"_For since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were
from the Creation_."
Whenever we read the stories in the Bible, our minds are held with a deep
interest, for through all its pages and in all its words, there breathes
out the history of the hopes, dreams and aspirations of human hearts, and
above every other story or hope or dream, there stands first in absorbing
interest the history of the man Jesus, with his wonderfully inspired life.
This wonderful Christ life as given in history is a benediction to the
world, and his teachings have given us a great inextinguishable hope. In
all his history there is one profound principle that never becomes
obscured, and that is his eternal adherence to the Law of Life. He never
forgot to speak the word that should show the true laws of Cause and
Effect.
Nearly all the people of his day followed the letter of his word and not
the spirit. When he spoke in parables they interpreted in fact, and even
when he said: "I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a
place, I will come again and receive ye unto myself, that where I am,
there ye may be also," they believed and interpreted it to mean really
material facts, and began to build up their finite hope for a future
kingdom, totally blind to the deep subjective law of his spoken word.
They really believed that if they waited a few years, at most, Jesus would
return unto them, and in triumph and power gather them together and raise
up a community of peace and love in this earth plane. They believed that
through this they would become monarchs of a new world. Nothing in their
minds revealed the impossibility of material form without fundamental
facts beneath them.
The sick and suffering and discouraged of every class, knowing nothing of
the higher laws, laid this hope to their hearts, and filled with a courage
built on this belief, they taught themselves to stand silent beneath scorn
and persecution, feeling inwardly, that when the hour of Christ's return
came, their life would suddenly become powerful through some new
dispensation.
The years came and went, one after another the apostles died with their
hope still in their hearts; at last, only the lengthened life of John was
left on which to hang expectancy, then he, too, died and the Jesus of
their hope had not returned. Even then the church was reluctant to give up
its teaching of the letter and it still held, that even while a few
followers remained whose term reached back to Christ's time, it was not
too late for his return, and the son of man might yet be sustained in his
earthly kingdom.
Time went on until even the oldest memories of the promises passed; change
after change came, and man could no longer find a finite place for his
faith and trust, and then, as human life was pushed on by the great
resistless ebb-tide of the Infinite, those who were still clinging to this
false hope, broke forth in a wail of despair, and they cried, "Where is
the promise of His coming?" "For since the fathers fell asleep, all things
continue as they were from the creation."
We who read their history today and know the truth of Life's finer
relationships, cannot but feel a pity for their failure, and the lingering
death of their expectancy, even while we see that it was built on
superficial human understanding.
In the great unrelated, ignorant hope of these people, we can read in
letters of fire, the proof of the certainty of disappointment of every
human hope that has not its conscious union with the great universal Laws
of Life.
We can see now with the calm vision of those who have no part in their
superstition that their hope was never built on the understanding and
wisdom of creation, but upon weak, human desires and narrow personal
expectation.
It can easily be seen that under the great Law Eternal it was not
possible, that after training only a small part of the human race-thought
there could be a return, a king of any sort, or that there could follow
the perfecting of the race in any such a narrow, limited, personal way.
When Truth has become revealed to the minds of men, they at once see that
laws remain, and that the human race is bound to fit itself to these, and
looking back over the centuries, and on into the future, we find that
Jesus taught us when he said, "I come not to destroy the Law, but to
fulfill it."
Today we see how everything waits upon its own cause, and how change is
only brought about by the processes of regular unfoldment. We know now
that the Whole can only come into expression through the Part, and that
the fulfillment of an individual, a nation, or a race must come under the
silent operation of those spiritual laws of human understanding which
neither the race nor the individual can outstrip.
GOD is LAW, and LAW began when LIFE began and only a deep union with the
finer relationships of Life can ever bring us into DOMINION of power.
There has ever been and ever will be many expressions of LAW, and between
the Absolute expression and the finite results there must ever be the
grinding to dust and ashes of things which oppose either the lesser or the
larger unfoldment.
When we look at life from the limited, personal view we can only see from
the boundary line of the unfathomed self; but as we come into deeper
consciousness, we learn that expectation and promise built on personal
hope is one thing, and expectation and promise built on universal
understanding of universal action is another.
We are a part of everything in the universe and as we come to look through
the personal to the universal, we see clearly the inseparable ONENESS of
God-consciousness and man-consciousness, and as we understand and master
this relationship, we can read the real answer to our question: "Where are
the promises?"
Human life has always been, and always will be, only the unfolding of the
personal mind into recognition of the Absolute Mind.
