sympathies, and there can be but little doubt that the thoughts of the
mother as she was struck went out, and perhaps _went strongly out_, to
her boy who was now away from home. He, being sensitively organised and
intimately related to her in thought, and alone at the time,
undoubtedly got, if not her thought, at least the effects of her
thought, as it went out to him under these peculiar and tense
conditions.
There are scores if not hundreds of occurrences of a more or less
similar nature that have occurred in the lives of others, many of them
well authenticated. How many of us, even, have had the experience of
suddenly thinking of a friend of whom we have not thought for weeks or
months, and then entirely unexpectedly meeting or hearing from this same
friend. How many have had the experience of writing a friend, one who
has not been written to or heard from for a long time, and within a day
or two getting a letter from that friend--the letters "crossing," as we
are accustomed to say. There are many other experiences or facts of a
similar nature, and many of them exceedingly interesting, that could be
related did space permit. These all indicate to me that thoughts are not
mere indefinite things but that thoughts are forces, that they go out,
and that every distinct, clear-cut thought has, or may have, an
influence of some type.
Thought transference, which is now unquestionably an established fact,
notwithstanding much chicanery that is still to be found in connection
with it, is undoubtedly to be explained through the fact that _thoughts
are forces_. A positive mind through practice, at first with very
simple beginnings, gives form to a thought that another mind open and
receptive to it--and sufficiently attuned to the other mind--is able to
receive.
Wireless telegraphy, as a science, has been known but a comparatively
short time. The laws underlying it have been in the universe perhaps, or
undoubtedly, always. It is only lately that the mind of man has been
able to apprehend them, and has been able to construct instruments in
accordance with these laws. We are now able, through a knowledge of the
laws of vibration and by using the right sending and receiving
instruments, to send actual messages many hundreds of miles directly
through the ether and without the more clumsy accessories of poles and
wires. This much of it we know--_there is perhaps even more yet to be
known_.
We may find, as I am inclined to think we shall find, that thought is a
form of vibration. When a thought is born in the brain, it goes out just
as a sound wave goes out, and transmits itself through the ether, making
its impressions upon other minds that are in a sufficiently sensitive
state to receive it; this in addition to the effects that various types
of thoughts have upon the various bodily functions of the one with whom
they take origin.
We are, by virtue of the laws of evolution, constantly apprehending the
finer forces of nature--the tallow-dip, the candle, the oil lamp, years
later a more refined type of oil, gas, electricity, the latest tungsten
lights, radium--and we may be still only at the beginnings. Our finest
electric lights of today may seem--will seem--crude and the quality of
their light even more crude, twenty years hence, even less. Many other
examples of our gradual passing from the coarser to the finer in
connection with the laws and forces of nature occur readily to the minds
of us all.
The present great interest on the part of thinking men and women
everywhere, in addition to the more particular studies, experiments, and
observations of men such as Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Ramsay, and
others, in the powers and forces pertaining to the inner life is an
indication that we have reached a time when we are making great strides
along these lines. Some of our greatest scientists are thinking that we
are on the eve of some almost startling glimpses into these finer
realms. My own belief is that we are likewise on the eve of apprehending
the more precise _nature_ of thought as a force, the methods of its
workings, and the law underlying its more intimate and everyday uses.
Of one thing we can rest assured; nothing in the universe, nothing in
connection with human life is outside of the Realm of Law. The elemental
law of Cause and Effect is absolute in its workings. One of the great
laws pertaining to human life is: As is the inner, so always and
inevitably is the outer--Cause, Effect. Our thoughts and emotions are
the silent, subtle forces that are constantly externalising themselves
in kindred forms in our outward material world. Like creates like, and
like attracts like. As is our prevailing type of thought, so is our
prevailing type and our condition of life.
The type of thought we entertain has its effect upon our energies and to
a great extent upon our bodily conditions and states. Strong, clear-cut,
positive, hopeful thought has a stimulating and life-giving effect upon
one's outlook, energies, and activities; and upon all bodily functions
and powers. A falling state of the mind induces a chronically gloomy
outlook and produces inevitably a falling condition of the body. The
mind grows, moreover, into the likeness of the thoughts one most
habitually entertains and lives with. Every thought reproduces of its
kind.
Says an authoritative writer in dealing more particularly with the
effects of certain types of thoughts and emotions upon bodily
conditions: "Out of our own experience we know that anger, fear, worry,
hate, revenge, avarice, grief, in fact all negative and low emotions,
produce weakness and disturbance not only in the mind but in the body as
well. It has been proved that they actually generate poisons in the
body, they depress the circulation; they change the quality of the
blood, making it less vital; they affect the great nerve centres and
thus partially paralyse the very seat of the bodily activities. On the
other hand, faith, hope, love, forgiveness, joy, and peace, all such
emotions are positive and uplifting, and so act on the body as to
restore and maintain harmony and actually to stimulate the circulation
and nutrition."
