MENTAL MEDICINE

by
W.John Murray

Divine Science Publishing Association

New York, 1923

Table of Contents

Chapter I - Thoughts to Build Upon

Pages 1-26
Pages 27-53
Pages 54-77

Chapter II - Concentration

Pages 78-91

Chapter III - The Medicine of Mind

Pages 92-107

Chapter IV - The Affirmative Life

Pages 108-118

Chapter V - The Externalization of Thought

Pages 119-127

Chapter VI - The Constructive Power of Imagination

Pages 128-134

Chapter VII - The Subconscious Mind

Pages 135-143

Chapter VIII - Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion

Pages 144-150

Chapter IX - The Science of Impartation

Pages 151-157
Chapter X - The Prayer of Faith

Pages 158-164

Chapter XI - The Healing Intention

Pages 165-173

Chapter XII - The Transference of Thought

Pages 174-185

Chapter XIII - The Wisdom of Expectation

Pages 186-191

Chapter XIV - The Opulent Consciousness

Pages 192-206

*****

Divine Science
Home
 Chapter I
THOUGHTS TO BUILD UPON

W. John Murray
Mental Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.

[1] If one accepts the oft repeated declaration that man was born to woe as "the
sparks fly upward," one will make no attempt to be other than what he believes
himself to be; but if one believes that man is formed for purposes of high
resolve and great accomplishment, then he will seek by all the means at his
command to work out what he believes to be his destiny, knowing, as the wise
man always knows, that his destiny is to attain to Godlikeness, not merely in
terms of moral goodness but in terms of spiritual power. Not only will he work
by all the means at his command, but he will command the means, for man has
resources of which, until he [2] arrives at a true appreciation of himself, he is
not conscious; therefore the only excuse for any form of instruction is to make
man aware of those inner potentialities so that he may no longer make excuses
for himself. Neither peculiarity of birth nor environment are sufficient in
themselves to justify failure or mediocrity, for these, failure and mediocrity,
are based more upon ignorance than upon prenatal conditions and limiting
surroundings. Not knowing our divine prerogatives, we are the slaves of
conditions which we presently overcome as soon as we discover our true
estate. The man who has found himself no longer whines over conditions, for
he knows that these are not insurmountable. On understanding's strongest
wings he soars above untoward conditions as the lark soars above the lowlands
with their miasmatic vapors. Formed for great things, and knowing he is
formed for great things, he no longer grovels on the refuse heap of his fears,
neither does he shrink at imaginary impending calamities, for past, present [3]
and future contain nothing for him but the harmonious working of that
immutable law which can never work contrary to its own nature. Man, as he is
observed on the material plane, is as "vice has made him;" but man as he shall
"hereafter be," when Truth becomes apparent to him, and he knows, even as he
is known of Him who created him, will enter at once into the enjoyment, not of
things which have not always belonged to him, but of things of which
ignorance has deprived him. The cry of every soul that is higher than the
animal is for better conditions individually and collectively, and because of
this we must infer that this instinctive longing is based upon the conviction that
there is something better in store for man than man is at present experiencing.
We look upon a world apparently filled with fruitless work and enfeebling
woe, and we ask if God has forgotten it, and we question as Shelley questioned
when he said,

"O Fairy! in the lapse of years,

Is there no hope in store? [4]
Will you vast suns roll on
Interminably, still illuming
The night of so many wretched souls,
And see no hope for them?
 Will not the universal Spirit e'er
Revivify this withered limb of Heaven?"

