A NEW ROSARY
There is a great significance in that passage in St. Mark: "All
the things whatsoever ye pray and ask for believe ye _have_
received them and ye have." We are bidden to believe that what we
wish _has already been fulfilled_; that if we take this attitude
we shall obtain our desire.
The benefit we derive from prayer is the harmonizing poising,
balancing of our own mind, putting ourselves into closer communion
into a more vital connection with the Divine Mind, through which
we receive a larger supply of our Father's blessings.
Prayer is the opening up of the pinched supply pipes of the mind
which shut out the divine inflow; it is the letting into our lives
greater abundance from the unlimited supply which continually
flows from the Source of all sources.
"Mary," said a young girl to a Catholic friend, "why do you carry that
rosary everywhere, and what possible good does it do you to count those
beads over and over?"
"Oh," answered Mary, "I never could make you understand what a comfort
this rosary is to me. When I am tired out, or blue or discouraged about
anything; or when I long very much for something that it seems
impossible I should ever get, I take my rosary and begin to pray. Before
I have gone over half of its beads, everything is changed. The tired,
discouraged feeling is gone, or if I have been asking for something I
long to have, it doesn't seem nearly so far away as before; and I know
that if I don't get just what I ask for, I'll get something better."
Those who are too narrow-minded or too prejudiced to see anything good
in a creed which is not their own, often sneer at the Catholic custom of
"saying the rosary." To them it is only "superstition," "nonsense," to
repeat the same prayer over and over. These people do not understand the
philosophy as well as the religion underlying this beautiful old custom.
They do not know the power that inheres in the repetition of the spoken
word, and in the influence of the thought expressed.
Any one can prove this for himself or herself. It isn't necessary to get
a rosary made of beads. You can make your own, an intangible but very
real rosary, and if you say it over, not once, or twice a day, but over
and over many times, and especially before retiring at night, you will
be surprised at the wonderful results.
Is it a fault you wish to correct; is it a talent or gift you desire to
develop and improve; is it money, or friends, an education, success in
any enterprise; is it contentment, peace of mind, happiness, power to
serve, power in your work,--whatever it is you desire, make it a bead in
your rosary, pray for its accomplishment, think of it, work for its
fulfillment and your desire will materialize.
There are many ways of praying. All our prayers are not vocalized
petitions to the Almighty. They are also our inspirations, the
aspirations of the soul to be and to do. Desire is prayer. The sincerest
prayer may be the longing of the heart to cultivate a talent or talents,
or the intense desire to get an education so that one may be of greater
service in the world. That which we dream of and struggle to attain, our
efforts to make good; these are genuine prayers.
When Jane Addams, as a little girl, longed for the power to lift up
other little girls and make them happy; when she dreamed of a time when
she should be grown up and doing a great work in the service of
humanity, she was praying. She was even then laying the foundations of
Hull House, and the Hull House of to-day is an answered prayer. Her
whole life from childhood up was a prayer, because it was a preparation
for a great and noble work.
When the child, Frances Willard, longed and dreamed in her remote
Wisconsin home, she was praying and building as surely as in her later
years when she was the moving power of the great organization she had
brought into being. "I always wanted to react on the world about me to
my utmost ounce of power," she said in telling of her early life and
aspirations. "Lying on the prairie grass and lifting my hand toward the
sky, I used to say in my inmost spirit, 'What is it? What is the aim to
be, O God?'"
Such noble heart yearnings are, in the truest sense, prayers. The
uttered prayer clothed in beautiful language, that which is delivered in
the pulpit to be heard of men, may not be a real prayer at all. The
collective prayer of the congregation may be a mockery. I have often
been in churches where people were repeating prayers automatically,
while looking all about the auditorium watching other people, mentally
occupied, while their lips moved in a so-called prayer, in noticing what
they wore and how they looked. There is no real praying in such a
performance as this. It is not soul expression, not heart talking. It is
mere parrot talking. All mechanical mumbling of prayers in our church
services is an insult to the Creator, who does not hear prayers which do
not come from the heart.