The one who does not allow himself to be influenced or controlled by
fears or forebodings is the one who ordinarily does not yield to
discouragements. He it is who is using the positive, success-bringing
types of thought that are continually working for him for the
accomplishment of his ends. The things that he sees in the ideal, his
strong, positive, and therefore creative type of thought, is continually
helping to actualise in the realm of the real.
We sometimes speak lightly of ideas, but this world would be indeed a
sorry place in which to live were it not for ideas--and were it not for
ideals. Every piece of mechanism that has ever been built, if we trace
back far enough, was first merely an idea in some man's or woman's
mind. Every structure or edifice that has ever been reared had form
first in this same immaterial realm. So every great undertaking of
whatever nature had its inception, its origin, in the realm of the
immaterial--at least as we at present call it--before it was embodied
and stood forth in material form.
It is well, then, that we have our ideas and our ideals. It is well,
even, to build castles in the air, if we follow these up and give them
material clothing or structure, so that they become castles on the
ground. Occasionally it is true that these may shrink or, rather, may
change their form and become cabins; but many times we find that an
expanded vision and an expanded experience lead us to a knowledge of the
fact that, so far as happiness and satisfaction are concerned, the
contents of a cabin may outweigh many times those of the castle.
Successful men and women are almost invariably those possessing to a
supreme degree the element of faith. Faith, absolute, unconquerable
faith, is one of the essential concomitants, therefore one of the great
secrets of success. We must realise, and especially valuable is it for
young men and women to realise, that one carries his success or his
failure with him, that it does not depend upon outside conditions.
There are some that no circumstances or combinations of circumstances
can thwart or keep down. Let circumstance seem to thwart or circumvent
them in one direction, and almost instantly they are going forward along
another direction. Circumstance is kept busy keeping up with them. When
she meets such, after a few trials, she apparently decides to give up
and turn her attention to those of the less positive, the less forceful,
therefore the less determined, types of mind and of life. Circumstance
has received some hard knocks from men and women of this type. She has
grown naturally timid and will always back down whenever she recognises
a mind, and therefore a life, of sufficient force.
To make the best of whatever present conditions are, to form and clearly
to see one's ideal, though it may seem far distant and almost
impossible, to believe in it, and to believe in one's ability to
actualise it--this is the first essential. Not, then, to sit and idly
fold the hands, expecting it to actualise itself, but to take hold of
the first thing that offers itself to do,--that lies sufficiently along
the way,--to do this faithfully, believing, knowing, that it is but the
step that will lead to the next best thing, and this to the next; this
is the second and the completing stage of all accomplishment.
We speak of fate many times as if it were something foreign to or
outside of ourselves, forgetting that fate awaits always our own
conditions. A man decides his own fate through the types of thoughts he
entertains and gives a dominating influence in his life. He sits at the
helm of his thought world and, guiding, decides his own fate, or,
through negative, vacillating, and therefore weakening thought, he
drifts, and fate decides him. Fate is not something that takes form and
dominates us irrespective of any say on our own part. Through a
knowledge and an intelligent and determined use of the silent but
ever-working power of thought we either condition circumstances, or,
lacking this knowledge or failing to apply it, we accept the role of a
conditioned circumstance. It is a help sometimes to realise and to voice
with Henley:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
The thoughts that we entertain not only determine the conditions of our
own immediate lives, but they influence, perhaps in a much more subtle
manner than most of us realise, our relations with and our influence
upon those with whom we associate or even come into contact. All are
influenced, even though unconsciously, by them.
Thoughts of good will, sympathy, magnanimity, good cheer--in brief, all
thoughts emanating from a _spirit of love_--are felt in their positive,
warming, and stimulating influences by others; they inspire in turn the
same types of thoughts and feelings in them, and they come back to us
laden with their ennobling, stimulating, pleasure-bringing influences.
Thoughts of envy, or malice, or hatred, or ill will are likewise felt by
others. They are influenced adversely by them. They inspire either the
same types of thoughts and emotions in them; or they produce in them a
certain type of antagonistic feeling that has the tendency to neutralise
and, if continued for a sufficient length of time, deaden sympathy and
thereby all friendly relations.
