with All-Being.
(f) _Equilibrium_--Note the difference between the Living
Equilibrium of Alternate Rhythmic _Pulsation_ (the whole
Pulsation Doctrine) and the dead equilibrium of merely
_running down_ to a _dead level_. The former implies the
Doctrine of the Return, the Upward Arc compensating the
Downward Arc--The deadness of the latter results from the
absence of any such compensation. The Upward Arc results from
the contemplation of the Highest Ideal.
(g) Spirit cannot leave any portion of its Nature behind it.
It _must_ always have _all_ the qualities of Spirit in it,
even though the lower parts of the individuality are not yet
conscious of it.
(h) The Great Affirmation is The Guide to the whole Subject.]
The theatre of its operations may be expanded to the magnificent
proportions of a world-history, or contracted to the sphere of a single
individuality: the difference is only one of scale; but the
Life-principle is always the same. It is always the principle of
confident Affirmation in the calm knowledge that all things are but
manifestations of itself, and that, therefore, all must move together in
one mighty unity which admits of no discordant elements. This "unity of
the spirit" once clearly grasped, to say I am is to send the vibrations
of our thought-currents throughout the universe to do our bidding when
and where we will; and, conversely, it is _to_ draw in the vitalising
influences of Infinite Spirit as from a boundless ocean of Life, which
can never be exhausted and from which no power can hold us back. And all
this is so because it is the supreme law of Nature. It is not the
introduction of a new order, but simply the allowing of the original and
only possible order to flow on to its legitimate fulfilment. A Divine
Order, truly, but nowhere shall we find anything that is not Divine; and
it is to the realisation of this Divine and Living Order that it is the
purpose of the Bible to lead us. But we shall never realise it around us
until we first realise it within us. We can see God outside only by the
light of God inside; and this light increases in proportion as we
become conscious of the Divine nature of the innermost I am which is the
centre of our own individuality.
Therefore, it is that Jesus tells us that the I am is "the door." It is
that central point of our individual Being which opens into the whole
illimitable Life of the Infinite. If we would understand the old-world
precept, "know thyself," we must concentrate our thought more and more
closely upon our own interior Life until we touch its central radiating
point, and there we shall find that the door into the Infinite is indeed
opened to us, and that we can pass from the innermost of our own Being
into the innermost of All-Being. This is why Jesus spoke of "the door"
as that through which we should pass in and out and find pasture.
Pasture, the feeding of every faculty with its proper food, is to be
found both on the within and the without. The livingness of Life
consists in both concentration and externalisation: it is not the dead
equilibrium of inertia, but the living equilibrium of a vital and
rhythmic pulsation. Involution and evolution must forever alternate, and
the door of communication between them is the I am which is the living
power in both. Thus it is that the Great Affirmation is the Secret of
Life, and that to say I am with a true understanding of all that it
implies is to place ourselves in touch with all the powers of the
Infinite.
This is the Universal and Eternal Affirmation to which no predicate is
attached; and all particular affirmations will be found to be only
special differentiations of this all-embracing one. I will this or that
particular thing because I know that I can bring it into
externalisation, and I know that I can because I know that I am, and so
we always come back to the great central Affirmation of All-Being.
Search the Scriptures and you will find that from first to last they
teach only this: that every human soul is an individualisation of that
Universal Being, or All-Spirit, which we call God, and that Spirit can
never be shorn of its powers, but like Fire, which is its symbol, must
always be fully and perfectly itself, which is Life in all its unlimited
fulness.
In assigning to Affirmation, therefore, the importance which it does,
the New Thought movement is at one with the teaching of Jesus and Moses
and of the entire Bible. And the reason is clear. There is only one
Truth, and therefore careful seeking can bring men only to the same
Truth, whether they be Bible-writers or any other. The Bible derives its
authority from the inherent truth of the things it tells of, and not
vice versa; and if these things be true at all, they would be equally
true even though no Bible had ever been written. But, taking the Great
Affirmation as our guide, we shall find that the system taught by the
Bible is scientific and logical throughout, and therefore any other
system which is scientifically true will be found to correspond with it
in substance, however it may differ from it in form; and thus, in their
statements regarding the power of Affirmation, the exponents of the New
Thought broach no new-fangled absurdity, but only reiterate a great
truth which has been before the world, though very imperfectly
recognised, for thousands of years.
III
_The Father_
If, as we have seen, "the Son" is the differentiating principle of
Spirit, giving rise to innumerable individualities, "the Father" is the
unifying principle by which these innumerable individualities are bound
together into one common life, and the necessity for recognising this
great basis of the universal harmony forms the foundation of Jesus'
teaching on the subject of Worship. "Woman, believe me, the hour cometh,
when neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, shall ye worship
the Father. Ye worship that which ye know not; we worship that which we
know; for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour cometh and now is
when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth"
(Revised Version). In these few words the Great Teacher sums up the
whole subject. He lays particular stress on the kind of worship that he
means. It is, before all things, founded upon knowledge.