"Prayer is the heart's sincere desire." What we long for and hope for we
pray for by our very longing and hope. The real prayer may be struggling
in the heart without words, it may be a noble desire, a heart longing
which no language can express. It may be voiceless or it may not, but
the true prayer always comes from the heart, and it is always answered.
A remarkable illustration of this is afforded in a story told by John
Wesley. He was once riding through a dark wood, carrying with him a
large sum of money intrusted to his safe keeping. All at once a sense of
fear came over him, and dismounting from his horse, he offered up a
prayer for protection. Years afterward Wesley was called to see a dying
man. This man told the preacher that at the time he had passed through
the wood, so many years before, he, the robber, had been lying in wait
to rob him of the money he carried. He told Wesley that he had noticed
him dismounting and how, on his remounting and resuming his journey, the
appearance of an armed attendant riding beside him had so filled him
with awe and a great fear that he had abandoned his purpose.
Balzac said truly: "When we are enabled to pray without weariness, with
love, with certainty, with intelligence, we will find ourselves in
instant accord with power, and like a mighty roaring wind, like a
thunderbolt, our will will cut its way through all things and share the
power of God."
Everybody prays, because everybody hopes and desires, has longings and
yearnings which he hopes will be realized. In a sense the atheist, the
agnostic, the unbeliever, although they may not know it, pray just as
much as do believers, for every longing of the heart, every noble
aspiration, is a prayer. We pray as naturally as we breathe, for the
desire for a better, nobler life, for grander and higher attainment, is
an unconscious prayer. Prayer is really our heart hunger for oneness
with the Divine, with the Eternal. It is the union of the soul with its
Maker. It is literally what Phillips Brooks described it to be, the
sluice gate between God and the soul.
Many people mistake the very nature of prayer, and complain that it is
no use to pray, because their prayers are never answered.
The reason is clear, and is admirably expressed in Irving Bacheller's
pithy verses on "Faith."
"Now, don't expect too much o' God, it wouldn't be quite fair
If fer anything ye wanted ye could only swap a prayer;
I'd pray fer yours, an' you fer mine, an' Deacon Henry Hospur
He wouldn't hev a thing t' do but lay abed an' prosper.
"If all things come so easy, Bill, they'd hev but little worth,
An' some one with a gift o' prayer 'u'd mebbe own the earth.
It's the toil ye give t' git a thing--the sweat an' blood an' care--
That makes the kind o' argument that ought to back yer prayer."
If your prayers come back to you unanswered it is because they are not
backed by the conditions on which the answer to prayer depends,--faith
and work. You don't get the thing you pray for either because you don't
really believe you will get it, or you don't back your prayer with the
necessary effort, or because you fail in both requisites.
To pray for a thing and not work for it, not strive and do our level
best to obtain it, is a mockery. To ask God to give us that which we
long for, but are too lazy to help get ourselves, is begging. In answer
to our prayers and longings and efforts we get that which we call out of
the universal supply, which is everywhere. Every day some prayer is made
visible, something is wrought out of the invisible, manifested in the
actual by those two mighty instruments--prayer and work. But if you
think your stumbling block will be removed, or your desire realized
without raising a finger to help yourself, you may pray until doomsday
without ever getting an answer. Prayer without faith is of no avail. And
faith without work is a barren virtue.
In the second stanza of a little poem entitled "God's Answer," Ella
Wheeler Wilcox gives us the answer to the plaint of the discouraged,
unsuccessful soul, who cries that his prayers are not heard, and that no
hand is stretched out to lead him to the heights he would attain.
"Then answered God: 'Three things I gave to thee--
Clear brain, brave will and strength of mind and heart,
All implements divine to shape the way;
Why shift the burden of the toil on Me?
Till to the utmost he has done his part
With all his might, let no man _dare_ to pray.'"
