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Title: The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit

Author: Ralph Waldo Trine

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Language: English

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THE HIGHER POWERS
OF
MIND AND SPIRIT


BY
RALPH WALDO TRINE

AUTHOR OF "IN TUNE WITH THE INFINITE," ETC.


LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
1933




First published May 1918
Reprinted November 1918.
Reprinted 1919, 1923, 1927, 1933.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, GLASGOW




FOREWORD


We are all dwellers in two kingdoms, the inner kingdom, the kingdom of
the mind and spirit, and the outer kingdom, that of the body and the
physical universe about us. In the former, the kingdom of the unseen,
lie the silent, subtle forces that are continually determining, and with
exact precision, the conditions of the latter.

To strike the right balance in life is one of the supreme essentials of
all successful living. We must work, for we must have bread. We require
other things than bread. They are not only valuable, comfortable, but
necessary. It is a dumb, stolid being, however, who does not realize
that life consists of more than these. They spell mere existence, not
abundance, fullness of life.

We can become so absorbed in making a living that we have no time _for
living_. To be capable and efficient in one's work is a splendid thing;
but efficiency _can be made_ a great mechanical device that robs life of
far more than it returns it. A nation can become so possessed, and even
obsessed, with the idea of power and grandeur through efficiency and
organisation, that it becomes a great machine and robs its people of the
finer fruits of life that spring from a wisely subordinated and
coordinated individuality. Here again it is the wise balance that
determines all.

Our prevailing thoughts and emotions determine, and with absolute
accuracy, the prevailing conditions of our outward, material life, and
likewise the prevailing conditions of our bodily life. Would we have any
conditions different in the latter we must then make the necessary
changes in the former. The silent, subtle forces of mind and spirit,
ceaselessly at work, are continually moulding these outward and these
bodily conditions.

He makes a fundamental error who thinks that these are mere sentimental
things in life, vague and intangible. They are, as great numbers are now
realising, the great and elemental things in life, the only things that
in the end really count. The normal man or woman can never find real and
abiding satisfaction in the mere possessions, the mere accessories of
life. There is an eternal something within that forbids it. That is the
reason why, of late years, so many of our big men of affairs, so many in
various public walks in life, likewise many women of splendid equipment
and with large possessions, have been and are turning so eagerly to the
very things we are considering. To be a mere huckster, many of our big
men are finding, cannot bring satisfaction, even though his operations
run into millions in the year.

And happy is the young man or the young woman who, while the bulk of
life still lies ahead, realises that it is the things of the mind and
the spirit--the fundamental things in life--that really count; that here
lie the forces that are to be understood and to be used in moulding the
everyday conditions and affairs of life; that the springs of life are
all from within, that as is the inner so always and inevitably will be
the outer.

To present certain facts that may be conducive to the realisation of
this more abundant life is the author's purpose and plan.

                                        R. W. T.

_Sunnybrae Farm,
Croton-on-Hudson,
New York._




CONTENTS


Chapter                                                           Page

   I. The Silent, Subtle Building Forces of Mind and Spirit          9

  II. Soul, Mind, Body--The Subconscious Mind That
      Interrelates Them                                             19

 III. The Way Mind Through the Subconscious Mind Builds Body        37

  IV. The Powerful Aid of the Mind in Rebuilding Body--How
      Body Helps Mind                                               50

   V. Thought as a Force in Daily Living                            63

  VI. Jesus the Supreme Exponent of the Inner Forces and
      Powers: His People's Religion and Their Condition             76

 VII. The Divine Rule in the Mind and Heart: The Unessentials
      We Drop--The Spirit Abides                                    89

VIII. If We Seek the Essence of His Revelation, and the
      Purpose of His Life                                          113

  IX. His Purpose of Lifting Up, Energising, Beautifying,
      and Saving the Entire Life: The Saving of the Soul is
      Secondary; but Follows                                       140

   X. Some Methods of Attainment                                   152

  XI. Some Methods of Expression                                   173

 XII. The World War--Its Meaning and Its Lessons for Us            191

XIII. Our Sole Agency of International Peace, and
      International Concord                                        213

 XIV. The World's Balance-wheel                                    231




THE HIGHER POWERS

OF

MIND AND SPIRIT




I

THE SILENT, SUBTLE BUILDING FORCES OF MIND AND SPIRIT


There are moments in the lives of all of us when we catch glimpses of a
life--our life--that is infinitely beyond the life we are now living. We
realise that we are living below our possibilities. We long for the
realisation of the life that we feel should be.

Instinctively we perceive that there are within us powers and forces
that we are making but inadequate use of, and others that we are
scarcely using at all. Practical metaphysics, a more simplified and
concrete psychology, well-known laws of mental and spiritual science,
confirm us in this conclusion.

Our own William James, he who so splendidly related psychology,
philosophy, and even religion, to life in a supreme degree, honoured his
calling and did a tremendous service for all mankind, when he so
clearly developed the fact that we have within us powers and forces that
we are making all too little use of--that we have within us great
reservoirs of power that we have as yet scarcely tapped.

The men and the women who are awake to these inner helps--these
directing, moulding, and sustaining powers and forces that belong to the
realm of mind and spirit--are never to be found among those who ask: Is
life worth the living? For them life has been multiplied two, ten, a
hundred fold.

It is not ordinarily because we are not interested in these things, for
instinctively we feel them of value; and furthermore our observations
and experiences confirm us in this thought. The pressing cares of the
everyday life--in the great bulk of cases, the bread and butter problem
of life, which is after all the problem of ninety-nine out of every
hundred--all seem to conspire to keep us from giving the time and
attention to them that we feel we should give them. But we lose thereby
tremendous helps to the daily living.

Through the body and its avenues of sense, we are intimately related to
the physical universe about us. Through the soul and spirit we are
related to the Infinite Power that is the animating, the sustaining
force--the Life Force--of all objective material forms. It is through
the medium of the mind that we are able consciously to relate the two.
Through it we are able to realise the laws that underlie the workings of
the spirit, and to open ourselves that they may become the dominating
forces of our lives.

There is a divine current that will bear us with peace and safety on its
bosom if we are wise and diligent enough to find it and go with it.
Battling against the current is always hard and uncertain. Going with
the current lightens the labours of the journey. Instead of being
continually uncertain and even exhausted in the mere efforts of getting
through, we have time for the enjoyments along the way, as well as the
ability to call a word of cheer or to lend a hand to the neighbour, also
on the way.

The _natural, normal life_ is by a law divine under the guidance of the
spirit. It is only when we fail to seek and to follow this guidance, or
when we deliberately take ourselves from under its influence, that
uncertainties arise, legitimate longings go unfulfilled, and that
violated laws bring their penalties.

It is well that we remember always that violated law carries with it its
own penalty. The Supreme Intelligence--God, if you please--does not
punish. He works through the channel of great immutable systems of law.
_It is ours to find these laws._ That is what mind, intelligence, is
for. Knowing them we can then obey them and reap the beneficent results
that are always a part of their fulfilment; knowingly or unknowingly,
intentionally or unintentionally, we can fail to observe them, we can
violate them, and suffer the results, or even be broken by them.

Life is not so complex if we do not so continually persist in making it
so. Supreme Intelligence, creative Power works only through law. Science
and religion are but different approaches to our understanding of the
law. When both are real, they supplement one another and their findings
are identical.

The old Hebrew prophets, through the channel of the spirit, perceived
and enunciated some wonderful laws of the natural and normal life--that
are now being confirmed by well-established laws of mental and spiritual
science--and that are now producing these identical results in the lives
of great numbers among us today, when they said: "And thine ears shall
hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye
turn to the right hand and when ye turn to the left."

And again: "The Lord is with you, while ye be with him; and if ye seek
him, he will be found of you; but if ye forsake him, he will forsake
you." "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on
thee; because he trusteth in thee." "The Lord in the midst of thee is
mighty." "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall
abide under the shadow of the Almighty." "Thou shalt be in league with
the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field shall be at peace
with thee." "Commit thy way unto the Lord: trust also in him and he
shall bring it to pass." Now these formulations all mean something of a
_very definite nature_, or, they mean nothing at all. If they are actual
expressions of fact, they are governed by certain definite and immutable
laws.

These men gave us, however, no knowledge of _the laws_ underlying the
workings of these inner forces and powers; they perhaps had no such
knowledge themselves. They were intuitive perceptions of truth on their
part. The scientific spirit of this, our age, was entirely unknown to
them. The growth of the race in the meantime, the development of the
scientific spirit in the pursuit and the finding of truth, makes us
infinitely beyond them in some things, while in others they were far
ahead of us. But this fact remains, and this is the important fact: If
these things were actual facts in the lives of these early Hebrew
prophets, they are then actual facts in our lives right now, today; or,
if not actual facts, then they are facts that still lie in the realm of
the potential, only waiting to be brought into the realm of the actual.

These were not unusual men in the sense that the Infinite Power, God, if
you please, could or did speak to them alone. They are types, they are
examples of how any man or any woman, through desire and through will,
can open himself or herself to the leadings of Divine Wisdom, and have
actualised in his or her life an ever-growing sense of Divine Power. For
truly "God is the same yesterday, and today, and forever." His laws are
unchanging as well as immutable.

None of these men taught, then, how to recognise the Divine Voice
within, nor how to become continually growing embodiments of the Divine
Power. They gave us perhaps, though, all they were able to give. Then
came Jesus, the successor of this long line of illustrious Hebrew
prophets, with a greater aptitude for the things of the spirit--the
supreme embodiment of Divine realisation and revelation. With a greater
knowledge of truth than they, he did greater things than they.

He not only did these works, but he showed how he did them. He not only
revealed _the Way_, but so earnestly and so diligently he implored his
hearers to follow _the Way_. He makes known the secret of his insight
and his power: "The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself:
but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." Again, "I can
of my own self do nothing." And he then speaks of his purpose, his aim:
"I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more
abundantly." A little later he adds: "The works that I do ye shall do
also." Now again, these things mean something of a very definite nature,
or they mean nothing at all.

The works done, the results achieved by Jesus' own immediate disciples
and followers, and in turn their followers, as well as in the early
church for close to two hundred years after his time, all attest the
truth of his teaching and demonstrate unmistakably the results that
follow.

Down through the intervening centuries, the teachings, the lives and the
works of various seers, sages, and mystics, within the church and out of
the church, have likewise attested the truth of his teachings. The bulk
of the Christian world, however, since the third century, has been so
concerned with various theories and teachings _concerning_ Jesus, that
it has missed almost completely the real vital and vitalising teachings
_of_ Jesus.

We have not been taught primarily to follow his injunctions, and to
apply the truths that he revealed to the problems of our everyday
living. Within the last two score of years or a little more, however,
there has been a great going back directly to the teachings of Jesus,
and a determination to prove their truth and to make effective their
assurances. Also various laws in the realm of Mental and Spiritual
Science have become clearly established and clearly formulated, that
confirm all his fundamental teachings.

There are now definite and well-defined laws in relation to thought as a
force, and the methods as to how it determines our material and bodily
conditions. There are now certain well-defined laws pertaining to the
subconscious mind, its ceaseless building activities, how it always
takes its direction from the active, thinking mind, and how through this
channel we may connect ourselves with reservoirs of power, so to speak,
in an intelligent and effective manner.

There are now well-understood laws underlying mental suggestion, whereby
it can be made a tremendous source of power in our own lives, and can
likewise be made an effective agency in arousing the motive powers of
another for his or her healing, habit-forming, character-building. There
are likewise well-established facts not only as to the value, but the
absolute need of periods of meditation and quiet, alone with the Source
of our being, stilling the outer bodily senses, and fulfilling the
conditions whereby the Voice of the Spirit can speak to us and through
us, and the power of the Spirit can manifest in and through us.

A nation is great only as its people are great. Its people are great in
the degree that they strike the balance between the life of the mind and
the spirit--all the finer forces and emotions of life--and their outer
business organisation and activities. When the latter become excessive,
when they grow at the expense of the former, then the inevitable decay
sets in, that spells the doom of that nation, and its time is tolled off
in exactly the same manner, and under the same law, as has that of all
the other nations before it that sought to reverse the Divine order of
life.

The human soul and its welfare is the highest business that any state
can give its attention to. To recognise or to fail to recognise the
value of the human soul in other nations, determines its real greatness
and grandeur, or its self-complacent but essential vacuity. It is
possible for a nation, through subtle delusions, to get such an attack
of the big head that it bends over backwards, and it is liable, in this
exposed position, to get a thrust in its vitals.

To be carried too far along the road of efficiency, big business,
expansion, world power, domination, at the expense of the great
spiritual verities, the fundamental humanities of national life, that
make for the real life and welfare of its people, and that give also its
true and just relations with other nations and their people, is both
dangerous and in the end suicidal--it can end in nothing but loss and
eventual disaster. A silent revolution of thought is taking place in the
minds of the people of all nations at this time, and will continue for
some years to come. A stock-taking period in which tremendous
revaluations are under way, is on. It is becoming clear-cut and
decisive.




II

SOUL, MIND, BODY--THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND THAT INTERRELATES THEM


There is a notable twofold characteristic of this our age--we might
almost say: of this our generation. It is on the one hand a tremendously
far-reaching interest in the deeper spiritual realities of life, in the
things of the mind and the Spirit. On the other hand, there is a
materialism that is apparent to all, likewise far-reaching. We are
witnessing the two moving along, apparently at least, side by side.

There are those who believe that out of the latter the former is
arising, that we are witnessing another great step forward on the part
of the human race--a new era or age, so to speak. There are many things
that would indicate this to be a fact. The fact that the _material
alone_ does not satisfy, and that from the very constitution of the
human mind and soul, it cannot satisfy, may be a fundamental reason for
this.

It may be also that as we are apprehending, to a degree never equalled
in the world's history, the finer forces in nature, and are using them
in a very practical and useful way in the affairs and the activities of
the daily life, we are also and perhaps in a more pronounced degree,
realising, understanding, and using the finer, the higher insights and
forces, and therefore powers, of mind, of spirit, and of body.

I think there is a twofold reason for this widespread and rapidly
increasing interest. A new psychology, or perhaps it were better to say,
some new and more fully established laws of psychology, pertaining to
the realm of the subconscious mind, its nature, and its peculiar
activities and powers, has brought us another agency in life of
tremendous significance and of far-reaching practical use.

Another reason is that the revelation and the religion of Jesus the
Christ is witnessing a _new birth_, as it were. We are finding at last
an entirely new content in his teachings, as well as in his life. We are
dropping our interest in those phases of a Christianity that he probably
never taught, and that we have many reasons now to believe he never even
thought--things that were added long years after his time.

We are conscious, however, as never before, that that wonderful
revelation, those wonderful teachings, and above all that wonderful
life, have a content that can, that does, inspire, lift up, and make
more effective, more powerful, more successful, and more happy, the life
of every man and every woman who will accept, who will appropriate, who
will live his teachings.

Look at it, however we will, this it is that accounts for the vast
number of earnest, thoughtful, forward looking men and women who are
passing over, and in many cases are passing from, traditional
Christianity, and who either of their own initiative, or under other
leadership, are going back to those simple, direct, God-impelling
teachings of the Great Master. They are finding salvation in his
teachings and his example, where they _never could_ find it in various
phases of the traditional teachings _about_ him.

It is interesting to realise, and it seems almost strange that this new
finding in psychology, and that this new and vital content in
Christianity, have come about at almost identically the same time. Yet
it is not strange, for the one but serves to demonstrate in a concrete
and understandable manner the fundamental and essential principles of
the other. Many of the Master's teachings of the inner life, teachings
of "the Kingdom," given so far ahead of his time that the people in
general, and in many instances even his disciples, were incapable of
fully comprehending and understanding them, are now being confirmed and
further elucidated by clearly defined laws of psychology.

Speculation and belief are giving way to a greater knowledge of law. The
supernatural recedes into the background as we delve deeper into the
supernormal. The unusual loses its miraculous element as we gain
knowledge of the law whereby the thing is done. We are realising that no
miracle has ever been performed in the world's history that was not
through the understanding and the use of Law.

Jesus did unusual things; but he did them because of his unusual
understanding of the law through which they could be done. _He_ would
not have us believe otherwise. To do so would be a distinct
contradiction of the whole tenor of his teachings and his injunctions.
Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free, was his own
admonition. It was the great and passionate longing of his master heart
that the people to whom he came, grasp the _interior meanings_ of his
teachings. How many times he felt the necessity of rebuking even his
disciples for dragging his teachings down through their material
interpretations. As some of the very truths that he taught are now
corroborated and more fully understood, and in some cases amplified by
well-established laws of psychology, mystery recedes into the
background.

We are reconstructing a more natural, a more sane, a more common-sense
portrait of the Master. "It is the spirit that quickeneth," said he;
"the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, _they_
are spirit and _they_ are life." Shall we recall again in this
connection: "I am come that ye might have life and that ye might have it
more abundantly"? When, therefore, we take him at his word, and listen
intently to _his_ words, and not so much to the words of others about
him; when we place our emphasis upon the fundamental spiritual truths
that he revealed and that he pleaded so earnestly to be taken in the
simple, direct way in which he taught them, we are finding that the
religion of the Christ means a clearer and healthier understanding of
life and its problems through a greater knowledge of the elemental
forces and laws of life.

Ignorance enchains and enslaves. Truth--which is but another way of
saying a clear and definite knowledge of Law, the elemental laws of
soul, of mind, and body, and of the universe about us--brings freedom.
Jesus revealed essentially a spiritual philosophy of life. His whole
revelation pertained to the essential divinity of the human soul and
the great gains that would follow the realisation of this fact. His
whole teaching revolved continually around his own expression, used
again and again, the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven, and which
he so distinctly stated was an inner state or consciousness or
realisation. Something not to be found outside of oneself but to be
found _only within_.

We make a great error to regard man as merely a duality--mind and body.
Man is a trinity,--soul, mind, and body, each with its own
functions,--and it is the right coordinating of these that makes the
truly efficient and eventually the perfect life. Anything less is always
one-sided and we may say, continually out of gear. It is essential to a
correct understanding, and therefore for any adequate use of the
potential powers and forces of the inner life, to realise this.

It is the physical body that relates us to the physical universe about
us, that in which we find ourselves in this present form of existence.
But the body, wondrous as it is in its functions and its mechanism, is
not the life. It has no life and no power in itself. It is of the earth,
earthy. Every particle of it has come from the earth through the food we
eat in combination with the air we breathe and the water we drink, and
every part of it in time will go back to the earth. It is the house we
inhabit while here.

We can make it a hovel or a mansion; we can make it even a pig-sty or a
temple, according as the soul, the real self, chooses to function
through it. We should make it servant, but through ignorance of the real
powers within, we can permit it to become master. "Know ye not," said
the Great Apostle to the Gentiles, "that your body is the temple of the
Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your
own?"

The soul is the self, the soul made in the image of Eternal Divine Life,
which, as Jesus said, is Spirit. The essential reality of the soul is
Spirit. Spirit--Being--is one and indivisible, manifesting itself,
however, in individual forms in existence. Divine Being and the human
soul are therefore in essence the same, the same in quality. Their
difference, which, however, is very great--though less in some cases
than in others--is a difference _in degree_.

Divine Being is the cosmic force, the essential essence, the Life
therefore of all there is in existence. The soul is individual personal
existence. The soul while in this form of existence manifests, functions
through the channel of a material body. _It is the mind that relates the
two._ It is through the medium of the mind that the two must be
coordinated. The soul, the self, while in this form of existence, must
have a body through which to function. The body, on the other hand, to
reach and to maintain its highest state, must be continually infused
with the life force of the soul. The life force of the soul is Spirit.
If spirit, then _essentially one_ with Infinite Divine Spirit, for
spirit, Being, is one.

The embodied soul finds itself the tenant of a material body in a
material universe, and according to a plan as yet, at least, beyond our
human understanding, whatever may be our thoughts, our theories
regarding it. The whole order of life as we see it, all the world of
Nature about us, and we must believe the order of human life, is a
gradual evolving from the lower to the higher, from the cruder to the
finer. The purpose of life is unquestionably unfoldment, growth,
advancement--likewise the evolving from the lower and the coarser to the
higher and the finer.

The higher insights and powers of the soul, always potential within,
become of value only as they are realised and used. Evolution implies
always involution. The substance of all we shall ever attain or be, is
within us now, waiting for realisation and thereby expression. The soul
carries its own keys to all wisdom and to all valuable and usable
power.

It was that highly illumined seer, Emanuel Swedenborg, who said: "Every
created thing is in itself inanimate and dead, but it is animated and
caused to live by this, that the Divine is in it and that it exists in
and from the Divine." Again: "The universal end of creation is that
there should be an external union of the Creator with the created
universe; and this would not be possible unless there were beings in
whom His Divine might be present as if in itself; thus in whom it might
dwell and abide. To be His abode, they must receive His love and wisdom
by a power which seems to be their own; thus, must lift themselves up to
the Creator as if by their own power, and unite themselves with Him.
Without this mutual action no union would be possible." And again:
"Every one who duly considers the matter may know that the body does not
think, because it is material, but the soul, because it is spiritual.
All the rational life, therefore, which appears in the body belongs to
the spirit, for the matter of the body is annexed, and, as it were,
joined to the spirit, in order that the latter may live and perform uses
in the natural world.... Since everything which lives in the body, and
acts and feels by virtue of that life, belongs to the spirit alone, it
follows that the spirit is the real man; or, what comes to the same
thing, man himself is a spirit, in a form similar to that of his body."

Spirit being the real man, it follows that the great, central fact of
all experience, of all human life, is the coming into a conscious, vital
realisation of our source, of our real being, in other words, of our
essential oneness with the spirit of Infinite Life and Power--the source
of all life and all power. We need not look for outside help when we
have within us waiting to be realised, and thereby actualised, this
Divine birthright.

Browning was prophet as well as poet when in "Paracelsus" he said:

    Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
    From outward things, whate'er you may believe.
    There is an inmost centre in us all,
    Where truth abides in fulness; and around
    Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
    This perfect, clear perception--which is truth.
    A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
    Binds it, and makes all error: and, to know
    Rather consists in opening out a way
    Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
    Than in effecting entry for a light
    Supposed to be without.

How strangely similar in meaning it seems to that saying of an earlier
prophet, Isaiah: "And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying,
This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand and when
ye turn to the left."

All great educators are men of great vision. It was Dr. Hiram Corson who
said: "It is what man draws up from his sub-self which is of prime
importance in his true education, not what is put into him. It is the
occasional uprising of our sub-selves that causes us, at times, to feel
that we are greater than we know." A new psychology, spiritual science,
a more commonsense interpretation of the great revelation of the Christ
of Nazareth, all combine to enable us to make this occasional uprising
our natural and normal state.

No man has probably influenced the educational thought and practice of
the entire world more than Friedrich Froebel. In that great book of his,
"The Education of Man," he bases his entire system upon the following,
which constitutes the opening of its first chapter: "In all things there
lives and reigns an eternal law. This all-controlling law is necessarily
based on an all-pervading, energetic, living, self-conscious, and hence
eternal, Unity.... _This Unity is God._ All things have come from the
Divine Unity, from God, and have their origin in the Divine Unity, in
God alone. God is the sole source of all things. All things live and
have their being in and through the Divine Unity, in and through God.
All things are only through the divine effluence that lives in them. The
divine effluence that lives in each thing is the essence of each thing.

"It is the destiny and life work of all things to unfold their essence,
hence their divine being, and, therefore, the Divine Unity itself--to
reveal God in their external and transient being. It is the special
destiny and life work of man, as an intelligent and rational being, to
become fully, vividly, conscious of this essence of the divine effluence
in him, and therefore of God.

"The precept for life in general and for every one is: _Exhibit only thy
spiritual, thy life, in the external, and by means of the external in
thy actions, and observe the requirements of thy inner being and its
nature._"

Here is not only an undying basis for all real education, but also the
basis of all true religion, as well as the basis of all ideal
philosophy. Yes, there could be no evolution, unless the essence of all
to be evolved, unfolded, were already involved in the human soul. To
follow the higher leadings of the soul, which is so constituted that it
is the inlet, and as a consequence the outlet of Divine Spirit, Creative
Energy, the real source of all wisdom and power; to project its leadings
into every phase of material activity and endeavour, constitutes the
ideal life. It was Emerson who said: "Every soul is not only the inlet,
but may become the outlet of all there is in God." To keep this inlet
open, so as not to shut out the Divine inflow, is the secret of all
higher achievement, as well as attainment.

There is a wood separated by a single open field from my house. In it,
halfway down a little hillside, there was some years ago a spring. It
was at one time walled up with rather large loose stone--some three feet
across at the top. In following a vaguely defined trail through the wood
one day in the early spring, a trail at one time evidently considerably
used, it led me to this spot. I looked at the stone enclosure, partly
moss-grown. I wondered why, although the ground was wet around it, there
was no water in or running from what had evidently been at one time a
well-used spring.

A few days later when the early summer work was better under way, I took
an implement or two over, and half scratching, half digging inside the
little wall, I found layer after layer of dead leaves and sediment, dead
leaves and sediment. Presently water became evident, and a little later
it began to rise within the wall. In a short time there was nearly three
feet of water. It was cloudy, no bottom could be seen. I sat down and
waited for it to settle.

Presently I discerned a ledge bottom and the side against the hill was
also ledge. On this side, close to the bottom, I caught that peculiar
movement of little particles of silvery sand, and looking more closely I
could see a cleft in the rock where the water came gushing and bubbling
in. Soon the entire spring became clear as crystal, and the water
finding evidently its old outlet, made its way down the little hillside.
I was soon able to trace and to uncover its course as it made its way to
the level place below.

As the summer went on I found myself going to the spot again and again.
Flowers that I found in no other part of the wood, before the autumn
came were blooming along the little watercourse. Birds in abundance came
to drink and to bathe. Several times I have found the half-tame deer
there. Twice we were but thirty to forty paces apart. They have watched
my approach, and as I stopped, have gone on with their drinking,
evidently unafraid--as if it were likewise their possession. And so it
is.

After spending a most valuable hour or two in the quiet there one
afternoon, I could not help but wonder as I walked home whether
perchance the spring may not be actually happy in being able to resume
its life, to fulfil, so to speak, its destiny; happy also in the service
it renders flowers and the living wild things--happy in the service it
renders even me. I am doubly happy and a hundred times repaid in the
little help I gave it. It needed help, to enable it effectively to keep
connection with its source. As it became gradually shut off from this,
it weakened, became then stagnant, and finally it ceased its active
life.

Containing a fundamental truth deeper perhaps than we realise, are these
words of that gifted seer, Emanuel Swedenborg: "There is only one
Fountain of Life, and the life of man is a stream therefrom, which if it
were not continually replenished from its source would instantly cease
to flow." And likewise these: "Those who think in the light of interior
reason can see that all things are connected by intermediate links with
the First Cause, and that whatever is not maintained in that connection
must cease to exist."

There is a mystic force that transcends any powers of the intellect or
of the body, that becomes manifest and operative in the life of man when
this God-consciousness becomes awakened and permeates his entire being.
Failure to realise and to keep in constant communion with our Source is
what causes fears, forebodings, worry, inharmony, conflict, conflict
that downs us many times in mind, in spirit, in body--failure to follow
that Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, failure
to hear and to heed that Voice of the soul, that speaks continually
clearer as we accustom ourselves to listen to and to heed it, failure to
follow those intuitions with which the soul, every soul, is endowed, and
that lead us aright and that become clearer in their leadings as we
follow them. It is this guidance and this sustaining power that all
great souls fall back upon in times of great crises.

This single stanza by Edwin Markham voices the poet's inspiration:

    At the heart of the cyclone tearing the sky,
    And flinging the clouds and the towers by,
        Is a place of central calm;
    So, here in the roar of mortal things
    I have a place where my spirit sings,
        In the hollow of God's palm.

"That the Divine Life and Energy _actually lives in us_," was the
philosopher Fichte's reply to the proposition--"the profoundest
knowledge that man can attain." And speaking of the man to whom this
becomes a real, vital, conscious realisation, he said: "His whole
existence flows forth, softly and gently, from his Inward Being, and
issues out into Reality without difficulty or hindrance."

There are certain faculties that we have that are not a part of the
active thinking mind; they seem to be no part of what we might term our
_conscious intelligence_. They transcend any possible activities of our
regular mental processes, and they are in some ways independent of them.
Through some avenue, suggestions, intuitions of truth, intuitions of
occurrences of which through the thinking mind we could know nothing,
are at times borne in upon us; they flash into our consciousness, as we
say, quite independent of any mental action on our part, and sometimes
when we are thinking of something quite foreign to that which comes to,
that which "impresses" us.

This seems to indicate a source of knowledge, a faculty that is distinct
from, but that acts in various ways in conjunction with, the active
thinking mind. It performs likewise certain very definite and distinct
functions in connection with the body. It is this that is called the
_subconscious mind_--by some the superconscious or the supernormal mind,
by others the subliminal self.

Just what the subconscious mind is no man knows. It is easier to define
its functions and to describe its activities than it is to state in
exact terms what it is. It is similar in this respect to the physical
force--if it be a physical force--electricity. It is only of late years
that we know anything of electricity at all. Today we know a great deal
of its nature and the laws of its action. No man living can tell exactly
what electricity is. We are nevertheless making wonderful _practical
applications_ of it. We are learning more _about it_ continually. Some
day we may know what it _actually is_.

The fact that the subconscious mind seems to function in a realm apart
from anything that has to do with our conscious mental processes, and
also that it has some definite functions as both directing and building
functions to perform in connection with the body, and that it is at the
same time subject to suggestion and direction from the active thinking
mind, would indicate that it may be the true connecting link, the medium
of exchange, between the soul and the body, the connector of the
spiritual and the material so far as man is concerned.




III

THE WAY MIND THROUGH THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND BUILDS BODY


When one says that he numbers among his acquaintances some who are as
old at sixty as some others are at eighty, he but gives expression to a
fact that has become the common possession of many. I have known those
who at fifty-five and sixty were to all intents and purposes really
older, more decrepit, and rapidly growing still more decrepit both in
mind and body, than many another at seventy and seventy-five and even at
eighty.

History, then, is replete with instances, memorable instances, of
people, both men and women, who have accomplished things at an age--who
have even begun and carried through to successful completion things at
an age that would seem to thousands of others, in the captivity of age,
with their backs to the future, ridiculous even to think of
accomplishing, much less of beginning. On account of a certain law that
has always seemed to me to exist and that I am now firmly convinced is
very _exact_ in its workings, I have been interested in talking with
various ones and in getting together various facts relative to this
great discrepancy in the ages of these two classes of "old" people.

