THE WORLD AS IT IS AND THE FALSE GOD OF FEAR
I
Of all fears the most dogging and haunting are those connected with
money. Everyone knows them, even the rich. For many years I was their
victim, and will now try to tell how I got rid of them so effectively
that I may call it entirely.
Having a good many responsibilities I lived in terror of not being able
to keep pace with their demands. The dread was like a malign invisible
presence, never leaving me. With much in the way of travel, friendship,
and variety of experience, which I could have enjoyed, the evil thing
was forever at my side. "This is all very well," it would whisper in
moments of pleasure, "but it will be over in an hour or two, and then
you'll be alone with me as before."
I can recall minutes when the delight in landscape, or art, or social
intercourse, became alien to me, something to be thrust away. Once in
driving through rich, lush, storied Warwickshire on the way to
Stratford-on-Avon--once in a great Parisian restaurant where the
refinement, brilliancy, and luxury of the world seemed crushed into
epitome--once at a stupendous performance of _Götterdämmerung_ at
Munich--once while standing on the shores of a lovely New Hampshire lake
looking up at a mountain round which, as Emerson says, the Spirit of
Mystery hovers and broods--but these are only remembered high points of
a constant dread of not being able to meet my needs and undertakings.
There used to be an hour in the very early morning--"the coward hour
before the dawn," it is called by a poet-friend of my own--when I was in
the habit of waking, only to hear the sleepless thing saying, as my
senses struggled back into play, "My God, can you be sleeping
peacefully, with possible ruin just ahead of you?" After that further
sleep would become impossible for an hour or two, such wakings
occurring, in periods of stress, as often as two and three times a week.
II
It was the spiritually minded man whom I have already quoted as giving
me the three great points as to God's direction who first helped me to
see that, on the part of anyone working hard and trying on the whole to
do right, the fear of being left without means amounts in effect to
denial of God. Thinking this over for myself during the course of some
years, this fear has come to seem to me of the nature of blasphemy. It
is like the "Curse God and die," of the wife of Job. I shall not
hesitate to speak strongly on the subject, because so few are speaking
on it strongly--while the urgency is pressing.
III
I have already said that it does not seem reasonable that the Father
should put us into His universe to expand, and then deny us the power
of expanding. The power of expanding is not wrapped up in money, but in
the world as it is the independence of the one of the other is not very
great. "One of the hardest things I ever had to do," a mother said to
me, not long ago, "was to tell my little girl that her father and I
could not afford to send her to college." That is what I mean. To most
of us "expanding" and "affording" amount to the same thing.
True, there are natures which transcend the limitations of "affording,"
and by innate strength do what others resign themselves to not doing.
For instance, there are men and women who "put themselves" through
college, doing similar things which bring out the best in their
characters. These are the exceptions; and they are the exceptions
precisely for the reason that, whether they know it or not, they are
nearer than their fellows to the divine working principle. It is not
necessary for us to be conscious of that principle in order to get much
of its result, though consciousness enables us to get more of it. The
strong are strong because of harmony with God, at least to some extent.
They may misuse their strength, as we can misuse anything; but the mere
fact of possessing it shows a certain degree of touch with the
Universal. But I am speaking chiefly of the weak, of those who think
first of all in terms of restriction rather than in those of privilege
to come and go and be and do.
I repeat that though this privilege is not dependent on money, money
expresses it to the average mind.
And what is money after all? It is only a counter for what we call
goods. Goods is the word with which, according to our Anglo-Saxon genius
for the right phrase, we sum up the good things with which the Father
blesses His children. The root connection between good, goods, and God
is worth everyone's attention, A hundred dollars is simply a standard of
measurement for so much of God's good things. A thousand dollars
represents so much more; a million dollars so much more again. But it is
important to note that this is not God's standard of measurement; it is
man's, and adopted only for man's convenience.
As for God's standard of measurement it is inconceivable that the
Universal Father should give to one of His children far more of His
"goods" than he can use, while denying to another that which he is in
absolute need of. The Universal Father could surely not do otherwise
than bless all alike. With His command of resources He must bless all
alike, not by depriving anyone, but by enriching everyone. If everyone
does not enjoy plenty it must be because of the bringing in of some
principle of distribution which could never have been His.
IV
The right and the wrong principles of distribution are indirectly placed
before us by our Lord in one of the most beautiful passages which ever
fell from human lips. Familiar as it is, I venture to quote it at
length, for the reason that the modern translation makes some of the
points clearer than they are in the King James version which most of us
know best.