The answer to your prayers is right inside of yourself. They are
answered by your obeying the natural as well as the spiritual law of all
supply. If you don't do your part in the actual working world down to
the minutest detail your prayer is bound to come back to you unanswered.
Everything in the universe has its price, a perfectly legitimate one.
You can realize what you desire if you are willing to pay the price, and
that is honest, earnest, persistent effort to make it yours. The Creator
answers your prayer by fitting you to answer it yourself, by enabling
you to put into practice the law of demand and supply, the fundamental
principle on which answer to prayer is based. You must put yourself in
absolute harmony with the thing you pray for. It cannot be forced. You
must attract it. Answer to prayer comes only to a receptive mind in a
positive condition, that is, in a condition to create, to achieve.
The law of affirmation and the law of prayer are one and the same.
"Affirm that which you wish, work for it, and it will be manifest in
your life." Affirm it confidently, with the utmost faith, without any
doubt of what you affirm. Say to yourself, "I am that which I think I
am--and I can be nothing else." But if you affirm, "I am health; I am
prosperity; I am this or that," and do not believe it, you will not be
helped by affirmation. You must believe what you affirm; you must
constantly strive to be what you assert you are, or your affirmations
are but idle breath.
Make yourself a New Thought rosary, not of set formal prayers, but an
original one whose beads shall be your heart's aspirations, your desires
to e-volve the strong, radiant, successful happy man or woman the
Creator has in-volved in you.
If you are unhappy, crushed by repeated failures and disappointment,
suffering the pangs of thwarted ambition, put this bead in your rosary
and say it over to yourself frequently: "The being God made was never
intended for this sort of life. Mary (or John)," addressing yourself by
name, "God made you for success, not failure. He never made any one to
be a failure. You are perverting the great object of your existence by
giving way to discouragement, going about among your fellows with a
long, sad, dejected face, as though you were a misfit, as though there
were no place for you in this great glad world of abundance. You were
made to express gladness, to go through life with a victorious attitude,
like a conqueror. The image of God is in you; you must bring it out and
exhibit it to the world. Don't disgrace your Maker by violating His
image, by being anything but the magnificent man or woman He intended
you to be."
Back up every "bead," or prayer you put in your rosary by action during
the day, otherwise you might as well save yourself the trouble of
stringing your beads, for
"It's the toil ye give t' get a thing--the sweat an' blood an' care--
That makes the kind o' argument that ought to back yer prayer."
Don't be afraid of thinking too highly of yourself, not in the
egotistical sense, but because (the Creator having made you in His
image) you must have inherited divine qualities, omnipotent
possibilities. It is an insult to God to depreciate what He has made and
has pronounced good.
If you are a victim of timidity and self-depreciation, afraid to say
your soul is your own; if you creep about the world as though you
thought you were taking up room which belonged to somebody else; if you
shrink from responsibility, from everything which draws attention to
yourself; if you are bashful, timid, confused, tongue-tied, when you
ought to assert yourself, turn to your rosary and add another bead.
Say to yourself, "I am a child of the King of kings. I will no longer
suffer this cowardly timidity to rule me,--a prince of heaven. I am made
by the same Creator who has made all other human beings. They are my
brothers and sisters. There is no more reason why I should be afraid to
express what I feel or think before them than if they were in my own
family. I have just as much right on this earth as any potentate, as
much right to hold up my head and assert myself as any monarch. I am my
Father's heir, and have all the rights of a prince. I have inherited the
wealth of the universe. The earth and the stars and the sun are mine. I
will quit this everlasting self-depreciation, this self-effacement, this
cringing habit of forever appearing to apologize for being alive. It is
a crime against my Maker and myself. Henceforth I shall carry myself
like a prince. I will act like one, and will walk the earth as a
conqueror. I will let no opportunity pass to-day for assuming any
responsibility which will enlarge me, for expressing my opinion, for
asserting myself whenever and wherever necessary.
