turn produce this changed effect? This is the practical question that
perplexes many earnest seekers. They can see their way clearly enough
through the whole sequence of cause and effect resulting in the
externalisation of the desired results, if only the one initial
difficulty could be got over. The difficulty is a real one, and until it
is overcome it vitiates all the teaching and reduces it to a mere paper
theory. Therefore it is to this point that the attention of students
should be particularly directed. They feel the need of some solid basis
from which the change of thought can be effected, and until they find
this the theory of Divine Science, however perfect in itself, will
remain for them nothing more than a mere theory, producing no practical
results.
The necessary scientific basis exists, however, and is extremely simple
and reasonable, if we will take the pains to think it out carefully for
ourselves. Unless we are prepared to support the thesis that the Power
which created the universe is inherently evil, or that the universe is
the work of two opposite and equal powers, one evil and the other
good--both of which propositions are demonstrably false--we have no
alternative but to say that the Originating Source of all must be
inherently good. It cannot be partly good and partly evil, for that
would be to set it against itself and make it self-destructive;
therefore it must be good altogether. But once grant this initial
proposition and we cut away the root of all evil. For how can evil
proceed from an All-originating Source which is good altogether, and in
which, therefore, no germ for the development of evil is to be found?
Good cannot be the origin of evil; and since nothing can proceed except
from the one Originating Mind, which is only good, the true nature of
all things must be that which they have received from their
Source--namely, good.
Hence it follows that evil is not the true nature of anything, and that
evil must have its rise in something external to the true nature of
things. And since evil is not in the true nature of the things
themselves, nor yet in the Universal Mind which is the Originating
Principle, there remains only one place for it to spring from, and that
is our own personal thought. First we suppose evil to be as inherent in
the nature of things as good--a supposition which we could not make if
we stopped to consider the necessary nature of the Originating
Principle. Then, on this entirely gratuitous supposition, we proceed to
build up a fabric of fears, which, of course, follow logically from it;
and so we nourish and give substance to the Negative, or that which has
no substantial existence except such as we attribute to it, until we
come to regard it as having Affirmative power of its own, and so set up
a false idea of Being--the product of our own minds--to dispute the
claims of true Being to the sovereignty of the universe.
Once assume the existence of two rival powers--one good and the other
evil--in the direction of the universe, and any sense of harmony becomes
impossible; the whole course of Nature is thrown out of gear, and,
whether for ourselves or for the world at large, there remains no ground
of certainty anywhere. And this is precisely the condition in which the
majority of people live. They are surrounded by infinite uncertainty
about everything, and are consequently a prey to continual fears and
anxieties; and the only way of escape from this state of things is to
go to the root of the matter, and realise that the whole fabric of evil
originates in our own inverted conception of the nature of Being.
But if we once realise that the true conception of Being necessarily
excludes the very idea of evil, we shall see that, in giving way to
thoughts and fears of evil, we are giving substance to that which has no
real substance in itself, and are attributing to the Negative an
Affirmative force which it does not possess--in fact, we are creating
the very thing we fear. And the remedy for this is always to recur to
the original nature of Being as altogether Good, and then to speak to
ourselves thus: "My thought must continually externalise something, for
that is its inherent quality, which nothing can ever alter. Shall I,
then, externalise God or the opposite of God? Which do I wish to see
manifested in my life--Good or its opposite? Shall I manifest what I
know to be the reality or the reverse?" Then comes the steady resolve
always to manifest God, or Good, because that is the only true reality
in all things; and this resolve is with power because it is founded upon
the solid rock of Truth.
We must refuse to know evil; we must refuse to admit that there is any
such thing to be known. It is the converse of this which is symbolised
in the story of the Fall. "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou
shalt surely die" was never spoken of the knowledge of Good, for Good
never brought death into the world. It is eating the fruit of the tree
of a so-called knowledge which admits a second branch, the knowledge of
evil, that is the source of death. Admit that evil has a substantive
entity, which renders it a subject of knowledge, and you thereby create
it, with all its consequences of sorrow, sickness and death. But "be
sure that the Lord He is God"--that is, that the one and Only Ruling
Principle of the universe, whether within us or around us, is Good and
Good only--and evil with all its train sinks back into its original
nothingness, and we find that the Truth has made us free. We are free to
externalise what we will, whether in ourselves or our surroundings, for
we have found the solid basis on which to make the needed change of
mental attitude in the fact that the Good is the only reality of Being.
1902.