"We worship that which we know," and it is this knowledge that gives the
worship a healthful and life-giving quality. It is not the ignorant
worship of wonderment and fear, a mere abasement of ourselves before
some vast, vague, unknown power, which may injure us if we do not find
out how to propitiate it; but it is a definite act performed with a
definite purpose, which means that it is the employment of one of our
natural faculties upon its proper object in an intelligent manner. The
ignorant Samaritan worship is better than no worship at all, for at
least it realises the existence of some centre around which a man's life
should revolve, something to prevent the aimless dispersion of His
powers for want of a centripetal force to bind them together; and even
the crudest notion of prayer, as a mere attempt to induce God to change
his mind, is at least a first step towards the truth that full supply
for all our needs may be drawn from the Infinite. Still, such worship as
this is hampered with perplexities, and can give only a feeble answer to
the atheistical sneer which asks, "What is man, that God should be
mindful of him, a momentary atom among unnumbered worlds?"
Now the teaching of Jesus throws all these perplexities aside with the
single word "knowledge." There is only one true way of doing anything,
and that is knowing exactly what it is we want to do, and knowing
exactly why we want to do it. All other doing is blundering. We may
blunder into the right thing sometimes, but we cannot make this our
principle of life to all eternity; and if we have to give up the blunder
method eventually, why not give it up now, and begin at once to profit
by acting according to intelligible principle? The knowledge that "the
Son," as individualised Spirit, has his correlative in "the Father," as
Universal Spirit, affords the clue we need.
In whatever way we may attempt to explain it, the fact remains that
volition is the fundamental characteristic of Spirit. We may speak of
conscious, or subconscious or super-conscious action; but in whatever
way we may picture to ourselves the condition of the agent as
contemplating his own action, a general purposeful lifeward tendency
becomes abundantly evident on any enlarged view of Nature, whether seen
from without or from within, and we may call this by the general name of
volition. But the error we have to avoid is that of supposing volition
to take the same form in Universal Spirit as in individualised Spirit.
The very terms "universal" and "individual" forbid this. For the
universal, as such, to exercise specific volition, concentrating itself
upon the details of a specific case, would be for it to pass into
individualisation, and to cease to be the Absolute and Infinite; it
would be no longer "the Father," but "the Son." It is therefore exactly
by not exercising specific volition that "the Father" continues to be
"the Father," or the Great Unifying Principle. But the volitional
quality is not on this account absent from Spirit in the Universal; for
otherwise whence would that quality appear in ourselves? It is present;
but according to the nature of the plane on which it is acting. The
Universal is not the Specific, and everything on the plane of the
Universal must partake of the nature of that plane. Hence volition in
"the Father" is not specific; and that which is not specific and
individual must be generic. Generic volition, therefore, is that mode of
volition which belongs to the Universal, and generic volition is
tendency. This is the solution of the enigma, and this solution is
given, not obscurely, in Jesus' statement that "the Father" seeks those
true worshippers who worship Him in spirit and in truth.
For what do we mean by tendency? From the root of tendere, to stretch;
it signifies a pushing out in a certain definite direction, the tension
of some force seeking to expand itself. What force? The Universal
Life-Principle, for "the Spirit is Life." In the language of modern
science this "seeking" on the part of "the Father" is the expansive
pressure of the Universal Life-Principle seeking the line of least
resistance, along which to flow into the fullest manifestation of
individualised Life. It is a tendency which will take manifested form
according to the degree in which it meets with reception.
St. John says, "This is the boldness that we have towards him, that if
we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us; and if we know
that He heareth us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the
petitions that we have asked of Him" (1 John v. 14). Now according to
the popular notion of "the will of God," this passage entirely loses its
value, because it makes everything depend on our asking "according to
His will," and if we start with the idea of an individual act of the
Divine volition in each separate case, nothing short of a special
revelation continually repeated could inform us what the Divine will in
each particular instance was. Viewed in this light, this passage is a
mere jeering at our incapacity. But when once we realise that "the will
of God" is an invariable law of tendency, we have a clear standard by
which to test whether we may rightly expect to get what we desire. We
can study this law of tendency as we would any other law, and it is this
study that is the essence of true worship.
The word "worship" means to count worthy; to count worthy, that is, of
observation. The proverb says that "imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery" more truly we may say that it is the sincerest worship. Hence
the true worship is the study of the Universal Life-Principle "the
Father," in its nature and in its modes of action; and when we have thus
realised "the Law of God," the law that is inherent in the nature of
Infinite Being, we shall know that by conforming our own particular
action to this generic law, we shall find that this law will in every
instance work out the results that we desire. This is nothing more or
less miraculous than what occurs in every case of applied science. He
only is the true chemist or engineer who, by first learning how to obey
the generic tendency of natural laws, is able to command them to the
fulfilment of his individual purposes; no other method will succeed.