"This specter, this shadow of self-depreciation which has held me back
so long, which has darkened my path in life must go, for I shall walk
henceforth with my face toward the sun so that the shadows of life will
fall behind me, and not across my path as before. I am going to face
life with a self-respecting, victorious attitude, with a hopeful
outlook, for I know that I am victory organized. Hereafter I am going
to think more of myself. I am not going to put myself on the bargain
counter any longer by going around as though I had a skim milk opinion
of myself. No more of the poorhouse attitude of inferiority for me. I
know that I was born for victory, born to conquer. I am going to win out
in this great inspiring game of life."
If you feel that you lack initiative, if you are not a self-starter,
boldly assert the opposite and add the assertion to your rosary. Stoutly
affirm your ability to begin things, to do them as well as they can be
done, and to push them through to a complete finish. Learn to trust the
God in you. This trust is a divine force which will carry you through.
Never again allow yourself to harbor thoughts of your inferiority or
deficiency. Say to yourself, "I am going to assert my manhood or
womanhood and stand for something. I am going to be a force in the world
and not a weakling. I was made to make my life a masterpiece and not a
botch; I was created for a great end, and I am going to realize that
end. There are forces inside of me which if aroused and put into action
would revolutionize my life, and I am going to get control of them, to
use them. I am going to find myself and use a hundred per cent. instead
of a miserable little fraction of my ability."
If you are obsessed with the idea that you are not as bright, that you
have not as much ability as most other people; if you have been called
dull, dense, stupid by your parents and teachers, until you have lost
confidence in yourself; if you have been dwarfed by the suggestion of
inferiority, either through what others have said of you, or the thought
you have held of yourself, you must change all this. You must assert
your ability and hold tenaciously the ideal of the able, efficient man
or woman you long to be and that it is in you to become. You must not
only affirm your power to be that which you wish, but you must replace
the picture of your inferiority with the ideal of wholeness, of
completeness, of the man or woman the Creator intended you to be. Cling
to this ideal of yourself, assert your superiority, and you will soon
drive out the dwarfed, inferior, defective image which others, or your
own false thoughts, have established in your subconsciousness. Holding
the truth, the perfect ideal, in mind will give you confidence,
assurance to do the thing you are capable of doing.
Thousands of students have failed to pass examinations not because of
inability to answer test questions, but because of fear, loss of
self-confidence engendered by the blighting suggestion of inferiority.
This is especially true of highstrung, sensitive natures.
If you brood over the failure suggestion, if you visualize an inferior
picture of yourself, you will become obsessed with the failure idea,
with the thought of your inefficiency, and make it wellnigh impossible
for you to succeed in any undertaking. If for any reason you have
dropped into the failure habit, you will have to make a very determined
effort to break away from it, or your life will indeed be a failure.
I know a young man who is both efficient and ambitious, but when the
opportunity for which, perhaps, he has been working a long time comes,
he wilts. His courage fails and he does not feel equal to it. He can see
how somebody else can do the thing required, but he fears it is too much
for him. He has never done anything like it before; and he is afraid to
make the attempt because he might fail.
Now, if you feel this way about yourself, just add another bead to your
rosary. Cut "I can't" out of your vocabulary and substitute "I
can,"--for he can who thinks he can. Napoleon, one of the greatest
achievers the world has ever seen, hated the word "can't" and would
never use it if it could be avoided. He did not believe in the
"impossible." When he was praised for his daring and genius in crossing
the Alps in the dead of winter, he said, "I deserve no credit except for
refusing to believe those who said it could not be done."
Did you ever think that every time you say "I can't" you weaken your
confidence in yourself and your power to do things? Did you ever know a
person who has a great many "I cant's," and excuses in his vocabulary to
accomplish very much? Some people are always using the words, "Oh, I
can't do that;" "I can't afford this;" "I can't afford to go there;" "I
can't undertake such a hard task, let somebody else do that." These
negative assertions undermine power. Have nothing to do with them. In
all questions of achievement, let your rosary deal in affirmations.
Instead of "I can't," say "_I can_," "_I must_," "_I will_." Begin what
you fear to undertake, and half its difficulties will vanish.