"No man can be the bondservant of two masters; for either he will
dislike one and like the other, or he will attach himself to one and
think slightingly of the other. You cannot be the bondservants both of
God and of gold. For this reason I charge you not to be over-anxious
about your lives, inquiring what you are to eat or what you are to
drink, nor yet about your bodies, inquiring what clothes you are to put
on. Is not the life more precious than its food, and the body than its
clothing? Look at the birds which fly in the air; they do not sow or
reap or store up in barns, but your Heavenly Father feeds them; are you
not of much greater value than they? Which of you by being over-anxious
can add a single foot to his height? And why be anxious about clothing?
Learn a lesson of the wild lilies. Watch their growth. They neither toil
nor spin, and yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his
magnificence could array himself like one of these. And yet if God so
clothes the wild herbage which to-day flourishes and to-morrow is cast
into the oven, is it not much more certain that he will clothe you, you
men of little faith? Do not even begin to be anxious, therefore, saying,
'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'
For all these are questions that Gentiles are always asking; but your
Heavenly Father knows that you need these things--all of them. But make
His Kingdom and righteousness your chief aim, and then these things
shall be given you in addition. Do not be over-anxious, therefore, about
to-morrow, for to-morrow will bring its own cares. Enough for each day
are its own troubles."
In this passage there are two points, each of which may merit a few
words as a means of eliminating fear.
V
The first point is the reference to what we are to make our "chief
aim"--the Kingdom of God and righteousness.
I feel sure we generally miss the force of these words through our
Caucasian sanctimoniousness. We can think of God's Kingdom and
righteousness only in the light of the pietistic. The minute they are
mentioned we strike what I have already called our artificial pose, our
funereal frame of mind. I am not flippant when I say that in the mind of
the Caucasian the first step toward seeking the Kingdom of God and
righteousness is in pulling a long face. We can hardly think of
righteousness except as dressed in our Sunday clothes, and looking and
feeling wobegone. To most of us the seeking of righteousness suggests at
once an increase in attending church services, or going to
prayer-meetings, or making missionary efforts--excellent practices in
themselves--according to the form of pietism we are most familiar with.
Those of us who have no form of pietism feel cut off from making the
attempt at all.
Oh, to be simple!--to be natural!--to be spontaneous!--to be free from
the concept of a God shut up within the four walls of a building and
whose chief interests are the sermon and the number of parishioners!
The Kingdom of God is the Universal Kingdom, including everyone and
everything--all interests, all commerce, all government, all invention,
all art, all amusement, all the staid pursuits of the old and all the
ardour of the young, all sport, all laughter, all that makes for
gladness. It is the Kingdom of the bird and the flower and the horse and
the motor-car and the motion-picture house and the office and the
theatre and the ballroom and the school and the college and everything
else that man has evolved for himself. He has evolved these things
wrongly because nine times out of ten he has seen them as outside God's
Kingdom, instead as being God's own undertakings because they are ours.
All that we have to do to seek His Kingdom is to do what we are doing
every day, with energy and fun, but to do it knowing we are His agents
and co-workers. As a matter of fact, most of us are, to some extent,
doing that already, getting food, shelter, clothing, and all other
necessary things as our reward. What we do not get is relief from fear,
because we do not understand that fear above all things is what He
would take away from us.
VI
The second point is a curious one, and all the more emphatic for being
curious. Our Lord invents a false god. He names the false god of fear,
who was never named before. Mammon is the word which the modern
translator gives as gold. As Mammon it is translated in the Authorised
Version, whence we get the familiar phrase, "Ye cannot serve God
and Mammon."
But Mammon was never the name of an idol or other form of false deity.
The word, which is Syriac, means money. Our Lord, apparently, made it
the name of a false god in order to set before us, and make vivid to us,
a false principle.
That false principle is in the belief that the material essentials for
living and expanding are dependent on man's economic laws.
This is a point of vast importance to the individual who desires to
strike out beyond the crowd, not only getting what he needs, but
ridding himself of fear.
The law of supply and demand is the most practical which the human race
in its present stage has been able to evolve. That it is not an ideal
law is obvious. There are ways in which it works, and ways in which it
does not. When the Christians began to act for themselves they
established a community of goods, such as had obtained among the little
band who gathered round our Lord. Almost at once it was given up,
presumably as being too advanced for the existing world of men. I
suppose we might say the same of the various systems of Socialism and
Communism urged on us at the present day. However good they may be, we
are not ready to put them into practice. That, I judge--without
positively knowing--is the reason why certain great Christian bodies
oppose both. These bodies, I assume, are not hostile to equal
distribution in itself, but only to equal distribution before men are
developed to a stage at which it would be wise.