If one can imagine this Fairy of Shelley's to be the eternal and infilling Christ,
one can also imagine this Christ speaking to the inquiring soul as it spoke
through Jesus to the winds and waves on the Sea of Galilee. To our disturbed
mentalities the eternal Christ is ever saying, "Peace, be still," but our inner ears
are stopped so that we can hear nothing save through the outer ear of sense;
hence all our fears and doubts. For the outer has nothing else that it can
convey, since it bears no message from the Highest. Truth bids us, "Be not
afraid," while error seeks to terrify, and will continue to terrify, so long as we
believe error to be Truth. On the plane of sense there is crime and misery, lust
and licentiousness, but these never disturb the soul which is anchored in God,
for the cure [5] for all the miseries in the world of sense is to turn at once to
that Eternal Order which underlies all reality. When the enlightened soul
perceives this Eternal Order to be the governing force of all things, visible and
invisible, it loses its fear of evil through the conviction of evil's nothingness,
for Truth realized furnishes man with the strong cord which binds all error with
consuming fire, "Until the monster stings itself to death." The Kingdom of God
will come upon earth, as Jesus prayed it should, when man, instructed in Truth,
shall co-operate with that Truth in the working out of all his problems, and not
seek to solve those problems as he does at present by resorting to error's ways.

In the unfolding of Truth to human consciousness the spiritual world of

Thought has had its different conceptions as the intellectual world has had its
cycles of civilization and as the material world has had its geological changes.
The eternal Cause of things has been acknowledged and adored according to
these ever ascending conceptions throughout [6] all time. Nature's various
aspects were once worshipped as so many gods. The sun, the moon, the
elements were all endowed with deific qualities so that there were as many
gods as there were elements of force and fury, benevolent or malevolent as the
case might be. From out of this vast system of confused thought and
polytheism, there arose the conception of the Unity of Cause, or monotheism, a
monotheism however which included in the One Supreme and Only God all
that was malevolent as well as all that was benevolent in the many gods. If
before, there were many causes for many maladies, now, through the
conception of One Cause, these many maladies, universal and particular, were
ascribed to Him "from whom all things proceed." That which hitherto had
converged to humanity's hurt from many sources was now traced back from
effect to Cause until all the sin, sickness, and sorrow in the objective world
was made to converge to a central source, and that source was God. High in
heaven's center [7] sat the Ruler of the universe, creating the sons of men and
fastening upon them as soon as they were born, aye even before, the fate that
should be theirs despite their strong endeavors. Some were born to disease and
decrepitude, others to health of body, peace of mind, and with the proverbial
golden spoons in their mouths. When those who could not reconcile all these
human distresses with a conception of God higher than that of their religious
teachers, protested their disbelief in such a monster, they were persecuted to
the death. It was the priest's conception of God or no conception at all, and no
conception at all was accounted as heresy, and heresy was a sin for which no
form of punishment could be too severe.

That God, however, is dead; that is, that monstrous conception is dead, and the
race is better off in consequence. The wise man does not mourn the death of a
god who could bless one and curse another, for he has learned that God is a
fount from which there cannot proceed blessing and cursing. Whatever [8] of
misery and unhappiness there is in human experience the wise man ascribes to
ignorance, and knowing that all ignorance may be overcome, he knows that
earth will become that "sweetest scene" when men everywhere shall know that
"Only the Good is true." As the lowest forms of animal life are said to have
grown by slow but sure processes of progressive evolution to the point where
we are told they have culminated in man as we know him, so the lowest
conceptions of the Supreme Being have steadily given place to other and
higher conceptions, until today the conception of God that is most acceptable
to the thinker is that of God, the changeless Divine Principle whose stately
laws once understood by man make of that man a God in manifestation. As
God, Divine Mind, is the same, "yesterday, and today and forever," He knows
neither love nor hate, approval nor disapproval, favoritism nor prejudice. He
regards all things with most impartial eyes, for all He knows is that for which
He Himself is responsible, [9] and this He has pronounced "very good." It is
for this reason that we read in the Scriptures that His ways are higher than our
ways, and His thoughts higher than our thoughts.