Similarly with the student of the divine mystery of Life. He must first
learn the great laws of its generic tendency, and then he will be in a
position to apply that tendency to the working of any specific effect he
will.
Common sense tells us what the law of this tendency must be. The Master
taught that a house divided against itself cannot stand; and for the
Life-Principle to do anything restrictive of the fullest expansion of
life, would be for it to act to its own destruction. The test,
therefore, in every case, whether our intention falls within the scope
of the great law, is this: Does it operate for the expansion or for the
restriction of life? and according to the answer we can say positively
whether or not our purpose is according to "the will of God." Therefore
so long as we work within the scope of this generic "will of the Father"
we need have no fear of the Divine Providence, as an agency, acting
adversely to us. We may dismiss this bugbear, for we ourselves are
manifestations of the very power which we call "the Father." The I am is
one; and so long as we preserve this unity by conforming to the generic
nature of the I am in the universal, it will certainly never destroy the
unity by entering upon a specific course of action on its own account.
Here, then, we find the secret of power. It is contained in the true
worship of "the Father," which is the constant recognition of the
lifegivingness of Originating Spirit, and of the fact that we, as
individuals, still continue to be portions of that Spirit; and that
therefore the law of our nature is to be perpetually drawing life from
the inexhaustible stores of the Infinite--not bottles of water-of-life
mixed with other ingredients and labelled for this or that particular
purpose, but the full flow of the pure stream itself, which we are free
to use for any purpose we desire. "Whosoever will, let him take the
water of life freely." It is thus that the worship of "the Father"
becomes the central principle of the individual life, not as curtailing
our liberty, but as affording the only possible basis for it. As a
planetary system would be impossible without a central controlling sun,
so harmonious life is impossible without the recognition of Infinite
Spirit as that Power, whose generic tendency serves to control each
individual being into its proper orbit. This is the teaching of the
Bible, and it is also the teaching of the New Thought, which says that
life with all its limitless possibilities is a continual outflow from
the Infinite which we may turn in any direction that we desire.
But, it may be asked, what happens if we go counter to this generic law
of Spirit? This is an important question, and I must leave the answer
for further consideration.
IV
_Conclusion_
I concluded my last chapter with the momentous question, What happens if
we go counter to the generic law of Spirit? What happens if we go
counter to any natural law? Obviously, the law goes counter to us. We
can use the laws of Nature, but we cannot alter them. By opposing any
natural law we place ourselves in an inverted position with regard to
it, and therefore, viewed from this false standpoint, it appears as
though the law itself were working against us with definite purpose. But
the inversion proceeds entirely from ourselves, and not from any change
in the action of the law. The law of Spirit, like all other natural
laws, is in itself impersonal; but we carry into it, so to speak, the
reflection of our own personality, though we cannot alter its generic
character; and therefore, if we oppose its generic tendency towards the
universal good, we shall find in it the reflection of our own opposition
and waywardness.
The law of Spirit proceeds unalterably on its course, and what is spoken
of in popular phraseology as the Divine wrath is nothing else than the
reflex action which naturally follows when we put ourselves in
opposition to this law. The evil that results is not a personal
intervention of the Universal Spirit, which would imply its entering
into specific manifestation, but it is the natural outcome of the
causes that we ourselves have set in motion. But the effect to ourselves
will be precisely the same as if they were brought about by the volition
of an adverse personality, though we may not realise that in truth the
personal element is our own. And if we are at all aware of the
wonderfully complex nature of man, and the various interweavings of
principles which unite the material body at one end of the scale to the
purely spiritual Ego at the other, we shall have some faint idea of on
how vast a field these adverse influences may operate, not being
restricted to the plane of outward manifestation, but acting equally on
those inner planes which give rise to the outer and are of a more
enduring nature.
Thus the philosophic study of Spirit, so far from affording any excuse
for laxity of conduct, adds an emphatic definiteness to the Bible
exhortation to flee from the wrath of God. But, on the other hand, it
delivers us from groundless terrors, the fear lest our repentance should
not be accepted, the fear lest we should be rejected for our inability
to subscribe to some traditional dogma, the fear of utter uncertainty
regarding the future--fears which make life bitter and the prospect of
death appalling to those who are in bondage to them. The knowledge that
we are dealing with a power which is no respecter of persons, and in
which is no variableness, which is, in fact, an unalterable Law, at
once delivers us from all these terrors.