But my point is independent of all men's theories, and rests simply on
the fact that, whatever the law of man, God is not bound by it.
If we can believe the Old and New Testaments--which, of course, some of
us do not--He has shown on many, many occasions that He is far from
being bound by it. Time after time He comes to the individual's relief
according to His own law. We reject these occurrences as mythical on the
ground that the laws of supply and demand--and some other laws as law is
understood by us--do not support them; and yet it is in the power of the
individual to test the truth for himself.
That is one of the burdens of both Testaments. The individual is
implored to see the only real system for the distribution of "goods" as
God's. It is not expressed in that way, but that is what it comes to.
God owns and disposes of everything. He has not put us into His Universe
and left us to fend for ourselves. He follows us. He cares for us. Not
one is forgotten or overlooked by Him. It is personal watching and
brooding and defence. He is our Father, not merely for the purpose of
hearing us sing hymns, and forgiving our sins when we stop committing
them, but for all our aims and objects. Nothing that concerns us is so
small but that His Infinite Intelligence follows it; no need of ours is
so large but that His All-Ownership can meet it. "Do not two sparrows
sell for a half-penny?" is our Lord's illustration on this point, "yet
not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's leave. But
as for you," He reasons, in order that we may understand the
infinitesimal nature of God's care, "the very hairs on your heads are
all numbered. Away then with fear!"[31]
[31] St Matthew.
VII
Away then with fear, because our first and over-ruling and
all-determining relationship is to Him.
In eliminating money-fears from my own life that was the fact which
helped me most. I had not only to seize it intellectually, but to get
what William James calls the "feeling" of it, the apprehension of it in
my subconsciousness. It was like acquiring a new instinct. The
_Metanoia_, the re-directing of my thought, was a thorough and
basic change.
It meant getting up in the morning with a new conception as to why I was
working and for whom. I had taken it for granted hitherto that I was
working for such and such a firm, for as much money as they would pay
me. As much money as they would pay me was the limit of my expectation.
Beyond the law of supply and demand I had no vision; and whenever the
demand fell short fear was the result.
The change in my base was in seeing that working for such and such a
firm, for as much money as they would pay me, was merely incidental. It
was secondary. It was not what determined my position. It was not what
determined my reward. It was a small way of looking at a situation which
was big. It was a small way of looking at a situation which was big,
merely to confine my objective to such selling and buying as goes on in
the planet called the Earth. I was working for the Master of the
Universe, who had all the resources of the universe with which to pay me
for what I was worth _to Him_.
VIII
It is this last fact, as I have hinted already, which fixes my true
value. To the firm for which I am working I am worth so many dollars and
cents, and if for any reason I am unable to do their work they will get
someone else who can. I am not essential to them in any way, however
essential they may be to me. It is my part to "keep my job," since if I
don't I may find it hard to get another. If I do get another it will be
on the same principle, of being paid what I can be made to work for, and
not a penny more.
But in working for the Master of the Universe I am working for One to
whom I am essential. My "job" could not be "swung" by anyone else, since
everyone else is essential to the swinging of his own. I am not "taken
on" to do what anyone else could do as well; I am positively needed for
this thing and for no other thing.
The nature of "this thing" for which I am needed may be seen in the
obvious duties of my situation--as regards my family, my employers, and
my surroundings, which sum up my responsibilities toward men in general.
No explanation of myself can be independent of men in general, since my
work is for them in its final aim. If I forget them I forget God, God
expressing Himself to me through men in general, as through my family
and my employers in particular.
Incidentally, then, I work for men, but essentially and consciously I
work for God, and look to God for my recompense.
Now God is the most generous of all paymasters. It is natural enough
that He should be so. He who delights in the grace of a bird or the
colour of a flower must delight in a man in proportion to a man's higher
place in the creative scale. As our Lord points out, that is no more
than common sense. And, delighting in us as He does, God could not
possibly stint us in what we earn from Him. Merely to suppose so is to
dishonour Him. A large part of His joy must be in our joy.