Within the year I called upon a friend whom, on account of living in a
different portion of the country, I hadn't seen for nearly ten years.
Conversation revealed to me the fact that he was then in his
eighty-eighth year. I could notice scarcely a change in his appearance,
walk, voice, and spirit. We talked at length upon the various,
so-called, periods of life. He told me that about the only difference
that he noticed in himself as compared with his middle life was that now
when he goes out to work in his garden, and among his trees, bushes, and
vines--and he has had many for many years--he finds that he is quite
ready to quit and to come in at the end of about two hours, and
sometimes a little sooner, when formerly he could work regularly without
fatigue for the entire half day. In other words, he has not the same
degree of endurance that he once had.

Among others, there comes to mind in this connection another who is a
little under seventy. It chances to be a woman. She is bent and decrepit
and growing more so by very fixed stages each twelvemonth. I have known
her for over a dozen years. At the time when I first knew her she was
scarcely fifty-eight, she was already bent and walked with an
uncertain, almost faltering tread. The dominant note of her personality
was then as now, but more so now, fear for the present, fear for the
future, a dwelling continually on her ills, her misfortunes, her
symptoms, her approaching and increasing helplessness.

Such cases I have observed again and again; so have all who are at all
interested in life and in its forces and its problems. What is the cause
of this almost world-wide difference in these two lives? In this case it
is as clear as day--the mental characteristics and the mental habits of
each.

In the first case, here was one who early got a little philosophy into
his life and then more as the years passed. He early realised that in
himself his good or his ill fortune lay; that the mental attitude we
take toward anything determines to a great extent our power in
connection with it, as well as its effects upon us. He grew to love his
work and he did it daily, but never under high pressure. He was
therefore benefited by it. His face was always to the future, even as it
is today. This he made one of the fundamental rules of his life. He was
helped in this, he told me in substance, by an early faith which with
the passing of the years has ripened with him into a demonstrable
conviction--that there is a Spirit of Infinite Life back of all,
working in love in and through the lives of all, and that in the degree
that we realise it as the one Supreme Source of our lives, and when
through desire and will, which is through the channel of our thoughts,
we open our lives so that this Higher Power can work definitely in and
through us, and then go about and do our daily work without fears or
forebodings, the passing of the years sees only the highest good
entering into our lives.

In the case of the other one whom we have mentioned, a repetition seems
scarcely necessary. Suffice it to say that the common expression on the
part of those who know her--I have heard it numbers of times--is: "What
a blessing it will be to herself and to others when she has gone!"

A very general rule with but few exceptions can be laid down as follows:
The body ordinarily looks as old as the mind thinks and feels.

Shakespeare anticipated by many years the best psychology of the times
when he said: "It is the mind that makes the body rich."

It seems to me that our great problem, or rather our chief concern,
should not be so much how to stay young in the sense of possessing all
the attributes of youth, _for the passing of the years does bring
changes_, but how to pass gracefully, and even magnificently, and with
undiminished vigour from youth to middle age, and then how to carry that
middle age into approaching old age, with a great deal more of the
vigour and the outlook of middle life than _we ordinarily do_.

The mental as well as the physical helps that are now in the possession
of this our generation, are capable of working a revolution in the lives
of many who are or who may become sufficiently awake to them, so that
with them there will not be that--shall we say--immature passing from
middle life into a broken, purposeless, decrepit, and sunless, and one
might almost say, soulless old age.

It seems too bad that so many among us just at the time that they have
become of most use to themselves, their families, and to the world,
should suddenly halt and then continue in broken health, and in so many
cases lie down and die. Increasing numbers of thinking people the world
over are now, as never before, finding that this is not necessary, that
something is at fault, that that fault is in ourselves. If so, then
reversely, the remedy lies in ourselves, in our own hands, so to speak.

In order to actualise and to live this better type of life we have got
to live better from both sides, both the mental and the physical, this
with all due respect to Shakespeare and to all modern mental
scientists.

The body itself, what we term the physical body, whatever may be the
facts regarding a finer spiritual body within it all the time giving
form to and animating and directing all its movements, is of material
origin, and derives its sustenance from the food we take, from the air
we breathe, the water we drink. In this sense it is from the earth, and
when we are through with it, it will go back to the earth.

The body, however, is not the Life; it is merely the material agency
that enables the Life to manifest in a material universe for a certain,
though not necessarily a given, period of time. It is the Life, or the
Soul, or the Personality that uses, and that in using shapes and moulds,
the body and that also determines its strength or its weakness. When
this is separated from the body, the body at once becomes a cold, inert
mass, commencing immediately to decompose into the constituent material
elements that composed it--literally going back to the earth and the
elements whence it came.

It is through the instrumentality or the agency of thought that the
Life, the Self, uses, and manifests through, the body. Again, while it
is true that the food that is taken and assimilated nourishes, sustains
and builds the body, it is also true that the condition and the
operation of the mind through the avenue of thought determines into what
shape or form the body is so builded. So in this sense it is true that
mind builds body; it is the agency, the force that determines the
shaping of the material elements.

Here is a wall being built. Bricks are the material used in its
construction. We do not say that the bricks are building the wall; we
say that the mason is building it, as is the case. He is using the
material that is supplied him, in this case bricks, giving form and
structure in a definite, methodical manner. Again, back of the mason is
his mind, acting through the channel of his thought, that is directing
his hands and all his movements. Without this guiding, directing _force_
no wall could take shape, even if millions of bricks were delivered upon
the scene.

So it is with the body. We take the food, the water, we breathe the air;
but this is all and always acted upon by a higher force. Thus it is that
mind builds body, the same as in every department of our being it is the
great builder. Our thoughts shape and determine our features, our walk,
the posture of our bodies, our voices; they determine the effectiveness
of our mental and our physical activities, as well as all our relations
with and influence or effects upon others.

You say: "I admit the operation of and even in certain cases the power
of thought, also that at times it has an influence upon our general
feelings, but I do not admit that it can have any direct influence upon
the body." Here is one who has allowed herself to be long given to
grief, abnormally so--notice her lowered physical condition, her lack of
vitality. The New York papers within the past twelve months recorded the
case of a young lady in New Jersey who, from _constant_ grieving over
the death of her mother, died, fell dead, within a week.

A man is handed a telegram. He is eating and enjoying his dinner. He
reads the contents of the message. Almost immediately afterward, his
body is a-tremble, his face either reddens or grows "ashy white," his
appetite is gone; such is the effect of the mind upon the stomach that
it literally refuses the food; if forced upon it, it may reject it
entirely.

A message is delivered to a lady. She is in a genial, happy mood. Her
face whitens; she trembles and her body falls to the ground in a faint,
temporarily helpless, apparently lifeless. Such are the intimate
relations between the mind and the body. Raise a cry of fire in a
crowded theatre. It may be a false alarm. There are among the audience
those who become seemingly palsied, powerless to move. It is the state
of the mind, and within several seconds, that has determined the state
of these bodies. Such are examples of the wonderfully quick influence of
the mind on the body.

Great stress, or anxiety, or fear, may in two weeks' or even in two
days' time so work its ravages that the person looks ten years or even
twenty years older. A person has been long given to worry, or perhaps to
worry in extreme form though not so long--a well-defined case of
indigestion and general stomach trouble, with a generally lowered and
sluggish vitality, has become pronounced and fixed.

Any type of thought that prevails in our mental lives will in time
produce its correspondences in our physical lives. As we understand
better these laws of correspondences, we will be more careful as to the
types of thoughts and emotions we consciously, or unwittingly, entertain
and live with. The great bulk of all diseases, we will find, as we are
continually finding more and more, are in the mind before being in the
body, or are generated in the body through certain states and conditions
of mind.

The present state and condition of the body have been produced primarily
by the thoughts that have been taken by the conscious mind into the
subconscious, that is so intimately related to and that directs all the
subconscious and involuntary functions of the body. Says one: It may be
true that the mind has had certain effects upon the body; but to be able
_consciously_ to affect the body through the mind is impossible and even
unthinkable, for the body is a solid, fixed, material form.

We must get over the idea, as we quickly will, if we study into the
matter, that the body, in fact anything that we call material and solid,
is really solid. Even in the case of a piece of material as "solid" as a
bar of steel, the atoms forming the molecules are in continual action
each in conjunction with its neighbour. In the last analysis the body is
composed of cells--cells of bone, vital organ, flesh, sinew. In the body
the cells are continually changing, forming and reforming. Death would
quickly take place were this not true. Nature is giving us a new body
practically every year.

There are very few elements, cells, in the body of today that were there
a year ago. The rapidity with which a cut or wound on the body is
replaced by healthy tissue, the rapidity with which it heals, is an
illustration of this. One "touches" himself in shaving. In a week,
sometimes in less than a week, if the blood and the cell structure be
particularly healthy, there is no trace of the cut, the formation of new
cell tissue has completely repaired it. Through the formation of new
cell structure the life-force within, acting through the blood, is able
to rebuild and repair, if not too much interfered with, very rapidly.
The reason, we may say almost the sole reason, that surgery has made
such great advances during the past few years, so much greater
correspondingly than medicine, is on account of a knowledge of the
importance of and the use of antiseptics--keeping the wound clean and
entirely free from all extraneous matter.

So then, the greater portion of the body is really new, therefore young,
in that it is almost entirely this year's growth. Newness of form is
continually being produced in the body by virtue of this process of
perpetual renewal that is continually going on, and the new cells and
tissues are just as new as is the new leaf that comes forth in the
springtime to take the place of and to perform the same functions as the
one that was thrown off by the tree last autumn.

The skin renews itself through the casting off of used cells (those that
have already performed their functions) most rapidly, taking but a few
weeks. The muscles, the vital organs, the entire arterial system, the
brain and the nervous system all take longer, but all are practically
renewed within a year, some in much less time. Then comes the bony
structure, taking the longest, varying, we are told, from seven and
eight months to a year, in unusual cases fourteen months and longer.

It is, then, through this process of cell formation that the physical
body has been built up, and through the same process that it is
continually renewing itself. It is not therefore at any time or at any
age a solid fixed mass or material, but a structure in a continually
changing fluid form. It is therefore easy to see how we have it in our
power, when we are once awake to the relations between the conscious
mind and the subconscious--and it in turn in its relations to the
various involuntary and vital functions of the body--to determine to a
great extent how the body shall be built or how it shall be rebuilt.

Mentally to live in any state or attitude of mind is to take that state
or condition into the subconscious. _The subconscious mind does and
always will produce in the body after its own kind._ It is through this
law that we externalise and become in body what we live in our minds. If
we have predominating visions of and harbour thoughts of old age and
weakness, this state, with all its attendant circumstances, will become
externalised in our bodies far more quickly than if we entertain
thoughts and visions of a different type. Said Archdeacon Wilberforce in
a notable address in Westminster Abbey some time ago: "The recent
researches of scientific men, endorsed by experiments in the Salpetriere
in Paris, have drawn attention to the intensely creative power of
suggestions made by the conscious mind to the subconscious mind."




IV

THE POWERFUL AID OF THE MIND IN REBUILDING BODY--HOW BODY HELPS MIND


"The body looks," some one has said, "as old as the mind feels." By
virtue of a great mental law and at the same time chemical law we are
well within the realm of truth when we say: The body ordinarily is as
old as the mind feels.

Every living organism is continually going through two processes: it is
continually dying, and continually being renewed through the operation
and the power of the Life Force within it. In the human body it is
through the instrumentality of the cell that this process is going on.
The cell is the ultimate constituent in the formation and in the life of
tissue, fibre, tendon, bone, muscle, brain, nerve system, vital organ.
It is the instrumentality that Nature, as we say, uses to do her work.

The cell is formed; it does its work; it serves its purpose and dies;
and all the while new cells are being formed to take its place. This
process of new cell formation is going on in the body of each of us much
more rapidly and uniformly than we think. Science has demonstrated the
fact that there are very few cells in the body today that were there
twelve months ago. The form of the body remains practically the same;
but its constituent elements are in a constant state of change. The
body, therefore, is continually changing; it is never in a fixed state
in the sense of being a solid, but is always in a changing, fluid state.
It is being continually remade.

It is the Life, or the Life Force within, acting under the direction and
guidance of the subconscious or subjective mind that is the agency
through which this continually new cell-formation process is going on.
The subconscious mind is, nevertheless, always subject to suggestions
and impressions that are conveyed to it by the conscious or sense mind;
and here lies the great fact, the one all-important fact for us so far
as desirable or undesirable, so far as healthy or unhealthy, so far as
normal or aging body-building is concerned.

That we have it in our power to determine our physical and bodily
conditions to a far greater extent than we do is an undeniable fact.
That we have it in our power to determine and to dictate the conditions
of "old age" to a marvellous degree is also an undeniable fact--if we
are sufficiently keen and sufficiently awake to begin early enough.

If any arbitrary divisions of the various periods of life were
allowable, I should make the enumeration as follows: Youth, barring the
period of babyhood, to forty-five; middle age, forty-five to sixty;
approaching age, sixty to seventy-five; old age, seventy-five to
ninety-five and a hundred.

That great army of people who "age" long before their time, that
likewise great army of both men and women who along about middle age,
say from forty-five to sixty, break and, as we say, all of a sudden go
to pieces, and many die, just at the period when they should be in the
prime of life, in the full vigour of manhood and womanhood and of
greatest value to themselves, to their families, and to the world, is
something that is _contrary to nature_, and is one of the pitiable
conditions of our time. A greater knowledge, a little foresight, a
little care in _time_ could prevent this in the great majority of cases,
in ninety cases out of every hundred, without question.

Abounding health and strength--wholeness--is the natural law of the
body. The Life Force of the body, acting always under the direction of
the subconscious mind, _will build, and always does build_, healthily
and normally, unless too much interfered with. It is this that
determines the type of the cell structure that is continually being
built into the body from the available portions of the food that we
take to give nourishment to the body. It is affected for good or for
bad, helped or hindered, in its operation by the type of conscious
thought that is directed toward it, and that it is always influenced by.

Of great suggestive value is the following by an able writer and
practitioner:

"God has managed, and perpetually manages, to insert into our nature a
tendency toward health, and against the unnatural condition which we
call disease. When our flesh receives a wound, a strange nursing and
healing process is immediately commenced to repair the injury. So in all
diseases, organic or functional, this mysterious healing power sets
itself to work at once to triumph over the morbid condition.... Cannot
this healing process be greatly accelerated by a voluntary and conscious
action of the mind, assisted, if need be, by some other person? I
unhesitatingly affirm, from experience and observation, that it can. By
some volitional, mental effort and process of thought, this sanative
colatus, or healing power which God has given to our physiological
organism, may be greatly quickened and intensified in its action upon
the body. Here is the secret philosophy of the cures effected by Jesus
Christ.... There is a law of the action of mind on the body that is no
more an impenetrable mystery than the law of gravitation. It can be
understood and acted upon in the cure of disease as well as any other
law of nature."

If, then, it be possible through this process to change physical
conditions in the body even after they have taken form and have become
fixed, as we say, isn't it possible even more easily to determine the
type of cell structure that is grown in the first place?

The ablest minds in the world have thought and are thinking that if we
could find a way of preventing the hardening of the cells of the system,
producing in turn hardened arteries and what is meant by the general
term "ossification," that the process of aging, growing old, could be
greatly retarded, and that the condition of perpetual youth that we seem
to catch glimpses of in rare individuals here and there could be made a
more common occurrence than we find it today.

The cause of ossification is partly mental, partly physical, and in
connection with them both are hereditary influences and conditions that
have to be taken into consideration.

Shall we look for a moment to the first? The food that is taken into the
system, or the available portions of the food, is the building material;
but the mind is always the builder.

There are, then, two realms of mind, the conscious and the
subconscious. Another way of expressing it would be to say that mind
functions through two avenues--the avenue of the conscious and the
avenue of the subconscious. The conscious is the thinking mind; the
subconscious is the doing mind. The conscious is the sense mind, it
comes in contact with and is acted upon through the avenue of the five
senses. The subconscious is that quiet, finer, all-permeating inner mind
or force that guides all the inner functions, the life functions of the
body, and that watches over and keeps them going even when we are
utterly unconscious in sleep. The conscious suggests and gives
directions; the subconscious receives and carries into operation the
suggestions that are received.

The thoughts, ideas, and even beliefs and emotions of the conscious mind
are the seeds that are taken in by the subconscious and that in this
great _realm of causation_ will germinate and produce of their own kind.
The chemical activities that go on in the process of cell formation in
the body are all under the influence, the domination of this great
all-permeating subconscious, or subjective realm within us.

In that able work, "The Laws of Psychic Phenomena," Dr. Thomas J. Hudson
lays down this proposition: "That the subjective mind is constantly
amenable to control by suggestion." It is easy, when we once understand
and appreciate this great fact, to see how the body builds, or rather is
built, for health and strength, or for disease and weakness; for youth
and vigour, or for premature ossification and age. It is easy, then, to
see how we can have a hand in, in brief can have the controlling hand
in, building either the one or the other.

It is in the province of the intelligent man or woman to take hold of
the wheel, so to speak, and to determine as an intelligent human being
should, what condition or conditions shall be given birth and form to
and be externalised in the body.

A noted thinker and writer has said: "Whatever the mind is set upon, or
whatever it keeps most in view, that it is bringing to it, and the
continual thought or imagining must at last take form and shape in the
world of seen and tangible things."

And now, to be as concrete as possible, we have these facts: The body is
continually changing in that it is continually throwing out and off,
used cells, and continually building new cells to take their places.
This process, as well as all the inner functions of the body, is
governed and guarded by the subconscious realm of our being. The
subconscious can do and does do whatever it is _actually_ directed to
do by the conscious, thinking mind. "We must be careful on what we allow
our minds to dwell," said Sir John Lubbock, "the soul is dyed by its
thoughts."

If we believe ourselves subject to weakness, decay, infirmity, when we
should be "whole," the subconscious mind seizes upon the pattern that is
sent it and builds cell structure accordingly. This is one great reason
why one who is, as we say, chronically thinking and talking of his
ailments and symptoms, who is complaining and fearing, is never well.

To see one's self, to believe, and therefore to picture one's self in
mind as strong, healthy, active, well, is to furnish a pattern, is to
give suggestion and therefore direction to the subconscious so that it
will build cell tissue having the stamp and the force of healthy, vital,
active life, which in turn means abounding health and strength.

So, likewise, at about the time that "old age" is supposed ordinarily to
begin, when it is believed in and looked for by those about us and those
who act in accordance with this thought, if we fall into this same
mental drift, we furnish the subconscious the pattern that it will
inevitably build bodily conditions in accordance with. We will then find
the ordinarily understood marks and conditions of old age creeping upon
us, and we will become subject to their influences in every department
of our being. Whatever is thus pictured in the mind and lived in, the
Life Force will produce.

To remain young in mind, in spirit, in feeling, is to remain young in
body. Growing old at the period or age at which so many grow old, is to
a great extent a matter of habit.

To think health and strength, to see ourselves continually growing in
this condition, is to set into operation the subtlest dynamic force for
the externalisation of these conditions in the body that can be even
conceived of. If one's bodily condition, through abnormal, false mental
and emotional habits, has become abnormal and diseased, this same
attitude of mind, of spirit, of imagery, is to set into operation _a
subtle and powerful corrective agency that, if persisted in, will
inevitably tend to bring normal, healthy conditions to the front again_.

True, if these abnormal, diseased conditions have been helped on or have
been induced by wrong physical habits, by the violation of physical
laws, this violation must cease. But combine the two, and then give the
body the care that it requires in a moderate amount of simple, wholesome
food, regular cleansing to assist it in the elimination of impurities
and of used cell structure that is being regularly cast off, an
abundance of pure air and of moderate exercise, and a change amounting
almost to a miracle can be wrought--it may be, indeed, what many people
of olden time would have termed a miracle.

The mind thus becomes "a silent, transforming, sanative energy" of great
potency and power. That it can be so used is attested by the fact of the
large numbers, and the rapidly increasing numbers, all about us who are
so using it. This is what many people all over our country are doing
today, with the results that, by a great elemental law--Divine Law if
you choose--_many_ are curing themselves of various diseases, _many_ are
exchanging weakness and impotence for strength and power, _many_ are
ceasing, comparatively speaking, are politely refusing, to grow old.

Thought is a force, subtle and powerful, and it tends inevitably to
produce of its kind.

In forestalling "old age," at least old age of the decrepit type, it is
the period of middle life where the greatest care is to be employed. If,
at about the time "old age" is supposed ordinarily to begin, the "turn"
at middle life or a little later, we would stop to consider what this
period really means, that it means with both men and women a period of
life where some simple readjustments are to be made, a period of a
little rest, a little letting up, a temporary getting back to the
playtime of earlier years and a bringing of these characteristics back
into life again, then a complete letting-up would not be demanded by
nature a little later, as it is demanded in such a lamentably large
number of cases at the present time.

So in a definite, deliberate way, youth should be blended into the
middle life, and the resultant should be a force that will stretch
middle life for an indefinite period into the future.

And what an opportunity is here for mothers, at about the time that the
children have grown, and some or all even have "flown"! Of course,
Mother shouldn't go and get foolish, she shouldn't go cavorting around
in a sixteen-year-old hat, when the hat of the thirty-five-year-old
would undoubtedly suit her better; but she should rejoice that the
golden period of life is still before her. Now she has leisure to do
many of those things _that she has so long wanted to do_.

The world's rich field of literature is before her; the line of study or
work she has longed to pursue, she bringing to it a better equipped mind
and experience than she has ever had before. There is also an interest
in the life and welfare of her community, in civic, public welfare lines
that the present and the quick-coming time before us along women's
enfranchisement lines, along women's commonsense equality lines, is
making her a responsible and full sharer in. And how much more valuable
she makes herself, also, to her children, as well as to her community,
inspiring in them greater confidence, respect, and admiration than if
she allows herself to be pushed into the background by her own weak and
false thoughts of herself, or by the equally foolish thoughts of her
children in that she is now, or is at any time, to become a back number.

Life, as long as we are here, should mean continuous unfoldment,
advancement, and this is undoubtedly the purpose of life; but
age-producing forces and agencies mean deterioration, as opposed to
growth and unfoldment. They ossify, weaken, stiffen, deaden, both
mentally and physically. For him or her who yearns to stay young, the
coming of the years does not mean or bring abandonment of hope or of
happiness or of activity. It means comparative vigour combined with
continually larger experience, and therefore even more usefulness, and
hence pleasure and happiness.

Praise also to those who do not allow any one or any number of
occurrences in life to sour their nature, rob them of their faith, or
cripple their energies for the enjoyment of the fullest in life while
here. It's those people _who never allow themselves in spirit to be
downed_, no matter what their individual problems, surroundings, or
conditions may be, but who chronically bob up serenely who, after all,
_are the masters of life_, and who are likewise the strength-givers and
the helpers of others. There are multitudes in the world today, there
are readers of this volume, who could add a dozen or a score of
years--teeming, healthy years--to their lives by a process of
self-examination, a mental housecleaning, and a reconstructed, positive,
commanding type of thought.

Tennyson was prophet when he sang:

    Cleave then to the sunnier side of doubt,
    And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith!
    She reels not in the storm of warring words,
    She brightens at the clash of "Yes" and "No,"
    She sees the Best that glimmers through the Worst,
    She feels the sun is hid but for a night,
    She spies the summer through the winter bud,
    She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,
    She hears the lark within the songless egg,
    She finds the fountain where they wailed "mirage."




V

THOUGHT AS A FORCE IN DAILY LIVING


Some years ago an experience was told to me that has been the cause of
many interesting observations since. It was related by a man living in
one of our noted university towns in the Middle West. He was a
well-known lecture manager, having had charge of many lecture tours for
John B. Gough, Henry Ward Beecher, and others of like standing. He
himself was a man of splendid character, was of a sensitive organism, as
we say, and had always taken considerable interest in the powers and
forces pertaining to the inner life.

As a young man he had left home, and during a portion of his first year
away he had found employment on a Mississippi steamboat. One day in
going down the river, while he was crossing the deck, a sudden stinging
sensation seized him in the head, and instantly vivid thoughts of his
mother, back at the old home, flashed into his mind. This was followed
by a feeling of depression during the remainder of the day. The
occurrence was so unusual and the impression of it was so strong that
he made an account of it in his diary.

Some time later, on returning home, he was met in the yard by his
mother. She was wearing a thin cap on her head which he had never seen
her wear before. He remarked in regard to it. She raised the cap and
doing so revealed the remains of a long ugly gash on the side of her
head. She then said that some months before, naming the time, she had
gone into the back yard and had picked up a heavy crooked stick having a
sharp end, to throw it out of the way, and in throwing it, it had struck
a wire clothesline immediately above her head and had rebounded with
such force that it had given her the deep scalp wound of which she was
speaking. On unpacking his bag he looked into his diary and found that
the time she had mentioned corresponded exactly with the strange and
unusual occurrence to himself as they were floating down the
Mississippi.

The mother and son were very near one to the other, close in their
sympathies, and there can be but little doubt that the thoughts of the
mother as she was struck went out, and perhaps _went strongly out_, to
her boy who was now away from home. He, being sensitively organised and
intimately related to her in thought, and alone at the time,
undoubtedly got, if not her thought, at least the effects of her
thought, as it went out to him under these peculiar and tense
conditions.

There are scores if not hundreds of occurrences of a more or less
similar nature that have occurred in the lives of others, many of them
well authenticated. How many of us, even, have had the experience of
suddenly thinking of a friend of whom we have not thought for weeks or
months, and then entirely unexpectedly meeting or hearing from this same
friend. How many have had the experience of writing a friend, one who
has not been written to or heard from for a long time, and within a day
or two getting a letter from that friend--the letters "crossing," as we
are accustomed to say. There are many other experiences or facts of a
similar nature, and many of them exceedingly interesting, that could be
related did space permit. These all indicate to me that thoughts are not
mere indefinite things but that thoughts are forces, that they go out,
and that every distinct, clear-cut thought has, or may have, an
influence of some type.

Thought transference, which is now unquestionably an established fact,
notwithstanding much chicanery that is still to be found in connection
with it, is undoubtedly to be explained through the fact that _thoughts
are forces_. A positive mind through practice, at first with very
simple beginnings, gives form to a thought that another mind open and
receptive to it--and sufficiently attuned to the other mind--is able to
receive.

Wireless telegraphy, as a science, has been known but a comparatively
short time. The laws underlying it have been in the universe perhaps, or
undoubtedly, always. It is only lately that the mind of man has been
able to apprehend them, and has been able to construct instruments in
accordance with these laws. We are now able, through a knowledge of the
laws of vibration and by using the right sending and receiving
instruments, to send actual messages many hundreds of miles directly
through the ether and without the more clumsy accessories of poles and
wires. This much of it we know--_there is perhaps even more yet to be
known_.

We may find, as I am inclined to think we shall find, that thought is a
form of vibration. When a thought is born in the brain, it goes out just
as a sound wave goes out, and transmits itself through the ether, making
its impressions upon other minds that are in a sufficiently sensitive
state to receive it; this in addition to the effects that various types
of thoughts have upon the various bodily functions of the one with whom
they take origin.

We are, by virtue of the laws of evolution, constantly apprehending the
finer forces of nature--the tallow-dip, the candle, the oil lamp, years
later a more refined type of oil, gas, electricity, the latest tungsten
lights, radium--and we may be still only at the beginnings. Our finest
electric lights of today may seem--will seem--crude and the quality of
their light even more crude, twenty years hence, even less. Many other
examples of our gradual passing from the coarser to the finer in
connection with the laws and forces of nature occur readily to the minds
of us all.

The present great interest on the part of thinking men and women
everywhere, in addition to the more particular studies, experiments, and
observations of men such as Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Ramsay, and
others, in the powers and forces pertaining to the inner life is an
indication that we have reached a time when we are making great strides
along these lines. Some of our greatest scientists are thinking that we
are on the eve of some almost startling glimpses into these finer
realms. My own belief is that we are likewise on the eve of apprehending
the more precise _nature_ of thought as a force, the methods of its
workings, and the law underlying its more intimate and everyday uses.

Of one thing we can rest assured; nothing in the universe, nothing in
connection with human life is outside of the Realm of Law. The elemental
law of Cause and Effect is absolute in its workings. One of the great
laws pertaining to human life is: As is the inner, so always and
inevitably is the outer--Cause, Effect. Our thoughts and emotions are
the silent, subtle forces that are constantly externalising themselves
in kindred forms in our outward material world. Like creates like, and
like attracts like. As is our prevailing type of thought, so is our
prevailing type and our condition of life.

The type of thought we entertain has its effect upon our energies and to
a great extent upon our bodily conditions and states. Strong, clear-cut,
positive, hopeful thought has a stimulating and life-giving effect upon
one's outlook, energies, and activities; and upon all bodily functions
and powers. A falling state of the mind induces a chronically gloomy
outlook and produces inevitably a falling condition of the body. The
mind grows, moreover, into the likeness of the thoughts one most
habitually entertains and lives with. Every thought reproduces of its
kind.

Says an authoritative writer in dealing more particularly with the
effects of certain types of thoughts and emotions upon bodily
conditions: "Out of our own experience we know that anger, fear, worry,
hate, revenge, avarice, grief, in fact all negative and low emotions,
produce weakness and disturbance not only in the mind but in the body as
well. It has been proved that they actually generate poisons in the
body, they depress the circulation; they change the quality of the
blood, making it less vital; they affect the great nerve centres and
thus partially paralyse the very seat of the bodily activities. On the
other hand, faith, hope, love, forgiveness, joy, and peace, all such
emotions are positive and uplifting, and so act on the body as to
restore and maintain harmony and actually to stimulate the circulation
and nutrition."

The one who does not allow himself to be influenced or controlled by
fears or forebodings is the one who ordinarily does not yield to
discouragements. He it is who is using the positive, success-bringing
types of thought that are continually working for him for the
accomplishment of his ends. The things that he sees in the ideal, his
strong, positive, and therefore creative type of thought, is continually
helping to actualise in the realm of the real.

We sometimes speak lightly of ideas, but this world would be indeed a
sorry place in which to live were it not for ideas--and were it not for
ideals. Every piece of mechanism that has ever been built, if we trace
back far enough, was first merely an idea in some man's or woman's
mind. Every structure or edifice that has ever been reared had form
first in this same immaterial realm. So every great undertaking of
whatever nature had its inception, its origin, in the realm of the
immaterial--at least as we at present call it--before it was embodied
and stood forth in material form.

It is well, then, that we have our ideas and our ideals. It is well,
even, to build castles in the air, if we follow these up and give them
material clothing or structure, so that they become castles on the
ground. Occasionally it is true that these may shrink or, rather, may
change their form and become cabins; but many times we find that an
expanded vision and an expanded experience lead us to a knowledge of the
fact that, so far as happiness and satisfaction are concerned, the
contents of a cabin may outweigh many times those of the castle.