XVIII
ENTERING INTO THE SPIRIT OF IT
"Entering into the spirit of it." What a common expression! And yet how
much it really means, how absolutely everything! We enter into the
spirit of an undertaking, into the spirit of a movement, into the spirit
of an author, even into the spirit of a game; and it makes all the
difference both to us and to that into which we enter. A game without
any spirit is a poor affair; and association in which there is no spirit
falls to pieces; and a spiritless undertaking is sure to be a failure.
On the other hand, the book which is meaningless to the unsympathising
reader is full of life and suggestion to the one who enters into the
spirit of the writer; the man who enters into the spirit of the music
finds a spring of refreshment in some fine recital which is entirely
missed by the cold critic who comes only to judge according to the
standard of a rigid rule; and so on in every case that we can think of.
If we do not enter the spirit of a thing, it has no invigorating effect
upon us, and we regard it as dull, insipid and worthless. This is our
everyday experience, and these are the words in which we express it.
And the words are well chosen. They show our intuitive recognition of
the spirit as the fundamental reality in everything, however small or
however great. Let us be right as to the spirit of a thing, and
everything else will successfully follow.
By entering into the spirit of anything we establish a mutual vivifying
action and reaction between it and ourselves; we vivify it with our own
vitality, and it vivifies us with a living interest which we call its
spirit; and therefore the more fully we enter into the spirit of all
with which we are concerned, the more thoroughly do we become _alive_.
The more completely we do this the more we shall find that we are
penetrating into the great secret of Life. It may seem a truism, but the
great secret of Life is its Livingness, and it is just more of this
quality of Livingness that we want to get hold of; it is that good thing
of which we can never have too much.
But every fact implies also its negative, and we never properly
understand a thing until we not only know what it is, but also clearly
understand what it is not. To a complete understanding the knowledge of
the negative is as necessary as the knowledge of the affirmative; for
the perfect knowledge consists in realising the relation between the
two, and the perfect power grows out of this knowledge by enabling us to
balance the affirmative and negative against each other in any
proportion that we will, thus giving flexibility to what would otherwise
be too rigid, and form to what would otherwise be too fluid; and so, by
uniting these two extremes, to produce any result we may desire. It is
the old Hermetic saying, "_Coagula et solve_"--"Solidify the fluid and
dissolve the solid"; and therefore, if we would discover the secret of
"entering into the spirit of it," we must get some idea of the negative,
which is the "not-spirit."
In various ages this negative phase has been expressed in different
forms of words suitable to the spirit of the time; and so, clothing this
idea in the attire of the present day, I will sum up the opposite of
Spirit in the word "Mechanism." Before all things this is a mechanical
age, and it is astonishing how great a part of what we call our social
advance has its root in the mechanical arts. Reduce the mechanical arts
to what they were in the days of the Plantagenets and the greater part
of our boasted civilisation would recede through the centuries along
with them. We may not be conscious of all this, but the mechanical
tendency of the age has a firm grip upon society at large. We habitually
look at the mechanical side of things by preference to any other.
Everything is done mechanically, from the carving on a piece of
furniture to the arrangement of the social system. It is the mechanism
that must be considered first, and the spirit has to be fitted to the
mechanical exigencies. We enter into the mechanism of it instead of into
the Spirit of it, and so limit the Spirit and refuse to let it have its
own way; and then, as a consequence, we get entirely mechanical action,
and complete our circle of ignorance by supposing that this is the only
sort of action there is.
Yet this is not a necessary state of things even in regard to "physical
science," for the men who have made the greatest advances in that
direction are those who have most clearly seen the subordination of the
mechanical to the spiritual. The man who can recognise a natural law
only as it operates through certain forms of mechanism with which he is
familiar will never rise to the construction of the higher forms of
mechanism which might be built up upon that law, for he fails to see
that it is the law which determines the mechanism and not vice versa.
This man will make no advance in science, either theoretical or applied,
and the world will never owe any debt of gratitude to him. But the man
who recognises that the mechanism for the application of any principle
grows out of the true apprehension of the principle studies the
principle first, knowing that when _that_ is properly grasped it will
necessarily suggest all that is wanted for bringing it into practical
use.
And if this is true in regard to so-called physical science, it is _a
fortiori_ true as regards the Science of Spirit. There is a mechanical
attitude of mind which judges everything by the limitations of past
experiences, allowing nothing for the fact that those experiences were
for the most part the results of our ignorance of spiritual law. But if
we realise the true law of Being we shall rise above these mechanical
conceptions. We shall not deny the reality of the body or of the
physical world as facts, knowing that they also are Spirit, but we shall
learn to deny their power as causes. We shall learn to distinguish
between the _causa causta_ and the _causa causans_, the secondary or
apparent physical cause and the primary or spiritual cause, without
which the secondary cause could not exist; and so we shall get a new
standpoint of clear knowledge and certain power by stepping over the
threshold of the mechanical and entering into the spirit of it.