The simplest way in which I can express it is that in consciously trying
to work with God, not man, as our employer, things happen to us which,
to the best of our foresight, would not have happened otherwise. Often
they seem accidental, and possibly we ascribe them to accident till the
coincidences become too numerous to explain by coincidence and nothing
more. It constantly happens to myself, for instance, to find the whole
solution of some tangled financial problem hanging on the chance turning
of my steps to someone's office, and the chance turning of the
conversation to some specific observation. Chance is the explanation
which comes to me first, till I reflect on the finespun chain which
brought me to that particular spot and those particular words. Leading
is what I see then; and seeing it once I am more confident of being led
the next time. The next time, therefore, I am the less afraid, having
the definite experience to support me.
There are millions of men and women to whom life brings no more than the
monotony of a treadmill round, year in and year out, with a cramping of
mind, spirit, and ambition, who might have been free had they measured
themselves by God's standards and not by men's. It is simply the taking
of a point of view, and adjusting the life to it. In doing one's work
primarily for God, the fear of undue restriction is put, sooner or
later, out of the question. He pays me and He pays me well. He pays me
and He will not fail to pay me. He pays me not merely for the rule of
thumb task which is all that men recognise, but for everything else I
bring to my job in the way of industry, good intention, and
cheerfulness. If the Lord loveth a cheerful giver, as St Paul says, we
may depend upon it that He loveth a cheerful worker; and where we can
cleave the way to His love there we find His endless generosity.
In my own case this generosity has most frequently been shown in
opening doors for me where I saw nothing but blank walls. He has made
favourable things happen. It may be said that they would have happened
anyhow; but when they have happened on my looking to Him, and have not
happened when I did not look to Him, it is only fair to draw the
conclusion that He was behind the event.
IX
It may also be urged that if there was really a God who delighted in us
He would make favourable things happen to us whether we looked to Him or
not. So He does. Every life, even among those who never think of Him, is
full of such occurrences. Every individual gets some measure of supply
for his necessities, and in many instances a liberal one. God's sun
rises on the wicked as well as on the good, and His rain falls on those
who do right and those who do wrong.
At the same time there is a force generated by working consciously with
Him which we have to go without when we disregard Him. It is not, I
suppose, that He refuses to co-operate with us, but that it is out of
our power to co-operate with Him. If His is the only right way to our
success and prosperity, and we are, to any extent, taking the wrong, it
stands to reason that to that extent we must fail.
It is doubtless for this reason that our Lord emphasises seeking His
righteousness as well as His Kingdom. His Kingdom might be roughly
defined as His power; righteousness as the right way of doing anything.
But you never obtain power by going the wrong way to work; whereas by
working in the right way you get your result. The conclusion is obvious.
X
It is often objected to the point of view I have been trying to express
that so much weight is thrown on material blessing. God gives spiritual
rewards, it is contended, not material ones. To expect the material from
Him is to make Him gross, and to become gross ourselves.
And yet those who put forth this objection are doing their utmost to
secure material comforts, and to make material provision for the future.
Are they doing it independently of God? Are they working in a medium
into which God cannot enter? Is it argued for a single minute that
"goods" are not God's good things, and that money is not their token?
True, the love of money is the root of all evil. Of course--when you
separate money from God, as Caucasians mostly do; not when you take
money as one of the material symbols for God's love toward his sons.
As a matter of fact, we dig a gulf between the material and the
spiritual which does not exist. We have seen that modern physical
science is showing us how near to spirit matter comes, while it is
highly probable that further research will diminish even the slight
existing difference between them. Matter may really be considered as our
sensuous misreading of the spiritual. That is to say, God sees one
thing; our senses see another. In the wild lily cited by our Lord our
senses see a thing exquisite in form and colour; and yet, relatively
speaking, it is no more than a distortion of what God beholds and
delights in. It is a commonplace fact that, even within the limitations
of the senses, our sense-faculties perceive few things, if anything,
quite accurately. Matter may therefore be considered as our wrong view
of what God sees rightly. Both for Him and for us the object is there;
but it is there with higher qualities than we can appreciate or
understand.
The situation is not unknown among ourselves. A picture by a great
master hangs on a wall. Two men look at it--the one with an expert
knowledge of painting, the other with none. The untrained eye will
translate into daubs of colour and meaningless forms what the skilled
understanding will perceive as a masterly setting forth of beauty. So
the good things--the "goods"--with which God blesses us, as well as the
money which is their symbol, may be taken as having to God a meaning
which they do not possess for us, but not as being outside the sphere
of His interest and control.