There was an age of God the Father, during which men thought of the Ruler of
the universe as afar-off and only to be approached through Moses or the
prophets; so they said, "Speak unto us through Moses lest we die." Then there
was an age of God the Son, during which men believed that salvation could
only come to them through the vicarious atonement or suffering of one for the
many. If before, God could only be appeased by the blood of bulls and of
goats, now nothing would suffice but the blood of His most precious Son; and
so for centuries we have taken refuge in the belief that our sins were atoned for
by the redeeming blood of the Lamb. In both of these ages of God the Father,
and God the Son, the conception of an angry God persisted, but today a new
conception is taking place, and it is that of [10] God the Holy Ghost. When, at
the River of Jordan, as Jesus was being baptized of John, the act was sealed by
the words, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," the New
Dispensation commenced; but later when this same Jesus said, "I will send to
you the Holy Comforter who will lead you into all Truth," He prophesied the
advent of a new era, and this era is now upon us. "He came unto His own and
His own received Him not," for the reason that no man can receive what he
cannot understand. The Holy Ghost or Comforter (the Divine Principle of
Truth) is in the world today but the world receives It not. Therefore we should
not flatter ourselves that if we had lived in the day when Jesus Christ walked
among men, we should have immediately recognized Him as Its highest
expression. Again we say we receive what we understand, whether it be in
mathematics, music, or metaphysics: hence the initiate neither condemns the
ancients for stoning the prophets, the Roman for martyring the followers [11]
of the Nazarene, nor those of today who ridicule the new philosophy of life.
Having eyes they see not, and the initiate is sorry for them for the same reason
that Jesus was sorry for them that drove spikes through those hands which only
healed, and those feet which were beautiful on the mountains, as He brought
the glad tidings of Mind's supremacy over matter. "Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do," is the prayer of Him who knows, and knows that
He knows.

When scientific apprehension of Truth takes the place of sectarian belief, we

shall learn something of that state of mind which characterized Guatama, and
Mahommed, Socrates and Plato, and above all Jesus, and we shall also realize
what prayer is and what may be accomplished by it. We shall neither mumble
words nor memorize formulae, for we shall know what it is to dwell in the
"secret place of the Most High." Many creeds will die in order that one eternal
Christ may live in the hearts of men and [12] work out through these hearts in
terms of peace and power, a peace that is not of this world, and a power which
does not seek to exhibit itself in deeds of selfish exploitation of those less
fortunate.

This is the age of the Holy Ghost, for it accepts the idea of the supremacy of
Mind as no other age has ever accepted it. That some twist facts to suit their
own convenience regardless of the rights of others, does not change these facts,
even though it gives a false direction to the force of Thought. That man can
through thinking bring into his experience the things he desires, is true, but let
him see to it that he brings these by the lawful process of working out from the
Universal rather than inward upon the individual. Every true student of
spiritual metaphysics will understand what I mean and realize that any attempt
to get through the particular what can only be obtained from the Absolute is
nothing more than a subtle form of self-hypnosis, the re-action from which can
only work harm to him who [13] indulges in it. Until we find the right way, we
shall make many mistakes in metaphysics as we have made mistakes in
mechanics, but we must be certain that they are mistakes of head and not
deliberate intents of the heart. When an experimenter in mechanics makes a
mistake he may profit by it, but a deliberate use of the power of Thought to
work another harm or to get from him that which may be better and more
easily obtained by going direct to the Source, is the worst form of self-
deception, the results of which are always painful and sometimes persistent.