If you are vexed, worried, and like Martha, "troubled about many
things;" if you are suffering from all sorts of discord; if you are not
feeling well, you will get great comfort from turning to your rosary and
repeating some of the blessed Biblical promises. "Neither shall any
plagues (discord or harm) come nigh thy dwelling. This is the promise to
him that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High. I will restore
health into thinking and I will heal thee of thy wounds." "He that
dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the
shadow of the Almighty," "The Lord is my refuge, my fortress. In Him
will I trust." "Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror by night, nor for
the arrow that flieth by day," "Surely He shall deliver thee from the
snare of the fowler, from the pestilence that walketh in darkness," "He
shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou
trust."
The contemplation of God and the frequent repetition of these beautiful
Bible passages will increase your faith and your consciousness of
oneness with the Infinite.
Make it a rule never to affirm of your health, your success, or yourself
what you do not wish to be true. Don't say that you feel "rocky," that
you are used up, played out, that you feel miserable, that you don't
feel like doing anything. Never tell people of your aches and pains, for
every repetition means etching the black pictures of these conditions
deeper and deeper into your consciousness. Instead of thus intensifying
them, say to yourself, "The Power that created, and that sustains me
every instant of my life, repairs, renews, restores, cures me. I am
health, I am vigor, I am power, I am that which I think I am." Refuse to
see or to hold for an instant an imperfect, discordant sin or
disease-marred image of yourself. Do not harbor a suggestion of your
inferiority, physically or mentally. Always picture yourself as a great,
strong, splendid man or woman, clean, true, beautiful--a sublime
specimen of humanity. Do not allow yourself to harbor a thought of
physical or mental weakness. Think health, power, perfection at every
breath. Persist in holding the thought of yourself as you long to be,
the ideal which your Creator saw ahead of you when he fashioned you.
Cling to your vision of health without taint, weakness or defect.
Have you a hair-trigger temper, and do you fly all to pieces over the
least provocation, starting raging fires in your brain that are as
destructive to your mental and physical forces as are the great forest
fires to the vast tracts of territory over which they sweep? If you have
you are minimizing all your powers and seriously endangering your
success, your happiness, your life itself. Ask Sing Sing what the hot
tempers, the fires of uncontrolled anger, of jealous rage, of revenge,
of hate, of all the explosive passions have done. Ask the poorhouses,
the insane asylums, the morgues, ask the records of human wreckage
everywhere, what the fruits of uncontrolled passions of every sort are.
Anger, whatever its cause, is temporary insanity. Are you in the habit
of losing your temper, of flying into a rage over trifles? If you could
only see what a miserable spectacle, what a fool exhibition, you make of
yourself on such occasions, when you go all to pieces and rave like a
madman because you miss your train, or because you think some one
insults you, when you step down from the throne of your reason and let
the brute sit there and rule in your place, you would be so chagrined
and mortified that you would leave nothing undone to rid yourself of
your fault. Why, nothing could hire you, when in your right mind, to
make such a ludicrous and contemptible exhibition of yourself. You only
do it when under the stress of angry passion, when shorn of your power
by this temporary insanity.
To retain self-control, mental poise, equanimity, under all
provocations, great or small, is an index of a fine strong character. It
is a triumph of strength over weakness, of greatness over littleness.
The habit of conquering ourselves is the habit of victory; it
strengthens all the faculties.
You can bring this great force of control to your aid, by calling on the
divinity within you, by asserting your oneness with the Divine who is
eternal calmness. Say to yourself, "God's image is in me. I am of divine
lineage. I was not intended to be passion's slave. It is unworthy of a
real man, of a real woman, to be the plaything of temper, or any sort of
explosive tearing down passion. There is something divine in me and I
will not allow my lower nature to get control."
The constant affirmation of your oneness with your Creator, with _the_
One, will give you a wonderful sense of power, and will help you to
overcome every handicap. But you must be very positive, very insistent
and persistent in your affirmations. No matter what fault you are trying
to overcome or what good quality you are anxious to acquire there must
be no weakness, indecision or vacillation in your affirmations or your
efforts.