XI
It is the tendency to puts "goods" and money outside the sphere of His
interest and control which has impelled us--and perhaps the Caucasian
especially--to have one God for the spiritual and another for the
material. We try to serve God and Mammon to an extent far beyond
anything we are generally aware of. It is not merely the individual who
is doing it; it is part of our collective, social, and national life.
Our civilisation is more or less based on the principle.
It is a mistake to suppose that a formal belief in One Almighty,
All-knowing, All-loving God has, to the immense majority of us, ever
been more than an ideal. It is a mistake to suppose that because the
false god is no longer erected before us in silver or stone he is no
longer served. The world has never outgrown idolatry, the so-called
Christian world no more than any other. "Dear children," are the words
with which St. John closes one of his epistles, "guard yourselves from
idols." He at least did not think that the idol had been forsaken
because the use of his name was given up.
We may define as a god any force to which we ascribe a supreme and
controlling power in our lives. It is of little consequence whether or
not we give it name and personality, so long as that force rules us. So
long, too, as it wields a power which the One God does not, so long as
we make the false god greater than the true, and more influential.
This is no mere figure of speech; it is fact. We have never guarded
ourselves from idols. We have never done more toward recognising the
Father than the putting Him in the pantheon with our other gods. Even
though we have inscribed the whole pantheon with His name, the other
gods have been in it.
XII
I have said that our whole collective life is based on the principle of
one God for the soul and another for the body; and so it is. In what we
call our temporal life God gets only a formal recognition, while Mammon
is the referee. Beyond the controlling power of money we have no vision,
and we see no laws. The sphere of material productivity being one in
which, according to our foregone conclusion, God does not operate, we
have to make the controlling power of money our only practical standard.
It has its laws--chiefly the laws of supply and demand--within whose
working we human beings are caught like flies in spider-webs. Though we
struggle, and know we are struggling, we take it for granted that there
is nothing to do but struggle, and struggle vainly. We take it for
granted that we are born into a vast industrial spider-web, whence there
is no possibility of getting out, and in which we can only churn our
spirits rebelliously. In proportion as God is a God of love, Mammon is a
god of torture; but such is our supineness of spiritual energy that we
go on serving Mammon.
XIII
But I am writing only for the individual. I am trying to suggest to him
that however much his race, his nation, his society, may serve Mammon,
he is free to renounce the idol and escape the idol's laws. Escaping the
idol's laws he comes within the realm of God's laws; and coming within
the realm of God's laws he reaches the region of plenty.
He may be the poorest and most ill-paid labourer; but God will recognise
his industry not in proportion to its technical skill, but according to
the spiritual excellence which goes into it. Technical skill depends
largely on the right man finding the right job; but as our world is
organised at present the right man, more often than not, is put into the
wrong job and has to do his best with it. God sees and estimates that
best; and as surely as He makes His sun to rise and His rain to fall
will give it its just compensation.
XIV
Our industrial questions are primarily spiritual. That is why they can
never be settled on a purely economic basis, and why every attempt to
settle them on a purely economic basis leads to conditions more confused
than those from which we have emerged. The so-called purely economic
basis is the basis where only Mammon's laws are considered, and God's
are held to be impractical.
Quite so! But even then the individual is free. Working with God he is
always master of the situation as it affects _him_.
The problem of Capital and Labour, for example, has, in one form or
another, been before the world for thousands of years. The more acute it
becomes the further we are from a solution, and were never so far from a
solution as we are to-day. Poverty, again, is the canker at the heart of
both Church and State, and has been so in every stage of our
civilisation. In 1921 it is no more under control than it was in the
days of Charlemagne or Attila or Xerxes. Charitable efforts to relieve
it have proved as effective as tickling with a feather to cure disease.
Or again, high prices and low wages, high wages creating high prices,
resented conditions leading to strikes, strikes bringing confusion to
both wages and prices alike--these things perplex the most clear-sighted
among us, compelling us to wonder as to what new troubles we are heaping
up. Or again, taxes crippling incomes and gnawing at the heart of
industry vex us each year with a sense of the futility of all man's
efforts for the common good, and the uselessness of our energies. These
difficulties, with many kindred ones, are the working of the laws of
Mammon. The case is simple. We shall never be free from the difficulties
till we are free from the laws. The bondservants of Mammon will go on
from misery to misery, till the will which opposes God is broken down.
There is no other way. The colossal disintegration of the world now
taking place before our eyes may be the beginning of this end.