What we have to do is to maintain our even balance between the two
extremes, denying neither Spirit nor the mechanism which is its form and
through which it works. The one is as necessary to a perfect whole as
the other, for there must be an _outside_ as well as an _inside_; only
we must remember that the creative principle is always _inside_, and
that the outside only exhibits what the inside creates. Hence, whatever
external effect we would produce, we must first enter into the spirit of
it and work upon the spiritual principle, whether in ourselves or
others; and by so doing our insight will become greatly enlarged, for
from without we can see only one small portion of the circumference,
while from the centre we can see the whole of it. If we fully grasp the
truth that Spirit is Creator, we can dispense with painful
investigations into the mechanical side of all our problems. If we are
constructing from without, then we have to calculate anxiously the
strength of our materials and the force of every thrust and strain to
which they may be subjected, and very possibly after all we may find
that we have made a mistake somewhere in our elaborate calculations. But
if we realise the power of creating from within, we shall find all these
calculations correctly made for us; for the same Spirit which is Creator
is also that which the Bible calls "the Wonderful Numberer."
Construction from without is based upon analysis, and no analysis is
complete without accurate quantitative knowledge; but creation is the
very opposite of analysis, and carries its own mathematics with it.
To enter into the spirit of anything, then, is to make yourself one in
thought with the creative principle that is at the centre of it; and
therefore why not go to the centre of all things at once, and enter into
the Spirit of Life? Do you ask where to find it? _In yourself_; and in
proportion as you find it there, you will find it everywhere else.
Look at Life as the one thing that is, whether in you or around you; try
to realise the livingness of it, and then seek to enter into the Spirit
of it by affirming it to be the whole of what you are. Affirm this
continually in your thoughts, and by degrees the affirmation will grow
into a real living force within you, so that it will become a second
nature to you, and you will find it impossible and unnatural to think in
any other way; and the nearer you approach this point the greater you
will find your control over both body and circumstances, until at last
you shall so enter into the Spirit of it--into the Spirit of the Divine
creative power which is the root of all things--that, in the words of
Jesus, "nothing shall be impossible to you," because you have so entered
into the Spirit of it that you discover yourself to be _one with it_.
Then all the old limitations will have passed away, and you will be
living in an entirely new world of Life, Liberty and Love, of which you
yourself are the radiating centre. You will realise the truth that your
Thought is a limitless creative power, and that you yourself are behind
your Thought, controlling and directing it with Knowledge for any
purpose which Love motives and Wisdom plans. Thus you will cease from
your labours, your struggles and anxieties, and enter into that new
order where perfect rest is one with ceaseless activity.
1902.
XIX
THE BIBLE AND THE NEW THOUGHT
I
_The Son_
A deeply interesting subject to the student of the New Thought movement
is to trace how exactly its teaching is endorsed by the teaching of the
Bible. There is no such thing as new thought in the sense of new Truth,
for what is truth now must have been truth always; but there is such a
thing as a new presentment of the old Truth, and it is in this that the
newness of the present movement consists. But the same Truth has been
repeatedly stated in earlier ages under various forms and in various
measures of completeness, and nowhere more completely than in the
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. None of the older forms of
statement is more familiarly known to our readers than that contained in
the Bible, and no other is entwined around our hearts with the same
sacred and tender associations: therefore, I have no hesitation in
saying that the existence of a marked correspondence between its
teaching and that of the New Thought cannot but be a source of strength
and encouragement to any of us who have been accustomed in the past to
look to the old and hallowed Book as a storehouse of Divine wisdom. We
shall find that the clearer light will make the rough places smooth and
the dim places luminous, and that of the treasures of knowledge hidden
in the ancient volume the half has not been told us.
The Bible lays emphatic stress upon "the glorious liberty of the sons of
God," thus uniting in a single phrase the twofold idea of filial
dependence and personal liberty. A careful study of the subject will
show us that there is no opposition between these two ideas, but that
they are necessary correlatives to each other, and that whether stated
after the more concentrated method of the Bible, or after the more
detailed method of the New Thought, the true teaching proclaims, not our
independence of God, but our independence in God.