The Universe is under the Law Eternal and in the degree that we know this,
we stop our limitations; mankind is free in the Absolute Law, and only
seemingly bound in the finite one. Not one jot or tittle of the Law ever
passes away; all laws exist to be fulfilled, but human life evolves from
level to level of consciousness, and through relationship with higher
understanding it escapes the primitive expressions of the lower laws and
unites itself with the higher.
The very first truth, then, for any life to learn is, that in this
universe of law and order, we get just what we relate with--no more, no
less! Nothing happens; everything is the natural expression of the action
which produces it.
Jesus came into the world under the law of his own life; he was born to
pass along and die expressing the forms of his higher knowledge; he came
and went under his own laws, but these were too obscure for the minds of
that race to comprehend, and they lived, hoped and died, ignorant of his
great Cosmic relationship. Jesus was a son of the planet and his mission
was to set laws of race consciousness into activity which would act as a
spiritual fulcrum throughout the ages.
What was true in these olden days is still true today; we often go on
hoping that fulfillment will come, when by the very nature of what we are
doing, we cannot get the higher expression. Take the simple things of our
everyday life, our hope of health or our hope of love, wealth, place,
happiness, success and usefulness; often we really do hope to be well, and
plan in a way for that end, while really at the same time every breath we
draw builds for the transitory and fleeting. Like the Christians of old we
do not understand higher relationships, and at last, worn out with
disappointment we cry, "Where are the promises?" and do not see that until
we have perfect thought relationships, we cannot hope for perfect results.
It takes deep perception to find the immutable law that all physical
phenomena is mental arrangement.
We get everything we find expressing in life through the law of conscious
or unconscious thinking! We have, and hold and keep only the things we
create for ourselves; there is no other law; no one can take our own away;
no one can give us anything, for only what we create is our own, and we
alone must create it in consciousness before we can possess it. When we
create it in consciousness we really set the law in operation for
ourselves and this law will pass it into form.
We make our relationships through the thoughts of our mind. Our mind is
the universal mind, and it is inseparably connected with everything in the
universe; and whatever we have or have not is a signal of just what we
have related with in consciousness. This is the unwritten action of the
LAW; no one limits us but ourselves; the Universal Life stands ready with
its many levels of relationships to give to every one according to the
power he has to create for himself and he is really and truly judged
"according to the deeds done in the body."
Jesus could not give an ignorant and undeveloped race the gift of a
glorified kingdom; nor could they give it to themselves until they had
related in consciousness with the laws that would produce it, the thing we
want and our point of attraction must be equal.
We come into life under correct laws; one is not born a Jew, an Assyrian,
an Englishman or an American by chance; nor is one born well and rich, and
another sick and poor by chance, but EACH is the expression of the LAWS
with which he has related in his own consciousness.
Thoughts are things and it is a part of the Universal plan that thoughts
from the human mind reach out into the Universal, or Cosmic mind, and
there generate an ENERGY which must in time embody in FORM and become the
world picture of just what has been stimulated into expression. When
thinking passes into a _fixed power_ in our life it can be used to
destroy or construct the body or the environment and every thought spoken
or unspoken is registered in thought forms in our atmospheric environment
and must some day pass into material form.
Health is the expression of a law brought about by a certain line of
thinking and disease is another expression. Wealth is one law, poverty is
another, and any life can choose this day _which_ he wishes to be
under, and choose this hour which law he will serve, and Jesus said,
"Whomsoever ye yield yourself servants to obey, his servants ye are,
whether it be sin unto death or salvation unto righteousness."
Jesus did not return to his disciples as they expected, because there was
no Universal Law for such return. Just so with Health, Wealth, Love, Joy
and Happiness. They can never come into expression for us so long as there
is not established within us the Law of Natural Relationships.
We are learning at last that "Since the fathers fell asleep all things
continue as they were from the creation," and it takes more than a fond
imagination to pass our life from the law of inharmony, desire and pain,
into the higher one of peace, power and happiness.
The moment a life desires anything it instantly becomes related with that
thing, but it does not become a possession until all the conditions are
fulfilled. Some minds think so _lightly_ of everything that nothing
ever becomes steadfast and certain. They drift aimlessly between loss and
gain, health and disease, crying out, "Where are the promises," never
realizing that promises are only fulfilled when the whole selfhood becomes
grappled to the rock of understanding.
Human life is only a _growing_ time, and each life will remain just
where it is and express the laws of its level of consciousness until it
develops out from them into others.
Sickness, poverty, wretchedness, disappointed hopes are common in the
journey of Life; despairing human lives are common too, and lives full of
rebellion can be found on every hand, but all these are the products of
thoughts that produced them and show just where the consciousness has
lingered.
Freedom from all these negative human experiences comes as the reward of
inner growth; it can only come through unfoldment and transmutation into
higher understanding. Human pain and loss, despair and disease, and the
heart-breaks of life, are all the fruits of the Tree of Life whose root is
_Truth_.