If you are cursed with the fatal habit of indecision; if you are a weak
vacillator, always taking things up for reconsideration because you are
not quite sure that you have done the right thing; if you allow yourself
to waver, to doubt the wisdom of your decision, you will be incapable of
ever under any circumstances arriving at an intelligent conclusion.
You can cure the curse of indecision by asserting your power to see
clearly, think quickly and act decisively. If you are in doubt as to
what career to choose; if you hesitate in regard to what course you
should take in any difficulty, which of two or three paths you should
follow, whatever your problem may be, ask for light and the divine power
within will come to your aid and guide you aright. Repeat the "I am" in
every instance. "I am positive." "I can decide vigorously, firmly,
finally." Resolve every morning that you will, during that day, decide
things without possibility of recall or reconsideration. First go over
the matter to be decided very thoroughly and carefully. In making your
decision use the best judgment at your command and then close the
incident. You will secure yourself against vacillation by refusing,
after it is thus closed, to wonder whether you have done the wisest
thing, by resisting every temptation to open the matter for
reconsideration.
If you feel that you are a coward somewhere in your nature, you can
strengthen this deficient faculty wonderfully by holding the courageous
ideal, by thinking and reading about heroic people and things, holding
the thought of fearlessness, that you are God's child, that you are not
afraid of anything on the earth. Study the stories of heroic lives;
think, act, live, the heroic thought. Say, "I am a son of God, and I was
never made to cower, to slink, to be afraid. Fear is not an attribute of
divinity. I am brave, courageous; I am a conqueror."
If you are suffering with the poverty disease, if your whole life has
been stunted by poverty, saturated with poverty-stricken thoughts and
convictions, if you have been heading towards the poverty goal, just
turn about face, and put the law of abundance into operation. Face
towards prosperity and success instead of poverty and failure. All the
good things you need are yours by inheritance. Claim them, expect them,
work for them, pray for them, and you will realize them in your life.
Make this last stanza of Ella Wheeler Wilcox's splendid little poem
"Assertion" a new bead on your rosary. Repeat it frequently, and work
cheerfully, confidently, courageously toward its fulfillment.
"I am success. Though hungry, cold, ill-clad,
I wander for a while. I smile and say,
'It is but for a time--I shall be glad
To-morrow, for good fortune comes my way.
God is my father, He has wealth untold,
His wealth is mine, health, happiness and gold.'"
If you have made fatal mistakes for which you have been ostracized from
society; if you are morbidly worrying over some unfortunate experience,
thus making it bigger, blacker and more hideous, just thrust it out of
your mind, bury it, forget it, say to it, "You have no power over me; I
will not allow you to destroy my peace and thwart my career; you are not
the truth of my being; the reality of me is divine, and you cannot touch
that. I can and I will rise above all my troubles, make good all my
mistakes and errors. From now on I will work with the God in me. I will
not be overcome. I will overcome."
If you are the slave of a demon habit which has blasted your hopes,
blighted your happiness, thwarted your ambition, cast its black shadow
across your whole life, say to yourself: "I will break away from this
vile habit. I will be free and not a slave."
If it is impurity, say, "I was not made to be dominated by such a
monstrous vice. God's image in me was not intended to wallow in this
filth. I have suffered long enough from this damnable habit, which is
undermining my health, killing my chances of success in life, and
lowering me below the level of the beast. I am a child of the Infinite,
sent here to make a worthy contribution to humanity, to make good. I am
going to make good. I am going to free myself from this base habit and
recover my self-respect, my manhood, at any cost. I am going to be a
MAN, not a THING, a son of God, not of the devil."
Continually flood your mind with purity thoughts and affirmations which
will neutralize your sensual desires. Repeat again and again your
determination not to allow your life to be spoiled by unrestrained
passion. Make such an emphatic and vigorous call upon your better self,
make the demand so appealing that your higher nature will be aroused and
will dominate your acts. Say, "The Creator has bidden me look up, not
down. He made me to climb, not to descend and wallow in the mire of
animalism."