Successful men and women are almost invariably those possessing to a
supreme degree the element of faith. Faith, absolute, unconquerable
faith, is one of the essential concomitants, therefore one of the great
secrets of success. We must realise, and especially valuable is it for
young men and women to realise, that one carries his success or his
failure with him, that it does not depend upon outside conditions.
There are some that no circumstances or combinations of circumstances
can thwart or keep down. Let circumstance seem to thwart or circumvent
them in one direction, and almost instantly they are going forward along
another direction. Circumstance is kept busy keeping up with them. When
she meets such, after a few trials, she apparently decides to give up
and turn her attention to those of the less positive, the less forceful,
therefore the less determined, types of mind and of life. Circumstance
has received some hard knocks from men and women of this type. She has
grown naturally timid and will always back down whenever she recognises
a mind, and therefore a life, of sufficient force.

To make the best of whatever present conditions are, to form and clearly
to see one's ideal, though it may seem far distant and almost
impossible, to believe in it, and to believe in one's ability to
actualise it--this is the first essential. Not, then, to sit and idly
fold the hands, expecting it to actualise itself, but to take hold of
the first thing that offers itself to do,--that lies sufficiently along
the way,--to do this faithfully, believing, knowing, that it is but the
step that will lead to the next best thing, and this to the next; this
is the second and the completing stage of all accomplishment.

We speak of fate many times as if it were something foreign to or
outside of ourselves, forgetting that fate awaits always our own
conditions. A man decides his own fate through the types of thoughts he
entertains and gives a dominating influence in his life. He sits at the
helm of his thought world and, guiding, decides his own fate, or,
through negative, vacillating, and therefore weakening thought, he
drifts, and fate decides him. Fate is not something that takes form and
dominates us irrespective of any say on our own part. Through a
knowledge and an intelligent and determined use of the silent but
ever-working power of thought we either condition circumstances, or,
lacking this knowledge or failing to apply it, we accept the role of a
conditioned circumstance. It is a help sometimes to realise and to voice
with Henley:

    Out of the night that covers me,
      Black as the pit from pole to pole,
    I thank whatever gods may be
      For my unconquerable soul.

The thoughts that we entertain not only determine the conditions of our
own immediate lives, but they influence, perhaps in a much more subtle
manner than most of us realise, our relations with and our influence
upon those with whom we associate or even come into contact. All are
influenced, even though unconsciously, by them.

Thoughts of good will, sympathy, magnanimity, good cheer--in brief, all
thoughts emanating from a _spirit of love_--are felt in their positive,
warming, and stimulating influences by others; they inspire in turn the
same types of thoughts and feelings in them, and they come back to us
laden with their ennobling, stimulating, pleasure-bringing influences.

Thoughts of envy, or malice, or hatred, or ill will are likewise felt by
others. They are influenced adversely by them. They inspire either the
same types of thoughts and emotions in them; or they produce in them a
certain type of antagonistic feeling that has the tendency to neutralise
and, if continued for a sufficient length of time, deaden sympathy and
thereby all friendly relations.

We have heard much of "personal magnetism." Careful analysis will, I
think, reveal the fact that the one who has to any marked degree the
element of personal magnetism is one of the large-hearted, magnanimous,
cheer-bringing, unself-centred types, whose positive thought forces are
being continually felt by others, and are continually inspiring and
calling forth from others these same splendid attributes. I have yet to
find any one, man or woman, of the opposite habits and, therefore, trend
of mind and heart who has had or who has even to the slightest
perceptible degree the quality that we ordinarily think of when we use
the term "personal magnetism."

If one would have friends he or she must be a friend, must radiate
habitually friendly, helpful thoughts, good will, love. The one who
doesn't cultivate the hopeful, cheerful, uncomplaining, good-will
attitude toward life and toward others becomes a drag, making life
harder for others as well as for one's self.

Ordinarily we find in people the qualities we are mostly looking for, or
the qualities that our own prevailing characteristics call forth. The
larger the nature, the less critical and cynical it is, the more it is
given to looking for the best and the highest in others, and the less,
therefore, is it given to gossip.

It was Jeremy Bentham who said: "In order to love mankind, we must not
expect too much of them." And Goethe had a still deeper vision when he
said: "Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others,
and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though it were his own."

The chief characteristic of the gossip is that he or she prefers to live
in the low-lying miasmic strata of life, revelling in the negatives of
life and taking joy in finding and peddling about the findings that he
or she naturally makes there. The larger natures see the good and
sympathise with the weaknesses and the frailties of others. They realise
also that it is so consummately inconsistent--many times even humorously
inconsistent--for one also with weaknesses, frailties, and faults,
though perhaps of a little different character, to sit in judgment of
another. Gossip concerning the errors or shortcomings of another is
judging another. The one who is himself perfect is the one who has the
right to judge another. By a strange law, however, though by a natural
law, we find, as we understand life in its fundamentals better, such a
person is seldom if ever given to judging, much less to gossip.

Life becomes rich and expansive through sympathy, good will, and good
cheer; not through cynicism or criticism. That splendid little poem of
but a single stanza by Edwin Markham, "Outwitted," points after all to
one of life's fundamentals:

    He drew a circle that shut me out--
    Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout,
    But Love and I had the wit to win:
    We drew a circle that took him in!




VI

JESUS THE SUPREME EXPONENT OF THE INNER FORCES AND POWERS: HIS PEOPLE'S
RELIGION AND THEIR CONDITION


In order to have any true or adequate understanding of what the real
revelation and teachings of Jesus were, two things must be borne in
mind. It is necessary in the first place, not only to have a knowledge
of, but always to bear in mind the method, the medium through which the
account of his life has come down to us. Again, before the real content
and significance of Jesus' revelation and teachings can be intelligently
understood, it is necessary that we have a knowledge of the conditions
of the time in which he lived and of the people to whom he spoke, to
whom his revelation was made.

To any one who has even a rudimentary knowledge of the former, it
becomes apparent at once that no single saying or statement of Jesus can
be taken to indicate either his revelation or his purpose. These must be
made to depend upon not any single statement or saying of his own, much
less anything reported about him by another; but it must be made to
depend rather upon the whole tenor of his teachings.

Jesus put nothing in writing. There was no one immediately at hand to
make a record of any of his teachings or any of his acts. It is now well
known that no one of the gospels was written by an immediate hearer, by
an eye-witness.

The Gospel of Mark, the oldest gospel, or in other words the one written
nearest to Jesus' time, was written some forty years after he had
finished his work. Matthew and Luke, taken to a great extent from the
Gospel of Mark, supplemented by one or two additional sources, were
written many years after. The Gospel of John was not written until after
the beginning of the second century after Christ. These four sets of
chronicles, called the Gospels, written independently one of another,
were then collected many years after their authors were dead, and still
a great deal later were brought together into a single book.

The following concise statement by Professor Henry Drummond throws much
light upon the way the New Testament portions of our Bible took form:
"The Bible is not a book; it is a library. It consists of sixty-six
books. It is a great convenience, but in some respects a great
misfortune, that these books have always been bound up together and
given out as one book to the world, when they are not; because that has
led to endless mistakes in theology and practical life. These books,
which make up this library, written at intervals of hundreds of years,
were collected after the last of the writers was dead--long after--by
human hands. Where were the books? Take the New Testament. There were
four lives of Christ. One was in Rome; one was in Southern Italy; one
was in Palestine; one in Asia Minor. There were twenty-one letters. Five
were in Greece and Macedonia; five in Asia; one in Rome. The rest were
in the pockets of private individuals. Theophilus had Acts. They were
collected undesignedly. In the third century the New Testament consisted
of the following books: The four Gospels, Acts, thirteen letters of
Paul, I John, I Peter; and, in addition, the Epistles of Barnabas and
Hermas. This was not called the New Testament, but the Christian
Library. Then these last books were discarded. They ceased to be
regarded as upon the same level as the others. In the fourth century the
canon was closed--that is to say, a list was made up of the books which
were to be regarded as canonical. And then long after that they were
stitched together and made up into one book--hundreds of years after
that. Who made up the complete list? It was never formally made up. The
bishops of the different churches would draw up a list each of the books
that they thought ought to be put into this Testament. The churches also
would give their opinions. Sometimes councils would meet and talk it
over--discuss it. Scholars like Jerome would investigate the
authenticity of the different documents, and there came to be a general
consensus of the churches on the matter."

Jesus spoke in his own native language, the Aramaic. His sayings were
then rendered into Greek, and, as is well known by all well-versed
Biblical scholars, it was not an especially high order of Greek. The New
Testament scriptures including the four gospels, were then many hundreds
of years afterwards translated from the Greek into our modern
languages--English, German, French, Swedish, or whatever the language of
the particular translation may be. Those who know anything of the matter
of translation know how difficult it is to render the exact meanings of
any statements or writing into another language. The rendering of a
_single word_ may sometimes mean, or rather may make a great difference
in the thought of the one giving the utterance. How much greater is this
liability when the thing thus rendered is twice removed from its
original source and form!

The original manuscripts had no punctuation and no verse divisions;
these were all arbitrarily supplied by the translators later on. It is
also a well-established fact on the part of leading Biblical scholars
that through the centuries there have been various interpolations in the
New Testament scriptures, both by way of omissions and additions.

Reference is made to these various facts in connection with the sayings
and the teachings of Jesus and the methods and the media through which
they have come down to us, to show how impossible it would be to base
Jesus' revelation or purpose upon any single utterance made or purported
to be made by him--to indicate, in other words, that to get at his real
message, his real teachings, and his real purpose, we must find the
binding thread if possible, the reiterated statement, the repeated
purpose that makes them throb with the living element.

Again, no intelligent understanding of Jesus' revelation or ministry can
be had without a knowledge of the conditions of the time, and of the
people to whom his revelation was made, among whom he lived and worked;
for his ministry had in connection with it both a time element and an
eternal element. There are two things that must be noted, the moral and
religious condition of the people; and, again, their economic and
political status.

The Jewish people had been preeminently a religious people. But a great
change had taken place. Religion was at its lowest ebb. Its spirit was
well-nigh dead, and in its place there had gradually come into being a
Pharisaic legalism--a religion of form, ceremony. An extensive system of
ecclesiastical tradition, ecclesiastical law and observances, which had
gradually robbed the people of all their former spirit of religion, had
been gradually built up by those in ecclesiastical authority.

The voice of that illustrious line of Hebrew prophets had ceased to
speak. It was close to two hundred years since the voice of a living
prophet had been heard. Tradition had taken its place. It took the form:
Moses hath said; It has been said of old; The prophet hath said. The
scribe was the keeper of the ecclesiastical law. The lawyer was its
interpreter.

The Pharisees had gradually elevated themselves into an ecclesiastical
hierarchy who were the custodians of the law and religion. They had come
to regard themselves as especially favoured, a privileged class--not
only the custodians but the dispensers of all religious knowledge--and
therefore of religion. The people, in their estimation, were of a lower
intellectual and religious order, possessing no capabilities in
connection with religion or morals, dependent therefore upon their
superiors in these matters.

This state of affairs that had gradually come about was productive of
two noticeable results: a religious starvation and stagnation on the
part of the great mass of the people on the one hand, and the creation
of a haughty, self-righteous and domineering ecclesiastical hierarchy on
the other. In order for a clear understanding of some of Jesus' sayings
and teachings, some of which constitute a very vital part of his
ministry, it is necessary to understand clearly what this condition was.

Another important fact that sheds much light upon the nature of the
ministry of Jesus is to be found, as has already been intimated, in the
political and the economic condition of the people of the time. The
Jewish nation had been subjugated and were under the domination of Rome.
Rome in connection with Israel, as in connection with all conquered
peoples, was a hard master. Taxes and tribute, tribute and taxes, could
almost be said to be descriptive of her administration of affairs.

She was already in her degenerate stage. Never perhaps in the history of
the world had men been so ruled by selfishness, greed, military power
and domination, and the pomp and display of material wealth. Luxury,
indulgence, over-indulgence, vice. The inevitable concomitant
followed--a continually increasing moral and physical degeneration. An
increasing luxury and indulgence called for an increasing means to
satisfy them. Messengers were sent and additional tribute was levied.
Pontius Pilate was the Roman administrative head or governor in Judea at
the time. Tiberius Caesar was the Roman Emperor.

Rome at this time consisted of a few thousand nobles and people of
station--freemen--and hundreds of thousands of slaves. Even her
campaigns in time became virtual raids for plunder. She conquered--and
she plundered those whom she conquered. Great numbers from among the
conquered peoples were regularly taken to Rome and sold into slavery.
Judea had not escaped this. Thousands of her best people had been
transported to Rome and sold into slavery. It was never known where the
blow would fall next; what homes would be desolated and both sons and
daughters sent away into slavery. No section, no family could feel any
sense of security. A feeling of fear, a sense of desolation pervaded
everywhere.

There was a tradition, which had grown into a well-defined belief, that
a Deliverer would be sent them, that they would be delivered out of the
hands of their enemies and that their oppressors would in turn be
brought to grief. There was also in the section round about Judaea a
belief, which had grown until it had become well-nigh universal, that
the end of the world, or the end of the age, was speedily coming, that
then there would be an end of all earthly government and that the reign
of Jehovah--the kingdom of God--would be established. These two beliefs
went hand in hand. They were kept continually before the people, and now
and then received a fresh impetus by the appearance of a new prophet or
a new teacher, whom the people went gladly out to hear. Of this kind was
John, the son of a priest, later called John the Baptist.

After his period of preparation, he came out of the wilderness of Judaea,
and in the region about the Jordan with great power and persuasiveness,
according to the accounts, he gave utterance to the message: Repent ye,
for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Forsake all earthly things; they
will be of avail but a very short time now, turn ye from them and
prepare yourselves for the coming of the Kingdom of God. The old things
will speedily pass away; all things will become new. Many went out to
hear him and were powerfully appealed to by the earnest, rugged
utterances of this new preacher of righteousness and repentance.

His name and his message spread through all the land of Judea and the
country around the Jordan. Many were baptised by him there, he making
use of this symbolic service which had been long in use by certain
branches of the Jewish people, especially the order of the Essenes.

Among those who went out to hear John and who accepted baptism at his
hands was Jesus, the son of Joseph and Mary, whose home was at Nazareth.
It marks also the beginning of his own public ministry, for which he
evidently had been in preparation for a considerable time.

It seems strange that we know so little of the early life of one
destined to exert such a powerful influence upon the thought and the
life of the world. In the gospel of Mark, probably the most reliable,
because the nearest to his time, there is no mention whatever of his
early life. The first account is where he appears at John's meetings.
Almost immediately thereafter begins his own public ministry.

In the gospel of Luke we have a very meagre account of him. It is at the
age of twelve. The brief account gives us a glimpse into the lives of
his father and his mother, Joseph and Mary; showing that at that time
they were not looked upon as in any way different from all of the
inhabitants of their little community, Nazareth, the little town in
Galilee--having a family of several sons and daughters, and that Jesus,
the eldest of the family, grew in stature and in knowledge, as all the
neighbouring children grew; but that he, even at an early age, showed
that he had a wonderful aptitude for the things of the spirit. I
reproduce Luke's brief account here:

"Now, his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the
passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem,
after the custom of the feast. And when they had fulfilled the days, as
they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem: and Joseph
and his mother knew not of it. But they, supposing him to have been in
the company, went a day's journey; and they sought him among their
kinsfolk and acquaintances. And when they found him not, they turned
back again to Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass that after
three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the
doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions. And all that heard
him were astonished at his understanding and answers.

"And when they saw him they were amazed: and his mother said unto him,
Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have
sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought
me? Wist ye not that I must be about my father's business? And they
understood not the saying which he spake unto them. And he went down
with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his
mother kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus increased in
wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man."

Nothing could be more interesting than to know the early life of Jesus.
There are various theories as to how this was spent, that is, as to what
his preparation was--the facts of his life, in addition to his working
with his father at his trade, that of a carpenter; but we know nothing
that has the stamp of historical accuracy upon it. Of his entire life,
indeed, including the period of his active ministry, from thirty to
nearly thirty-three, it is but fair to presume that we have at best but
a fragmentary account in the Gospel narratives. It is probable that many
things connected with his ministry, and many of his sayings and
teachings, we have no record of at all.

It is probable that in connection with his preparation he spent a great
deal of time alone, in the quiet, in communion with his Divine Source,
or as the term came so naturally to him, with God, his Father--God, our
Father, for that was his teaching--my God and your God. The many times
that we are told in the narratives that he went to the mountain alone,
would seem to justify us in this conclusion. Anyway, it would be
absolutely impossible for anyone to have such a vivid realisation of his
essential oneness with the Divine, without much time spent in such a
manner that the real life could evolve into its Divine likeness, and
then mould the outer life according to this ideal or pattern.




VII

THE DIVINE RULE IN THE MIND AND HEART: THE UNESSENTIALS WE DROP--THE
SPIRIT ABIDES


That Jesus had a supreme aptitude for the things of the spirit, there
can be no question. That through desire and through will he followed the
leadings of the spirit--that he gave himself completely to its
leadings--is evident both from his utterances and his life. It was this
combination undoubtedly that led him into that vivid sense of his life
in God, which became so complete that he afterwards speaks--I and my
Father are one. That he was always, however, far from identifying
himself as equal with God is indicated by his constant declaration of
his dependence upon God. Again and again we have these declarations: "My
meat and drink is to do the will of God." "My doctrine is not mine, but
his that sent me." "I can of myself do nothing: as I hear I judge; and
my judgment is righteous; because I seek not mine own will, but the will
of him that sent me."

And even the very last acts and words of his life proclaim this
constant sense of dependence for guidance, for strength, and even for
succour. With all his Divine self-realisation there was always,
moreover, that sense of humility that is always a predominating
characteristic of the really great. "Why callest thou me good? There is
none good but one--that is God."

It is not at all strange, therefore, that the very first utterance of
his public ministry, according to the chronicler Mark was: The Kingdom
of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. And while this was
the beginning utterance, it was the keynote that ran through his entire
ministry. It is the basic fact of all his teachings. The realisation of
his own life he sought to make the realisation of all others. It was, it
is, a call to righteousness, and a call to righteousness through the
only channel that any such call can be effective--through a realisation
of the essential righteousness and goodness of the human soul.

An unbiased study of Jesus' own words will reveal the fact that he
taught only what he himself had first realised. It is this, moreover,
that makes him the supreme teacher of all time--Counsellor, Friend,
Saviour. It is the saving of men from their lower conceptions and
selves, a lifting of them up to their higher selves, which, as he
taught, is eternally one with God, the Father, and which, when realised,
will inevitably, reflexly, one might say, lift a man's thoughts, acts,
conduct--the entire life--up to that standard or pattern. It is thus
that the Divine ideal, that the Christ becomes enthroned within. The
Christ-consciousness is the universal Divine nature in us. It is the
state of God-consciousness. It is the recognition of the indwelling
Divine life as the source, and therefore the essence of our own lives.

Jesus came as the revealer of a new truth, a new conception of man.
Indeed, the Messiah. He came as the revealer of the only truth that
could lead his people out of their trials and troubles--out of their
bondage. They were looking for their Deliverer to come in the person of
a worldly king and to set up his rule as such. He came in the person of
a humble teacher, the revealer of a mighty truth, the revealer of the
Way, the only way whereby real freedom and deliverance can come. For
those who would receive him, he was indeed the Messiah. For those who
would not, he was not, and the same holds today.

He came as the revealer of a truth which had been glimpsed by many
inspired teachers among the Jewish race and among those of other races.
The time waited, however, for one to come who would first embody this
truth and then be able effectively to teach it. This was done in a
supreme degree by the Judaean Teacher. He came not as the doer-away with
the Law and the Prophets, but rather to regain and then to supplement
them. Such was his own statement.

It is time to ascend another round. I reveal God to you, not in the
Tabernacle, but in the human heart--then in the Tabernacle in the degree
that He is in the hearts of those who frequent the Tabernacle. Otherwise
the Tabernacle becomes a whited sepulchre. The Church is not a building,
an organisation, not a creed. The Church is the Spirit of Truth. It must
have one supreme object and purpose--to lead men to the truth. I reveal
what I have found--I in the Father and the Father in me. I seek not to
do mine own will, but the will of the Father who sent me.

Everything was subordinated to this Divine realisation and to his Divine
purpose.

The great purpose at which he laboured so incessantly was the teaching
of the realisation of the Divine will in the hearts and minds, and
through these in the lives of men--the finding and the realisation of
the Kingdom of God. This is the supreme fact of life. Get right at the
centre and the circumference will then care for itself. As is the
inner, so always and invariably will be the outer. There is an inner
guide that regulates the life when this inner guide is allowed to assume
authority. Why be disconcerted, why in a heat concerning so many things?
It is not the natural and the normal life. Life at its best is something
infinitely beyond this. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His
righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." And if
there is any doubt in regard to his real meaning in this here is his
answer: "Neither shall they say, 'Lo here' or 'Lo there' for behold the
Kingdom of God is within you."

Again and again this is his call. Again and again this is his
revelation. In the first three gospels alone he uses the expression "the
Kingdom of God," or "the Kingdom of Heaven," upwards of thirty times.
Any possible reference to any organisation that he might have had in
mind, can be found in the entire four gospels but twice.

It would almost seem that it would not be difficult to judge as to what
was uppermost in his mind. I have made this revelation to you; you must
raise yourselves, you must become _in reality_ what _in essence_ you
really are. I in the Father, and the Father in me. I reveal only what I
myself know. As I am, ye shall be. God is your Father. In your real
nature you are Divine. Drop your ideas of the depravity of the human
soul. To believe it depraves. To teach it depraves the one who teaches
it, and the one who accepts it. Follow not the traditions of men. I
reveal to you your Divine birthright. Accept it. It is best. Behold all
things are become new. The Kingdom of God is the one all-inclusive
thing. Find it and all else will follow.

"Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God? Or with what comparison
shall we compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it
is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth;
but when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs,
and shooteth out great branches; so that the fowls of the air may lodge
under the shadow of it." "Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God? Is
it like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal,
till the whole was leavened?" Seek ye first the Kingdom, and the Holy
Spirit, the channel of communion between God your source, and
yourselves, will lead you, and will lead you into all truth. It will
become as a lamp to your feet, a guide that is always reliable.

To refuse allegiance to the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, is the
real sin, the only sin that cannot be forgiven. Violation of all moral
and natural law may be forgiven. It will bring its penalty, for the
violation of law carries in itself its own penalty, its own
punishment--_it is a part of law_; but cease the violation and the
penalty ceases. The violation registers its ill effects in the illness,
the sickness, of body and spirit. If the violation has been long
continued, these effects may remain for some time; but the instant the
violation ceases the repair will begin, and things will go the other
way.

Learn from this experience, however, that there can be no deliberate
violation of, or blaspheming against any moral or natural law. But
deliberately to refuse obedience to the inner guide, the Holy Spirit,
constitutes a defiance that eventually puts out the lamp of life, and
that can result only in confusion and darkness. It severs the ordained
relationship, the connecting, the binding cord, between the soul--the
self--and its Source. Stagnation, degeneracy, and eventual death is
merely the natural sequence.

With this Divine self-realisation the Spirit assumes control and
mastery, and you are saved from the follies of error, and from the
consequences of error. Repent ye--turn from your trespasses and sins,
from your lower conceptions of life, of pleasure and of pain, and walk
in this way. The lower propensities and desires will lose their hold
and will in time fall away. You will be at first surprised, and then
dumfounded, at what you formerly took for pleasure. True pleasure and
satisfaction go hand in hand,--nor are there any bad after results.

All genuine pleasures should lead to more perfect health, a greater
accretion of power, a continually expanding sense of life and service.
When God is uppermost in the heart, when the Divine rule under the
direction of the Holy Spirit becomes the ruling power in the life of the
individual, then the body and its senses are subordinated to this rule;
the passions become functions to be used; license and perverted use give
way to moderation and wise use; and there are then no penalties that
outraged law exacts; satiety gives place to satisfaction. It was Edward
Carpenter who said: "In order to enjoy life one must be a master of
life--for to be a slave to its inconsistencies can only mean torment;
and in order to enjoy the senses one must be master of them. To dominate
the actual world you must, like Archimedes, base your fulcrum somewhere
beyond."

It is not the use, but the abuse of anything good in itself that brings
satiety, disease, suffering, dissatisfaction. Nor is asceticism a true
road of life. All things are for use; but all must be wisely, in most
cases, moderately used, for true enjoyment. All functions and powers are
for use; but all must be brought under the domination of the Spirit--the
God-illumined spirit. This is the road that leads to heaven here and
heaven hereafter--and we can rest assured that we will never find a
heaven hereafter that we do not make while here. Through everything runs
this teaching of the Master.

How wonderfully and how masterfully and simply he sets forth his whole
teaching of sin and the sinner and his relation to the Father in that
marvellous parable, the Parable of the Prodigal Son. To bring it clearly
to mind again it runs:

"A certain man had two sons: and the younger of them said to his father,
Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth _to me_. And he
divided unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son
gathered all together, and took his journey to a far country, and there
wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all,
there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want.
And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent
him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his
belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.
And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my
father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I
will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have
sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be
called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose and
came to his father.

"But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had
compassion, and ran, and fell upon his neck, and kissed him. And the son
said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight,
and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his
servants, Bring forth the best robe and put it on him; and put a ring on
his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring hither the fatted calf, and
kill it; and let us eat, and be merry; for this my son was dead, and is
alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry. Now
his elder son was in the field: and as he came and drew nigh to the
house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants,
and asked what these things meant. And he said unto him, Thy brother is
come; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath
received him safe and sound. And he was angry and would not go in:
therefore came his father out, and entreated him, and he answering said
to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither
transgressed I at any time thy commandment; and yet thou never gavest me
a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: but as soon as this thy
son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast
killed for him the fatted calf. And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever
with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make
merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again;
and was lost, and is found."

It does away forever in all thinking minds with any participation of
Jesus in that perverted and perverting doctrine that man is by nature
essentially depraved, degraded, fallen, in the sense as was given to the
world long, long after his time in the doctrine of the Fall of Man, and
the need of redemption through some external source outside of himself,
in distinction from the truth that he revealed that was to make men
free--the truth of their Divine nature, and this love of man by the
Heavenly Father, and the love of the Heavenly Father by His children.

To connect Jesus with any such thought or teaching would be to take the
heart out of his supreme revelation. For his whole conception of God the
Father, given in all his utterances, was that of a Heavenly Father of
love, of care, longing to exercise His protecting care and to give good
gifts to His children--and this because it is the _essential nature_ of
God to be fatherly. His Fatherhood is not, therefore, accidental, not
dependent upon any conditions or circumstances; it is essential.

If it is the nature of a father to give good gifts to his children, so
in a still greater degree is it the nature of the Heavenly Father to
give good gifts to those who ask Him. As His words are recorded by
Matthew: "Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will
he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If
ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how
much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them
that ask him?" So in the parable as presented by Jesus, the father's
love was such that as soon as it was made known to him that his son who
had been lost to him had returned, he went out to meet him; he granted
him full pardon--and there were no conditions.

Speaking of the fundamental teaching of the Master, and also in
connection with this same parable, another has said: "It thus appears
from this story, as elsewhere in the teaching of Jesus, that he did not
call God our father because He created us, or because He rules over us,
or because He made a covenant with Abraham, but simply and only because
He loves us. This parable individualises the divine love, as did also
the missionary activity of Jesus. The gospels know nothing of a national
fatherhood, of a God whose love is confined to a particular people. It
is the individual man who has a heavenly Father, and this individualised
fatherhood is the only one of which Jesus speaks. As he had realised his
own moral and spiritual life in the consciousness that God was his
father, so he sought to give life to the world by a living revelation of
the truth that God loves each separate soul. This is a prime factor in
the religion and ethics of Jesus. It is seldom or vaguely apprehended in
the Old Testament teaching; but in the teaching of Jesus it is central
and normative." Again in the two allied parables of Jesus--the Parable
of the Lost Sheep, and the Parable of the Lost Coin--it is his purpose
to teach the great love of the Father for all, including those lost in
their trespasses and sins, and His rejoicing in their return.

This leads to Jesus' conception and teaching of sin and repentance.
Although God is the Father, He demands filial obedience in the hearts
and the minds of His children. Men by following the devices and desires
of their own hearts, are not true to their real nature, their Divine
pattern. By following their selfish desires they have brought sin, and
thereby suffering, on themselves and others. The unclean, the selfish
desires of mind and heart, keep them from their higher moral and
spiritual ideal--although not necessarily giving themselves to gross
sin. Therefore, they must become sons of God by repenting--by turning
from the evil inclinations of their hearts and seeking to follow the
higher inclinations of the heart as becomes children of God and those
who are dwellers in the Heavenly Kingdom. Therefore, his opening
utterance: "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand;
repent ye, and believe the gospel."

Love of God with the whole heart, and love of the neighbour, leading to
the higher peace and fulfilment, must take the place of these more
selfish desires that lead to antagonisms and dissatisfactions both
within and without. All men are to pray: Forgive us our sins. All men
are to repent of their sins which are the results of following their own
selfish desires,--those of the body, or their own selfish desires to the
detriment of the welfare of the neighbour.

All men are to seek the Divine rule, the rule of God in the heart, and
thereby have the guidance of the Holy Spirit, which is the Divine
spirit of wisdom that tabernacles with man when through desire and
through will he makes the conditions whereby it can make its abode with
him. It is a manifestation of the force that is above man--it is the
eternal heritage of the soul. "Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the
Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." And therein lies salvation. It
follows the seeking and the finding of the Kingdom of God and His
righteousness that Jesus revealed to a waiting world.

And so it was the spirit of religion that Jesus came to reveal--the real
Fatherhood of God and the Divine Sonship of man. A better righteousness
than that of the scribes and the Pharisees--not a slavish adherence to
the Law, with its supposed profits and rewards. Get the motive of life
right. Get the heart right and these things become of secondary
importance. As his supreme revelation was the personal fatherhood of
God, from which follows necessarily the Divine sonship of man, so there
was a corollary to it, a portion of it almost as essential as the main
truth itself--namely, that all men are brothers. Not merely those of one
little group, or tribe or nation; not merely those of any one little set
or religion; not merely those of this or that little compartment that we
build and arbitrarily separate ourselves into--but all men the world
over. If this is not true then Jesus' supreme revelation is false.

In connection with this great truth he brought a new standard by virtue
of the logic of his revelation. "Ye have heard that it hath been said,
Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you,
Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate
you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven."
Struggling for recognition all through the Old Testament scriptures, and
breaking through partially at least in places, was this conception which
is at the very basis of all man's relationship with man.

And finally through this supreme Master of life it did break through,
with a wonderful newborn consciousness.

The old dispensation, with its legal formalism, was an eye for an eye
and a tooth for a tooth. The new dispensation was--"But I say unto you,
Love your enemies." Enmity begets enmity. It is as senseless as it is
godless. It runs through all his teachings and through every act of his
life. If fundamentally you do not have the love of your fellow-man in
your hearts, you do not have the love of God in your hearts and you
cannot have.