Such an enquiry naturally centres in an especial manner around the
sayings of Jesus; for whatever may be our opinions as to the nature of
the authority with which he spoke, we must all agree that a peculiar
weight attaches to those utterances which have come down to us as the
_ipsissima verba_ from which the entire New Testament has been
developed; and if an identity of conception in the New Thought movement
can be traced here at the fountain-head, we may expect to find it in the
lower streams also.
The Key to the Master's teaching is to be found in his discourse with
the Woman of Samaria, and it is contained in the statement that "the
Father" is Spirit, that is, Spirit in the absolute and unqualified sense
of the word, as appears from the original Greek, and not "A Spirit" as
it is rendered in the Authorised Version: and then as the natural
correlative to "the Father" we find another term employed, "the Son."
The relation between these two forms the great subject of Jesus'
teaching, and, therefore, it is most important to have some definite
idea of what he meant by these terms if we would understand what it was
that he really taught.
Now if "the Father" be Spirit, "the Son" must be Spirit also; for a son
must necessarily be of the same nature as his father. But since "the
Father" is Spirit, Absolute and Universal, it is evident that "the Son"
cannot be Spirit, Absolute and Universal, because there cannot be two
Universal Spirits, for then neither would be universal. We may,
therefore, logically infer that because "the Father" is Universal
Spirit, "the Son" is Spirit not universal; and the only definition of
Spirit not-universal is Spirit individualised and particular. The
Scripture tells us that "the Spirit is Life," and taking this as the
definition of "Spirit," we find that "the Father" is Absolute,
Originating, Undifferentiated Life, and "the Son" is the same Life
differentiated into particular forms. Hence, in the widest sense of the
expression, "the Son" stands for the whole creation, visible or
invisible, and in this sense it is the mere differentiation of the
universal Life into a multiplicity of particular modes. But if we have
any adequate idea of the intelligent and responsive nature of
Spirit[2]--if we realise that because it is Pure Being it must be
Infinite Intelligence and Infinite Responsiveness--then we shall see
that its reproduction in the particular admits of innumerable degrees,
from mere expression as outward form up to the very fullest expression
of the infinite intelligence and responsiveness that Spirit is.
[Footnote 2: _Intelligence_ and _Responsiveness_ is the
Generic Nature of Spirit in _every_ Mode, and it is the
_concentration_ of this into centres of consciousness that
makes personality, i. e., _self_-conscious individuality.
This varies immensely in degree, from its first adumbration
in the animal to its intense development in the Great Masters
of Spiritual Science. Therefore it is called "The Power that
Knows Itself"--It is the power of _Self_-recognition that
makes _personality_, and as we grow to see that our
personality is not all contained between our hat and our
boots, as Walt Whitman says, but _expands_ away into the
Infinite, which we then find to be _the Infinite of
ourselves_, the _same_ I AM that I am, so _our personality_
expands and we become conscious of ever-increasing degrees of
Life-in-ourselves.]
The teachings of Jesus were addressed to the hearts and intelligences of
men, and therefore the grade of sonship of which he spoke has reference
to the expression of Infinite Being in the human heart and intellect.
But this, again, may be conceived of in infinite degrees; in some men
there is the bare potentiality of sonship entirely undeveloped as yet,
in others the beginnings of its development, in others a fuller
development, and so on, until we can suppose some supreme instance in
which the absolutely perfect reproduction of the universal has been
attained. Each of these stages constitutes a fuller and fuller
expression of sonship, until the supreme development reaches a point at
which it can be described only as the perfect image of "the Father"; and
this is the logical result of a process of steady growth from an inward
principle of Life which constitutes the identity of each individual.
It is thus a necessary inference from Jesus' own explanation of "the
Father" as Spirit or Infinite Being that "the Son" is the Scriptural
phrase for the reproduction of Infinite Being in the individual,
contemplated in that stage at which the individual does in some measure
begin to recognise his identity with his originating source, or, at any
rate, where he has capacity for such a recognition, even though the
actual recognition may not yet have taken place. It is very remarkable
that, thus defining "the Son" on the direct statement of Jesus himself,
we arrive exactly at the definition of Spirit as "that power which knows
itself." In the capacity for thus recognising its identity of nature
with "the Father" is it that the potential fact of sonship consists, for
the prodigal son was still a son even before he began to realise his
relation to his "Father" in actual fact. It is the dawning of this
recognition that constitutes the spiritual "babe," or infant son; and by
degrees this consciousness grows till he attains the full estate of
spiritual manhood. This recognition by the individual of his own
identity with Universal Spirit is precisely what forms the basis of the
New Thought; and thus at the outset the two systems radiate from a
common centre.