We have heard much of "personal magnetism." Careful analysis will, I
think, reveal the fact that the one who has to any marked degree the
element of personal magnetism is one of the large-hearted, magnanimous,
cheer-bringing, unself-centred types, whose positive thought forces are
being continually felt by others, and are continually inspiring and
calling forth from others these same splendid attributes. I have yet to
find any one, man or woman, of the opposite habits and, therefore, trend
of mind and heart who has had or who has even to the slightest
perceptible degree the quality that we ordinarily think of when we use
the term "personal magnetism."
If one would have friends he or she must be a friend, must radiate
habitually friendly, helpful thoughts, good will, love. The one who
doesn't cultivate the hopeful, cheerful, uncomplaining, good-will
attitude toward life and toward others becomes a drag, making life
harder for others as well as for one's self.
Ordinarily we find in people the qualities we are mostly looking for, or
the qualities that our own prevailing characteristics call forth. The
larger the nature, the less critical and cynical it is, the more it is
given to looking for the best and the highest in others, and the less,
therefore, is it given to gossip.
It was Jeremy Bentham who said: "In order to love mankind, we must not
expect too much of them." And Goethe had a still deeper vision when he
said: "Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others,
and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though it were his own."
The chief characteristic of the gossip is that he or she prefers to live
in the low-lying miasmic strata of life, revelling in the negatives of
life and taking joy in finding and peddling about the findings that he
or she naturally makes there. The larger natures see the good and
sympathise with the weaknesses and the frailties of others. They realise
also that it is so consummately inconsistent--many times even humorously
inconsistent--for one also with weaknesses, frailties, and faults,
though perhaps of a little different character, to sit in judgment of
another. Gossip concerning the errors or shortcomings of another is
judging another. The one who is himself perfect is the one who has the
right to judge another. By a strange law, however, though by a natural
law, we find, as we understand life in its fundamentals better, such a
person is seldom if ever given to judging, much less to gossip.
Life becomes rich and expansive through sympathy, good will, and good
cheer; not through cynicism or criticism. That splendid little poem of
but a single stanza by Edwin Markham, "Outwitted," points after all to
one of life's fundamentals:
He drew a circle that shut me out--
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout,
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
VI
JESUS THE SUPREME EXPONENT OF THE INNER FORCES AND POWERS: HIS PEOPLE'S
RELIGION AND THEIR CONDITION
In order to have any true or adequate understanding of what the real
revelation and teachings of Jesus were, two things must be borne in
mind. It is necessary in the first place, not only to have a knowledge
of, but always to bear in mind the method, the medium through which the
account of his life has come down to us. Again, before the real content
and significance of Jesus' revelation and teachings can be intelligently
understood, it is necessary that we have a knowledge of the conditions
of the time in which he lived and of the people to whom he spoke, to
whom his revelation was made.
To any one who has even a rudimentary knowledge of the former, it
becomes apparent at once that no single saying or statement of Jesus can
be taken to indicate either his revelation or his purpose. These must be
made to depend upon not any single statement or saying of his own, much
less anything reported about him by another; but it must be made to
depend rather upon the whole tenor of his teachings.
Jesus put nothing in writing. There was no one immediately at hand to
make a record of any of his teachings or any of his acts. It is now well
known that no one of the gospels was written by an immediate hearer, by
an eye-witness.
The Gospel of Mark, the oldest gospel, or in other words the one written
nearest to Jesus' time, was written some forty years after he had
finished his work. Matthew and Luke, taken to a great extent from the
Gospel of Mark, supplemented by one or two additional sources, were
written many years after. The Gospel of John was not written until after
the beginning of the second century after Christ. These four sets of
chronicles, called the Gospels, written independently one of another,
were then collected many years after their authors were dead, and still
a great deal later were brought together into a single book.
The following concise statement by Professor Henry Drummond throws much
light upon the way the New Testament portions of our Bible took form:
"The Bible is not a book; it is a library. It consists of sixty-six
books. It is a great convenience, but in some respects a great
misfortune, that these books have always been bound up together and
given out as one book to the world, when they are not; because that has
led to endless mistakes in theology and practical life. These books,
which make up this library, written at intervals of hundreds of years,
were collected after the last of the writers was dead--long after--by
human hands. Where were the books? Take the New Testament. There were
four lives of Christ. One was in Rome; one was in Southern Italy; one
was in Palestine; one in Asia Minor. There were twenty-one letters. Five
were in Greece and Macedonia; five in Asia; one in Rome. The rest were
in the pockets of private individuals. Theophilus had Acts. They were
collected undesignedly. In the third century the New Testament consisted
of the following books: The four Gospels, Acts, thirteen letters of
Paul, I John, I Peter; and, in addition, the Epistles of Barnabas and
Hermas. This was not called the New Testament, but the Christian
Library. Then these last books were discarded. They ceased to be
regarded as upon the same level as the others. In the fourth century the
canon was closed--that is to say, a list was made up of the books which
were to be regarded as canonical. And then long after that they were
stitched together and made up into one book--hundreds of years after
that. Who made up the complete list? It was never formally made up. The
bishops of the different churches would draw up a list each of the books
that they thought ought to be put into this Testament. The churches also
would give their opinions. Sometimes councils would meet and talk it
over--discuss it. Scholars like Jerome would investigate the
authenticity of the different documents, and there came to be a general
consensus of the churches on the matter."