When sickness, sorrow and unhappiness have taken the place of health and
joy in our life, we have no one to blame but ourselves; we can know that
through a long line of perverted thinking, both inherited and acquired, we
have become related with the laws in consciousness, and these laws are
thoughts of self, hate, jealousy, strife, condemnation, resistance, etc.
We have thought it unconsciously in the past, but until we stop and get up
new thought relationships, these old things must go on. When we know the
higher truth of New Thought Relationship, and the power of constructive
thinking, we can begin then and there to change things and we instantly
can clean out all the distorted thought energy, and pass the simple act of
thinking into a creative form, quitting forever our response to the
negative things around us.
We see the truth of "Whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap,"
and we see, too, that this harvest field where we reap is the human life,
and the seeds are thoughts, and we then and there fill our field of
consciousness with thought-seeds of Health, Strength, Peace, Love, Joy and
all the ten thousand beautiful constructive things, and we soon are living
in a perfected thought world, surrounded by the dream pictures of our soul
consciousness. We become like mystical seers, we can prophesy then about
everything in our life without fear of contradiction, for knowing the Law
that on the path "Like produces Like," and knowing the thought-seeds we
sow, we can be certain of the future harvest.
Under the Law Eternal we cease to consider ourselves related to anything
that we do not want. These things we do not want have ceased to exist for
us, in the moment we have forgotten them in consciousness. We must refuse
even to connect with them in memory. Sometimes this is a hard lesson: The
Law of Memory is a peculiar force, it is the expression of fixed
thinking--that which we cannot forget has made deep inroads into
consciousness. Memory often keeps us related in strange ways, and hinders
our unfoldment. Memory is the connecting link between the yesterday and
today; it makes the past always the present and it remains the master of
many lives and pours what it will into the field of consciousness until
it is conquered.
We cannot go on to peace, power and divine unfoldment while we are wrapped
around with olden memories, olden idols, fears and bondage.
It is an unwritten law that we pass on as we become fit, and any life can
at any moment come away from the thought law of sin, sickness and death,
into the law of peace, power, happiness and joy.
The great God-life wants us to have whatever we want, and will help us to
get it and keep it. We have been told for ages to "ask and receive, seek
and find, knock and it shall be opened." The Universal waits upon our
recognition of its presence and before we ask it is given. The moment we
know what we want and ask for it under the higher law of recognition, it
is ours, then we only have to wait until we can manifest it. Over the same
thought line which we pass out our desires, there passes back to us the
answer to our prayers and our human pathway blossoms with the fruits and
flowers of our deeper understanding.
The law of bondage will never become the law of liberty, but each one of
us may come away into this perfect law of creative thinking as soon as we
teach ourselves the simple act of picking out thoughts that relate us with
the higher things of life. The kinds of positions, friends, conditions and
environment we attract to ourselves under the positive conscious
relationship are entirely different from the ones we will attract under
the negative destructive thought laws. Good friends, happy environment,
peace and love, are not made from the material of mind that recognizes
only lack, loss, envy, despair, fear, condemnation and resistance.
When we want health, we must think health thoughts and become _one_
with the laws that make for health and live at health's heights; when we
want wealth we must create a wealth thought vibration and link our lives
with the levels of wealth. All the grand, good things of earth can only
come and gather around us when we have lifted our consciousness to the
level at which they can be touched.
In the light of this higher understanding we can see that in just the
proportion that our human nature rises towards the Universal Wisdom, our
human perception becomes widened, until, at last, we include all the laws
of higher living, thinking and being, and we bring from the hidden center
within ourselves a profound knowledge. As our life grows more and more in
the power of perception, we retire farther and farther from the personal,
the pessimistic, the limited belief of selfishness, condemnation,
resistance, and we begin a new thought life filled with moral,
intellectual and spiritual glory, and even though "since the fathers fell
asleep all things continue as they were from the creation," we see the
true laws of creation, and making pur minds one with these laws we pass
with them and through them on to perfected human wisdom, we turn to the
daily life then with a higher, holier and more glorified purpose and out
from all the gloom of the past we find the promises have all been answered
and that God has provided some better things for us, which without us
could not be made perfect.
The final word, then, to the sick, discouraged and diseased world is this:
"The righteous are in the hands of their God (the LAW) and their life is
full of immortality," and knowing this anyone may recognize their
conscious union with whatever they desire; create it in their human
thought world and project it into form in the Cosmic Consciousness; then
with wide open soul eyes walk calmly on, expecting it and never laying
down their demand until it manifests for them.