"The soul is not a compensation, but a life. The soul _is_. Under
all this sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with
perfect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Existence
or God is not a relation or a part, but a whole."--_Emerson._
"MARLOW, September ----.
"Dear husband: I was made very happy this morning by the messages from
home, and especially Fred's and Jamie's baby efforts. They wanted to
send mamma their love, and the straggling characters meant for words,
convey as much meaning as though they were in good English, for they
speak to me in unmistakable language. Why do I understand so well? Ah,
John, I see. Because, being filled with love for them, I recognize the
same quality in what they feel for me, and only need a sign to read the
meaning back of it.
"As I write, new light comes to me regarding the real meaning of signs
and symbols. Until we are filled with a desire and love for God, we can
not perceive or understand the real meaning of the universe, can not
read God's love for us. Until we have a conscious apprehension that
there is a spiritual knowledge, we can not recognize spiritual truth.
"Oh, I can not help wishing you had been here to-day! It was simply
grand; such an uplifting, such a glimpse of the wondrous Now. We learned
about what _is_, what we _are_ and how to prove ourselves God's
children. Mrs. Pearl opened with a few words on the use and necessity of
silence, after which we were all silent awhile, when she commenced:
"Garfield said, 'The world's history is a divine poem, of which the
history of every nation is a canto and every man a word. Its strains
have been pealing along down the centuries, and though there have been
the discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian, the
philosopher, the historian and the humble listener, there has been a
divine melody running through the song, which speaks of hope and halcyon
days to come.'
"What has made possible this divine melody but the spirit of love and
truth that ever animates the children of God? Were it not for this vein,
nay this wholeness of the invisible spirit, what could we have on which
to found hopes of 'halcyon days?'
"Not from the visible man of flesh and blood do all things beautiful and
true emanate, nor from the material and unstable, but from the one
source that is God, as apprehended and realized by His idea, the real,
invisible, spiritual man. Beauty, worth, can only be in idea or
understanding.
"What made Milton, Shakespeare, Emerson, truly great was their
appropriation and manifestation of the invisible inheritance of spirit,
mind.
"What is man without intelligence, without love, without life, without
truth? The real man is spiritual because he is the idea of Spirit, Mind,
God, the only Creator. All that is grand, noble, true in an individual
is a manifestation of the God-power and presence. There is but one real
Mind, and all real or positive thought or intelligence is the
manifestation of Mind, which is God. There is but one real Intelligence,
and the intelligence manifested by the individual is the Intelligence
which is God.
"God is absolutely one Verity, the primordial Essence. But how shall we
know this as a fact? How shall we prove it as an incontrovertible truth?
you ask.
"By persistent acknowledgement of God and His creation, we become one
with Him, and to be one with God is to know absolute Truth. We are
conditioned by the thoughts we think and by the words we speak. By
thinking and speaking right words we manifest true conditions; by
thinking and speaking wrong words we manifest false conditions. 'As a
man thinketh in his heart so is he.' If we desire to manifest strength,
justice or wisdom of God, we must 'acknowledge God in all our ways.'
"'The only salvation,' says George MacDonald, 'is being filled with the
spirit of God, having the same mind as Christ.'
"In order to realize the essence of these words, in order to realize the
essence of any truth, we must enter into its meaning by becoming one
with it, by making ourselves the expression of its harmony, the picture
of its idea.
"Knowing the potency of the word, we say the true words over and over
again, silently or audibly, we think of them in every possible way, with
varied expression if we will, as it is the thought, the prime idea that
we are seeking to manifest.
"We want the true salvation; 'we want to be filled with the spirit;' we
want the truth that makes free; we want strength, justice, wisdom. To
secure these we have only to rid ourselves of the false and be filled
with the true.
"By the positive denial of a lie we annul the lie; by the positive
affirmation of truth we establish truth, or rather our consciousness of
truth is established; thus, as we deny error or affirm truth, are we
carried forward and upward. These are the 'wonderful words of life' that
clothe us with righteousness.