And that this fundamental revelation be not misunderstood, near the
close of his life he said: "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye
love one another." No man could be, can be his disciple, his follower,
and fail in the realisation of this fundamental teaching. "By this shall
all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another." And
going back again to his ministry we find that it breathes through every
teaching that he gave. It breathes through that short memorable prayer
which we call the Lord's Prayer. It permeates the Sermon on the Mount.
It is the very essence of his summing up of this discourse. We call it
the Golden Rule. "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye
even so to them." Not that it was original with Jesus; other teachers
sent of God had given it before to other peoples--God's other children;
but he gave it a new emphasis, a new setting. _He made it fundamental._

So a man who is gripped at all vitally by Jesus' teaching of the
personal fatherhood of God, and the personal brotherhood of man, simply
can't help but make this the basic rule of his life--and moreover find
joy in so making it. A man who really comprehends this fundamental
teaching can't be crafty, sneaking, dishonest, or dishonourable, in his
business, or in any phase of his personal life. He never hogs the
penny--in other words, he never seeks to gain his own advantage to the
disadvantage of another. He may be long-headed; he may be able to size
up and seize conditions; but he seeks no advantage for himself to the
detriment of his fellow, to the detriment of his community, or to the
detriment of his extended community, the nation or the world. He is
thoughtful, considerate, open, frank; and, moreover, he finds great joy
in being so.

I have never seen any finer statement of the essential reasonableness,
therefore, of the essential truth of the value and the practice of the
Golden Rule than that given by a modern disciple of Jesus who left us
but a few years ago. A poor boy, a successful business man, straight,
square, considerate in all his dealings,--a power among his fellows, a
lamp indeed to the feet of many--was Samuel Milton Jones, thrice mayor
of Toledo. Simple, unassuming, friend of all, rich as well as poor, poor
as well as rich, friend of the outcast, the thief, the criminal, looking
beyond the exterior, he saw as did Jesus, the human soul always intact,
though it erred in its judgment--as we all err in our judgments, each in
his own peculiar way--and that by forbearance, consideration, and love,
it could be touched and the life redeemed--redeemed to happiness, to
usefulness, to service. Notwithstanding his many duties, business and
political, he thought much and he loved to talk of the things we are
considering.

His brief statement of the fundamental reasons and the comprehensive
results of the actual practice of the Golden Rule are shot through with
such fine insight, such abounding comprehension, that they deserve to
become immortal. He was my friend and I would not see them die. I
reproduce them here: "As I view it, the Golden Rule is the supreme law
of life. It may be paraphrased this way: As you do unto others, others
will do unto you. What I give, I get. If I love you, really and truly
and actively love you, you are as sure to love me in return as the earth
is sure to be warmed by the rays of the midsummer sun. If I hate you,
ill-treat you and abuse you, I am equally certain to arouse the same
kind of antagonism towards me, unless the Divine nature is so developed
that it is dominant in you, and you have learned to love your enemies.
What can be plainer? The Golden Rule is the law of action and reaction
in the field of morals, just as definite, just as certain here as the
law is definite and certain in the domain of physics.

"I think the confusion with respect to the Golden Rule arises from the
different conceptions that we have of the word love. I use the word
love as synonymous with reason, and when I speak of doing the loving
thing, I mean the reasonable thing. When I speak of dealing with my
fellow-men in an unreasonable way, I mean an unloving way. The terms are
interchangeable, absolutely. The reason why we know so little about the
Golden Rule is because we have not practised it."

Was Mayor Jones a Christian? you ask. He was a follower of the
Christ--for it was he who said: "By this shall all men know ye are my
disciples, if ye love one another." Was he a member of a religious
organisation? I don't know--it never occurred to me to ask him. Thinking
men the world over are making a sharp distinction in these days between
organised Christianity and essential Christianity.

The element of fear has lost its hold on the part of thinking men and
women. It never opened up, it never can open up the springs of
righteousness in the human heart. He believed and he acted upon the
belief that it was the spirit that the Master taught--that God is a God
of love and that He reveals Himself in terms of love to those who really
know Him. He believed that there is joy to the human soul in following
this inner guide and translating its impulses into deeds of love and
service for one's fellow-men. If we could, if we would thus translate
religion into terms of life, it would become a source of perennial joy.

It is not with observation, said Jesus, that the supreme thing that he
taught--the seeking and finding of the Kingdom of God--will come. Do not
seek it at some other place, some other time. It is within, and if
within it will show forth. Make no mistake about that,--it will show
forth. It touches and it sensitises the inner springs of action in a
man's or a woman's life. When a man realises his Divine sonship that
Jesus taught, he will act as a son of God. Out of the heart spring
either good or evil actions. Self-love, me, mine; let me get all I can
for myself, or, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself--the Divine law
of service, of mutuality--the highest source of ethics.

You can trust any man whose heart is right. He will be straight, clean,
reliable. His word will be as good as his bond. Personally you can't
trust a man who is brought into any line of action, or into any
institution through fear. The sore is there, liable to break out in
corruption at any time. This opening up of the springs of the inner life
frees him also from the letter of the law, which after all consists of
the traditions of men, and makes him subject to that higher moral guide
within. How clearly Jesus illustrated this in his conversations
regarding the observance of the Sabbath--how the Sabbath was made for
man and not man for the Sabbath, and how it was always right to do good
on the Sabbath.

I remember some years ago a friend in my native state telling me the
following interesting incident in connection with his grandmother. It
was in northern Illinois--it might have been in New England. "As a boy,"
said he, "I used to visit her on the farm. She loved her cup of coffee
for breakfast. Ordinarily she would grind it fresh each morning in the
kitchen; but when Sunday morning came she would take her coffee-grinder
down into the far end of the cellar, where no one could see and no one
could hear her grind it." He could never quite tell, he said, whether it
was to ease her own conscience, or in order to give no offence to her
neighbours.

Now, I can imagine Jesus passing by and stopping at that home--it was a
home known for its native kindly hospitality--and meeting her just as
she was coming out of the cellar with her coffee-grinder--his quick and
unerring perception enabling him to take in the whole situation at once,
and saying: "In the name of the Father, Aunt Susan, what were you doing
with your coffee-grinder down in the cellar on this beautiful Sabbath
morning? You like your cup of coffee, and I also like the coffee that
you make; thank God that you have it, and thank God that you have the
good health to enjoy it. We can give praise to the Father through eating
and drinking, if, as in everything else, these are done in moderation
and we give value received for all the things that we use. So don't take
your grinder down into the cellar on the Sabbath morning; but grind your
coffee up here in God's sunshine, with a thankful heart that you have it
to grind."

And I can imagine him, as he passes out of the little front gate,
turning and waving another good-bye and saying: "When I come again, Aunt
Susan, be it week-day or Sabbath, remember God's sunshine and keep out
of the cellar." And turning again in a half-joking manner: "And when you
take those baskets of eggs to town, Aunt Susan, don't pick out too many
of the large ones to keep for yourself, but take them just as the hens
lay them. And, Aunt Susan, give good weight in your butter. This will do
your soul infinitely more good than the few extra coins you would gain
by too carefully calculating"--Aunt Susan with all her lovable
qualities, had a little tendency to close dealing.

I think we do incalculable harm by separating Jesus so completely from
the more homely, commonplace affairs of our daily lives. If we had a
more adequate account of his discourses with the people and his
associations with the people, we would perhaps find that he was not,
after all, so busy in saving the world that he didn't have time for the
simple, homely enjoyments and affairs of the everyday life. The little
glimpses that we have of him along these lines indicate to me that he
had. Unless we get his truths right into this phase of our lives, the
chances are that we will miss them entirely.

And I think that with all his earnestness, Jesus must have had an
unusually keen sense of humour. With his unusual perceptions and his
unusual powers in reading and in understanding human nature, it could
not be otherwise. That he had a keen sense for beauty; that he saw it,
that he valued it, that he loved it, especially beauty in all nature,
many of his discourses so abundantly prove. Religion with him was not
divorced from life. It was the power that permeated every thought and
every act of the daily life.




VIII

IF WE SEEK THE ESSENCE OF HIS REVELATION, AND THE PURPOSE OF HIS LIFE


If we would seek the essence of Jesus' revelation, attested both by his
words and his life, it was to bring a knowledge of the ineffable love of
God to man, and by revealing this, to instil in the minds and hearts of
men love for God, and a knowledge of and following of the ways of God.
It was also then to bring a new emphasis of the Divine law of love--the
love of man for man. Combined, it results, so to speak, in raising men
to a higher power, to a higher life,--as individuals, as groups, as one
great world group.

It is a newly sensitised attitude of mind and heart that he brought and
that he endeavoured to reveal in all its matchless beauty--a following
not of the traditions of men, but fidelity to one's God, whereby the
Divine rule in the mind and heart assumes supremacy and, as must
inevitably follow, fidelity to one's fellow-men. These are the
essentials of Jesus' revelation--the fundamental forces in his own
life. His every teaching, his every act, comes back to them. I believe
also that all efforts to mystify the minds of men and women by later
theories _about_ him are contrary to his own expressed teaching, and in
exact degree that they would seek to substitute other things for these
fundamentals.

I call them fundamentals. I call them his fundamentals. What right have
I to call them his fundamentals?

An occasion arose one day in the form of a direct question for Jesus to
state in well-considered and clear-cut terms the essence, the gist, of
his entire teachings--therefore, by his authority, the fundamentals of
essential Christianity. In the midst of one of the groups that he was
speaking to one day, we are told that a certain lawyer arose--an
interpreter of, an authority on, the existing ecclesiastical law. The
reference to him is so brief, unfortunately, that we cannot tell whether
his question was to confound Jesus, as was so often the case, or whether
being a liberal Jew he longed for an honest and truly helpful answer.
From Jesus' remark to him, after his primary answer, we are justified in
believing it was the latter.

His question was: "Master, which is the great commandment in the law?"
Jesus said unto him, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first
and great commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love
thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and
the prophets."

Here we have a wonderful statement from a wonderful source. So clear-cut
is it that any wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot mistake it.
Especially is this true when we couple with it this other statement of
Jesus: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I
am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." We must never forget that Jesus
was born, lived, and died a Jew, the same as all of his disciples--and
they never regarded themselves in any other light. The _basis_ of his
religion was the religion of Israel. It was this he taught and
expounded, now in the synagogue, now out on the hillside and by the
lake-side. It was this that he tried to teach in its purity, that he
tried to free from the hedges that ecclesiasticism had built around it,
this that he endeavoured to raise to a still higher standard.

One cannot find the slightest reference in any of his sayings that would
indicate that he looked upon himself in any other light--except the
overwhelming sense that it was his mission to bring in the new
dispensation by fulfilling the old, and then carrying it another great
step forward, which he did in a wonderful way--both God-ward and
man-ward.

We must not forget, then, that Jesus said that he did not come to
destroy the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil them. We must not
forget, however, that before fulfilling them he had to free them. The
freedom-giving, God-illumined words spoken by free God-illumined men,
had, in the hands of those not God-illumined, later on become
institutionalised, made into a system, a code. The people were taught
that only the priests had access to God. They were the custodians of
God's favour and only through the institution could any man, or any
woman, have access to God. This became the sacred thing, and as the
years had passed this had become so hedged about by continually added
laws and observances that all the spirit of religion had become crushed,
stifled, beaten to the ground.

The very scribes and Pharisees themselves, supposed to minister to the
spiritual life and the welfare of the people, became enrobed in their
fine millinery and arrogance, masters of the people, whose ministers
they were supposed to be, as is so apt to be the case when an
institution builds itself upon the free, all-embracing message of truth
given by any prophet or any inspired teacher. It has occurred time and
time again. Christianity knows it well. It is only by constant vigilance
that religious freedom is preserved, from which alone comes any high
degree of morality, or any degree of free and upward-moving life among
the people.

It was on account of this shameful robbing of the people of their Divine
birthright that the just soul of Jesus, abhorring both casuistry and
oppression under the cloak of religion, gave utterance to that fine
invective that he used on several occasions, the only times that he
spoke in a condemnatory or accusing manner: "Now do ye, Pharisee, make
clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is
full of ravening and wickedness. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk
over them are not aware of them.... Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! For
ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch
not the burdens with one of your fingers.... Woe unto you, lawyers! For
ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves,
and them that were entering in ye hindered."

And here is the lesson for us. It is the spirit that must always be kept
uppermost in religion. Otherwise even the revelation and the religion
of Jesus could be compressed into a code, with its self-appointed
instruments of interpretation, the same as the Pharisees did the Law and
the Prophets that he so bitterly condemned, with a bravery so intrepid
and so fearless that it finally caused his death.

No, if God is not in the human soul waiting to make Himself known to the
believing, longing heart, accessible to all alike without money and
without price, without any prescribed code, then the words of Jesus have
not been correctly handed down to us. And then again, confirming us in
the belief that a man's deepest soul relation is a matter between him
and his God, are his unmistakable and explicit directions in regard to
prayer.

It is so easy to substitute the secondary thing for the fundamental, the
by-thing for the essential, the container for the thing itself. You will
recall that symbolic act of Jesus at the last meeting, the Last Supper
with his disciples, the washing of the disciples' feet by the Master.
The point that is intended to be brought out in the story is, of course,
the extraordinary condescension of Jesus in doing this menial service
for his disciples. "The feet-washing symbolises the attitude of humble
service to others. Every follower of Jesus must experience it." One of
the disciples is so astonished, even taken aback by this menial service
on the part of Jesus, that he says: Thou shall never wash my feet. Jesus
answered him, "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me."

In Oriental countries where sandals are worn that cover merely the soles
of the feet, it was, it is the custom of the host to offer his guest who
comes water with which to wash his feet. There is no reason why this
simple incident of humble service, or rather this symbolic act of humble
service, could not be taken and made an essential condition of salvation
by any council that saw fit to make it such. Things just as strange as
this have happened; though any thinking man or woman _today_ would deem
it essentially foolish.

It is an example of how the spirit of a beautiful act could be
misrepresented to the people. For if you will look at them again, Jesus'
words are very explicit: "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with
me." But hear Jesus' own comment as given in John: "So after he had
washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again,
he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me Master
and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master,
have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I
have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his
lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye know
these things, happy are ye if ye do them." It is a means to an end and
not an end in itself. The spirit that it typifies is essential; but not
the act itself.

The same could be rightly said of the Lord's Supper. It is an observance
that can be made of great value, one very dear and valuable to many
people. But it cannot, if Jesus is to be our authority, and if correctly
reported, be by any means made a fundamental, an essential of salvation.
From the rebuke administered by Jesus to his disciples in a number of
cases where they were prone to drag down his meanings by their purely
material interpretations, we should be saved from this.

You will recall his teaching one day when he spoke of himself as the
bread of life that a man may eat thereof and not die. Some of his Jewish
hearers taking his words in a material sense and arguing in regard to
them one with another said: "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
Hearing them Jesus reaffirming his statement said: "Verily, verily, I
say unto you, except ye eat of the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink
his blood, ye have not life in yourselves.... For my flesh is meat
indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." His disciples, likewise, prone
here as so often to make a literal and material interpretation of his
statements, said one to another: "This is a hard saying; who can hear
him?" Or according to our idiom--who can understand him? Jesus asked
them squarely if what he had just said caused them to stumble, and in
order to be sure that they might not miss his real meaning and therefore
teaching, said: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth
nothing: the words that I speak unto you, _they_ are spirit, and _they_
are life."

Try as we will, we cannot get away from the fact that it was the words
of truth that Jesus brought that were ever uppermost in his mind. He
said, Follow me, not some one else, nor something else that would claim
to represent me. And follow me merely because I lead you to the Father.

So supremely had this young Jewish prophet, the son of a carpenter, made
God's business his business, that he had come into the full realisation
of the oneness of his life with the Father's life. He was able to
realise and to say, "I and my Father are one." He was able to bring to
the world a knowledge of the great fact of facts--the essential oneness
of the human with the Divine--that God tabernacles with men, that He
makes His abode in the minds and the hearts of those who through desire
and through will open their hearts to His indwelling presence.

The first of the race, he becomes the revealer of this great eternal
truth--the mediator, therefore, between God and man--in very truth the
Saviour of men. "If a man love me," said he, "he will keep my words: and
my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode
with him.... If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even
as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love."

It is our eternal refusal to follow Jesus by listening to the words of
life that he brought, and our proneness to substitute something else in
their place, that brings the barrenness that is so often evident in the
everyday life of the Christian. We have been taught _to believe in_
Jesus; we have not been taught _to believe_ Jesus. This has resulted in
a separation of Christianity from life. The predominating motive has
been the saving of the soul. It has resulted too often in a selfish,
negative, repressive, ineffective religion. As Jesus said: "And why call
ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?"

We are just beginning to realise at all adequately that it was _the
salvation of the life_ that he taught. When the life is redeemed to
righteousness through the power of the indwelling God and moves out in
love and in service for one's fellow-men, the soul is then saved.

A man may be a believer in Jesus for a million years and still be an
outcast from the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. But a man can't
believe Jesus, which means following his teachings, without coming at
once into the Kingdom and enjoying its matchless blessings both here and
hereafter. And if there is one clear-cut teaching of the Master, it is
that the life here determines and with absolute precision the life to
come.

One need not then concern himself with this or that doctrine, whether it
be true or false. Later speculations and theories are not for him.
Jesus' own saying applies here: "If any man will do his will he shall
know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." He enters into the Kingdom,
the Kingdom of Heaven here and now; and when the time comes for him to
pass out of this life, he goes as a joyous pilgrim, full of anticipation
for the Kingdom that awaits him, and the Master's words go with him: "In
my Father's house are many mansions."

By thus becoming a follower of Jesus rather than merely a believer in
Jesus, he gradually comes into possession of insights and powers that
the Master taught would follow in the lives of those who became his
followers. The Holy Spirit, the Divine Comforter, of which Jesus spoke,
the Spirit of Truth, that awaits our bidding, will lead continually to
the highest truth and wisdom and insight and power. Kant's statement,
"The other world is not another locality, but only another way of seeing
things," is closely allied to the Master's statement: "The Kingdom of
God is within you." And closely allied to both is this statement of a
modern prophet: "The principle of Christianity and of every true
religion is within the soul--the realisation of the incarnation of God
in every human being."

When we turn to Jesus' own teachings we find that his insistence was not
primarily upon the saving of the soul, but upon the saving of the life
for usefulness, for service, here and now, for still higher growth and
unfoldment, whereby the soul might be grown to a sufficient degree that
it would be worth the saving. And this is one of the great facts that is
now being recognised and preached by the forward-looking men and women
in our churches and by many equally religious outside of our churches.

And so all aspiring, all thinking, forward-looking men and women of our
day are not interested any more in theories about, explanations of, or
dogmas about Jesus. They are being won and enthralled by the wonderful
personality and life of Jesus. They are being gripped by the power of
his teachings. They do not want theories about God--they want God--and
God is what Jesus brought--God as the moving, the predominating, the
all-embracing force in the individual life. But he who finds the Kingdom
of God, whose life becomes subject to the Divine rule and life within,
realises at once also his true relations with the whole--with his
neighbour, his fellow-men. He realises that his neighbour is not merely
the man next door, the man around the corner, or even the man in the
next town or city; but that his neighbour _is every man and every woman
in the world_--because all children of the same infinite Father, all
bound in the same direction, but over many different roads.

The man who has come under the influence and the domination of the
Divine rule, realises that his interests lie in the same direction as
the interests of all, that he cannot gain for himself any good--that is,
any essential good--at the expense of the good of all; but rather that
his interests, his Welfare, and the interests and the welfare of all
others are identical. God's rule, the Divine rule, becomes for him,
therefore, the fundamental rule in the business world, the dominating
rule in political life and action, the dominating rule in the law and
relations of nations.

Jesus did not look with much favour upon outward form, ceremony, or with
much favour upon formulated, or formal religion; and he somehow or other
seemed to avoid the company of those who did. We find him almost
continually down among the people, the poor, the needy, the outcast, the
sinner--wherever he could be of service to the Father, that is, wherever
he could be of service to the Father's children. According to the
accounts he was not always as careful in regard to those with whom he
associated as the more respectable ones, the more respectable classes of
his day thought he should be. They remarked it many times. Jesus noticed
it and remarked in turn.

We find him always where the work was to be done--friend equally of the
poor and humble, and those of station--truly friend of man, teaching,
helping, uplifting. And then we find him out on the mountain side--in
the quiet, in communion--to keep his realisation of his oneness with the
Father intact; and with this help he went down regularly to the people,
trying to lift their minds and lives up to the Divine ideal that he
revealed to them, that they in turn might realise their real relations
one with another, that the Kingdom of God and His righteousness might
grow and become the dominating law and force in the world--"Thy Kingdom
come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven."

It is this Kingdom idea, the Divine rule, the rule of God in all of the
relations and affairs of men on earth that is gripping earnest men and
women in great numbers among us today. Under the leadership of these
thinking, God-impelled men and women, many of our churches are pushing
their endeavours out into social service activities along many different
lines; and the result is they are calling into their ranks many able men
and women, especially younger men and women, who are intensely
religious, but to whom formal, inactive religion never made any appeal.

When the Church begins actually to throw the Golden Rule onto its
banner, not in theory but in actual practice, actually forgetting self
in the Master's service, careless even of her own interests, her
membership, she thereby calls into her ranks vast numbers of the best of
the race, especially among the young, so that the actual result is a
membership not only larger than she could ever hope to have otherwise,
but a membership that commands such respect and that exercises such
power, that she is astounded at her former stupidity in being shackled
so long by the traditions of the past. A new life is engendered. There
is the joy of real accomplishment.

We are in an age of great changes. Advancing knowledge necessitates
changes. And may I say a word here to our Christian ministry, that
splendid body of men for whom I have such supreme admiration? One of the
most significant facts of our time is this widespread inclination and
determination on the part of such great numbers of thinking men and
women to go directly to Jesus for their information of, and their
inspiration from him. The beliefs and the voice of the laymen, those in
our churches and those out of our churches, must be taken into account
and reckoned with. Jesus is too large and too universal a character to
be longer the sole possession, the property of any organisation.

There is a splendid body of young men and young women numbering into
untold thousands, who are being captured by the personality and the
simple direct message of Jesus. Many of these have caught his spirit and
are going off into other lines of the Master's service. They are doing
effective and telling work there. Remember that when the spirit of the
Christ seizes a man, it is through the channel of present-day forms and
present-day terms, not in those of fifteen hundred, or sixteen hundred,
or even three hundred years ago.

There is a spirit of intellectual honesty that prevents many men and
women from subscribing to anything to which they cannot give their
intellectual assent, as well as their moral and spiritual assent. They
do not object to creeds. They know that a creed is but a statement, a
statement of a man's or a woman's belief, whether it be in connection
with religion, or in connection with anything else. But what they do
object to is dogma, that unholy thing that lives on credulity, that is
therefore destructive of the intellectual and the moral life of every
man and every woman who allows it to lay its paralysing hand upon them,
that can be held to if one is at all honest and given to thought, only
through intellectual chicanery.

We must not forget also that God is still at work, revealing Himself
more fully to mankind through modern prophets, through modern agencies.
His revelation is not closed. It is still going on. The silly
presumption in the statement therefore--"the truth once delivered."

It is well occasionally to call to mind these words by Robert Burns,
singing free and with an untrammelled mind and soul from his
heather-covered hills:

    Here's freedom to him that wad read,
      Here's freedom to him that wad write;
    There's nane ever feared that the truth should be heared
      But them that the truth wad indict.

It is essential to remember that we are in possession of knowledge, that
we are face to face with conditions that are different from any in the
previous history of Christendom. The Christian church must be sure that
it moves fast enough so as not to alienate, but to draw into it that
great body of intellectually alive, intellectually honest young men and
women who have the Christ spirit of service and who are mastered by a
great purpose of accomplishment. Remember that these young men and women
are now merely standing where the entire church will stand in a few
years. Remember that any man or woman who has the true spirit of service
has the spirit of Christ--and more, has the religion of the Christ.

Remember that Jesus formulated no organisation. His message of the
Kingdom was so far-reaching that no organisation could ever possibly
encompass it, though an organisation may be, and has been, a great aid
in actualising it here on earth. He never made any conditions as to
through whom, or what, his truth should be spread, and he would condemn
today any instrumentality that would abrogate to itself any monopoly of
his truth, just as he condemned those ecclesiastical authorities of his
day who presumed to do the same in connection with the truth of God's
earlier prophets.

And so I would say to the Church--beware and be wise. Make your
conditions so that you can gain the allegiance and gain the help of this
splendid body of young men and young women. Many of them are made of the
stock that Jesus would choose as his own apostles. Among the young men
will be our greatest teachers, our great financiers, our best
legislators, our most valuable workers and organisers in various fields
of social service, our most widely read authors, eminent and influential
editorial and magazine writers as well as managers.

Many of these young women will have high and responsible positions as
educators. Some will be heads and others will be active workers in our
widely extended and valuable women's clubs. Some will have a hand in
political action, in lifting politics out of its many-times low
condition into its rightful state in being an agent for the
accomplishment of the people's best purposes and their highest good.
Some will be editors of widely circulating and influential women's
magazines. Some will be mothers, true mothers of the children of others,
denied their rights and their privileges. Make it possible for them,
nay, make it incumbent upon them to come in, to work within the great
Church organisation.

It cannot afford that they stay out. It is suicidal to keep them out.
Any other type of organisation that did not look constantly to
commanding the services of the most capable and expert in its line would
fall in a very few months into the ranks of the ineffectives. A business
or a financial organisation that did not do the same would go into
financial bankruptcy in even a shorter length of time. By attracting
this class of men and women into its ranks it need fear neither moral
nor financial bankruptcy.

But remember, many men and women of large calibre are so busy doing
God's work in the world that they have no time and no inclination to be
attracted by anything that does not claim their intellectual as well as
their moral assent. The Church must speak fully and unequivocally in
terms of present-day thought and present-day knowledge, to win the
allegiance or even to attract the attention of this type of men and
women.

And may I say here this word to those outside, and especially to this
class of young men and young women outside of our churches? Changes,
and therefore advances in matters of this kind come slowly. This is true
from the very nature of human nature. Inherited beliefs, especially when
it comes to matters of religion, take the deepest hold and are the
slowest to change. Not in all cases, but this is the general rule.

Those who hold on to the old are earnest, honest. They believe that
these things are too sacred to be meddled with, or even sometimes, to be
questioned. The ordinary mind is slow to distinguish between tradition
and truth--especially where the two have been so fully and so adroitly
mixed. Many are not in possession of the newer, the more advanced
knowledge in various fields that you are in possession of. But remember
this--in even a dozen years a mighty change has taken place--except in a
church whose very foundation and whose sole purpose is dogma.

In most of our churches, however, the great bulk of our ministers are
just as forward-looking, just as earnest as you, and are deeply desirous
of following and presenting the highest truth in so far as it lies
within their power to do so. It is a splendid body of men, willing to
welcome you on your own grounds, longing for your help. It is a mighty
engine for good. Go into it. Work with it. Work through it. The best
men in the Church are longing for your help. They need it more than they
need anything else. I can assure you of this--I have talked with many.

They feel their handicaps. They are moving as rapidly as they find it
possible to move. On the whole, they are doing splendid work and with a
big, fine spirit of which you know but little. You will find a wonderful
spirit of self-sacrifice, also. You will find a stimulating and precious
comradeship on the part of many. You will find that you will get great
good, even as you are able to give great good.

The Church, as everything else, needs to keep its machinery in continual
repair. Help take out the worn-out parts--but not too suddenly. The
Church is not a depository, but an instrument and engine of truth and
righteousness. Some of the older men do not realise this; but they will
die off. Respect their beliefs. Honest men have honest respect for
differences of opinion, for honest differences in thought. Sympathy is a
great harmoniser. "Differences of opinion, intellectual distinctions,
these must ever be--separation of mind, but unity of heart."

I like these words of Lyman Abbott. You will like them. They are spoken
out of a full life of rich experience and splendid service. They have,
moreover, a sort of unifying effect. They are more than a tonic: "Of
all characters in history none so gathers into himself and reflects from
himself all the varied virtues of a complete manhood as does Jesus of
Nazareth. And the world is recognising it.... If you go back to the
olden time and the old conflicts, the question was, 'What is the
relation of Jesus Christ to the Eternal?' Wars have been fought over the
question, 'Was he of one substance with the Father?' I do not know; I do
not know of what substance the Father is; I do not know of what
substance Jesus Christ is. What I do know is this--that when I look into
the actual life that I know about, the men and women that are about me,
the men and women in all the history of the past, of all the living
beings that ever lived and walked the earth, there is no one that so
fills my heart with reverence, with affection, with loyal love, with
sincere desire to follow, as doth Jesus Christ....

"I do not need to decide whether he was born of a virgin. I do not need
to decide whether he rose from the dead. I do not need to decide whether
he made water into wine, or fed five thousand with two loaves and five
small fishes. Take all that away, and still he stands the one
transcendent figure toward whom the world has been steadily growing, and
whom the world has not yet overtaken even in his teachings.... I do not
need to know what is his metaphysical relation to the Infinite. I say it
reverently--I do not care. I know for me he is the great Teacher; I know
for me he is the great Leader whose work I want to do; and I know for me
he is the great Personality, whom I want to be like. That I know.
Theology did not give that to me, and theology cannot get it away from
me."

And what a basis as a test of character is this twofold injunction--this
great fundamental of Jesus! All religion that is genuine flowers in
character. It was Benjamin Jowett who said, and most truly: "The value
of a religion is in the ethical dividend that it pays." When the heart
is right towards God we have the basis, the essence of religion--the
consciousness of God in the soul of man. We have truth in the inward
parts. When the heart is right towards the fellow-man we have the
essential basis of ethics; for again we have truth in the inward parts.

Out of the heart are the issues of life. When the heart is right all
outward acts and relations are right. Love draws one to the very heart
of God; and love attunes one to all the highest and most valued
relationships in our human life.

Fear can never be a basis of either religion or ethics. The one who is
moved by fear makes his chief concern the avoidance of detection on the
one hand, or the escape of punishment on the other. Men of large calibre
have an unusual sagacity in sifting the unessential from the essential
as also the false from the true. Lincoln, when replying to the question
as to why he did not unite himself with some church organisation, said:
"When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification
of membership, the Saviour's condensed statement of the substance of
both law and gospel: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour
as thyself, that church shall I join with all my heart and soul."

He was looked upon by many in his day as a non-Christian--by some as an
infidel. His whole life had a profound religious basis, so deep and so
all-absorbing that it gave him those wonderful elements of personality
that were instantly and instinctively noticed by, and that moved all men
who came in touch with him; and that sustained him so wonderfully,
according to his own confession, through those long, dark periods of the
great crisis, The fact that in yesterday's New York paper--Sunday
paper--I saw the notice of a sermon in one of our Presbyterian
pulpits--Lincoln, the Christian--shows that we have moved up a round
and are approaching more and more to an essential Christianity.