XV
But I return to the point I have emphasised already, the only point to
this book. The individual can act on his own account. He does not have
to wait till the race as a whole gives up the service of Mammon, or even
the nation to which he belongs. He can set _himself_ free, and enjoy the
benefits of freedom.
There must be many to whom, as to myself, the kingdom of heaven will
really be at hand when they are delivered from the snares and
entanglements of man's economic systems. Caught in those systems,
imprisoned in them, more hopelessly enmeshed the more they struggle to
save themselves, the suggestion that a change in point of view will take
us out of them will seem to some of us too amazing to be true.
Nothing will prove it true but a man's own experience. Mine will
convince nobody; no other man's can convince me. Demonstration must be
personal before we can make anything our own. But the fact remains, as
sure as the surest thing we know anything about, that the law of Mammon
does not work, while the law of God does work, and will work for anyone
who calls it to his aid.
No one who has ever seen the early morning trains into any great city
vomiting forth their hundreds of thousands of men and women, trudging
more or less dispiritedly to uncongenial jobs, can have felt anything
but pity for so many lives squeezed into the smallest possible
limitations. Admitting cheerfulness, admitting a measure of content, and
a larger measure of acceptance of what can't be helped, there still
remains over these hordes the shadow of a cloud from which they know
they never will escape. Clerks, factory hands, tradesmen, working men
and women of every stamp and occupation, they bow to the fact that they
will always work hard at tasks which are rarely their own choice, that
they will always work for little money, that they will always be denied
their desires for expansion; that as it was with their fathers and
mothers before them, so it will be with them, and so it will be with
their children after them.
With the supineness of our race most of them force themselves to be
satisfied with what comes. But here and there is a rebel. Here and there
is a man or a woman who feels that joyless work, and small pay, and
little or nothing to look forward to, are cruel elements in life, not
fair, not just, on the part of God or man. But what can they do? They
are in man's economic machine. The machine turns round and they turn
with it. They can do nothing else but turn with it. They see no prospect
except of turning with it till they die.
It is out of such men and women that our modern world breeds
revolutionists, that exalted and yet dangerous band who seek redress
from the laws of Mammon by appealing _to_ the laws of Mammon, so making
confusion worse confounded.
XVI
A revolution indeed is needed; but a revolution in point of view.
Political revolution, for the sake of righting governmental abuses,
has been known to produce beneficent results.
Material revolution, the attack of the poor on the rich to take away
their possessions, has never achieved anything. Many a time it has been
tried, and many a time it has failed. Being part of the system of Mammon
it could do nothing else than fail. The evils which Mammon has wrought
Mammon will never remedy. There may be instances in history of economic
cures for economic ills; but I think they are few. In general such cures
are of the nature of our "settlements" of strikes. They settle to-day
what is again unsettled to-morrow, leaving the work to be done all over
again, and so on into a far future.
The revolution in point of view has these great advantages:
First, it contains within it the seeds of success, since it is
revolution toward God, the owner of the Earth and the fulness thereof;
Next, it takes place within the individual himself, doing no one
else any harm;
Lastly, it does not run counter to man's economic laws; it only uses and
transcends them. It directs and corrects them. Working along their lines
it stimulates their fruit. Letting the inner man out of the economic
trap it sets him in a world in which first, and last, and before
everything else, he is God's servant in God's pay. God's pay being sure,
and paid in the way we need it, we no longer have money-fear to be
afraid of. Money-fear being set aside we can the more easily give
ourselves to the knowledge that "the Kingdom of God does not consist of
eating and drinking, but of right conduct, peace, and joy, through the
Holy Spirit; and whoever in this way devotedly serves Christ, God takes
pleasure in him, and men commend him highly."[32]
[32] Epistle to the Romans.
XVII
And lest what I have said should seem fanciful or chimerical let me add
that I am not saying these things merely on my own responsibility. To
my certain knowledge there are hundreds of thousands--some millions--of
people throughout the world who at this very minute are living according
to this principle, and proving that it works in practical effect.
Neither am I speaking theoretically, as I have tried to make plain. To a
degree that convinces myself I have made the demonstration. Where my
life was like a dark and crooked lane in which I might easily be lost,
it has now become as an easy and open highway; where money-fear was the
very air I breathed, it is now no more than a nebulous shred on a far
horizon. Money-fear comes occasionally; but only as the memory of pain
to a wound which you know to be healed. It comes; but, like Satan out of
Heaven, I can cast it from me with a thought.