"The power to bind and loose to Truth is given!
The mouth that speaks it is the mouth of Heaven.
The power, which in a sense belongs to none,
Thus understood belongs to every one."
--_Abraham Coles._
"Thro' envy, thro' malice, thro' hating,
Against the world, early and late,
No jot of our courage abating--
Our part is to work and to wait."
--_Anon._
MARLOW, October ----.
"Dear ones at home: Your letters were all received this afternoon. Am
pleased to know that Mabel is so interested, for it will help her so
much in her studies and work. I must begin my daily report at once, as
there is not much time before class.
"There was no lesson yesterday, and about noon Mrs. Dawn came after me
to go with her and Mrs. Browning, her hostess, to the dentist's, as Mrs.
Browning had to have a tooth extracted. We started, treating her all the
way with the quieting, reassuring thoughts that allay fear. Before she
went in we agreed to hold that thought.
"When Mrs. Browning went into the office, we remained in the waiting
room thinking as intently as possible:
"'There is not a thing to fear, Lida Browning, there is no tooth-ache
with your real self, there is no sensation in matter. You can entertain
nothing but the One Life. The One Mind thinks, and you are His idea,
perfect as your Creator. Good is all, Love is all, Peace is already with
you, for you are one with the Father.'
... "It was done. The dentist was so amazed that he hardly remembered to
give his patient a glass of water.
"'Well, I never knew a cuspidate to come so hard. Didn't it hurt
terribly?' he asked sympathetically.
"'Not a bit except when you first put on the forceps,' was her prompt
reply as she rinsed out her mouth....
"I need say no more. You can imagine our pleasure at this victory. We
never know how little our faith till we see how astonished we are at the
demonstration.
"You ask if Mrs. Pearl has explained your queries. A few questions were
handed in yesterday, but I had not time to put them in my letter. One
that always puzzled us, was: What is the origin of evil? The questions
are written on slips of paper and laid on the table. She answers them
before giving the regular lesson. When she read this slip there was not
a little stir among the fifty eager questioners. 'What is the origin of
evil?' she repeated. 'It has no origin,' was the unsatisfactory answer,
after a momentary silence. Oh! the blankness of those faces! 'But,' she
resumed presently, 'if you ask how _seeming_ evil originated, I may give
you the ideas that came to me as a solution of that mortal mind
question.'
"You know we might ask questions of each other forever, but unless our
thoughts are tinged with same quality, or run in the same direction, the
satisfactory answer to one may not be at all satisfactory to another. In
other words, we will not recognize the same phase of truth, unless we
are in the same stage of development, so if you are not willing to take
my explanation as true, it may be that you are not yet where you can
perceive it, or it may be, you require a different illustration to
convey the same thought, or, there may be innumerable reasons, but of
this one blessed fact be assured: if you hold yourself in the receptive
attitude, and sincerely expect to be guided by the spirit of truth, some
day the answer will come to you with such irresistible force and
plainness that you can not forget it, or ever be in doubt upon that
point again.
"It was in this way the light came to me. That question had puzzled me
more than all else, and I asked every healer whom I met as to the
correct solution. For several months I pondered and fretted over it. At
last, in despair, I let it alone, resolving I would not be further
troubled. But one day it unfolded itself so clearly and beautifully I
was completely satisfied.
"Here it is: Taking the first account of creation, we find man made in
the image and likeness of God, given dominion over all things. If we
believe man to be spiritual and not material, if we know that spirit
_can not_ change its character or quality, we must know that spiritually
man never fell, but that he _seemed_ to fall through our misconception
and misunderstanding of appearances.
"Man now manifests what he believes in; his consciousness of truth is
not fully developed and he mistakes appearances for realities. Having
all possibilities of recognizing only the good, he is perfect. For every
mistake that is made he manifests error, the fallen, or rather the
undeveloped state. The Truth and Love that he manifests in his life, is
the revealment of his God-like nature. In the glimpses of his true self
he recognizes his inheritance of power, and in his mistaken conceptions
forgets to acknowledge God. He then judges according to appearances, and
says things are true because they appear true to the senses.
"The creating principle of life is perfect, but man neglects to
acknowledge this divine power in proportion to his selfishness. It is
therefore his selfishness that prevents him from recognizing the Good,
and causes him to see, name and believe in matter and its consequences;
and he thus becomes materially minded, and is known as the 'Adam' in
'whom all die.'
"Adam signifies error, clay, unreality. Christ signifies Truth, Spirit,
Reality. If we believe in things that appear to be the creation, we are
believing in nothingness, which so proves itself by death and
disintegration. If we believe appearances to be the _sign_ of the real,
we are acknowledging the spiritual to be the all, hence it proves itself
by making even the body its sign, manifest life, health, perfection.
"If we cast out all selfishness, pure love takes its place. We must be
purified from the beliefs of the world in selfishness and its
consequences by recognizing that our 'sufficiency is of God.'