If it is drink, opium, excessive smoking, or any other vicious habit
that is robbing you of manhood and holding you back in life, string this
bead on your rosary, "I was not made to be dominated by you, a mere
weed, an extract of grain, a habit which I forged. I am done with you
once and forever. The appetite for you is destroyed. There is something
divine within me which makes me perfectly able to overcome you. You are
a vile thing, and have disgraced me for the last time. Never again can
you humiliate me and make me despise myself. There can be only one ruler
in my mental kingdom and I propose to be that one. I don't propose to
allow you Whiskey, Cigarette, Opium, or other Drug or Devil, to ruin my
life, to force me to carry in my face the signs of my defeat, the
scarlet letter of my degradation, my failure. You have humiliated,
insulted me, tyrannized over me long enough, making me confess that I
hadn't enough strength of mind to stand up against a single vicious,
degrading habit. Now I defy you. Your power over me is at an end. The
spell is broken. Hereafter I am going to walk the earth as a conqueror,
a victor, not as a slave. I am going to front the world with my head up
and face forward. God and one make a majority. I am in the majority
NOW."
_There is no inferiority or depravity about the man God made._ No matter
how low you may have fallen, the God image in you never can be smirched
or depraved. It is as perfect in the worst criminal in the penitentiary
as it is in the greatest saint. There is something in every human being
that is incontaminable, something which is never sick, never diseased,
and which never sins. This is the God in us, and herein lies the hope of
the most brutal human being on the earth. There is something in him that
is divine, sinless, immortal, the God in him which when called will
instantly rush to his aid.
If you feel that you have wandered very far from your God, that you had
gotten out of the current which runs Heavenward, just repeat to yourself
such things as this, "Nearer My God to Thee, Nearer to Thee." This will
help you to put up your trolley pole, to make your connection with the
Divine wire which carries omnipotent power. The sense of separateness
will disappear and the load under which you staggered before will grow
light, will be lifted from you.
The secret of all health, prosperity, happiness, power, love, of
victorious living, is a consciousness of union, of oneness with the
Divine. This is the secret of all human blessedness. When you are in
this Godward current you are "nearer to God," and you cannot fear, for
you know that no harm can come to infinite power.
The closer we are to divinity, the greater our strength and efficiency.
What makes us weak and inefficient is that we have shut off this power
by our wrong thinking, vicious living. Your life will take on a new
meaning, a diviner dignity, when you consciously realize your
at-one-ment with the great creative, sustaining Principle of the
universe.
Nothing will be of more help to you in achieving this great result than
the constant daily use of your New Thought rosary. It will help you to
put further and further away the things that make you weak, that make
you think you are a mere puppet, at the mercy of a cruel Fate, which
tosses you about in the world regardless of your own birthright,
desires, and volition. You can make each bead a prayer, an affirmation,
to lead you closer and closer to the Source of all things. Whether it
be the overcoming of a vicious habit, the strengthening of some defect
or deficiency, the getting away from poverty and despair, whatever you
desire, you can repeat your affirmation concerning it, silently, if with
others, audibly when you are alone, until it becomes a part of you.
Especially repeat the beads of your rosary which fit your greatest needs
before retiring to sleep.
If you have been demagnetizing yourself, neutralizing your hopes, your
ambition and your efforts by your black, vicious outlook upon life, by
your doubts, and worries, your fear of poverty, of sickness, of
misfortune, of death, put these things out of your mind, and say, "God
is my helper. God is my supply, I cannot want. God is my shepherd, I
cannot lack. I must live in full realization of my oneness with Infinite
Life."
Each one of us is a part of the living God and we are powerful,
victorious and happy just in proportion as we realize our oneness with
Him, and weak, abject and miserable just in the degree we separate
ourselves from Him, the All-Source, the All-Supply.