Similar to this statement or rather belief was that of Emerson,
Jefferson, Franklin, and a host of other men among us whose lives have
been lives of accomplishment and service for their fellow-men. Emerson,
who said: "A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light
which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the
firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his
thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognise our own
rejected thoughts. They come back to us with a certain alienated
majesty." Emerson, who also said: "I believe in the still, small voice,
and that voice is the Christ within me." It was he of whom the famous
Father Taylor in Boston said: "It may be that Emerson is going to hell,
but of one thing I am certain: he will change the climate there and
emigration will set that way."

So thought Jefferson, who said: "I have sworn eternal hostility to every
form of tyranny over the minds of men." And as he, great prophet, with
his own hand penned that immortal document--the Declaration of American
Independence--one can almost imagine the Galilean prophet standing at
his shoulder and saying: Thomas, I think it well to write it so. Both
had a burning indignation for that species of self-seeking either on the
part of an individual or an organisation that would seek to enchain the
minds and thereby the lives of men and women, and even lay claim to
their children. Yet Jefferson in his time was frequently called an
atheist--and merely because men in those days did not distinguish as
clearly as we do today between ecclesiasticism and religion, between
formulated and essential Christianity.

So we are brought back each time to Jesus' two fundamentals--and these
come out every time foursquare with the best thought of our time. The
religion of Jesus is thereby prevented from being a mere tribal
religion. It is prevented from being merely an organisation that could
possibly have his sanction as such--that is, an organisation that would
be able to say: This is his, and this only. It makes it have a
world-wide and eternal content. The Kingdom that Jesus taught is
infinitely broader in its scope and its inclusiveness than any
organisation can be, or that all organisations combined can be.




IX

HIS PURPOSE OF LIFTING UP, ENERGISING, BEAUTIFYING, AND SAVING THE
ENTIRE LIFE: THE SAVING OF THE SOUL IS SECONDARY; BUT FOLLOWS


We have made the statement that Jesus did unusual things, but that he
did them on account of, or rather by virtue of, his unusual insight into
and understanding of the laws whereby they could be done. His
understanding of the powers of the mind and spirit was intuitive and
very great. As an evidence of this were his numerous cases of healing
the sick and the afflicted.

Intuitively he perceived the existence and the nature of the subjective
mind, and in connection with it the tremendous powers of suggestion.
Intuitively he was able to read, to diagnose the particular ailment and
the cause of the ailment before him. His thought was so poised that it
was energised by a subtle and peculiar spiritual power. Such confidence
did his personality and his power inspire in others that he was able to
an unusual degree to reach and to arouse the slumbering subconscious
mind of the sufferer and to arouse into action its own slumbering
powers whereby the life force of the body could transcend and remould
its error-ridden and error-stamped condition.

In all these cases he worked through the operation of law--it is exactly
what we know of the laws of suggestion today. The remarkable cases of
healing that are being accomplished here and there among us today are
done unquestionably through the understanding and use of the same laws
that Jesus was the supreme master of.

By virtue of his superior insight--his understanding of the laws of the
mind and spirit--he was able to use them so fully and so effectively
that he did in many cases eliminate the element of time in his healing
ministrations. But even he was dependent in practically all cases, upon
the mental cooperation of the one who would be healed. Where this was
full and complete he succeeded; where it was not he failed. Such at
least again and again is the statement in the accounts that we have of
these facts in connection with his life and work. There were places
where we are told he could do none of his mighty works on account of
their unbelief, and he departed from these places and went elsewhere.
Many times his question was: "Believe ye that I am able to do this?"
Then: "According to your faith be it unto you," and the healing was
accomplished.

The laws of mental and spiritual therapeutics are identically the same
today as they were in the days of Jesus and his disciples, who made the
healing of sick bodies a part of their ministration. It is but fair to
presume from the accounts that we have that in the early Church of the
Disciples, and for well on to two hundred years after Jesus' time, the
healing of the sick and the afflicted went hand in hand with the
preaching and the teaching of the Kingdom. There are those who believe
that it never should have been abandoned. As a well-known writer has
said: "Healing is the outward and practical attestation of the power and
genuineness of spiritual religion, and ought not to have dropped out of
the Church." Recent sincere efforts to re-establish it in church
practice, following thereby the Master's injunction, is indicative of
the thought that is alive in connection with the matter today.[A] From
the accounts that we have Jesus seems to have engaged in works of
healing more during his early than during his later ministry. He may
have used it as a means to an end. On account of his great love and
sympathy for the physical sufferer as well as for the moral sufferer, it
is but reasonable to suppose that it was an integral part of his
announced purpose--the saving of the life, of the entire life, for
usefulness, for service, for happiness.

And so we have this young Galilean prophet, coming from an hitherto
unknown Jewish family in the obscure little village of Nazareth, giving
obedience in common with his four brothers and his sisters to his father
and his mother; but by virtue of a supreme aptitude for and an
irresistible call to the things of the spirit--made irresistible through
his overwhelming love for the things of the spirit--he is early absorbed
by the realisation of the truth that God is his father and that all men
are brothers.

The thought that God is his father and that he bears a unique and filial
relationship to God so possesses him that he is filled, permeated with
the burning desire to make this newborn message of truth and thereby of
righteousness known to the world.

His own native religion, once vibrating through the souls of the
prophets as the voice of God, has become so obscured, so hedged about,
so killed by dogma, by ceremony, by outward observances, that it has
become a mean and pitiable thing, and produces mean and pitiable
conditions in the lives of his people. The institution has become so
overgrown that the spirit has gone. But God finds another prophet,
clearly and supremely open to His spirit, and Jesus comes as the
Messiah, the Divine Son of God, the Divine Son of Man, bringing to the
earth a new Dispensation. It is the message of the Divine Fatherhood of
God, God whose controlling character is love, and with it the Divine
sonship of man. An integral part of it is--all men are brothers.

He comes as the teacher of a new, a higher righteousness. He brings the
message and he expounds the message of the Kingdom of God. All men he
teaches must repent and turn from their sins, and must henceforth live
in this Kingdom. It is an inner kingdom. Men shall not say: Behold it is
here or it is there; for, behold, it is within you. God is your father
and God longs for your acknowledgment of Him as your father; He longs
for your love even as He loves you. You are children of God, but you
are not true Sons of God until through desire the Divine rule and life
becomes supreme in your minds and hearts. It is thus that you will find
the Kingdom of God. When you do, then your every act will show forth in
accordance with this Divine ideal and guide, and the supreme law of
conduct in your lives will be love for your neighbour, for all mankind.
Through this there will then in time become actualised the Kingdom of
Heaven on the earth.

He comes in no special garb, no millinery, no brass bands, no formulas,
no dogmas, no organisation other than the Kingdom, to uphold and become
a slave to, and in turn be absorbed by, as was the organisation that he
found strangling all religion in the lives of his people and which he so
bitterly condemned. What he brought was something infinitely
transcending this--the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, to which
all men were heirs--equal heirs--and thereby redemption from their sins,
therefore salvation, the saving of their lives, would be the inevitable
result of their acknowledgment of and allegiance to the Divine rule.

How he embraced all--such human sympathy--coming not to destroy but to
fulfil; not to judge the world but to save the world. How he loved the
children! How he loved to have them about him! How he loved their
simplicity, and native integrity of mind and heart! Hear him as he says:
"Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God
as a little child, he shall not enter therein"; and again: "Suffer the
little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the
Kingdom of God." The makers of dogma, in evolving some three hundred
years later on the dogma of the inherent sinfulness and degradation of
the human life and soul, could certainly find not the slightest trace of
any basis for it again in these words and acts of Jesus.

We find him sympathising with and mingling with and seeking to draw unto
the way of his own life the poor, the outcast, the sinner, the same as
the well-to-do and those of station and influence--seeking to draw all
through love and knowledge to the Father.

There is a sense of justice and righteousness in his soul, however, that
balks at oppression, injustice, and hypocrisy. He therefore condemns and
in scathing terms those and only those who would seek to place any
barrier between the free soul of any man and his God, who would bind
either the mind or the conscience of man to any prescribed formulas or
dogmas. Honouring, therefore the forms that his intelligence and his
conscience allowed him to honour, he disregarded those that they did
not.

Like other good Jewish rabbis, for he was looked upon during his
ministry and often addressed as Rabbi, he taught in the synagogues of
his people; but oftener out on the hillsides and by the lake-side, under
the blue sky and the stars of heaven. Giving due reverence to the Law
and the Prophets--the religion of his people and his own early
religion--but in spirit and in discriminating thought so far
transcending them, that the people marvelled at his teachings and
said--surely this a prophet come from God; no man ever spoke to us as he
speaks. By the ineffable beauty of his life and the love and the
winsomeness of his personality, and by the power of the truths that he
taught, he won the hearts of the common people. They followed him and
his following continually increased.

Through it all, however, he incurred the increasing hostility and the
increasing hatred of the leaders, the hierarchy of the existing
religious organisation. They were animated by a double motive, that of
protecting themselves, and that of protecting their established
religion. But in their slavery to the organisation, and because unable
to see that it was the spirit of true religion that he brought and
taught, they cruelly put him to death--the same as the organisation
established later on in his name, put numbers of God's true prophets,
Jesus' truest disciples to death, and essentially for the same reasons.

Jesus' quick and almost unerring perception enabled him to foresee this.
It did not deter him from going forward with his message, standing
resolutely and superbly by his revelation, and at the last almost
courting death--feeling undoubtedly that the sealing of his revelation
and message with his very life blood would but serve to give it its
greatest power and endurance. Heroically he met the fate that he
perceived was conspiring to end his career, to wreck his teachings and
his influence. He went forth to die clear-sighted and unafraid.

He died for the sake of the truth of the message that he lived and so
diligently and heroically laboured for--the message of the ineffable
love of God for all His children and the bringing of them into the
Father's Kingdom. And we must believe from his whole life's teaching,
not to save their souls from some future punishment; not through any
demand of satisfaction on the part of God; not as any substitutionary
sacrifice to appease the demands of an angry God--for it was the exact
opposite of this that his whole life teaching endeavoured to make
known. It was supremely the love of the Father and His longing for the
love and allegiance, therefore the complete life and service of His
children. It was the beauty of holiness--the beauty of wholeness--the
wholeness of life, the saving of the whole life from the sin and
sordidness of self and thereby giving supreme satisfaction to God. It
was love, not fear. If not, then almost in a moment he changed the
entire purpose and content, the entire intent of all his previous life
work. This is unthinkable.

In his last act he did not abrogate his own expressed statement, that
the very essence of his message was expressed, as love to God and love
to one's neighbour. He did not abrogate his continually repeated
declaration that it was the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, which
brings man's life into right relations with God and into right relations
with his fellow-men, that it was his purpose to reveal and to draw all
men to, thereby aiding God's eternal purpose--to establish in this world
a state which he designated the Kingdom of Heaven wherein a social order
of brotherliness and justice, wrought and maintained through the potency
of love, would prevail. In doing this he revealed the character of God
by being himself an embodiment of it.

It was the power of a truth that was to save the life that he was
always concerned with. Therefore his statement that the Son of Man has
come that men might have life and might have it more abundantly--to save
men from sin and from failure, and secondarily from their consequences;
to make them true Sons of God and fit subjects and fit workers in His
Kingdom. Conversion according to Jesus is the fact of this Divine rule
in the mind and heart whereby the life is saved--the saving of the soul
follows. It is the direct concomitant of the saved life.

In his death he sealed his own statement: "The law and the prophets were
until John; since that time the Kingdom of God is preached, and every
man presseth into it." Through his death he sealed the message of his
life when putting it in another form he said: "Verily, verily, I say
unto you, He that heareth my word and believeth on Him that sent me hath
everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation: but is passed
from death unto life."

In this majestic life divinity and humanity meet. Here is the
incarnation. The first of the race consciously, vividly, and fully to
realise that God incarnates Himself and has His abode in the hearts and
the lives of men, the first therefore to realise his Divine Sonship and
become able thereby to reveal and to teach the Divine Fatherhood of God
and the Divine Sonship of Man.

In this majestic life is the atonement, the realisation of the
at-one-ment of the Divine in the human, made manifest in his own life
and in the way that he taught, sealed then by his own blood.

In this majestic life we have the mediator, the medium or connector of
the Divine and the human. In it we have the Saviour, the very
incarnation of the truth that he taught, and that lifts the minds and
thereby the lives of men up to their Divine ideal and pattern, that
redeems their lives from the sordidness and selfishness and sin of the
hitherto purely material self, and that being thereby saved, makes them
fit subjects for the Father's Kingdom.

In this majestic life is the full embodiment of the beauty of
holiness--whose words have gone forth and whose spirit is ceaselessly at
work in the world, drawing men and women up to their divine ideal, and
that will continue so to draw all in proportion as his words of truth
and his life are lifted up throughout the world.




X

SOME METHODS OF ATTAINMENT


After this study of the teachings of the Divine Master let us know this.
It is the material that is the transient, the temporary; and the mental
and spiritual that is the real and the eternal. We must not become
slaves to habit. The material alone can never bring happiness--much less
satisfaction. These lie deeper. That conversation between Jesus and the
rich young man is full of significance for us all, especially in this
ambitious, striving, restless age.

Abundance of life is determined not alone by one's material possessions,
but primarily by one's riches of mind and spirit. A world of truth is
contained in these words: "Life is what we are alive to. It is not a
length, but breadth. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, mere luxury
or idleness, pride or money-making, and not to goodness and kindness,
purity and love, history, poetry, and music, flowers, God and eternal
hopes, is to be all but dead."

Why be so eager to gain possession of the hundred thousand or the
half-million acres, of so many millions of dollars? Soon, and it may be
before you realise it, all must be left. It is as if a man made it his
ambition to accumulate a thousand or a hundred thousand automobiles. All
soon will become junk. But so it is with all material things beyond what
we can actually and profitably use for our good and the good of
others--and that we actually do so use.

A man can eat just so many meals during the year or during life. If he
tries to eat more he suffers thereby. He can wear only so many suits of
clothing; if he tries to wear more, he merely wears himself out taking
off and putting on. Again it is as Jesus said: "For what shall it profit
a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own life?" And right
there is the crux of the whole matter. All the time spent in
accumulating these things beyond the reasonable amount, is so much taken
from the life--from the things of the mind and the spirit. It is in the
development and the pursuit of these that all true satisfaction lies.
Elemental law has so decreed.

We have made wonderful progress, or rather have developed wonderful
skill in connection with things. We need now to go back and catch up the
thread and develop like skill in making the life.

Little wonder that brains are addled, that nerves are depleted, that
nervous dyspepsia, that chronic weariness, are not the exception but
rather the rule. Little wonder that sanitariums are always full; that
asylums are full and overflowing--and still more to be built. No wonder
that so many men, so many good men break and go to pieces, and so many
lose the life here at from fifty to sixty years, when they should be in
the very prime of life, in the full vigour of manhood; at the very age
when they are capable of enjoying life the most and are most capable of
rendering the greatest service to their fellows, to their community,
because of greater growth, experience, means, and therefore leisure.
Jesus was right--What doth it profit? And think of the real riches that
in the meantime are missed.

It is like an addled-brain driver in making a trip across the continent.
He is possessed, obsessed with the insane desire of making a record. He
plunges on and on night and day, good weather and foul--and all the time
he is missing all the beauties, all the benefits to health and spirit
along the way. He has none of these when he arrives--he has missed them
all. He has only the fact that he has made a record drive--or nearly
made one. And those with him he has not only robbed of the beauties
along the way; but he has subjected them to all the discomforts along
the way. And what really underlies the making of a record? It is
primarily the spirit of vanity.

When the mental beauties of life, when the spiritual verities are
sacrificed by self-surrender to and domination by the material, one of
the heavy penalties that inexorable law imposes is the drying up, so to
speak, of the finer human perceptions--the very faculties of enjoyment.
It presents to the world many times, and all unconscious to himself, a
stunted, shrivelled human being--that eternal type that the Master had
in mind when he said: "Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be required
of thee." He whose sole employment or even whose primary employment
becomes the building of bigger and still bigger barns to take care of
his accumulated grain, becomes incapable of realising that life and the
things that pertain to it are of infinitely more value than barns, or
houses, or acres, or stocks, or bonds, or railroad ties. These all have
their place, all are of value; but they can never be made the life. A
recent poem by James Oppenheim presents a type that is known to nearly
every one:[B]

    I heard the preacher preaching at the funeral:
    He moved the relatives to tears telling them of
      the father, husband, and friend that was dead:
    Of the sweet memories left behind him:
    Of a life that was good and kind.

    I happened to know the man,
    And I wondered whether the relatives would
      have wept if the preacher had told the truth:
    Let us say like this:

    "The only good thing this man ever did in his life,
    Was day before yesterday:
    _He died_....
    But he didn't even do that of his own volition....
    He was the meanest man in business on Manhattan Island,
    The most treacherous friend, the crudest and stingiest husband,
    And a father so hard that his children left home as soon as they were
      old enough....
    Of course he had divinity: everything human has:
    But he kept it so carefully hidden away that he might just as well not
      have had it....

    "Wife! good cheer! now you can go your own way and live your own life!
    Children, give praise! you have his money: the only good thing he ever
      gave you....
    Friends! you have one less traitor to deal with....
    This is indeed a day of rejoicing and exultation!
    Thank God this man is dead!"

An unknown enjoyment and profit to him is the world's great field of
literature, the world's great thinkers, the inspirers of so many through
all the ages. That splendid verse by Emily Dickinson means as much to
him as it would to a dumb stolid ox:

    He ate and drank the precious words,
      His spirit grew robust,
    He knew no more that he was poor,
      Nor that his frame was dust;
    He danced along the dingy days,
      And this bequest of wings
    Was but a book! What liberty
      A loosened spirit brings!

Yes, life and its manifold possibilities of unfoldment and avenues of
enjoyment--life, and the things that pertain to it--is an infinitely
greater thing than the mere accessories of life.

What infinite avenues of enjoyment, what peace of mind, what serenity of
soul may be the possession of all men and all women who are alive to
the inner possibilities of life as portrayed by our own prophet,
Emerson, when he said:

    Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
    I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome;
    And when I am stretched beneath the pines,
    Where the evening star so holy shines,
    I laugh at the lore and pride of man,
    At the Sophist schools and the learned clan;
    For what are they all in their high conceit,
    When man in the bush with God may meet?

It was he who has exerted such a world-wide influence upon the minds and
lives of men and women who also said: "Great men are they who see that
spirituality is stronger than any material force: that thoughts rule the
world." And this is true not only of the world in general, but it is
true likewise in regard to the individual life.

One of the great secrets of all successful living is unquestionably the
striking of the right balance in life. The material has its place--and a
very important place. Fools indeed were we to ignore or to attempt to
ignore this fact. We cannot, however, except to our detriment, put the
cart before the horse. Things may contribute to happiness, but things
cannot bring happiness--and sad indeed, and crippled and dwarfed and
stunted becomes the life of every one who is not capable of realising
this fact. Eternally true indeed is it that the life is more than meat
and the body more than raiment.

All life is from an inner centre outward. As within, so without. As we
think we become. Which means simply this: our prevailing thoughts and
emotions are never static, but dynamic. Thoughts are forces--like
creates like, and like attracts like. It is therefore for us to choose
whether we shall be interested primarily in the great spiritual forces
and powers of life, or whether we shall be interested solely in the
material things of life.

But there is a wonderful law which we must not lose sight of. It is to
the effect that when we become sufficiently alive to the inner powers
and forces, to the inner springs of life, the material things of life
will not only follow in a natural and healthy sequence, but they will
also assume their right proportions. They will take their right places.

It was the recognition of this great fundamental fact of life that Jesus
had in mind when he said: "But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and
all these things shall be added unto you,"--meaning, as he so distinctly
stated, the kingdom of the mind and spirit made open and translucent to
the leading of the Divine Wisdom inherent in the human soul, when that
leading is sought and when through the right ordering of the mind we
make the conditions whereby it may become operative in the individual
life.

The great value of God as taught by Jesus is that God dwells in us. It
is truly Emmanuel--God with us. The law must be observed--the conditions
must be met. "The Lord is with you while ye be with him; and if ye will
seek him, he will be found of you." "The spirit of the living God
dwelleth in you." "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that
giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given
him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering." That there is a Divine
law underlying prayer that helps to release the inner springs of wisdom,
which in turn leads to power, was well known to Jesus, for his life
abundantly proved it.

His great aptitude for the things of the spirit enabled him intuitively
to realise this, to understand it, to use it. And there was no mystery,
no secret, no subterfuge on the part of Jesus as to the source of his
power. In clear and unmistakable words he made it known--and why should
he not? It was the truth, the truth of this inner kingdom that would
make men free that he came to reveal. "The words that I speak unto you
I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the
works." "My Father worketh hitherto and I work.... For as the Father
hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in
himself.... I can of mine own self do nothing." As he followed the
conditions whereby this higher illumination can come so must we.

The injunction that Jesus gave in regard to prayer is unquestionably the
method that he found so effective and that he himself used. How many
times we are told that he withdrew to the mountain for his quiet period,
for communion with the Father, that the realisation of his oneness with
God might be preserved intact. In this continual realisation--I and my
Father are one--lay his unusual insight and power. And his distinct
statement which he made in speaking of his own powers--as I am ye shall
be--shows clearly the possibilities of human unfoldment and attainment,
since he realised and lived and then revealed the way.

Were not this Divine source of wisdom and power the heritage of every
human soul, distinctly untrue then would be Jesus' saying: "For every
one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him
that knocketh, it shall be opened." Infinitely better is it to know that
one has this inner source of guidance and wisdom which as he opens
himself to it becomes continually more distinct, more clear and more
unerring in its guidance, than to be continually seeking advice from
outside sources, and being confused in regard to the advice given. This
is unquestionably the way of the natural and the normal life, made so
simple and so plain by Jesus, and that was foreshadowed by Isaiah when
he said: "Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard that the everlasting
God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth fainteth not,
neither is weary? He giveth power to the faint and to them that have no
might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord
shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles;
they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint."

Not that problems and trials will not come. They will come. There never
has been and there never will be a life free from them. Life isn't
conceivable on any other terms. But the wonderful source of consolation
and strength, the source that gives freedom from worry and freedom from
fear is the realisation of the fact that the guiding force and the
moulding power is within us. It becomes active and controlling in the
degree that we realise and in the degree that we are able to open
ourselves so that the Divine intelligence and power can speak to and can
work through us.

Judicious physical exercise induces greater bodily strength and vigour.
An active and alert mental life, in other words mental activity, induces
greater intellectual power. And under the same general law the same is
true in regard to the development and the use of spiritual power. It,
however, although the most important of all because it has to do more
fundamentally with the life itself, we are most apt to neglect. The
losses, moreover, resulting from this neglect are almost beyond
calculation.

To establish one's centre aright is to make all of life's activities and
events and results flow from this centre in orderly sequence. A modern
writer of great insight has said: "The understanding that God is, and
_all there is_, will establish you upon a foundation from which you can
never be moved." To know that the power that is God is the power that
works in us is knowledge of transcendent import.

To know that the spirit of Infinite wisdom and power which is the
creating, the moving, and the sustaining force in all life, thinks and
acts in and through us as our own very life, in the degree that we
consciously and deliberately desire it to become the guiding and the
animating force in our lives, and open ourselves fully to its leadings,
and follow its leadings, is to attain to that state of conscious oneness
with the Divine that Jesus realised, lived and revealed, and that he
taught as the method of the natural and the normal life for all men.

We are so occupied with the matters of the sense-life that all
unconsciously we become dominated, ruled by the things of the senses.
Now in the real life there is the recognition of the fact that the
springs of life are all from within, and that the inner always leads and
rules the outer. Under the elemental law of Cause and Effect this is
always done--whether we are conscious of it or not. But the difference
lies here: The master of life consciously and definitely allies himself
in mind and spirit with the great central Force and rules his world from
within. The creature of circumstances, through lack of desire or through
weakness of will, fails to do this, and, lacking guiding and directing
force, drifts and becomes thereby the creature of circumstance.

One of deep insight has said: "That we do not spontaneously see and know
God, as we see and know one another, and so manifest the God-nature as
we do the sense-nature, is because that nature is yet latent, and in a
sense slumbering within us. Yet the God-nature within us connects us as
directly and vitally with the Being and Kingdom of God within, behind,
and above the world, as does the sense-nature with the world external to
us. Hence as the sense-consciousness was awakened and established by the
recognition of and communication with the outward world through the
senses, so the God-consciousness must be awakened by the corresponding
recognition of, and communication with the Being and Kingdom of God
through intuition--the spiritual sense of the inner man.... The true
prayer--the prayer of silence--is the only door that opens the soul to
the direct revelation of God, and brings thereby the realisation of the
God-nature in ourselves."

As the keynote to the world of sense is activity, so the keynote to
spiritual light and power is quiet. The individual consciousness must be
brought into harmony with the Cosmic consciousness. Paul speaks of the
"sons of God." And in a single sentence he describes what he means by
the term--"For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the
sons of God." An older prophet has said: "The Lord in the midst of thee
is mighty." Jesus with his deep insight perceived the identity of his
real life with the Divine life, the indwelling Wisdom and Power,--the
"Father in me." The whole course of his ministry was his attempt "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."

There is that within man that is illumined and energised through the
touch of His spirit. We can bring our minds into rapport, into such
harmony and connection with the infinite Divine mind that it speaks in
us, directs us, and therefore acts through us as our own selves. Through
this connection we become illumined by Divine wisdom and we become
energised by Divine power. It is ours, then, to act under the guidance
of this higher wisdom and in all forms of expression to act and to work
augmented by this higher power. The finite spirit, with all its
limitations, becomes at its very centre in rapport with Infinite spirit,
its Source. The finite thereby becomes the channel through which the
Infinite can and does work.

To use an apt figure, it is the moving of the switch whereby we connect
our wires as it were with the central dynamo which is the force that
animates, that gives and sustains life in the universe. It is making
actual the proposition that was enunciated by Emerson when he said:
"Every soul is not only the inlet, but may become the outlet of all
there is in God." Significant also in this connection is his statement:
"The only sin is limitation." It is the actualising of the fact that in
Him we live and move and have our being, with its inevitable resultant
that we become "strong in the Lord and in the power of His might." There
is perhaps no more valuable way of realising this end, than to adopt the
practice of taking a period each day for being alone in the quiet, a
half hour, even a quarter hour; stilling the bodily senses and making
oneself receptive to the higher leadings of the spirit--receptive to the
impulses of the soul. This is following the master's practice and
example of communion with the Father. Things in this universe and in
human life do not happen. All is law and sequence. The elemental law of
cause and effect is universal and unvarying. In the realm of spirit law
is as definite as in the realm of mechanics--in the realm of all
material forces.

If we would have the leading of the spirit, if we would perceive the
higher intuitions and be led intuitively, bringing the affairs of the
daily life thereby into the Divine sequence, we must observe the
conditions whereby these leadings can come to us, and in time become
habitual.

The law of the spirit is quiet--to be followed by action--but quiet, the
more readily to come into a state of harmony with the Infinite
Intelligence that works through us, and that leads us as our own
intelligence when through desire and through will, we are able to bring
our subconscious minds into such attunement that it can act through us,
and we are able to catch its messages and follow its direction. But to
listen and to observe the conditions whereby we can listen is essential.

Jesus' own words as well as his practice apply here. After his
admonition against public prayer, or prayer for show, or prayer of much
speaking, he said: "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet,
and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret;
and thy Father which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly." Now
there are millions of men, women, and children in the world who have no
closets. There are great numbers of others who have no access to them
sometimes for days, or weeks, or months at a time. It is evident,
therefore, that in the word that has been rendered closet he
meant--enter into the quiet recesses of your own soul that you may thus
hold communion with the Father.

Now the value of prayer is not that God will change or order any laws or
forces to suit the numerous and necessarily the diverse petitions of
any. All things are through law, and law is fixed and inexorable. The
value of prayer, of true prayer, is that through it one can so harmonise
his life with the Divine order that intuitive perceptions of truth and a
greater perception and knowledge of law becomes his possession. As has
been said by an able contemporary thinker and writer: "We cannot form a
passably thorough notion of man without saturating it through and
through with the idea of a cosmic inflow from outside his world
life--the inflow of God. Without a large consciousness of the universe
beyond our knowledge, few men, if any, have done great things.[C]

I shall always remember with great pleasure and profit a call a few days
ago from Dr. Edward Emerson of Concord, Emerson's eldest son. Happily I
asked him in regard to his father's methods of work--if he had any
regular methods. He replied in substance: "It was my father's custom to
go daily to the woods--_to listen_. He would remain there an hour or
more in order to get whatever there might be for him that day. He would
then come home and write into a little book--his 'day-book'--what he had
gotten. Later on when it came time to write a book, he would transcribe
from this, in their proper sequence and with their proper connections,
these entrances of the preceding weeks or months. The completed book
became virtually a ledger formed or posted from his day-books."

The prophet is he who so orders his life that he can adequately listen
to the voice, the revelations of the over soul, and who truthfully
transcribes what he hears or senses. He is not a follower of custom or
of tradition. He can never become and can never be made the subservient
tool of an organisation. His aim and his mission is rather to free men
from ignorance, superstition, credulity, from half truths, by leading
them into a continually larger understanding of truth, of law--and
therefore of righteousness.

It was more than a mere poetic idea that Lowell gave utterance to when
he said:

    The thing we long for, that we are
    For one transcendent moment.

To establish this connection, to actualise this God-consciousness, that
it may not be for one transcendent moment, but that it may become
constant and habitual, so that every thought arises, and so that every
act goes forth from this centre, is the greatest good that can come into
the possession of man. There is nothing greater. It is none other than
the realisation of Jesus' injunction--"Seek ye first the Kingdom of God
and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." It
is then that he said--Do not worry about your life. Your mind and your
will are under the guidance of the Divine mind; your every act goes out
under this direction and all things pertaining to your life will fall
into their proper places. Therefore do not worry about your life.

When a man finds his centre, when he becomes centred in the Infinite,
then redemption takes place. He is redeemed from the bondage of the
senses. He lives thereafter under the guidance of the spirit, and this
is salvation. It is a new life that he has entered into. He lives in a
new world, because his outlook is entirely new. He is living now in the
Kingdom of Heaven. Heaven means harmony. He has brought his own personal
mind and life into harmony with the Divine mind and life. He becomes a
coworker with God.

It is through such men and women that God's plans and purposes are
carried out. They not only hear but they interpret for others God's
voice. They are the prophets of our time and the prophets of all time.
They are doing God's work in the world, and in so doing they are finding
their own supreme satisfaction and happiness. They are not looking
forward to the Eternal life. They realise that they are now in the
Eternal life, and that there is no such thing as eternal life if this
life that we are now in is not it. When the time comes for them to stop
their labours here, they look forward without fear and with anticipation
to the change, the transition to the other form of life--but not to any
other life. The words of Whitman embody a spirit of anticipation and of
adventure for them:

      Joy, Shipmate, joy!
    (Pleas'd to my soul at death I cry)
    One life is closed, one life begun,
    The long, long anchorage we leave,
    The ship is clear at last, she leaps.
      Joy, Shipmate, joy!