"This was very plain to me, John, and I hope you will find it so too,
but if you do not, wait, and as soon as you are ready for it, the answer
will come to you.
"The lesson to-day was on deception and personal influences. The whole
world has been deceived into believing man is fleshly instead of
spiritual, so many false thoughts and beliefs have arisen, which are the
cause of all disease and trouble. Universally we are deceived,
individually we are deceived, and it is not only because we are making
our beliefs visible on the body, but because we suffer from them
mentally and physically that it is necessary to discover what they are
and cast them out.
"The term deception will cover the mistakes believed and made in
ignorance, and deceitfulness will include the beliefs in and expression
of deceitfulness. On the second day the patient is treated for the
world's next greatest beliefs, which are deception and deceitfulness,
and as before, we set him free from this belief, as possibly reflected
or absorbed through one or more or all of these five avenues we
mentioned in the first treatment.
"Because the world has admitted the first great lie, that the material
creation is the true one, or synonymous with the true, we have 'yielded
ourselves servants to sin,' hence will see the consequences of such
false conclusion, until we deny the lie and affirm the truth.
'Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive,'
is a couplet I remember learning long ago, when I was a child, and how
applicable it is to this problem of deception. Truly, it is a tangled
web, and the only way to get it untangled is to break off the thread and
go back to the beginning where we can truly say, I am created free and
perfect and whole in His image, and can not be influenced by anything
different from Him.
"This is _always_ spiritually true, but if we deal with the worldly
beliefs, we find that according to appearances, we are under the
influence of our own and every other person's wrong thought. We say of
some people, 'how happy I am in their company, how it uplifts me to be
in their presence.' With others we feel a nameless depression, a
fearful, unhappy feeling, and shun their company. As Emerson so aptly
says: 'With some I walk among the stars, whilst others pin me to the
wall.'
"Now, in reality, no good ever comes from personal influence, although
in the first instance it might seem so. Personal, from the word
_persona_, a mask, is only applied to the physical self or carnal mind;
therefore we can receive no benefit from the _personal_ quality of our
friend, but we are benefited and uplifted by his freedom from
personality, or in other words by the divine individuality flowing
through him and expressed by his benevolence, his love, his
cheerfulness, his wisdom. Inasmuch as he is free from personal or
selfish thoughts, he is filled and permeated with gifts from the divine
Fountain of _all_ benevolence, _all_ love, _all_ cheerfulness, _all_
wisdom.
"There is a difference between personality and individuality which most
people do not recognize. Personality only pertains to the physical,
while individuality is the term properly applied to the spiritual self.
'There is but one Mind, the Universal Mind, which, if we can lay hold
on, will give us all knowledge, wisdom and power,' said Emerson.
"When we can throw aside a belief in personality, or personal influence,
we will be free. The negative thoughts sent out by the world have no
power over one who has become filled with positive thoughts of
righteousness. When we trust wholly to the Good, and become wholly at
one with the Good, recognizing the supremacy of the Good, we are free
from all belief in miseries or burdens. We breathe purer air, which is
invisible but life-giving; we feed on heavenly manna, the true word that
is divinely nourishing; we escape the awful bondage of fear, knowing the
perfect love that casts out fear. We can not fear any false beliefs or
wrong thoughts, for we are so filled with true thoughts, no such
falsities can enter our mind.
"Some people talk as though we have great cause to tremble at this awful
counterfeit power of mortal mind, but if they would not talk of it, nor
fear it as having power, it would vanish as mist before the morning sun.
"The great sin is in admitting a lie. Admit the belief of sickness as a
reality and you will see many witnesses to prove it. 'Agree with thine
adversary quickly, lest he turn and rend thee,' means make haste to
dispose of the lie that will throttle you, if you fellowship with it
ever so little. Let us not be deceived, but let us 'awake to
righteousness and sin not.'
"Another question, and a very important one, was: 'What is the
difference between the different teachers of Christian Healing?' I can
best give the substance of Mrs. Pearl's reply by reference to Mrs.
Fuller, the healer from Trenton.
"You remember when she gave her parlor lecture at Mrs. Haight's, she
said: 'Everything that did not come from her teacher was mesmerism, that
it was altogether false, and it was so much of a power that it was
indeed to be feared, for there was no telling what its subtlety and
cunning would suggest and execute; that no cure effected by it was
permanent, but that the patients would sooner or later be worse than
before.'
"Oh, dear, I must not rehearse it, for of course you remember how my old
headache overtook me when I got home, and how wrought up I was all
night. Now I know what caused it, and _now_ I know the difference.
"In the first place, these people are taught the pure and beautiful
foundation of pure Christian Healing, but instead of holding to their
premise that all is good, they begin to talk about people and things
that are _not_ good, imputing false motives, and giving false power to
those who, as they say, are not in the truth.
"If they would only remember that counterfeits can have no power except
as it is delegated to them, that unreal thoughts must disappear in the
presence of true thoughts, they would not be troubled and puzzled.