Jesus spoke in his own native language, the Aramaic. His sayings were
then rendered into Greek, and, as is well known by all well-versed
Biblical scholars, it was not an especially high order of Greek. The New
Testament scriptures including the four gospels, were then many hundreds
of years afterwards translated from the Greek into our modern
languages--English, German, French, Swedish, or whatever the language of
the particular translation may be. Those who know anything of the matter
of translation know how difficult it is to render the exact meanings of
any statements or writing into another language. The rendering of a
_single word_ may sometimes mean, or rather may make a great difference
in the thought of the one giving the utterance. How much greater is this
liability when the thing thus rendered is twice removed from its
original source and form!
The original manuscripts had no punctuation and no verse divisions;
these were all arbitrarily supplied by the translators later on. It is
also a well-established fact on the part of leading Biblical scholars
that through the centuries there have been various interpolations in the
New Testament scriptures, both by way of omissions and additions.
Reference is made to these various facts in connection with the sayings
and the teachings of Jesus and the methods and the media through which
they have come down to us, to show how impossible it would be to base
Jesus' revelation or purpose upon any single utterance made or purported
to be made by him--to indicate, in other words, that to get at his real
message, his real teachings, and his real purpose, we must find the
binding thread if possible, the reiterated statement, the repeated
purpose that makes them throb with the living element.
Again, no intelligent understanding of Jesus' revelation or ministry can
be had without a knowledge of the conditions of the time, and of the
people to whom his revelation was made, among whom he lived and worked;
for his ministry had in connection with it both a time element and an
eternal element. There are two things that must be noted, the moral and
religious condition of the people; and, again, their economic and
political status.
The Jewish people had been preeminently a religious people. But a great
change had taken place. Religion was at its lowest ebb. Its spirit was
well-nigh dead, and in its place there had gradually come into being a
Pharisaic legalism--a religion of form, ceremony. An extensive system of
ecclesiastical tradition, ecclesiastical law and observances, which had
gradually robbed the people of all their former spirit of religion, had
been gradually built up by those in ecclesiastical authority.
The voice of that illustrious line of Hebrew prophets had ceased to
speak. It was close to two hundred years since the voice of a living
prophet had been heard. Tradition had taken its place. It took the form:
Moses hath said; It has been said of old; The prophet hath said. The
scribe was the keeper of the ecclesiastical law. The lawyer was its
interpreter.
The Pharisees had gradually elevated themselves into an ecclesiastical
hierarchy who were the custodians of the law and religion. They had come
to regard themselves as especially favoured, a privileged class--not
only the custodians but the dispensers of all religious knowledge--and
therefore of religion. The people, in their estimation, were of a lower
intellectual and religious order, possessing no capabilities in
connection with religion or morals, dependent therefore upon their
superiors in these matters.
This state of affairs that had gradually come about was productive of
two noticeable results: a religious starvation and stagnation on the
part of the great mass of the people on the one hand, and the creation
of a haughty, self-righteous and domineering ecclesiastical hierarchy on
the other. In order for a clear understanding of some of Jesus' sayings
and teachings, some of which constitute a very vital part of his
ministry, it is necessary to understand clearly what this condition was.
Another important fact that sheds much light upon the nature of the
ministry of Jesus is to be found, as has already been intimated, in the
political and the economic condition of the people of the time. The
Jewish nation had been subjugated and were under the domination of Rome.
Rome in connection with Israel, as in connection with all conquered
peoples, was a hard master. Taxes and tribute, tribute and taxes, could
almost be said to be descriptive of her administration of affairs.
She was already in her degenerate stage. Never perhaps in the history of
the world had men been so ruled by selfishness, greed, military power
and domination, and the pomp and display of material wealth. Luxury,
indulgence, over-indulgence, vice. The inevitable concomitant
followed--a continually increasing moral and physical degeneration. An
increasing luxury and indulgence called for an increasing means to
satisfy them. Messengers were sent and additional tribute was levied.
Pontius Pilate was the Roman administrative head or governor in Judea at
the time. Tiberius Caesar was the Roman Emperor.