They have an abiding faith that they will take up the other form of life
exactly where they left it off here. Being in heaven now they will be in
heaven when they awake to the continuing beauties of the life subsequent
to their transition. Such we might also say is the teaching of Jesus
regarding the highest there is in life here and the best there is in the
life hereafter.




XI

SOME METHODS OF EXPRESSION


The life of the Spirit, or, in other words, the true religious life, is
not a life of mere contemplation or a life of inactivity. As Fichte, in
"The Way Toward the Blessed Life," has said: "True religion,
notwithstanding that it raises the view of those who are inspired by it
to its own region, nevertheless, retains their Life firmly in the domain
of action, and of right moral action.... Religion is not a business by
and for itself which a man may practise apart from his other
occupations, perhaps on certain fixed days and hours; but it is the
inmost spirit that penetrates, inspires, and pervades all our Thought
and Action, which in other respects pursue their appointed course
without change or interruption. That the Divine Life and Energy actually
lives in us is inseparable from Religion."

How thoroughly this is in keeping with the thought of the highly
illumined seer, Swedenborg, is indicated when he says: "The Lord's
Kingdom is a Kingdom of ends and uses." And again: "Forsaking the world
means loving God and the neighbour; and God is loved when a man lives
according to His commandments, and the neighbour is loved when a man
performs uses." And still again: "To be of use means to desire the
welfare of others for the sake of the common good; and not to be of use
means to desire the welfare of others not for the sake of the common
good but for one's own sake.... In order that man may receive heavenly
life he must live in the world and engage in its business and
occupations, and thus by a moral and civil life acquire spiritual life.
In no other way can spiritual life be generated in man, or his spirit be
prepared for heaven."

We hear much today both in various writings and in public utterances of
"the spiritual" and "the spiritual life." I am sure that to the great
majority of men and women the term spiritual, or better, the spiritual
life, means something, but something by no means fully tangible or
clear-cut. I shall be glad indeed if I am able to suggest a more
comprehensible concept of it, or putting it in another form and better
perhaps, to present a more clear-cut portraiture of the spiritual life
in expression--in action.

And first let us note that in the mind and in the teachings of Jesus
there is no such thing as the secular life and the religious life. His
ministry pertained to every phase of life. The truth that he taught was
a truth that was to permeate every thought and every act of life.

We make our arbitrary divisions. We are too apt to deny the fact that
the Lord is the Lord of the week-day, the same as He is the Lord of the
Sabbath. Jesus refused to be bound by any such consideration. He taught
that every act that is a good act, every act that is of service to
mankind is not only a legitimate act to be done on the Sabbath day, but
an act that _should_ be performed on the Sabbath day. And any act that
is not right and legitimate for the Sabbath day is neither right nor
legitimate for the week-day. In other words, it is the spirit of
righteousness that must permeate and must govern every act of life and
every moment of life.

In seeking to define the spiritual life, it were better to regard the
world as the expression of the Divine mind. The spirit is the life; the
world and all things in it, the material to be moulded, raised, and
transmuted from the lower to the higher. This is indeed the law of
evolution, that has been through all the ages and that today is at work.
It is the God-Power that is at work and every form of useful activity
that helps on with this process of lifting and bettering is a form of
Divine activity. If therefore we recognise the one Divine life working
in and through all, the animating force, therefore the Life of all, and
if we are consciously helping in this process we are spiritual men.

No man of intelligence can fail to recognise the fact that life is more
important than things. Life is the chief thing, and material things are
the elements that minister to, that serve the purposes of the life.
Whoever does anything in the world to preserve life, to better its
conditions, who, recognising the Divine force at work lifting life up
always to better, finer conditions, is doing God's work in the
world--because cooperating with the great Cosmic world plan.

The ideal, then, is men and women of the spirit, open and responsive
always to its guidance, recognising the Divine plan and the Divine
ideal, working cooperatively in the world to make all conditions of life
fairer, finer, more happy. He who lives and works not as an individual,
that is not for his good alone, but who recognises the essential oneness
of life--is carrying out his share of the Divine plan.

A man may be unusually gifted; he may have unusual ability in business,
in administration; he may be a giant in finance, in administration, but
if for self alone, if lack of vision blinds him to the great Divine
plan, if he does not recognise his relative place and value; if he gains
his purposes by selfishness, by climbing over others, by indifference to
human pain or suffering--oblivious to human welfare--his ways are the
ways of the jungle. His mind and his life are purely sordid, grossly and
blindly self-centred--wholly material. He gains his object, but by
Divine law not happiness, not satisfaction, not peace. He is outside the
Kingdom of Heaven--the kingdom of harmony. He is living and working out
of harmony with the Divine mind that is evolving a higher order of life
in the world. He is blind too, he is working against the Divine plan.

Now what is the Divine call? Can he be made into a spiritual man? Yes. A
different understanding, a different motive, a different object--then
will follow a difference in methods. Instead of self alone he will have
a sense of, he will have a call to service. And this man, formerly a
hinderer in the Divine plan, becomes a spiritual giant. His splendid
powers and his qualities do not need to be changed. Merely his motives
and thereby his methods, and he is changed into a giant engine of
righteousness. He is a part of the great world force and plan. He is
doing his part in the great world work--he is a coworker with God. And
here lies salvation. Saved from self and the dwarfed and stunted
condition that will follow, his spiritual nature unfolds and envelops
his entire life. His powers and his wealth are thereafter to bless
mankind. But behold! by another great fundamental law of life in doing
this he is blessed ten, a hundred, a millionfold.

Material prosperity is or may become a true gain, a veritable blessing.
But it can become a curse to the world and still more to its possessor
when made an end in itself, and at the expense of all the higher
attributes and powers of human life.

We have reason to rejoice that a great change of estimate has not only
begun but is now rapidly creeping over the world. He of even a
generation ago who piled and piled, but who remained ignorant of the
more fundamental laws of life, blind to the law of mutuality and
service, would be regarded today as a low, beastly type. I speak
advisedly. It is this obedience to the life of the spirit that Whitman
had in mind when he said: "And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy
walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud." It was the full flowering
of the law of mutuality and service that he saw when he said: "I saw a
city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth. I
dream'd that it was the new City of Friends. Nothing was greater there
than the quality of robust love; it led the rest. It was seen every hour
in the actions of the men of that city and in all their looks and
words." It is through obedience to this life of the spirit that order is
brought out of chaos in the life of the individual and in the life of
the community, in the business world, the labour world, and in our great
world relations.

But in either case, we men and women of Christendom, to be a Christian
is not only to be good, but to be good for something. According to the
teachings of the Master true religion is not only personal salvation,
but it is giving one's self through all of one's best efforts to
actualise the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth. The finding of the
Kingdom is not only personal but social and world-affirming--and in the
degree that it becomes fully and vitally personal will it become so.

A man who is not right with his fellow-men is not right and cannot be
right with God. This is coming to be the clear-cut realisation of all
progressive religious thought today. Since men are free from the
trammels of an enervating dogma that through fear made them seek, or
rather that made them contented with religion as primarily a system of
rewards and punishments, they are now awakening to the fact that the
logical carrying out of Jesus' teaching of the Kingdom is the
establishing here on this earth of an order of life and hence of a
society where greater love and cooperation and justice prevail. Our
rapidly growing present-day conception of Christianity makes it not
world-renouncing, but world-affirming.

This modern conception of the function of a true and vital Christianity
makes it the task of the immediate future to apply Christianity to
trade, to commerce, to labour relations, to all social relations, to
international relations. "And, in the wider field of religious thought,"
says a writer in a great international religious paper, "what truer
service can we render than to strip theology of all that is unreal or
needlessly perplexing, and make it speak plainly and humanly to people
who have their duty to do and their battle to fight?" It makes
intelligent, sympathetic, and helpful living take the place of the tooth
and the claw, the growl and the deadly hiss of the jungle--all right in
their places, but with no place in human living.

The growing realisation of the interdependence of all life is giving a
new standard of action and attainment, and a new standard of estimate.
Jesus' criterion is coming into more universal appreciation: He that is
greatest among you shall be as he who serves. Through this fundamental
law of life there are responsibilities that cannot be evaded or
shirked--and of him to whom much is given much is required.

It was President Wilson who recently said: "It is to be hoped that these
obvious truths will come to more general acceptance; that honest
business will quit thinking that it is attacked when loaded-dice
business is attacked; that the mutuality of interest between employer
and employee will receive ungrudging admission; and, finally, that men
of affairs will lend themselves more patriotically to the work of making
democracy an efficient instrument for the promotion of human welfare. It
cannot be said that they have done so in the past.... As a consequence,
many necessary things have been done less perfectly without their
assistance that could have been done more perfectly with their expert
aid." He is by no means alone in recognising this fact. Nor is he at all
blind to the great change that is already taking place.

In a recent public address in New York, the head of one of the largest
plants in the world, and who starting with nothing has accumulated a
fortune of many millions, said: "The only thing I am proud of--prouder
of than that I have amassed a great fortune--is that I established the
first manual training school in Pennsylvania. The greatest delight of
my life is to see the advancement of the young men who have come up
about me."

This growing sense of personal responsibility, and still better, of
personal interest, this giving of one's abilities and one's time, _in
addition to one's means_, is the beginning of the fulfilment of what I
have long thought: namely, the great gain that will accrue to numberless
communities and to the nation, when men of great means, men of great
business and executive ability, give of their time and their abilities
for the accomplishment of those things for the public welfare that
otherwise would remain undone, or that would remain unduly delayed. What
a gain will result also to those who so do in the joy and satisfaction
resulting from this higher type of accomplishment hallowed by the
undying element of human service!

You keep silent too much. "Have great leaders, and the rest will
follow," said Whitman. The gift of your abilities while you live would
be of priceless worth for the establishing and the maintenance of a
fairer, a healthier, and a sweeter life in your community, your city,
your country. It were better to do this and to be contented with a
smaller accumulation than to have it so large or even so excessive, and
when the summons comes to leave it to two or three or to half a dozen
who cannot possibly have good use for it all, and some of whom perchance
would be far better off without it, or without so much. By so doing you
would be leaving something still greater to them as well as to hundreds
or thousands of others.

Significant in this connection are these words by a man of wealth and of
great public service:[D]

"On the whole, the individualistic age has not been a success, either
for the individual, or the community in which he has lived, or the
nation. We are, beyond question, entering on a period where the welfare
of the community takes precedence over the interests of the individual
and where the liberty of the individual will be more and more
circumscribed for the benefit of the community as a whole. Man's
activities will hereafter be required to be not only for himself but for
his fellow-men. To my mind there is nothing in the signs of the times so
certain as this.

"The man of exceptional ability, of more than ordinary talent, will
hereafter look for his rewards, for his honours, not in one direction
but in two--first, and foremost, in some public work accomplished, and,
secondarily, in wealth acquired. In place of having it said of him at
his death that he left so many hundred thousand dollars it will be said
that he rendered a certain amount of public service, and, incidentally,
left a certain amount of money. Such a goal will prove a far greater
satisfaction to him, he will live a more rational, worthwhile life, and
he will be doing his share to provide a better country in which to live.
We face new conditions, and in order to survive and succeed we shall
require a different spirit of public service."

I am well aware of the fact that the mere accumulation of wealth is not,
except in very rare cases, the controlling motive in the lives of our
wealthy men of affairs. It is rather the joy and the satisfaction of
achievement. But nevertheless it is possible, as has so often proved, to
get so much into a habit and thereby into a rut, that one becomes a
victim of habit; and the life with all its superb possibilities of human
service, and therefore of true greatness, becomes side-tracked and
abortive.

There are so many different lines of activity for human betterment for
children, for men and women, that those of great executive and financial
ability have wonderful opportunities. Greatness comes always through
human service. As there is no such thing as finding happiness by
searching for it directly, so there is no such thing as achieving
greatness by seeking it directly. It comes not primarily through
brilliant intellect, great talents, but primarily through the heart. It
is determined by the way that brilliant intellect, great talents are
used. It is accorded not to those who seek it directly. By an indirect
law it is accorded to those who, forgetting self, give and thereby lose
their lives in human service.

Both poet and prophet is Edwin Markham when he says:

    We men of earth have here the stuff
    Of Paradise--we have enough!
    We need no other stones to build
    The stairs into the Unfulfilled--
    No other ivory for the doors--
    No other marble for the floors--
    No other cedar for the beam
    And dome of man's immortal dream.

    Here on the paths of every day--
    Here on the common human way,
    Is all the stuff the gods would take
    To build a Heaven; to mould and make
    New Edens. Ours the stuff sublime
    To build Eternity in time!

This putting of divinity into life and raising thereby an otherwise
sordid life up to higher levels and thereby to greater enjoyments, is
the power that is possessed equally by those of station and means, and
by those in the more humble or even more lowly walks of life.

When your life is thus touched by the spirit of God, when it is ruled by
this inner Kingdom, when your constant prayer, as the prayer of every
truly religious man or woman will be--Lord, what wilt Thou have me to
do? My one desire is that Thy will be my will, and therefore that Thy
will be done in me and through me--then you are living the Divine life;
you are a coworker with God. And whether your life according to accepted
standards be noted or humble it makes no difference--you are fulfilling
your Divine mission. You should be, you cannot help being fearless and
happy. You are a part of the great creative force in the world.

You are doing a man's or a woman's work in the world, and in so doing
you are not unimportant; you are essential. The joy of true
accomplishment is yours. You can look forward always with sublime
courage and expectancy. The life of the most humble can thus become an
exalted life. Mother, watching over, cleaning, feeding, training, and
educating your brood; seamstress, working, with a touch of the Divine
in all you do--it must be done by some one--allow it to be done by none
better than by you. Farmer, tilling your soil, gathering your crops,
caring for your herds; you are helping feed the world. There is nothing
more important.

    "Who digs a well, or plants a seed,
      A sacred pact he keeps with sun and sod;
    With these he helps refresh and feed
      The world, and enters partnership with God."

If you do not allow yourself to become a slave to your work, and if you
cooperate within the house and the home so that your wife and your
daughters do not become slaves or near-slaves, what an opportunity is
yours of high thinking and noble living! The more intelligent you
become, the better read, the greater the interest you take in community
and public affairs, the more effectively you become what in reality and
jointly you are--the backbone of this and of every nation. Teacher,
poet, dramatist, carpenter, ironworker, clerk, college head, Mayor,
Governor, President, Ruler--the effectiveness of your work and the
satisfaction in your work will be determined by the way in which you
relate your thought and your work to the Divine plan, and coordinate
your every activity in reference to the highest welfare of the greater
whole.

However dimly or clearly we may perceive it great changes are taking
place. The simple, direct teachings of the Christ are reaching more and
more the mind, are stirring the heart and through these are dominating
the actions of increasing numbers of men and women. The realisation of
the mutual interdependence of the human family, the realisation of its
common source, and that when one part of it goes wrong all suffer
thereby, the same as when any portion of it advances all are lifted and
benefited thereby, makes us more eager for the more speedy actualising
of the Kingdom that the Master revealed and portrayed.

It was Sir Oliver Lodge who in this connection recently said: "Those who
think that the day of the Messiah is over are strangely mistaken; it has
hardly begun. In individual souls Christianity has flourished and borne
fruit, but for the ills of the world itself it is an almost untried
panacea. It will be strange if this ghastly war fosters and simplifies
and improves a knowledge of Christ, and aids a perception of the
ineffable beauty of his life and teaching; yet stranger things have
happened, and whatever the churches may do, I believe that the call of
Christ himself will be heard and attended to by a larger part of
humanity in the near future, as never yet it has been heard or attended
to on earth."

The simple message of the Christ, with its twofold injunction of Love,
is, when sufficiently understood and sufficiently heeded, all that we
men of earth need to lift up, to beautify, to make strong and Godlike
individual lives and thereby and of necessity the life of the world.
Jesus never taught that God incarnated Himself in him alone. I challenge
any man living to find any such teaching by him. He did proclaim his own
unique realisation of God. Intuitively and vividly he perceived the
Divine life, the eternal Word, the eternal Christ, manifesting in his
clean, strong, upright soul, so that the young Jewish rabbi and prophet,
known in all his community as Jesus, the son of Joseph and Mary and
whose brothers and sisters they knew so well,[E] became the
firstborn--fully born--of the Father.

He then pleaded with all the energy and love and fervour of his splendid
heart and vigorous manhood that all men should follow the Way that he
revealed and realise their Divine Sonship, that their lives might be
redeemed--redeemed from the bondage of the bodily senses and the
bondage of merely the things of the outer world, and saved as fit
subjects of and workers in the Father's Kingdom. Otherwise for millions
of splendid earnest men and women today his life-message would have no
meaning.

To make men awake to their real identity, and therefore to their
possibilities and powers as true sons of God, the Father of all, and
therefore that all men are brothers--for otherwise God is not Father of
all--and to live together in brotherly love and mutual cooperation
whereby the Divine will becomes done on earth as it is in heaven--this
is his message to we men of earth. If we believe his message and accept
his leadership, then he becomes indeed our elder brother who leads the
way, the Word in us becomes flesh, the Christ becomes enthroned in our
lives,--and we become co-workers with him in the Father's vineyard.




XII

THE WORLD WAR--ITS MEANING AND ITS LESSONS FOR US


Whatever differences of opinion--and honest differences of opinion--may
have existed and may still exist in America in regard to the great world
conflict, there is a wonderful unanimity of thought that has
crystallised itself into the concrete form--_something must be done in
order that it can never occur again_. The higher intelligence of the
nation must assert itself. It must feel and think and act in terms of
internationalism. Not that the feeling of nationalism in any country
shall, or even can be eradicated or even abated. It must be made,
however, to coordinate itself with the now rapidly growing sense of
world-consciousness, that the growing intelligence of mankind, aided by
some tremendously concrete forms of recent experience, is now
recognising as a great reality.

That there were very strong sympathies for both the Allied Nations and
for the Central Powers in the beginning, goes without saying, How could
it be otherwise, when we realise the diverse and complex types of our
citizenship?

One of the most distinctive, and in some ways one of the most
significant, features of the American nation is that it is today
composed of representatives, and in some cases, of enormous bodies of
representatives, numbering into the millions, of practically every
nation in the world.

There are single cities where, in one case twenty-six, in another case
twenty-nine, and in other cases a still larger number of what are today
designated as hyphenated citizens are represented. The orderly removal
of the hyphen, and the amalgamation of these splendid representatives of
practically all nations into genuine American citizens, infused with
American ideals and pushed on by true American ambitions, is one of the
great problems that the war has brought in a most striking manner to our
attention.

Not that these representatives of many nations shall in any way lose
their sense of sympathy for the nations of their birth, in times of
either peace or of distress, although they have found it either
advisable or greatly to their own personal advantage and welfare to
leave the lands of their birth and to establish their homes here.

The fact that in the vast majority of cases they find themselves better
off here, and choose to remain and assume the responsibilities of
citizenship in the Western Republic, involves a responsibility that
some, if not indeed many, heretofore have apparently too lightly
considered. There must be a more supreme sense of allegiance, and a
continually growing sense of responsibility to the nation, that, guided
by their own independent judgment and animated by their own free wills,
they have chosen as their home.

There is a difference between sympathy and allegiance; and unless a man
has found conditions intolerable in the land of his birth, and this is
the reason for his seeking a home in another land more to his liking and
to his advantage, we cannot expect him to be devoid of sympathy for the
land of his birth, especially in times of stress or of great need. We
can expect him, however, and we have a right to demand his _absolute
allegiance_ to the land of his adoption. And if he cannot give this,
then we should see to it that he return to his former home. If he is
capable of clear thinking and right feeling, he also must realise the
fundamental truth of this fact.

There are public schools in America where as many as nineteen languages
are spoken in a single room. Our public schools, so eagerly sought by
the children of parents of foreign birth, in their intense eagerness
for an education, that is offered freely and without cost to all, can
and must be made greater instruments in converting what must in time
become a great menace to our institutions, and even to the very life of
the nation itself, into a real and genuine American citizenship. Our
best educators, in addition to our clearest thinking citizens, are
realising as never before, that our public-school system chiefly, among
our educational institutions, must be made a great melting-pot through
which this process of amalgamation must be carried on.

We are also realising clearly now that, as a nation, we have been
entirely too lax in connection with our immigration privileges,
regulations and restrictions. We have been admitting foreigners to our
shores in such enormous quantities each year that we have not been able
at all adequately to assimilate them, nor have we used at all a
sufficiently wise discrimination in the admission of desirables or
undesirables.

We have received, or we have allowed to be dumped upon our shores, great
numbers of the latter whom we should know would inevitably become
dependents, as well as great numbers of criminals. The result has been
that they have been costing certain localities millions of dollars every
year. But entirely aside from the latter, the last two or three years
have brought home to us as never before the fact that those who come to
our shores must come with the avowed and the settled purpose of becoming
real American citizens, giving full and absolute allegiance to the
institutions, the laws, the government of the land of their adoption.

If any other government is not able so to manage as to make it more
desirable for its subjects to remain in the land of their birth, rather
than to seek homes in the land with institutions more to their liking,
or with advantages more conducive to their welfare, that government then
should not expect to retain, even in the slightest degree, the
allegiance of such former subjects. A hyphenated citizenship may become
as dangerous to a republic as a cancer is in the human body. A country
with over a hundred hyphens cannot fulfil its highest destiny.

We, as a nation, have been rudely shaken from our long dream of almost
inevitable national security. We have been brought finally, and although
as a nation we have no desire for conquest or empire, and no desire for
military glory, and therefore no need of any great army or navy for
offensive purposes, we have been brought finally to realise that we do,
nevertheless, stand in need of a national strengthening of our arm of
defence. A land of a hundred million people, where one could travel many
times for a sixmonth and never see the sign of a soldier, is brought,
though reluctantly, to face a new state of affairs; but one,
nevertheless, that must be faced--calmly faced and wisely acted upon.
And while it is true that as a nation we have always had the tradition
of non-militarism, it is not true that we have had the tradition of
military or of naval impotence or weakness.

Preparedness, therefore, has assumed a position of tremendous
importance, in individual thought, in public discussion, and almost
universally in the columns of the public press. One of the most vital
questions among us then is, not so much as to how we shall prepare, but
how shall we prepare adequately for defensive purposes, in case of any
emergency arising, without being thrown too far along the road of
militarism, and without an inordinate preparation that has been the
scourge and the bane of many old-world countries for so many years, and
that quite as much as anything has been provocative of the horrible
conflict that has literally been devastating so many European countries.

It is clearly apparent that the best thought in America today calls for
an adequate preparation for purposes of defence, and calls for a
recognition of facts as they are. It also clearly sees the danger of
certain types of mind and certain interests combining to carry the
matter much farther than is at all called for. The question is--How
shall we then strike that happy balance that is the secret of all
successful living in the lives of either individuals or in the lives of
nations?

All clear-seeing people realise that, as things are in the world today,
there is a certain amount of preparedness that is necessary for
influence and for insurance. As within the nation a police force is
necessary for the enforcement of law, for the preservation of law and
order, although it is not at all necessary that every second or third
man be a policeman, so in the council of nations the individual nation
must have a certain element of force that it can fall back upon if all
other available agencies fail. In diplomacy the strong nations win out,
the weaker lose out. Military and naval power, unless carried to a
ridiculous excess does not, therefore, lie idle, even when not in actual
use.

Our power and influence as a nation will certainly not be in proportion
to our weakness. Although righteousness exalteth a nation, it is
nevertheless true that righteousness alone will not protect a
nation--while other nations are fully armed. National weakness does not
make for peace.

Righteousness, combined with a spirit of forbearance, combined with a
keen desire to give justice as well as to demand justice, if combined
with the power to strike powerfully and sustainedly in defence of
justice, and in defence of national integrity, is what protects a
nation, and this it is that in the long run exalteth a nation--_while
things are as they are_.

While conditions have therefore brought prominently to the forefront in
America the matter of military training and military service--an
adequate military preparation for purposes of defence, for full and
adequate defence, the best thought of the nation is almost a unit in the
belief that, for us as a nation, an immense standing army is unnecessary
as well as inadvisable.

No amount of military preparation that is not combined definitely and
completely with an enhanced citizenship, and therefore with an advance
in real democracy, is at all worthy of consideration on the part of the
American people, or indeed on the part of the people of any nation.
Pre-eminently is this true in this day and age.

Observing this principle we could then, while a certain degree of
universal training under some system similar to the Swiss or Australian
system is being carried on, and to serve _our immediate needs_, have an
army of even a quarter of a million men without danger of militarism and
without heavy financial burdens, and without subverting our American
ideas--providing it is an industrial arm. There are great engineering
projects that could be carried on, thereby developing many of our now
latent resources; there is an immense amount of road-building that could
be projected in many parts of, if not throughout the entire country;
there are great irrigation projects that could be carried on in the far
West and Southwest, reclaiming millions upon millions of acres of what
are now unproductive desert lands; all these could be carried on and
made even to pay, keeping busy a large number of men for half a dozen
years to come.

This army of this number of men could be recruited, trained to an
adequate degree of military service, and at the same time could be
engaged in profitable employment on these much-needed works. They could
then be paid an adequate wage, ample to support a family, or ample to
lay up savings if without family. Such men leaving the army service,
would then have a degree of training and skill whereby they would be
able to get positions or employment, all more remunerative than the
bulk of them, perhaps, would ever be able to get without such training
and experience.

An army of this number of trained men, somewhat equally divided between
the Atlantic and the Pacific seaboards, the bulk of them engaged in
regular constructive work, _work that needs to be done and that,
therefore, could be profitably done_, and ready to be called into
service at a moment's notice, would constitute a tremendous insurance
against any aggression from without, and would also give a tremendous
sense of security for half a dozen years at least. This number could
then be reduced, for by that time several million young men from
eighteen years up would be partially trained and in first-class physical
shape to be summoned to service should the emergency arise.

In addition to the vast amount of good roads building, whose cost could
be borne in equal proportions by nation, state and county--a most
important factor in connection with military necessity as well as a
great economic factor in the successful development and advancement of
any community--the millions of acres of now arid lands in the West,
awaiting only water to make them among the most valuable and productive
in all the world, could be used as a great solution of our immigration
problem.

Up to the year when the war began, there came to our shores upwards of
one million immigrants every twelve months, seeking work, and most of
them homes in this country. The great bulk of them got no farther than
our cities, increasing congestion, already in many cases acute, and many
of them becoming in time, from one cause or another, dependents, the
annual cost of their maintenance aggregating many millions every year.

With these vast acres ready for them large numbers could, under a wise
system of distribution, be sent on to the great West and Southwest, and
more easily and directly now since the Panama Canal is open for
navigation. Allotments of these lands could be assigned them that they
could in time become owners of, through a wisely established system of
payments. Many of them would thereby be living lives similar to those
they lived in their own countries, and for which their training and
experience there have abundantly fitted them. They would thus become a
far more valuable type of citizens--landowners--than they could ever
possibly become otherwise, and especially through our present
unorganised hit-or-miss system. They would in time also add annually
hundreds of millions of productive work to the wealth of the country.

The very wise system that was inaugurated some time ago in connection
with the Coast Defence arm of our army is, under the wise direction of
our present Secretary of War, to be extended to all branches of the
service. For some time in the Coast Artillery Service the enlisted man
under competent instruction has had the privilege of becoming a skilled
machinist or a skilled electrician. Now the system is to be extended
through all branches of the military service, and many additional trades
are to be added to the curricula of the trade schools of the army. The
young man can, therefore, make his own selection and become a trained
artisan at the same time that he serves his time in the army, with all
expenses for such training, as well as maintenance, borne by the
Government. He can thereby leave the service fully equipped for
profitable employment.

This will have the tendency of calling a better class of young men into
the service; it will also do away with the well-founded criticism that
army life and its idleness, or partly-enforced idleness, unfits a man
for useful industrial service after he quits the army. If this same
system is extended through the navy, as it can be, both army and navy
service will meet the American requirement--that neither military nor
naval service take great numbers of men from productive employment, to
be in turn supported by other workers. Instead of so much dead timber,
they are all the time producing while in active service, and are being
trained to be highly efficient as producers, when they leave the
service.

Under this system the Federal Government can build its own ordnance
works and its own munition factories and become its own maker of
whatever may be required in all lines of output. We will then be able to
escape the perverse influence of gain on the part of large munition
industries, and the danger that comes from that portion of a military
party whose motives are actuated by personal gain.

If the occasion arises, or if we permit the occasion to arise, Kruppism
in America will become as dangerous and as sinister in its influences
and its proportions, as it became in Germany.

Another great service that the war has done us, is by way of bringing
home to us the lesson that has been so prominently brought to the front
in connection with the other nations at war, namely, the necessity of
the speedy and thorough mobilisation of all lines of industries and
business; for the thoroughness and the efficiency with which this can be
done may mean success that otherwise would result in failure and
disaster. We are now awake to the tremendous importance of this.

It is at last becoming clearly understood among the peoples and the
nations of the world that, as a nation, we have no desire for conquest,
for territory, for empire--we have no purposes of aggression; we have
quite enough to do to develop our resources and our as yet great
undeveloped areas.

A few months before the war broke, I had conversations with the heads or
with the representatives of leading publishing houses in several
European countries. It was at a time when our Mexican situation was
beginning to be very acute. I remember at that time especially, the
conversation with the head of one of the largest publishing houses in
Italy, in Milan. I could see plainly his scepticism when, in reply to
his questions, I endeavoured to persuade him that as a nation we had no
motives of conquest or of aggression in Mexico, that we were interested
solely in the restoration of a representative and stable government
there. And since that time, I am glad to say that our acts as a nation
have all been along the line of persuading him, and also many other
like-minded ones in many countries abroad, of the truth of this
assertion. By this general course we have been gaining the confidence
and have been cementing the friendship of practically every South
American republic, our immediate neighbours on the southern continent.
This has been a source of increasing economic power with us, and an
element of greatly added strength, and also a tremendous energy working
all the time for the preservation of peace.

One can say most confidently, even though recognising our many grave
faults as a nation, that our course along this line has been such,
especially of late years, as to inspire confidence on the part of all
the fair-minded nations of the world.

Our theory of the state, the theory of democracy, is not that the state
is above all, and that the individual and his welfare are as nothing
when compared to it, but rather that the state is the agency through
which the highest welfare of all its subjects is to be evolved,
expressed, maintained. No other theory to my mind, is at all compatible
with the intelligence of any free-thinking people.

Otherwise, there is always the danger and also the likelihood, while
human nature is as it is, for some ruler, some clique, or factions so to
concentrate power into their own hands, that for their own ambitions,
for aggrandisement, or for false or short-sighted and half-baked ideas
of additions to their country, it is dragged into periodic wars with
other nations.