Adhering to the law, they would recognize and talk about the Good only.
"Ah, John, here is the secret of Jesus' words, 'Resist not evil.' If we
resist anything, we recognize it as something. If we regard evil as an
entity, we can not help fearing or fighting it, but if we know it is
nothingness claiming to be something, we deal with it accordingly.
"Whoever resists evil or calls evil a power, has not denied the reality
of evil faithfully enough. To talk of anything as having power, is to
believe in the power and become entangled in its meshes. That explains
Mrs. Fuller's remark that she was 'actually afraid to meet one of those
false teachers on the street, and always took pains to warn people
against them.' I speak of Mrs. Fuller because you know so well what she
did and said, that you will understand this explanation better.
"Another remark she made was, that 'this power of mortal mind is wholly
ignored by these false teachers, although they secretly use it so
effectually and disastrously.' Because they do not talk so much of evil,
she thinks they ignore it, while really they silently but earnestly and
vigorously deny it, thereby getting a sure control over it. She was
taught to call this seeming power of mortal thought Mesmerism, and
Animal Magnetism, and after giving it such formidable names, and so
mighty a place, it is most natural for her to say that it affects
herself and family or her patients, causing them to be slow in yielding
to treatment. Thus you can readily see how she accounts for her
failures.
"Mrs. Pearl teaches that we can deal with this influence of carnal or
mortal mind, by denying for the patient the conscious or unconscious
reflection of it from these five different sources. To the patient who
is ignorant of truth, mortal thought has a power, because he has
acknowledged it as having power, but in our silent conviction of its
powerlessness, we speak the true word that sets him free. The whole
secret lies in our own freedom from belief in this false power.
"The name Mesmerism or Magnetism makes it seem like some awful monster,
lurking in every corner, ready to devour us, while, as Mrs. Pearl says,
we go our way, quietly denying all appearance of evil, proving the law
of Good by recognizing only the Good in thought and speech.
"How beautiful this teaching is! and how wonderfully the spirit leads us
into all truth. But it can not teach us if we talk error, or
deliberately judge others. Never till we are faithful in acknowledging
the one Principle of Life will it prove itself the only power over us.
"After the questions, Mrs. Pearl spoke of the third treatment. We treat
for everything we might have missed in the first two treatments.
Sometimes this is called the sin treatment, for it takes up so many
things that belong more or less to everybody, according to the world's
belief. A more explicit naming is selfishness.
"Selfishness is the beginning, the mother of all the rest. It reminds
one of the seven devils from which poor Mary Magdalen was freed. It is
not unlikely these were their names: Selfishness, pride, envy, avarice,
jealousy, malice and cruelty. This we deny for the patient through the
five different sources, and you can see how apt it will be to touch him,
for who is there of all earth's children that is perfectly free from
any of these qualities. With our strong faith in the law and power of
the word, we sturdily deny everything that might be the shadow
obstructing his light.
"As we go on in this study, we learn the meaning of these outshowings of
disease. Every visible thing is the expression of a thought, whether
God-given or man-supposed. We look into a patient's face and read or
interpret the signs of his thought. Is he selfish, unkind or severe in
his disposition, there are the lines and expressions that betray him. Is
he lovely, gentle and kind, a nameless feeling of peace and trust steals
over us.
"In the moments or times of silence that every healer should seek, there
may come something to hint of the truth, some word or text or
mind-picture that will teach what no book or teacher could tell, for
'the spirit of truth leads us into all truth,' and the ways and means
are varied according to our capacity to receive.
"A mind-picture is a symbol representing some thought. For instance:
Suppose while I sit in the silence, there comes to my consciousness a
fragment of landscape, a child's face, a storm, a sun. These are ideas
symbolized. If it be a pleasant scene, it may be to me a glimpse of the
'green pastures and still waters' that David sang about when depicting
the life of the righteous. It would mean peace for my patient. If the
symbol be a child's face, it may mean that I must become as a little
child in order to be led into the kingdom. A storm may signify that my
patient is passing through a crisis of mental commotion, in which case I
must use the invariable rule, deny the false and affirm the true.
"On the other hand I may never see a symbol, but some suggestive text
may come into my mind. If I were depressed or discouraged, these words
might give me new courage and hope: 'Fear not, for I am with thee;'
'wait patiently on the Lord, and He will give thee the desires of thine
heart.'
"Or I might not be conscious of anything while I am sitting thus in the
silence. The answer to my silent question may come to me in the most
commonplace way days or weeks after it is asked. Some person may say
something that will be the very clue I am seeking. We are not to be
anxious or troubled if many questions perplex us, or many problems seem
insoluble, but wait, trusting that 'he is faithful who promised.' We
must not be wishing for the same signs or powers that others have, but
appreciate what is given to us, for faithfulness shall receive its full
reward in due time 'if we faint not.'
"No more to-day. Love to the babies. How glad I am to know they are so
well and happy.
"Faithfully, MARION."