"The words that we use first are statements of fundamental Truth,
acknowledging who and what God is, what we are, and in what relation we
stand to our Father.
"1. God is Life, Truth, Love, Substance.
"2. God is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent.
"3. I am the idea of God, and in Him I have my being.
"4. God is my sufficiency in all work and my will in all ways.
"5. I am subject to God's law and can not sin, suffer or die.
"Over and over again we speak the words, and by marvelous law new
meanings flash upon us, new thoughts are born, new interpretations come
to efface the more obscure ones of the past. It may be easier to follow
every denial with its corresponding affirmation; if so, study the lesson
that way.
"_Hold to each affirmation till it yields its pearl._ Take the first,
'God is Life;' say the words over and over, think of them in every
conceivable way. Make every tiny leaf and slender blade of grass tell
you something of the infinite Life. Bear in mind that every where life
is manifested, whether in plant, animal or man, wherever we look there
is omnipresent Life.
"God is Life. This same Life is our life, which can not be taken away
from us. This Life is good, and in It we live even as God lives in us.
Oh, wondrous life that flows on and on, without beginning, without end,
even as the river sings: 'Men may come and men may go, but I go on
forever.'
"God is Truth, all truth, wheresoever or by whomsoever recognized, is
the everlasting Truth that must forever be.
"There is not a community or church, not a society or family, but is
organized and held together by some phase of the all-embracing and
perfect Truth. The different sects and parties are only different
because certain people see the same side of Truth, and preferring to be
of one mind, they separate or unite and build their respective
sanctuaries.
"'Truth is always present, and we only need to lift the iron lids of the
mind's eye to read its oracles,' said Emerson. When the 'iron lids' are
lifted we shall see as one, we shall belong to the Church of the
universe and the oracle shall reveal to us its deepest secrets and most
sacred mysteries.
"Truth _is_. All that we have, can have, or will have or can conceive
of, exists in the ever present Here and Now. It only remains for us to
recognize and acknowledge it.
"God is Love. To realize the mighty sea of omnipotent Love that enfolds
and blesses humanity, would be to plunge into the healing waters of
Bethesda. Like the sick man, we wait until the majestic Christ commands
us to arise--help ourselves, instead of waiting for others to put us
into the cleansing current. Let us recognize, then, the allness, the
tenderness, the sacredness of this divine Love by submerging ourselves
in it, until all thoughts of evil, suffering or hatred are lost in its
embrace.
"'Lift up the gates that the king of glory may enter in,' sang David,
and we too cry aloud with earnest aspiration that the gates shall be
lifted away, that into our consciousness may come the high tide of
omnipresent Love. 'Love alone is wisdom, love alone is power, and when
love seems to fail it is where self has stepped in and dulled the
potency of its rays.'
"God is our substance. True substance alone is reliable. God is our rod
and our staff. Firmly relying on the Rock of substance which is God, we
can not be shaken, can not be destroyed. Though all seeming powers
totter and fall around us, the One is ever the same, indivisible,
unchangeable I Am. When we are one with the eternal Substance, weakness,
danger, failure shrink into cowering nothingness.
"Study to know, and know to live, should be our motto. Deny all error
and affirm all Truth is the way to appropriate whatsoever we desire to
manifest. Deny weakness and affirm strength, deny discord and affirm
harmony, deny sickness and affirm health. Why? Because we erase the
false beliefs of weakness, discord, sickness, by the denial, and
appropriate strength, harmony, wholeness by affirmation.
"Can the spiritual self be ignorant, weak, sick or sinful? we argue.
Impossible, for God is our sufficiency, is all there is. We refuse to
admit any belief of dullness and ignorance, but gratefully acknowledge
our likeness to God our Wisdom. We refuse to entertain anything contrary
to the Good, but fellowship only with God-like qualities. They are ours
by right of inheritance. We gladly claim them and prove our claim by our
manifestation.
"Cleansing our consciousness from false conceptions, what wondrous power
may we not reflect! Our sufficiency is of God, not of ourselves, and to
Him we ascribe all honor and glory.