Nor do we share in the belief that the state is above morality, but
rather that identically the same moral ideals, precepts and obligations
that bind individuals must be held sacred by the state, otherwise it
becomes a pirate among nations, and it will inevitably in time be hunted
down and destroyed as such, however great its apparent power. Nor do we
as a nation share in the belief that war is necessary and indeed good
for a nation, to inspire and to preserve its manly qualities, its
virility, and therefore its power. Were this the only way that this
could be brought about, it might be well and good; but the price to be
paid is a price that is too enormous and too frightful, and the results
are too uncertain. We believe that these same ideals can be inculcated,
that these same energies can be used along useful, conserving,
constructive lines, rather than along lines of destruction.

A nation may have the most colossal and perfect military system in the
world, and still may suffer defeat in any given while, because of those
unseen things that pertain to the soul of another people, whereby powers
and forces are engendered and materialised that make defeat for them
impossible; and in the matter of big guns, it is well always to remember
that no nation can build them so great that another nation may not build
them still greater. National safety does not necessarily lie in that
direction. Nor, on the other hand, along the lines of extreme
pacificism--surely not as long as things are as they are. The argument
of the lamb has small deterrent effect upon the wolf--as long as the
wolf is a wolf. And sometimes wolves hunt in packs. The most preeminent
lesson of the great war for us as a nation should be this--there should
be constantly a degree of preparedness sufficient to hold until all the
others, the various portions of the nation, thoroughly coordinated and
ready, can be summoned into action. Thus are we prepared, thus are we
safe, and there is no danger or fear of militarism.

In a democracy it should, without question, be a fundamental fact that
hand in hand with equal rights there should go a sense of equal duty. A
call for defence should have a universal response. So it is merely good
common-sense, good judgment, if you please, for all the young men of the
nation to have a training sufficient to enable them to respond
effectively if the nation's safety calls them to its defence. It is no
crime, however we may deprecate war, to be thus prepared.

For young men--and we must always remember that it is the young men who
are called for this purpose--for young men to be called to the colours
by the tens or the hundreds of thousands, unskilled and untrained, to be
shot down, decimated by the thoroughly trained and skilled troops of
another nation, or a combination of other nations, is indeed the crime.
Never, moreover, was folly so great as that shown by him or by her who
will not see. And to look at the matter without prejudice, we will
realise that this is merely policing what we have. It is meeting force
with adequate force, _if it becomes necessary_, so to meet it.

This is necessary until such time as we have in operation among nations
a thoroughly established machinery whereby force will give place to
reason, whereby common sense will be used in adjusting all differences
between nations, as it is now used in adjusting differences between
individuals.

Our period of isolation is over. We have become a world-nation. Equality
of rights presupposes equality of duty. In our very souls we loathe
militarism. Conquest and aggression are foreign to our spirit, and
foreign to our thoughts and ambitions. But weakness will by no means
assure us immunity from aggression from without. Universal military
training up to a reasonable point, and the joint sense of responsibility
of every man and every woman in the nation, and the right of the
national government to expect and to demand that every man and woman
stand ready to respond to the call to service, whatever form it may
take--this is our armour.

All intelligent people know that the national government has always had
the power to draft every male citizen fit for service into military
service. It is not therefore a question of universal military service.
The real and only question is whether these or great numbers of these go
out illy prepared and equipped as sheep to the shambles perchance, or
whether they go out trained and equipped to do a man's work--more
adequately prepared to protect themselves as well as the integrity of
the nation. It is not to be done for the love or the purpose of
militarism; but recognising the fact that militarism still persists,
that with us it may not be triumphant should we at any time be forced to
face it. There are certain facts that only to our peril as well as our
moral degradation, we can be blind to. Said a noted historian but a few
days ago:

"I loathe war and militarism. I have fought them for twenty years. But I
am a historian, and I know that bullies thrive best in an atmosphere of
meekness. As long as this military system lasts you must discourage the
mailed fist by showing that you will meet it with something harder than
a boxing glove. We do not think it good to admit into the code of the
twentieth century that a great national bully may still with impunity
squeeze the blood out of its small neighbours and seize their goods."

We need not fear militarism arising in America as long as the
fundamental principles of democracy are preserved and continually
extended, which can be done only through the feeling of the individual
responsibility of every man and every woman to take a keen and constant
interest in the matters of their own government--community, state,
national, and now international. We must realise and ever more fully
realise that in a government such as ours, the people are the
government, and that when in it anything goes wrong, or wrongs and
injustices are allowed to grow and hold sway, we are to blame.

Universal military training has not militarised Switzerland nor has it
Australia. It is rather the very essence of democracy and the very
antithesis of militarism.

    "Let each son of Freedom bear
      His portion of the burden. Should not each one do his share?
        To sacrifice the splendid few--
        The strong of heart, the brave, the true,
        Who live--or die--as heroes do,
      While cowards profit--is not fair!"

Many still recall that not a few well-meaning people at the close of the
Civil War proclaimed that, with upwards of two million trained men
behind him, General Grant would become a military dictator, and that
this would be followed by the disappearance of democracy in the nation.
But the mind, the temper, the traditions of our people are all a
guarantee against militarism. The gospel, the hallucination of the
shining armour, the will to power, has no attraction for us. We loathe
it; nor do we fear its undermining and crushing our own liberties
internally. Nevertheless, it is true that vigilance is always and always
will be the price of liberty. There must be a constant education towards
citizenship. There must be an alert democracy, so that any land and sea
force is always the servant of the spirit; for only otherwise it can
become its master--but otherwise it will become its master.




XIII

OUR SOLE AGENCY OF INTERNATIONAL PEACE, AND INTERNATIONAL CONCORD


The consensus of intelligent thought throughout the world is to the
effect that just as we have established an orderly method for the
settlement of disputes between individuals or groups of individuals in
any particular nation, we must now move forward and establish such
methods for the settlement of disputes among nations. There is no
civilised country in the world that any longer permits the individual to
take the law into his own hands.

The intelligent thought of the world now demands the definite
establishment of a World Federation for the enforcement of peace among
nations. It demands likewise the definite establishment of a permanent
World Court, backed by adequate force for the arbitrament of all
disputes among nations--unable to be adjusted by the nations themselves
in friendly conference. We have now reached the stage in world
development and in world intercourse where peace must be
internationalised. Our present chaotic condition, which exists simply
because we haven't taken time as yet to establish a method, must be
made to give place to an intelligently devised system of law and order.
Anything short of this means a periodic destruction of the finest fruits
of civilisation. It means also the periodic destruction of the finest
young manhood of the world. This means, in turn, the speedy degeneration
of the human race. The deification of force, augmented by all the
products and engines of modern science, is simply the way of sublimated
savagery.

The world is in need of a new dispensation. Recent events show
indisputably that we have reached the parting of the ways, the family of
nations must now push on into the new day or the world will plunge on
into a darker night. There is no other course in sight. I know of no
finer words penned in any language--this time it was in French--to
express an unvarying truth than these words by Victor Hugo: "There is
one thing that is stronger than armies, and that is an idea whose time
has come."

Never before, after viewing the great havoc wrought, the enormous debts
that will have to be paid for between fifty and a hundred years to come,
the tremendous disruptions and losses in trade, the misery and
degradation stalking broadcast over every land engaged in the
war--scarcely a family untouched--never before have nations been in the
state of mind to consider and to long to act upon some sensible and
comprehensive method of international concord and adjustments. If this
succeeds, the world, including ourselves, is the gainer. If this does
not succeed, though the chances are overwhelmingly in its favour, then
we can proclaim to the assembled nations that as long as a state of
outlawry exists among nations, that then no longer by chance but by
design, we as a nation will be in a state of preparedness broad and
comprehensive enough to defend ourselves against the violation of any of
the rights of a sovereign nation. It is only in this way that we can
show a due appreciation of the struggles and the sacrifices of those who
gave us our national existence; it is only in this way that we can,
retain our self-respect, that we can command the respect of other
nations _while things are as they are_; that we can hope to retain any
degree of influence and authority for the diplomatic arm of our
Government in the Council of Nations.

Every neutral nation has suffered tremendously by the war. Every neutral
nation will suffer until a new world-order among nations is projected
and perfected.

We owe a tremendous duty to the world in connection with this great
world crisis and upheaval. Diligently should our best men and women,
those of insight and greatest influence, and with the expenditure of
both time and means, seek to further the practical working out of a
World Federation and a permanent World Court. Public opinion should be
thus aroused and solidified so that the world knows that we stand as a
united nation back of the idea and the plan.

The divine right of kings has gone. It holds no more. We hear now and
then, it is true, some silly statement in regard to it, but little
attention is paid to it. The divine right of priests has gone except in
the minds of the few remaining ignorant and herdable ones. The divine
right of dynasties--or rather of dynasties to persist--seems to die a
little harder, but it is well on the way. We are now realising that the
only divine right is the right of the people--and all the people.

Never again should it be possible for one man, or for one little group
of men so to lead, or so to mislead a nation as to plunge it into war.
The growth of democracy compelling the greater participation of all the
people in government must prohibit this. So likewise the close
relationship of the entire world now must make it forever impossible for
a single nation or a group of nations for any cause to plunge a whole
world or any part of it into war. These are sound and clear-visioned
words recently given utterance to by James Bryce: "However much we
condemn reckless leaders and the ruthless caste that live for war, the
real source of the mischief is the popular sentiment behind them. The
lesson to be learned is that doctrines and deep-rooted passions, whence
these evils spring, can only be removed by the slow and steady working
of spiritual forces. What most is needed is the elimination of those
feelings the teachings of which breed jealousy and hatred and prompt men
to defiance and aggression."

Humanity and civilisation is not headed towards Ab the cave-man,
whatever appearances, in the minds of many, may indicate at the present
time. Humanity will arise and will reconstruct itself. Great lessons
will be learned. Good will result. But what a terrific price to pay!
What a terrific price to pay to learn the lesson that "moral forces are
the only invincible forces in the universe"! It has been slow, but
steadily the world is advancing to that stage when the individual or the
nation that does not know that the law of mutuality, of cooperation, and
still more the law of sympathy and good will, is the supreme law in real
civilisation, real advancement, and real gain--that does not know that
its own welfare is always bound up with the welfare of the greater
whole--is still in the brute stage of life and the bestial propensities
are still its guiding forces.

Prejudice, suspicion, hatred, national big-headedness, must give way to
respect, sympathy, the desire for mutual understanding and cooperation.
The higher attributes must and will assert themselves. The former are
the ways of periodic if not continuous destruction--the latter are the
ways of the higher spiritual forces that must prevail. Significant are
these words of one of our younger but clear-visioned American poets,
Winter Bynner:

    Whether the time be slow or fast,
      Enemies, hand in hand,
    Must come together at the last
      And understand.

    No matter how the die is cast,
      Or who may seem to win--
    We know that we must love at last--
      Why not begin?

The teaching of hatred to children, the fostering of hatred in adults,
can result only in harm to the people and the nation where it is
fostered. The dragon's tooth will leave its marks upon the entire nation
and the fair life of all the people will suffer by it. The holding in
contempt of other people makes it sometimes necessary that one's own
head be battered against the wall that he may be sufficiently aroused to
recognise and to appreciate their sterling and enduring qualities.

The use of a club is more spectacular for some at least than the use of
intellectual and moral forces. The rattling of the machine-gun produces
more commotion than the more quiet ways of peace. All of the powerful
forces in nature, those of growth, germination, and conservation, the
same as in human life are quiet forces. So in the preservation of peace.
It consists rather in a high constructive policy. It requires always
clear vision, a constantly progressive and cooperative method of life
and action; frank and open dealing and a resolute purpose. It is won and
maintained by nothing so much in the long run as when it makes the
Golden Rule its law of conduct. Slowly we are realising that great
armaments--militarism--do not insure peace. They may lead away from
it--they are very apt to lead away from it.

Peace is related rather to the great moral laws of conduct. It has to do
with straight, clean, open dealing. It is fostered by sympathy,
forbearance. This does not mean that it pertains to weakness. On the
contrary it is determined by resolute but high purpose, the actual and
active desire of a nation to live on terms of peace with all other
nations; and the world's; recognition of this fact is a most powerful
factor in inducing and in actualising such living.

Our own achievement of upwards of a hundred years in living in
peaceable, sympathetic and mutually beneficial relations with Canada;
Canada's achievement in so living with us, should be a distinct and
clear-cut answer to the argument that nations need to fortify their
boundaries one against another. This is true only where suspicion,
mistrust, fear, secret diplomacy, and secret alliances hold instead of
the great and eternally constructive forces--sympathy, good will, mutual
understanding, induced and conserved by an International Joint
Commission of able men whose business it is to investigate, to
determine, and to adjust any differences that through the years may
arise. Here we have a boundary line of upwards of three thousand miles
and not a fort; vast areas of inland seas and not a war vessel; and for
upwards of a hundred years not a difference that the High Joint
Commission has not been able to settle amicably and to the mutual
advantage of both countries.

I know that in connection with this we have an advantage over the
old-world nations because we are free from age-long prejudices,
hatreds, and past scores. But if this great conflict does not lead along
the lines of the constructive forces and the working out of a new world
method, then the future of Europe and of the world is dark indeed.
Surely it will lead to a new order--it is almost inconceivable that it
will not.

The Golden Rule is a wonderful developer in human life, a wonderful
harmoniser in community life--with great profit it could be extended as
the law of conduct in international relations. It must be so extended.
Its very foundation is sympathy, good will, mutuality, love.

The very essence of Jesus' entire revelation and teaching was love. It
was not the teaching of weakness or supineness in the face of wrong,
however. There was no failure on his part to smite wrong when he saw
it--wrong taking the form of injustice or oppression. He had, as we have
seen, infinite sympathy for and forbearance with the weak, the sinful;
but he had always a righteous indignation and a scathing denunciation
for oppression--for that spirit of hell that prompts men or
organisations to seek, to study, to dominate the minds and thereby the
lives of others. It was, moreover, that he would not keep silent
regarding the deadly ecclesiasticism that bore so heavily upon his
people and that had well-nigh crushed all their religious life whence
are the very springs of life, that he aroused the deadly antagonism of
the ruling hierarchy. And as he, witnessing for truth and freedom,
steadfastly and defiantly opposed oppression, so those who catch his
spirit today will do as he did and will realise as duty--"While wrong is
wrong let no man prate of peace!"

                    Peace? Peace? Peace?
    While wrong is wrong let no man prate of peace!
    He did not prate, the Master. Nay, he smote!

           *       *       *       *       *

    Hate wrong! Slay wrong! Else mercy, justice, truth,
    Freedom and faith, shall die for humankind.[F]

Nor did the code and teachings of Jesus prevent him driving the
money-changers from out the temple court. It was not for the purpose of
doing them harm. It was rather to do them good by driving home to them
in some tangible and concrete form, through the skin and flesh of their
bodies, what the thick skins of their moral natures were unable to
comprehend. The resistance of wrongdoing is not opposed to the law of
love. As in community life there is the occasional bully who has
sometimes to be knocked down in order that he may have a due
appreciation of individual rights and community amenities, so among
nations a similar lesson is sometimes necessary in order that it or its
leaders may learn that there are certain things that do not pay, and,
moreover, will not be allowed by the community of nations.

Making might alone the basis of national policy and action, or making it
the basis of settlement in international settlements, but arouses and
intensifies hatred and the spirit of revenge. So in connection with this
great world crisis--after it all then comes the great problem of
reorganisation and rehabilitation, and unless there comes about an
international concord strong and definite enough to prevent a recurrence
of what has been, it would almost seem that restoration were futile; for
things will be restored only in time to be destroyed again.

No amount of armament we know now will prevent war. It can be prevented
only by a definite concord of the nations brought finally to realise the
futility of war. To deny the possibility of a World League and a World
Court is to deny the ability of men to govern themselves. The history of
the American Republic in its demonstration of the power and the genius
of federation should disprove the truth of this. Here we have a nation
composed of forty-eight sovereign states and with the most heterogeneous
accumulation of people that ever came together in one country, let alone
one nation, and great numbers of them from those nations that for
upwards of a thousand years have been periodically springing at one
another's throats. Enlightened self-government has done it. The real
spirit and temper of democracy has done it. But it must be the
preservation of the real spirit of democracy and constant vigilance that
must preserve it.

Prejudice, suspicion, hatred on the part of individuals or on the part
of the people of one nation against the people of another nation, have
never yet advanced the welfare of any individual or any nation and never
can. The world war is but the direct result of the type of peace that
preceded it. The militarist argument reduced to its lowest terms amounts
merely to this: "For two nations to keep peace each must be stronger
than the other."

Representative men of other countries do not resent our part in pressing
this matter and in taking the leadership in it. But even if they did
they would have no just right to. There is, however, a very general
feeling that the American Republic, as the world's greatest example of
_successful federation_, should take the lead in the World Federation.

This is now going to be greatly fostered by virtue of one great good
that the world war will eventually have accomplished--the doom and the
end of autocracy. Dynasties and privileged orders that have lived and
lived alone on militarism, will have been foreclosed on. The people in
control, in an increasingly intelligent control of their own lives and
their own governments, will be governed by a higher degree of
self-enlightenment and mutual self-interest than under the domination or
even the leadership of any type of hereditary ruling class or war-lord.
In some countries autocracy in religion, through the free mingling and
discussions of men of various nationalities and religious persuasions,
will be again lessened, whereby the direct love and power of God in the
hearts of men, as Jesus taught, will have a fuller sway and a more holy
and a diviner moulding power in their lives.

It was during those long, weary years coupled with the horrible crimes
of the Thirty Years' War that the science of International Law began to
take form, the result of that notable work, "De Jure Belli ac Pacis," by
Grotius. It is ours to see that out of this more intense and thereby
even more horrible conflict a new epoch in human and international
relations be born.

As the higher powers of mind and spirit are realised and used, great
primal instincts impelling men to expression and action that find their
outlet many times in war, will be transmuted and turned from destruction
into powerful engines of construction. When a moral equivalent for war
of sufficient impelling power is placed before men, those same virile
qualities and powers that are now marshalled so easily for purposes of
fighting, will, under the guidance and in the service of the spirit, be
used for the conserving of human life, and for the advancement and the
increase of everything that administers to life, that makes it more
abundant, more mutual, and more happy. And God knows that the call for
such service is very great.

       *       *       *       *       *

And even now comes the significant word that the long, the too long
awaited world's Bill of Rights has taken form. The intelligence and the
will of righteous men, duly appointed as the representatives of fourteen
sovereign nations, has asserted itself, and the beginning has been made,
without which there can be neither growth nor advancement. The
Constitution of the World League has taken form. It is not a perfect
instrument; but it will grow into as perfect an instrument as need be
for its purpose. Changes and additions to it will be made as times and
conditions indicate. Partisanship even with us may seek to defeat it.
There is no question, however, but that the sober sense of the American
people is behind it.

One of the most fundamental results, we might say purposes of the great
world war, was to end war. It means now that the world's unity and
mutuality and its community of interests must be realised and that we
build accordingly. It means that the world's peace must be fostered and
preserved by the use of brains and guided by the heart; or that every
brute force made ghastly and deadly to the n_th_ degree that modern
science can devise, be periodically called in to settle the disputes or
curb the ambitions that will disrupt the peace of the world.

The common people the world over are desiring as near as can be arrived
at, some surety as to the preservation of the world's peace; and they
will brook no interference with a plan that seems the most feasible way
to that end. The whole world is in that temper that gives significance
to the words of President Wilson when a day or two ago he said: "Any
man who resists the present tides that run in the world will find
himself thrown upon a shore so high and barren that it will seem as if
he had been separated from his human kind forever." Unless, he might
have added--he has and can demonstrate a better plan. The two chief
arguments against it, that it will take away from our individual rights
and that it will lead us into entangling alliances, no longer hold--for
we are entangled already. We are a part of the great world force and it
were futile longer to seek to escape our duties as such. They are as
essential as "our rights."

It is with us now as a nation as it was with that immortal group that
gathered to sign our Declaration of Independence, to whom Franklin said:
"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

It is well for Americans to recall that the first League of Nations was
when thirteen distinct nationalities one day awoke to the fact that it
were better to forget their differences and to a great extent their
boundaries, and come together in a common union. They had their thirteen
distinct armies to keep up, in order to defend themselves each against
the other or against any combination of the others, to say nothing of
any outside power that might move against them. Jealousies arose and
misunderstandings were frequent. So zealous was each of its own rights
that when the Constitutional Convention had completed its work, and the
Constitution was ready for adoption, there were those who actually left
the hall rather than sign it. They were good men but they were looking
at stern facts and they wanted no idealism in theirs. Good men, some
animated by the partisan spirit, it is true, earnest in their
beliefs--but unequipped with the long vision. Their names are now
recalled only through the search of the antiquarian.

Infinitely better it has been found for the thirteen and eventually the
forty-eight to stand together than to stand separately. The thirteen
separate states were farther separated so far as means of communication
and actual knowledge of one another were concerned, than are the nations
of the world today.

It took men of great insight as well as vision to formulate our own
Constitution which made thirteen distinct and sovereign states the
United States of America. The formulation of the Constitution of the
World League has required such men. As a nation we may be proud that two
representative Americans have had so large a share in its
accomplishment--President Wilson, good Democrat, and Ex-President Taft,
good Republican.

The greatest international and therefore world document ever produced
has been forged--it awaits the coming days, years, and even generations
for its completion. And we accord great honour also to those statesmen
of other nations who have combined keen insight born of experience, with
a lofty idealism; for out of these in any realm of human activities and
relations, whatever eventually becomes the practical, is born.




XIV

THE WORLD'S BALANCE-WHEEL


It was Lincoln who gave us a wonderful summary when he said: "After all
the one meaning of life is to be kind."

Love, sympathy, fellowship is the very foundation of all civilised,
happy, ideal life. It is the very balance-wheel of life itself. It gives
that genuineness and simplicity in voice, in look, in spirit that is so
instinctively felt by all, and to which all so universally respond. It
is like the fragrance of the flower--the emanation of its soul.

Interesting and containing a most vital truth is this little memoir by
Christine Rossetti: "One whom I knew intimately, and whose memory I
revere, once in my hearing remarked that, 'unless we love people, we
cannot understand them.' This was a new light to me." It contains indeed
a profound truth.

Love, sympathy, fellowship, is what makes human life truly human.
Cooperation, mutual service, is its fruitage. A clear-cut realisation of
this and a resolute acting upon it would remove much of the cloudiness
and the barrenness from many a life; and its mutual recognition--and
action based upon it--would bring order and sweetness and mutual gain in
vast numbers of instances in family, in business, in community life. It
would solve many of the knotty problems in all lines of human relations
and human endeavour, whose solution heretofore has seemed well-nigh
impossible. It is the telling oil that will start to running smoothly
and effectively many an otherwise clogged and grating system of human
machinery.

When men on both sides are long-headed enough, are sensible enough to
see its practical element and make it the fundamental basis of all
relationships, of all negotiations, and all following activities in the
relations between capital and labour, employer and employee, literally a
new era in the industrial world will spring into being. Both sides will
be the gainer--the dividends flowing to each will be even surprising.

There is really no labour problem outside of sympathy, mutuality,
good-will, cooperation, brotherhood.

Injustice always has been and always will be the cause of all labour
troubles. But we must not forget that it is sometimes on one side and
sometimes on the other. Misunderstanding is not infrequently its
accompaniment. Imagination, sympathy, mutuality, cooperation,
brotherhood are the hand-maidens of justice. No man is intelligent
enough, is big enough to be the representative or the manager of
capital, who is not intelligent enough to realise this. No man is fit to
be the representative of, or fit to have anything to do with the
councils of labour who has not brains, intelligence enough to realise
this. These qualities are not synonyms of or in any way related to
sentimentality or any weak-kneed ethics. They underlie the soundest
business sense. In this day and age they are synonyms of the word
practical. There was a time and it was not so many years ago, when heads
and executives of large enterprises did not realise this as fully as
they realise it today. A great change has already taken place. A new era
has already begun, and the greater the ability and the genius the more
eager is its possessor to make these his guiding principles, and to
hasten the time when they will be universally recognised and built upon.
The same is true of the more intelligent in the rank and file of labour,
as also of the more intelligent and those who are bringing the best
results as leaders of labour. There is no intelligent man or woman today
who does not believe in organised labour. There is no intelligent
employer who does not believe in it and who does not welcome it.

The bane of organised labour in the past has too often been the
unscrupulous, the self-seeking, or the bull-headed labour leader.
Organised labour must be constantly diligent to purge itself of these
its worst enemies. Labour is entitled to the very highest wage, or to
the best returns in cooperative management that it can get, and that are
consistent with sound business management, as also to the best labour
conditions that a sympathetic and wise management can bring about. It
must not, however, be unreasonable in its demands, neither bull-headed,
nor seek to travel too fast--otherwise it may lose more than it will
gain.

It must not allow itself to act as a shield for the ineffective worker,
or the one without a sense of mutuality, whose aim is to get all he can
get without any thought as to what he gives in return, or even with the
deliberate purpose of giving the least that he can give and get away
with it. Where there is a good and a full return, there should be not
only the desire but an eagerness to give a full and honest service. Less
than this is indicative of a lack of honest and staunch manhood or
womanhood.

It is incumbent upon organised labour also to remember that it
represents but eight per cent of the actual working people of this
nation. Whether one works with his brains, or his hands, or both, is
immaterial. Nor does organised labour represent the great farming
interests of the country--even more fundamentally the backbone of the
nation.

The desirable citizen of any nation is he or she who does not seek to
prosper at the expense of his fellows, who does not seek the advancement
of his group to the detriment of all other groups--who realises that
none are independent, that all are interdependent.

He who is a teacher or a preacher of class-consciousness, is either
consciously or unconsciously--generally consciously and intentionally--a
preacher of class-hatred. There is no more undesirable citizen in any
nation than he. "Do you know why money is so scarce, brothers?" the soap
box orator demanded, and a fair-sized section of the backbone of the
nation waited in leisurely patience for the answer. A tired-looking
woman had paused for a moment on the edge of the crowd. She spoke
shortly. "It's because so many of you men spend your time telling each
other why, 'stead of hustling to see that it ain't!" He is a fair
representative of the class-consciousness, class-hatred type. Again he
is represented by the theorist constitutionally and chronically too lazy
to do honest and constructive work either physically or mentally. Again
by the one who has the big-head affliction. Or again by the one
afflicted with a species of insanity or criminality manifesting of late
under the name of Bolshevism--a self-seeking tyranny infinitely worse
than Czarism itself.

Its representatives have proved themselves moral perverts, determined to
carry out their theories and gain their own ends by treachery, theft,
coersion, murder, and every foul method that will aid them in reducing
order to chaos--through the slogan of rule or ruin. Through brigandage,
coersion, murder, it gets the funds to send its agents into those
countries whose governments are fully in the hands of the people, and
where if at any time injustice prevails it is solely the fault of the
people in not using in an intelligent and determined manner the
possessions they already have. Or putting it in another way, on account
of shirking the duties it is morally incumbent upon them as citizens of
free governments to perform.

In America, whose institutions have been built and maintained solely by
the people, our duty is plain, for orderly procedure has been and ever
must be our watch-word. Vigilance is moreover nowhere required more than
in representative government. Whenever the red hand of anarchy,
Bolshevism, terrorism raises itself it should be struck so instantly and
so powerfully that it has not only no time to gain adherents, but has no
time to make its escape. It should be the Federal prison for any
American who allows himself to become so misguided as to seek to
substitute terrorism and destruction for our orderly and lawful methods
of procedure, or quick deportation for any foreigner who seeks our
shores to carry out these purposes, or comes as an agent for those who
would do the same.

Organised labour has never occupied so high a position as it occupies
today. That the rank and file will for an instant have commerce with
these agencies, whatever any designing leader here and there may seek to
do, is inconceivable. That its organisations will be sought to be used
by them is just as probable. Its duty as to vigilance and determination
is pronounced. And unless vigilant and determined the set-backs it may
get and the losses it may suffer are just as pronounced. The spirit and
temper of the American people is such that it will not stand for
coersion, lawlessness, or any unfair demands. Public opinion is after
all the court of last resort. No strike or no lockout can succeed with
us that hasn't that tremendous weapon, public opinion, behind it. The
necessity therefore of being fair in all demands and orderly in all
procedure, and in view of this it is also well to remember that
organised labour represents but eight per cent of the actual working
people of this nation.

The gains of organised labour in the past have been very great. It is
also true that the demands of organised labour even today are very
great. In true candor it must also be said that not only the impulse but
the sincere desire of the great bulk of employers is in a conciliatory
way to grant all demands of labour that are at all consistent with sound
economic management, even in many cases to a great lessening of their
own profits, as well as to maintain working conditions as befits their
workers as valuable and honoured members of our body politic, as they
naturally are and as they so richly deserve.

For their own welfare, however, to say nothing of the welfare of the
nation, labour unions must purge themselves of all anarchistic and
destructive elements. Force is a two-edged sword, and the force of this
nation when once its sense of justice and right is outraged and its
temper is aroused, will be found to be infinitely superior to any
particular class, whether it be capital or whether it be labour.
Organised labour stands in the way to gain much by intelligent and
honest work and orderly procedure. And to a degree perhaps never before
equalled, does it stand in a position to lose much if through
self-deception on its own part or through unworthy leadership, it
deceives itself in believing itself superior to the forces of law and
order.

In a nation where the people through their chosen representatives and by
established systems of procedure determine their own institutions, when
agitators get beyond law and reason and lose sight too completely of the
law of mutuality, there is a power backed by a force that it is mere
madness to defy. The rights as well as the power of all the people will
be found to be infinitely superior to those of any one particular group
or class--clear-seeing men and women in any democratic form of
government realise that the words mutuality and self-interest bear a
very close relationship.

The greatest gains in the relations between capital and labour during
the coming few years will undoubtedly be along the lines of
profit-sharing. Some splendid beginnings are already in successful
operation. There is the recognition that capital is entitled initially
to a fair return; again that labour is entitled to a good and full
living wage--when both these conditions are met then that there be an
equal division of the profits that remain, between the capital and the
skill and management back of the capital invested on the one hand, and
labour on the other. Without the former labour would have no employment
in the particular enterprise; without the workers the former could not
carry on. Each is essential to the other.

Labour being not a commodity, as some material thing merely to be bought
and sold, but the human element, is entitled to more than a living wage.
It has human aspirations, and desires and needs. It has not only its
present but its own and its children's future to safeguard. When it is
thus made a partner in the business it becomes more earnest and reliable
and effective in its work, less inclined to condone the shiftless, the
incompetent, the slacker; more eager and resolute in withstanding the
ill-founded, reckless or sinister suggestions or efforts of an
ill-advised leadership.

Capital or employer is the gainer also, because it is insured that loyal
and more intelligent cooperation in its enterprise that is as essential
to its success as is the genius and skill of management.