The very unchangeableness of Law makes it certain that no amount of past
opposition to it, whether from ignorance or wilfulness, will prevent it
from working in accordance with its own beneficent and life-giving
character as soon as we quit our inverted position and place ourselves
in our true relation towards it. The laws of Nature do not harbour
revenge; and once we adapt our methods to their character, they will
work for us without taking any retrospective notice of our past errors.
The law of Spirit may be more complex than that of electricity, because,
as expressed in us, it is the law of conscious individuality; but it is
none the less a purely natural law, and follows the universal rule, and
therefore we may dismiss from our minds, as a baseless figment, the fear
of any Divine power treasuring up anger against us on account of
bygones, if we are sincerely seeking to do what is right now. The new
causes which we put in motion now will produce their proper effect as
surely as the old causes did; and thus by inaugurating a new sequence of
good we shall cut off the old sequence of evil. Only, of course, we
cannot expect to bring about the new sequence while continuing to repeat
the old causes, for the fruit must necessarily reproduce the nature of
the seed. Thus we are the masters of the situation, and, whether in this
world or the next, it rests with ourselves either to perpetuate the
evil or to wipe it out and put the good in its place. And it may be
noticed in passing that the great central Christian doctrine is based
upon the most perfect knowledge of this law, and is the practical
application to a profound problem of the deepest psychological science.
But this is a large subject, and cannot be suitably dealt with here.
Much has been written and said on the origin of evil, and a volume might
be filled with the detailed study of the subject; but for all practical
purposes it may be summed up in the one word limitation. For what is the
ultimate cause of all strife, whether public or private, but the notion
that the supply of good is limited? With the bulk of mankind this is a
fixed idea, and they therefore argue that because there is only a
certain limited quantity of good, the share in their possession can be
increased only by correspondingly diminishing some one else's share. Any
one entertaining the same idea, naturally resents the attempt to deprive
him of any portion of this limited quantity; and hence arises the whole
crop of envy, hatred, fraud, and violence, whether between individuals,
classes, or nations. If people only realised the truth that "good" is
not a certain limited quantity, but a stream continuously flowing from
the exhaustless Infinite, and ready to take any direction we choose to
give it, and that each one is able by the action of his own thought to
draw from it indefinitely, the substitution of this new and true idea
for the old and false one of limitation would at one stroke remove all
strife and struggle from the world; every man would find a helper
instead of a competitor in every other, and the very laws of Nature,
which now so often seem to war against us, would be found a ceaseless
source of profit and delight.
"They could not enter into rest because of unbelief," "they limited the
Holy One of Israel": in these words the Bible, like the New Thought,
traces all the sorrow of the world--that terrible _Weltschmerz_ which
expresses itself with such direful influence through the pessimistic
literature of the day--to the one root of a false belief, the belief in
man's limitation. Only substitute for it the true belief, and the evil
would be at an end. Now the ground of this true belief is that clear
apprehension of "the Father" which, as I have shown, forms the basis of
Jesus' teaching. If, from one point of view, the Intelligent Universal
Life-Principle is a Power to be obeyed, in the same sense in which we
have to obey all the laws of Nature, from the opposite point of view, it
is a power to be used. We must never lose sight of the fact that
obedience to any natural law in its generic tendency necessarily carries
with it a corresponding power of using that law in specific application.
This is the old proverb that knowledge is power. It is the old paradox
with which Jesus posed the ignorant scribes as to how David's Lord could
also be his Son. The word "David" means "Beloved" and to be beloved
implies that reciprocal sympathy which is intuitive knowledge. Hence
David, the Beloved, is the man who has realised his true relation as a
Son to his Father and who is "in tune with the Infinite." On the other
hand, this "Infinite" is his "Lord" because it is the complex of all
those unchangeable Laws from which it is impossible to swerve without
suffering consequent loss of power; and on the other, this knowledge of
the innermost principles of All-Being puts him in possession of
unlimited powers which he can apply to any specific purpose that he
will; and thus he stands towards them in the position of a father who
has authority to command the services of his son. Thus David's "Lord,"
becomes by a natural transition his "Son."
And it is precisely in this that the principle of "Sonship" consists. It
is the raising of man from the condition of bondage as a servant by
reason of limitation to the status of a son by the entire removal of all
limitations. To believe and act on this principle is to "believe on the
Son of God," and a practical belief in our own sonship thus sets us free
from all evil and from all fear of evil--it brings us out of the kingdom
of death into the kingdom of Life. Like everything else, it has to grow,
but the good seed of liberating Truth once planted in the heart is sure
to germinate, and the more we endeavour to foster its growth by seeking
to grasp with our understanding the reason of these things and to
realise our knowledge in practice, the more rapidly we shall find our
lives increase in livingness--a joy to ourselves, a brightness to our
homes, and a blessing expanding to all around in ever-widening circles.