"The Master taught the divineness of yielding our will wholly to God,
'Not my will but thine be done,' He prayed. This is the highest
conception of the denial of self. The mortal self is to be set aside,
our immortal consciousness awakened into oneness with the Father.
"MacDonald has beautifully said, 'Oneness with the mighty All is the one
end of life--God or chaos is the only alternative.' We say God works
through man to will and to do, and implicitly trust the divine
Intelligence that guides every waiting child.
"We choose the Good and reverently await our leadings. In every stormy
trial, in every doubtful moment, in every hard-pressed circumstance we
stand aside and let the divine will work through us. There can be no
mistaking this standing aside. It is not to sit down idly with no
thought of responsibility or effort, but it is to do the best we can so
far as we know, constantly awaiting more knowledge of God's will and
more strength to do.
"When the will of man is at one with the will of God, when man realizes
his mortal nothingness and the allness of God, there is divine and
perfect healing. The poet was right when he wrote,
'Our wills are ours we know not how,
Our wills are ours to make them Thine.'
"'I am subject to the law of God and can not sin, suffer nor die.' The
real _I_ is governed by spirit, as an idea is governed by the mind that
thinks it. The real creation, being spiritual, can not be subject to
mortal beliefs or 'carnal mind which is at enmity with God.' With spirit
there can be no sin, sickness nor death, for these are enemies to be
overcome by the Son of God, the Christ within. 'Thou wilt keep him in
perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.' 'The last enemy (belief) to
be overcome is death.'
"Until we persistently refuse to judge according to appearances, and
acknowledge the true and invisible, we will continue in our old code of
beliefs and be at the mercy of the consequences.
"When we recognize the Christ or God principle within, we are then truly
the sons and daughters of God. Spiritual insight gives a logical and to
some, a new meaning to the term Christ. Christ means Truth and Truth
means God. 'In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and
the Word was God, and the Word was made manifest in the flesh, or the
Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.'
"'Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth.' Jesus said of
Himself, 'I am the way, the truth and the life.' But He did not speak
this of His physical body, He referred to the spirit or Christ within,
which was one with the Father, that was and is, literally the way, the
truth and the life. If you will substitute Truth for Christ any place in
the Bible, with this understanding, you will be able to read and
apprehend as never before. In this line of thought read the thirty-fifth
chapter of Isaiah, the title of which is 'The joyful flourishing of
Christ's (Truth's) kingdom.' With this understanding, we so much more
clearly see what Paul meant when he said such things as 'Your life is
hid with Christ in God,' 'Christ in you, the hope of glory,' 'Until
Christ be formed in you,' and many other similar expressions. In the
eighth chapter of Romans, especially the first verse, it is much clearer
by reading with this new spiritual signification. 'There is, therefore,
now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus (Truth), who walk
not after the flesh but after the spirit.' Who could ever believe the
physical Jesus was meant? No: Christ was exactly what the first chapter
of John says He was, the Word (or Truth) made manifest in the flesh, and
the name of the flesh was Jesus.
"Jesus Christ means Jesus, the manifestation of Truth, and this explains
many hitherto obscure passages, which are exceedingly hard to
understand, when the flesh and spirit are regarded as one.
"What vast possibilities unfold to the human being persistent in his
search for truth! What a glorious realm of knowledge, what wonderful
power, what blissful peace, for he will have 'put on the new man, which
is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that creates him.' He
will have attained the clear vision of liberty, for he will no longer be
bound to the 'letter that killeth' but be filled with the 'spirit that
giveth life.'
"The silence at the close seemed like a baptism of peace. To me came the
realization of the intimate relationship of God's children to their
Father, whose love ever comes as a benediction to those who will or can,
recognize and appropriate it.
"With love to you all, I am,
"YOUR MARION.
"P. S. I take great pains to have the quotations accurate, and
fortunately I have made the acquaintance of the shorthand reporter in
the class who sits next to me; she takes notes and as a special favor,
reads the quotations for me after the class is dismissed.
"Once more, good-bye. M."