Taking a different form but proving most valuable alike for management
and capital on the one hand, and its workers on the other, is the case
of one of our great industrial plants, the largest of its kind in the
world and employing many thousands of workers, where already a trifle
over forty per cent. of its stock is in the hands of the workers. Their
thrift and their good judgment have enabled them to take advantage of
attractive prices and easy methods of payment made them by the company's
management. There are already many other concerns where this is true in
greater or less proportion.

These are facts that certain types of labour agitators or even leaders
as well as special pleaders for labour, find it convenient to forget, or
at least not to mention. The same is true also of the millions that are
every year being paid out to make all working conditions and
surroundings cheerful, healthful, safe; in various forms of insurance,
in retiring pensions. Through the initiative of this larger type of
employer, or manager of capital, many hundreds of thousands both men and
women and in continually increasing numbers, are being thus
benefited--outside and above their yearly wage or salary.

A new era in connection with capital and labour has for some time been
coming into being; the era of democracy in industry has arrived. The day
of the autocratic sway on the part of capital has passed; nor will we as
a nation take kindly to the autocratic sway of labour. It is obtaining
a continually fuller recognition; and cooperation leading in many lines
to profit-sharing is the new era we are now passing into.

Though there are very large numbers of men of great wealth, employers
and heads of industrial enterprises, who have caught the spirit of the
new industrial age upon which we have already begun to enter, and who
are glad to see labour getting its fairer share of the profits of
industry and a larger recognition as partners in industry, there are
those who, lacking both imagination and vision, attempt to resist the
tide that, already turned, is running in volume. They are our American
Bourbons, our American Junkers. They are, considering the ominous
undercurrents of change, unrest and discontent that are so apparent in
the entire industrial and economic world today, our worst breeders and
feeders of Bolshevism and lawlessness.

If they had their way and their numbers were sufficiently large, the
flames of Bolshevism and anarchy would be so fed that even in America we
would have little hope of escaping a great conflagration. They are the
ones who are determined to see that their immense profits are
uncurtailled, whose homes must have ten bathrooms each; while great
numbers of their workers without whom they would have to close up the
industry--hence their essential partners in the industry though not in
name--haven't even a single bath-room and with families as large and in
many cases larger.

They are they who must have three or four homes each, aggregating in the
millions to build and to maintain. They are they who cannot see why
workmen should discuss such things among themselves, or even question
them, though in many cases they are scarcely able to make ends meet in
the face of continually advancing or even soaring prices, who never
enjoy a holiday, and are unable to lay up for the years to come, when
they will no longer be "required" in industry. They are they therefore
who have but little if any interest or care for even the physical
well-being of their workers, say nothing of their mental and spiritual
well-being and enjoyments--beyond the fact that they are well enough fed
and housed for the next day's work.

They are they who when it is suggested that, recognizing the change and
the run of the tide, they be keen-minded enough to anticipate changing
conditions and organize their business so that their workers have some
joint share in its conditions and conduct, and some share in its profits
beyond a mere living wage, reply--"I'll be damned if I do." It doesn't
require much of a prophetic sense now however, to be able to tell
them--they'll be damned if they don't.

There is reason to rejoice also that for the welfare of American
institutions, the number of this class is continually decreasing. Did
they predominate, with the unmistakable undercurrents of unrest, born of
a sense of injustice, there would be in time, and in a shorter time than
we perhaps realize, but one outcome. Steeped in selfishness, making
themselves impervious to all the higher leadings and impulses of the
soul--less than men--they are not only enemies of their own better
selves, but enemies of the nation itself.

Bolshevism in Russia was born, or rather was able to get its hold, only
through the long generations of Czarism and the almost universal state
of ignorance in which its people were held, that preceded it. The great
preponderance and the continually growing numbers of men with
imagination, with a sense of care, mutuality, cooperation, brotherhood,
in our various large enterprises is a force that will save this and
other nations from a similar experience.

I have great confidence in the Russian people. Its soul is sound; and
after the forces of treachery, incompetence and terrorism have spent
themselves, and the better elements are able to organize in sufficient
force to drive the beasts from its borders, it will arise and assert
itself. There will be builded a new Russia that will be one of the great
and commanding nations of the world. In the meantime it affords a most
concrete and valuable lesson to us and to all other nations--to strike
on the one hand, the forces of treachery and lawlessness the moment they
show themselves, and on the other hand, to see that the soil is made
fertile for neither their entrance nor growth.

The strong nation is that in which under the leadership of universal
free education and equal opportunities, a due watch is maintained to see
that the rights of all individuals and all classes are nurtured and
carefully guarded. In such a government the nation and its interests is
and must be supreme. Then if built upon high ethical and moral standards
where mutuality is the watch-word and the governing principle of its
life, its motto might through right, power through justice, it becomes a
fit and effective member of the Society of Nations.

Internationalism is higher than nationalism, humanity is above the
nation. The stronger however the individual nation, the stronger
necessarily will be the Society of Nations.

Love, sympathy, fellowship, is not inconsistent with the use of force to
restrain malignant evil, in the case of nations as in the case of
individuals. Where goodness is weak it is exploited and becomes a victim
of the stronger, when, devoid of a sense of mutuality, it is
conscienceless. Strength without conscience, goodness, ungoverned by the
law of mutuality, becomes tyranny. In seeking its own ends it violates
every law of God and man.

For the safety therefore of the better life of the world, for the very
safety and welfare of the Society of Nations, those nations that combine
strength with goodness, strength with good-will, strength with an
ever-growing sense of mutuality, which is the only law of a happy,
orderly, and advancing human life, must combine to check the power of
any people or nation still devoid of the knowledge of this law, lest
goodness, truth and all the higher instincts and potentialities of life,
even freedom itself perish from the earth. This can be done and must be
done not through malice or hatred, but through a sense of right and
duty.

There is no more diabolical, no more damnable ambition on the part of
individuals, organizations or nations than to rule, to gain domination
over the minds and the lives of others either for the sake of power and
domination or for the material gain that can be made to flow therefrom.
As a rule, however, it is both. There is nothing more destructive to
the higher moral and ethical life of the individual or the organization
controlled by this desire, nothing so destructive to the life of the one
or ones so dominated, and as a consequence to the life of society itself
as this evil and prostituting desire and purpose.

Where this has become the clearly controlling motive, malignant and
deep-seated, if in the case of a nation, then it is the duty of those
nations that combine strength with character, strength with goodness, to
combine to check the evil wrought by such a nation. If by persuasion and
good-will, well and good. If not, then through the exercise of a
restraining force. This is not contrary to the law of love, for the love
of the good is the controlling motive. It is only thus that the higher
moral law which for its growth and consummation is dependent upon
individuals, can grow and gain supremacy in the world.

Intellectual independence and acumen, combined with a love of truth,
goodness, righteousness, love and service for others, is the greatest
aid there can be in carrying out the Divine plan and purpose in the
world. The sword of love therefore becomes the sword of righteousness
that cuts out the cancerous growth that is given from to by malignant
ill will; the sword of righteousness that strikes down slavery and
oppression; the sword of righteousness therefore that becomes the sword
of civilization.

It is a weapon that does not have to be always used however; for when
its power is once clearly understood it is feared. Its deterrent power
becomes therefore infinitely more effective than in its actual use. So
in any new world settlement, any nation or group that is not up to this
moral world standard, that would seek to impose its will and its
institutions upon any other nations for the sake of domination, or to
rob them of their goods, must be restrained through the federated power
of the other nations, not by forcing their own beliefs or codes or
institutions upon it, but by restraining it and making ineffective any
ambitions or purposes that it may plan, or until its people whatever its
leadership may be, are brought clearly and concretely to see that such
methods do not pay.

That Jesus to whom we ultimately go for our moral leadership, not only
sanctioned, but used and advocated the use of righteous force, when
malignant evil in the form of self-seeking sought domination, either
intellectual or physical, for its own selfish gain and aggrandizement,
is clearly evidenced by many of his own sayings and his own acts.

So within the nation during this great reconstruction period, these are
times that call for heroic men and women. In a Democracy or in any
representative form of government an alert citizenship is its only
safety. With a vastly increased voting population, in that many millions
of women citizens are now admitted to full citizenship, the need for
intelligent action and attention to matters of government was never so
great. Great numbers will be herded and voted by organizations as well
as by machines. As these will comprise the most ignorant and therefore
the herdable ones, it is especially incumbent upon the great rank and
file of intelligent women to see that they take and maintain an active
interest in public affairs.

Politics is something that we cannot evade except to the detriment of
our country and thereby to our own detriment. Politics is but another
word for government. And in a sense we the individual voter are the
government and unless we make matters of government our own concern,
there are organizations and there are groups of designing men who will
steal in and get possession for their own selfish aggrandizement and
gain. This takes sometimes the form of power, to be traded for other
power, or concessions; but always if you will trace far enough, eventual
money gain. Or again it takes the form of graft and even direct loot.
The losses that are sustained through a lowered citizenship, through
inefficient service, through a general debauchery of public
institutions, through increased taxation to make up for the amounts that
are drawn off in graft and loot are well nigh incalculable--and for the
sole reason that you and I, average citizens, do not take the active
personal interest in our own matters of government that we should take.

Clericalism, Tammanyism, Bolshevism, Syndicalism--and all in the guise
of interest in the people--get their holds and their profits in this
way. It is essential that we be locally wise and history wise. Any class
or section or organization that is less than the nation itself must be
watched and be made to keep its own place, or it becomes a menace to the
free and larger life of the nation. Even in the case of a great national
crisis a superior patriotism is affected and paraded in order that it
may camouflage its other and real activities.

When at times we forget ourselves and speak of rights rather than duties
in connection with our country, it were well to recall and to repeat the
words of Franklin: "The sun never repents of the good he does nor does
he ever demand a recompense."

Not only is constant vigilance incumbent upon us, but realising the fact
that the boys and the girls of today are the citizens of tomorrow--the
nation's voters and law-makers--it is incumbent upon us to see that
American free education through American free public schools, is
advanced to and maintained at its highest possibilities, and kept free
from any agencies that will make for a divided or anything less than a
whole-hearted and intelligent citizenship. The motto on the Shakespeare
statue at Leicester Square in London: "There is no darkness but
ignorance," might well be reproduced in every city and every hamlet in
the nation.

Late revelations have shown how even education can be manipulated and
prostituted for ulterior purposes. Parochial schools whether Protestant,
Catholic, Jewish, or Oriental, have no place in American
institutions--and whether their work is carried on in English or in a
foreign language. They are absolutely foreign to the spirit of our
institutions. They are purely for the sake of something less than the
nation itself. Blind indeed are we if we are not history-wise. Criminal
indeed are we to allow any boys or girls to be diverted to them and to
be deprived of the advantages of a better schooling and being brought
under the influences of agencies that are thoroughly and wholly
American.

American education must be made for American institutions and for
nothing less than this. The nation's children should be shielded from
any power that seeks to get possession of them in order at an early and
unaccountable age to fasten authority upon them, and to drive a wedge
between them and all others of the nation.

The nation has a duty to every child within its borders. To fail to
recognize or to shirk that duty, will call for a price to be paid
sometime as great as that that has been paid by every other nation that
did not see until too late. Sectarianism in education stultifies and
robs the child and nullifies the finest national instincts in education.
It is for but one purpose--the use and the power of the organization
that plans and that fosters it.

Our government profiting by the long weary struggles of other countries,
is founded upon the absolute separation of church and state. This does
not mean the separation of religion in its true sense from the state;
but keeping it free from every type of sectarian influence and
domination. It is ours to see that no silent subtle influences are at
work, that will eventually make the same trouble here as in other
countries, or that will thrust out the same stifling hand to undermine
and to throttle universal free public education, and the inalienable
right that every child has to it. Our children are the wards of and
accountable to the state--they are not the property of any organization,
group or groups, less than the state.

We need the creation of a strong Federal Department of Education of
cabinet rank, with ample means and strong powers to be the guiding
genius of all our state and local departments of education, with greater
attention paid to a more thorough and concrete training in civics, in
moral and ethical education, in addition to the other well recognized
branches in public school education. It should have such powers also as
will enable it to see that every child is in school up to a certain age,
or until all the fundamentals of a prescribed standard of American
education are acquired.

A recent tabulation made public by a Federal Deputy Commissioner of
Naturalization has shown that a little over one tenth, in round numbers,
11,000,000, of our population is composed of unnaturalized aliens. Even
this however tells but a part of the story; for vast numbers of even
those who have become naturalized, have in no sense become Americanized.

Speaking of this class an able editorial in a recent number of one of
our leading New York dailies has said:

"Of the millions of aliens who have gone through the legal forms of
naturalization a very large proportion have not in any sense been
Americanized, and, though citizens, they are still alien in habits of
thought, in speech and in their general attitude toward the community.

"There are industrial centres not far from New York City that are wholly
foreign. There are sections of this city that--except as the children
through the schools and association with others of their own age yield
to change--are intensely alien.

"To penetrate these barriers and open new avenues of communication with
the people who live within them is no longer a task to be performed by
individual effort. Americanization is a work that must be undertaken and
directed on a scale so extensive that only through the cooperation of
the States and the Federal Government can it be successfully carried
out. It cannot longer be neglected without serious harm to the life and
welfare of the Nation."

Some even more startling facts are given out in figures by the
Department of the Interior, figures supplied to it by the Surgeon
General's Office of the Army. The War Department records show that 24.9
per cent. of the draft army examined by that department's agents were
unable to read and understand a newspaper, or to write letters home. In
one draft in New York State in May, 1918, 16.6 per cent. were classed as
illiterate. In one draft in connection with South Carolina troops in
July, 1918, 49.5 per cent. where classed as illiterate. In one draft in
connection with Minnesota troops in July of the same year, 14.2 per
cent. were classed as illiterate. In other words it means for example
that in New York State we have in round numbers 700,000 men between 21
and 31 years of age who are illiterate. The same source reveals the fact
that in the nation in round numbers over 10,000,000 are either
illiterate or without a knowledge of our language. The South is the home
of most of the wholly uneducated, the North of those of foreign speech.
And in speaking of this class a recent editorial in another
representative New York daily, after making mention of one industrial
centre but a few miles out of New York City, in New Jersey, where nearly
16 out of every 100 cannot read English, has said:

"Such people may enjoy the advantages America offers. Of its spirit and
institutions they can comprehend nothing. They are the easy dupes of
foreign agitators, unassimilable, an element of weakness in the social
body that might easily be converted into an element of strength. Many
of them have the vote, controlled by leaders interested only in designs
alien to America's welfare.

"The problem is national in scope * * *. The best way to keep Bolshevism
out of America is to reduce ignorance of our speech and everything else
to a minimum. However alert our immigration officers may be, foreign
agents of social disorder are sure to pass through our doors, and as
long as we allow children to grow up among us who have no means of
finding out the meaning of our laws and forms of government the seeds of
discontent will be sown in congenial soil."

Profoundly true also are the following words from an editorial in still
another New York daily in dealing with that great army of 700,000
illiterates within the State, or rather that portion of them who are
adults of foreign birth:

"The first thing to do is to teach them, and make them realize that a
knowledge of the English language is a prerequisite of first class
American citizenship. * * * The wiping out of illiteracy is a foundation
stone in building up a strong population, able and worthy to hold its
own in the world. With the disappearance of illiteracy and of the
ignorance of the language of the country will also disappear many of the
trouble-breeding problems which have held back immigrants in gaining
their fair share of real prosperity, the intelligence and self-respect
which are vital ingredients in any good citizenship. Real freedom of
life and character cannot be enjoyed by the man or woman whose whole
life is passed upon the inferior plane of ignorance and prejudice. Teach
them all how to deserve the benefits of life in America, and they will
soon learn how to gain and protect them."

It is primarily among the ignorant and illiterate that Bolshevism,
anarchy, political rings, and every agency that attempts through
self-seeking to sow the seeds of discontent, treachery, and disloyalty,
works to exploit them and to herd them for political ends. No man can
have that respect for himself, or feel that he has the respect due him
from others as an honest and diligent worker, whatever his line of work,
who is handicapped by the lack of an ordinary education. The heart of
the American nation is sound. Through universal free public education it
must be on the alert and be able to see through Bourbonism and
understand its methods on the one hand, and Bolshevism on the other; and
be determined through intelligent action to see that American soil is
made uncongenial to both.

Our chief problem is to see that Democracy is made safe for and made of
real service to the world. Our American education must be made
continually more keenly alive to the great moral, ethical and social
needs of the time. Thereby it will be made religious without having any
sectarian slant or bias; it will be made safe for and the hand-maid of
Democracy and not a menace to it.

Vast multitudes today are seeing as never before that the moral and
ethical foundations of the nation's and the world's life is a matter of
primal concern to all.

We are finding more and more that the simple fundamentals of life and
conduct as portrayed by the Christ of Nazareth not only constitutes a
great idealism, but the only practical way of life. Compared to this and
to the need that it come more speedily and more universally into
operation in the life of the world today, truly "sectarian peculiarities
are obsolete impertinences."

Our time needs again more the prophet and less the priest. It needs the
God-impelled life and voice of the prophet with his face to the future,
both God-ward and man-ward, burning with an undivided devotion to truth
and righteousness. It needs less the priest, too often with his back to
the future and too often the pliant tool of the organisation whose chief
concern is, and ever has been, the preservation of itself under the
ostensible purpose of the preservation of the truth once delivered, the
same that Jesus with his keen powers of penetration saw killed the
Spirit as a high moral guide and as an inspirer to high and
unself-centred endeavour, and that he characterised with such scathing
scorn. There are splendid exceptions; but this is the rule now even as
it was in his day.

The prophet is concerned with truth, not a system; with righteousness,
not custom; with justice, not expediency. Is there a man who would dare
say that if Christianity--the Christianity of the Christ--had been
actually in vogue, in practice in all the countries of Christendom
during the last fifty years, during the last twenty-five years, that
this colossal and gruesome war would ever have come about? No
clear-thinking and honest man would or could say that it would. We need
again the voice of the prophet, clear-seeing, high-purposed, and
unafraid. We need again the touch of the prophet's hand to lead us back
to those simple fundamental teachings of the Christ of Nazareth, that
are life-giving to the individual, and that are world-saving.

We speak of our Christian civilisation, and the common man, especially
in times like these, asks what it is, where it is--and God knows that we
have been for many hundred years wandering in the wilderness. He is
thinking that the Kingdom of God on earth that the true teachings of
Jesus predicated, and that he laboured so hard to actualise, needs some
speeding up. There is a world-wide yearning for spiritual peace and
righteousness on the part of the common man. He is finding it
occasionally in established religion, but often, perhaps more often,
independently of it. He is finding it more often through his own contact
and relations with the Man of Nazareth--for him the God-man. There is no
greater fact in our time, and there is no greater hope for the future
than is to be found in this fact.

Jesus gave the great principles, the animating spirit of life, not
minute details of conduct. The real Church of Christ is not an
hierarchy, an institution, it is a brotherhood--the actual establishing
of the Kingdom of God in moral, ethical and social terms in the world.

Among the last words penned by Dr. John Watson--Ian Maclaren--good
churchman, splendid writer, but above all independent thinker and
splendid man, were the following: "Was it not the chief mistake and also
the hopeless futility of Pharisaism to meddle with the minute affairs of
life, and to lay down what a man should do at every turn? It was not
therefore an education of conscience, but a bondage of conscience; it
did not bring men to their full stature by teaching them to face their
own problems of duty and to settle them, it kept them in a state of
childhood, by forbidding and commanding in every particular of daily
life. Pharisaism, therefore, whether Jewish or Gentile, ancient or
modern, which replaces the moral law by casuistry, and the enlightened
judgment of the individual by the confessional, creates a narrow
character and mechanical morals. Freedom is the birthright of the soul,
and it is by the discipline of life the soul finds itself. It were a
poor business to be towed across the pathless ocean of this world to the
next; by the will of God and for our good we must sail the ship
ourselves, and steer our own course. It is the work of the Bible to show
us the stars and instruct us how to take our reckoning * * *.

"Jesus did not tell us what to do, for that were impossible, as every
man has his own calling, and is set in by his own circumstances, but
Jesus has told us how to carry ourselves in the things we have to do,
and He has put the heart in us to live becomingly, not by pedantic
rules, but by an instinct of nobility. Jesus is the supreme teacher of
the Bible and He came not to forbid or to command, but to place the
Kingdom of God as a living force, and perpetual inspiration within the
soul of man, and then, to leave him in freedom and in grace to fulfil
himself."[G]

We no longer admit that Christ is present and at work only when a
minister is expounding the gospel or some theological precept or
conducting some ordained observance in the pulpit; or that religion is
only when it is labelled as such and is within the walls of a church.
That belonged to the chapter in Christianity that is now rapidly
closing, a chapter of good works and results--but so pitiably below its
possibilities. So pitiably below because men had been taught and without
sufficient thought accepted the teaching that to be a Christian was to
hold certain beliefs about the Christ that had been formulated by early
groups of men and that had come down through the centuries.

The chapter that is now opening upon the world is the one that puts
Christ's own teachings in the simple, frank, and direct manner in which
he gave them, to the front. It makes life, character, conduct, human
concern and human service of greater importance than mere matters of
opinion. It makes eager and unremitting work for the establishing of the
Kingdom of God, the kingdom of right relations between men, here on this
earth, the essential thing. It insists that the telling test as to
whether a man is a Christian is how much of the Christ spirit is in
evidence in his life--and in every phase of his life. Gripped by this
idea which for a long time the forward-looking and therefore the big men
in them have been striving for, our churches in the main are moving
forward with a new, a dauntless, and a powerful appeal.

Differences that have sometimes separated them on account of differences
of opinion, whether in thought or interpretation,[H] are now found to be
so insignificant when compared to the actual simple fundamentals that
the Master taught, and when compared to the work to be done, that a
great Interallied Church Movement is now taking concrete and strong
working form, that is equipping the church for a mighty and far-reaching
Christian work. A new and great future lies immediately ahead. The good
it is equipping itself to accomplish is beyond calculation--a work in
which minister and layman will have equal voice and equal share.

It will receive also great inspiration and it will eagerly strike hands
with all allied movements that are following the same leader, but along
different roads.

Britain's apostle of brotherhood and leader of the Brotherhood Movement
there, Rev. Tom Sykes, who has caught so clearly the Master's own basis
of Christianity--love for and union with God, love for and union with
the brother--has recently put so much stimulating truth into a single
paragraph that I reproduce it here:

"The emergence of the feeling of kinship with the Unseen is the most
arresting and revealing fact of human history. * * * _The union
with God_ is not through the display of ritual, but the affiliation and
conjunction of life. We do not believe we are in a universe that has
screens and folds, where the spiritual commerce of man has to be
conducted on the principle of secret diplomacy. The universe is frank
and open, and God is straightforward and honourable. _In making the
spirit and practice of brotherliness_ the test of religious value, we
are at one with Him who said: 'Inasmuch as ye do it unto one of the
least--ye do it unto me.' _We touch the Father when we help His child._
Jesus taught us not to come to God asking, art Thou this or that? but to
call Him Father and live upon it. Do not admit that many of our
Brotherhood meetings are in 'neutral' or 'secular' halls and buildings!
'Where two or three gather in My name, there am I.' Where He is, there
is hallowed ground."

We need a stock-taking and a mobilisation of our spiritual forces. But
what, after all, does this mean? Search as we may we are brought back
_every time_ to this same Man of Nazareth, the God-man--Son of Man and
Son of God. And gathering it into a few brief sentences it is this:
Jesus' great revelation was this consciousness of God in the individual
life, and to this he witnessed in a supreme and masterly way, because
this he supremely realised and lived. Faith in him and following him
does not mean acquiring some particular notion of God or some particular
belief about him himself. It is the living in one's own life of this
same consciousness of God as one's source and Father, and a living in
these same filial relations with him of love and guidance and care that
Jesus entered into and continuously lived.

When this is done there is no problem and no condition in the individual
life that it will not clarify, mould, and therefore take care of; for
"[Greek transliteration: me merimnate te psyche hymon]"--do not worry about your
life--was the Master's clear-cut command. Are we ready for this high
type of spiritual adventure? Not only are we assured of this great and
mighty truth that the Master revealed and going ahead of us lived, that
under this supreme guidance we need not worry about the things of the
life, but that under this Divine guidance we need not think _even of the
life itself_, if for any reason it becomes our duty or our privilege to
lay it down. Witnessing for truth and standing for truth he again
preceded us in this.

But this, this love for God or rather this state that becomes the
natural and the normal life when we seek the Kingdom, and the Divine
rule becomes dominant and operative in mind and heart, leads us directly
back to his other fundamental: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
For if God is my Father and if he cares for me in this way--and every
other man in the world is my brother and He cares for him in exactly the
same way--then by the sanction of God his Father I haven't anything on
my brother; and by the love of God my Father my brother hasn't anything
on me. It is but the most rudimentary commonsense then, that we be
considerate one of another, that we be square and decent one with
another. We will do well as children of the same Father to sit down and
talk matters over; and arise with the conclusion that the advice of
Jesus, our elder brother, is sound: "Therefore all things whatsoever ye
would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."

He gave it no label, but it has subsequently become known as the Golden
Rule. There is no higher rule and no greater developer of the highest
there is in the individual human life, and no greater adjuster and
beautifier of the problems of our common human life. And when it becomes
sufficiently strong in its action in this, the world awaits its
projection into its international life. This is the truth that he
revealed--the twofold truth of love to God and love for the neighbour,
that shall make men free. The truth of the Man of Nazareth still holds
and shall hold, and we must realise this adequately before we ask or can
expect any other revelation.

We are in a time of great changes. The discovery of new laws and
therefore of new truth necessitates changes and necessitates advances.
But whatever changes or advances may come, the Divine reality still
survives, independent of Jesus it is true, but as the world knows him
still better, it will give to him its supreme gratitude and praise, in
that he was the most perfect revealer of God to man, of God in man, and
the most concrete in that he embodied and lived this truth in his own
matchless human-divine life; and stands as the God-man to which the
world is gradually approaching. For as Goethe has said--"We can never
get beyond the spirit of Jesus."

Love it is, he taught, that brings order out of chaos, that becomes the
solvent of the riddle of life, and however cynical, skeptical, or
practical we may think at times we may be, a little quiet clear-cut
thought will bring us each time back to the truth that it is the
essential force that leads away from the tooth and the claw of the
jungle, that lifts life up from and above the clod. Love is the world's
balance-wheel; and as the warming and ennobling element of sympathy,
care and consideration radiates from it, increasing one's sense of
mutuality, which in turn leads to fellowship, cooperation, brotherhood,
a holy and diviner conception and purpose of life is born, that makes
human life more as it should be, as it must be--as it will be.

I love to feel that when one makes glad the heart of any man, woman,
child, or animal, he makes glad the heart of God--and I somehow feel
that it is true.

As our household fires radiate their genial warmth, and make more joyous
and more livable the lot of all within the household walls, so life in
its larger scope and in all its human relations, becomes more genial and
more livable and reveals more abundantly the deeper riches of its
diviner nature, as it is made more open and more obedient to the higher
powers of mind and spirit.

Do you know that incident in connection with the little Scottish girl?
She was trudging along, carrying as best she could a boy younger, but it
seemed almost as big as she herself, when one remarked to her how heavy
he must be for her to carry, when instantly came the reply: "He's na
heavy. He's mi brither." Simple is the incident; but there is in it a
truth so fundamental that pondering upon it, it is enough to make many a
man, to whom dogma or creed make no appeal, a Christian--and a mighty
engine for good in the world. And more--there is in it a truth so
fundamental and so fraught with potency and with power, that its wider
recognition and projection into all human relations would reconstruct a
world.

    _I saw the mountains stand
    Silent, wonderful, and grand,
    Looking out across the land
    When the golden light was falling
    On distant dome and spire;
    And I heard a low voice calling,
    "Come up higher, come up higher,
    From the lowland and the mire,
    From the mist of earth desire,
    From the vain pursuit of pelf.
    From the attitude of self:
    Come up higher, come up higher."_

                       _James G. Clark_




FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: The Emmanuel Movement in Boston in connection with Emmanuel
Church, inaugurated some time ago under the leadership and direction of
two well-known ministers, Dr. Worcester and Dr. McComb, and a well-known
physician, Dr. Coriat, and similar movements in other cities is an
attestation of this.

That most valuable book under the joint authorship of these three men:
"Religion and Medicine," Moffat, Yard and Company, New York, will be
found of absorbing interest and of great practical value by many. The
amount of valuable as well as interesting and reliable material that it
contains is indeed remarkable.]

[Footnote B: "War and Laughter," by James Oppenheim--The Century
Company, New York.]

[Footnote C: Henry Holt in "Cosmic Relations."]

[Footnote D: From a notable article in the New York "Times Magazine,"
Sunday, April 1, 1917, by George W. Perkins, chairman Mayor's Food
Supply Commission.]

[Footnote E: Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of
James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? And are his sisters not here
with us?--Mark 6:3.]

[Footnote F: From that strong, splendid poem "Buttadeus," by William
Samuel Johnson.]

[Footnote G: "God's Message to the Human Soul"--_Revell_.]

[Footnote H: The thought of the layman in practically all of our
churches is much the same as that of Mr. Lloyd George when he said: "The
Church to which I belong is torn with a fierce dispute; one part says it
is baptism _into_ the name of the Father, and the other that it is
baptism _in_ the name of the Father. I belong to one of these parties. I
feel most strongly about this. I would die for it, but I forget which it
is."]




       *       *       *       *       *




Transcriber's Notes


Made minor punctuation, spelling, and hyphenation changes for
consistency.

Corrected the following typos:

Page 81: Changed Pharasaic to Pharisaic.
  (come into being a Pharisaic legalism)

Page 140: Changed subconsious to subconscious.
  (the slumbering subconsious mind)

Page 193: Changed independant to independent.
  (guided by their own independant judgment)

Page 217: Changed terriffic to terrific.
  (What a terriffic price to pay to learn the lesson)

Page 221: Changed symathy to sympathy.
  (He had, as we have seen, infinite symathy for and forbearance)

Page 232: Changed accompaniament to accompaniment.
  (Misunderstanding is not infrequently its accompaniament.)

Page 237: Changed viligant to vigilant.
  (And unless viligant and determined)

Page 245: Changed tyrany to tyranny.
  (ungoverned by the law of mutuality, becomes tyrany.)

Page 245: Changed malignent to malignant.
  (the use of force to restrain malignent evil,)

Page 253: Changed inaliable to inalienable.
  (the inaliable right that every child has)

Page 258: Changed impertinances to impertinences.
  ("sectarian peculiarities are obsolete impertinances.")

Page 259: Changed Chrisitianity to Christianity.
  (Chrisitianity of the Christ)

Page 260: Changed heirarchy to hierarchy.
  (The real Church of Christ is not an heirarchy,)

Page 262: Changed that to than.
  (human service of greater importance that mere matters of opinion.)








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