The great majority of the world's inhabitants are as yet on the plane of the first
mental remove from that of the animal; that is, they share all the appetites of
the animal such as hunger, thirst and need of rest in unconscious sleep; but in
addition to these they are conscious of things which the animal is not
conscious. For instance, the simplest savage is conscious of a physical self
which he is inclined to adorn, and [14] whether the savage, simple or complex,
ignorant or civilized, adorns himself with the feathers of birds or the most
recent styles of London, Paris or New York matters little; it simply proves that
in addition to all the appetites which characterize the beasts of the field there is
a consciousness of personality, and a desire to improve that personality as well
as to minister to its lowest needs. If it shows itself in what might be called
vanity, this is because this consciousness of personality is as yet in its infancy;
but there will come a day when it will manifest itself on the plane of the
intellectural, a plane which is as much higher than the plane of self-adornment,
as the plane of self-adornment is higher than the plane of self-satisfaction, or
the gratification of the appetites. When we look back over the centuries and
observe how long a time man, as we know him, has been in process of
evolution we ought not to become discouraged when we are told we shall be a
long time in arriving at that goal of perfection established as [15] the standard,
by Divine Mind. Neither ought we to become feverish in our haste to arrive,
for this is to cheat our own end, to balk our own purpose. To become on the
outer, what we are on the inner plane, is accomplished more by letting than be
forcing. We must learn to let our finest emotions have sway over our lives
instead of forcing our way into places and positions in which we can only
remain through fitness. It is for this reason then that we should, in addition to
personal adornment, which is not a sin, reach out after intellectual
advancement, so that the mind will become clothed with such garments as may
entitle it to appear at the Court of the Highest, which is Spiritual Illumination.
That some have become illumined without any special intellectual training
may be true, but history records that by far the greater number of those who
have given to the world such food as philosophers feed on, have been men and
women of rare intellectual accomplishments as well as of great spiritual
aspiration. This [16] is as right and proper as men who have just enough
personal vanity to wish never to appear before others without being
becomingly garbed are more ready for the next step, which is the adornment of
the mind, than the man who takes no pride whatsoever in his personal
appearance. Each thing in its place, and everything in its logical order. It does
not signify that because a man has arrived at the place where personal
appearance compels his attention that he has suddenly lost his appreciation for
food. His taste in this respect may become refined, but he nevertheless
continues to eat. He may know that "Man does not live by bread alone," but he
also knows that until he reaches a higher state of spiritual development, he
cannot live without it, and so it is, that "The higher includes the lower, while
the lower cannot include the higher."

From this point then we are able to proceed to where we can at least glimpse
the view above, where spiritual understanding becomes the new acquirement,
and where all [17] that is worthwhile below it is included in it, as the visible
expression of the interior state wherein tranquility retains its changeless mood.
Spiritual understanding is the Saviour, the Redeemer. It is that in man which
treads upon the lions and scorpions of the lower nature, and which confers a
power obtained in no other way. When God, The Holy Ghost, removes the
inner cataracts from the eyes of the soul, the soul sees the "new heaven and the
new earth," and the old concept of earth and heaven passes away with the
ignorance which begat it. In this hour a great revelation takes place. Every
place becomes sacred, so that worship is no longer confined to what are called
the "sacred precincts of the church." There are no times nor seasons for prayer
to the man who has glimpsed the Whole which contains all its parts, for to such
a man religion becomes something infinitely more than the adoration of
something inappreciable and abstract. Religion dominates such a man's whole
being, so that he intakes and outbreathes the [18] Divine that is in him, as it
was in Jesus. The events which, prior to this revelation of the Son of God in
him, desolated all his hopes and blighted all his prospects, fade from memory
so that nothing can ever again give reality to that which Truth annuls. Space,
matter, time and thought become the servitors of him who knows that only
God rules. All power is vested in the Changeless One, and the torments which
came from the belief in the changing many, subsides as this belief subsides.
The man who knows, does not need to consult wizards for a proof of
immortality, for immortality is to him as certain as the reality of his own being.
Neither is death to such an one a thing to be dreaded or invited, since it is
nothing more than a crossing over the threshold of a new experience from one
room to another, which does not give him one moment's anxiety or curiosity.
He carries the statement of Jesus into practical experience by realizing that,
"Sufficient for the moment is the experience thereof." With no useless [19]
bewailing of the past, nor debilitating fear of the future, the man of
understanding lives in an eternal present which is filled with glorious
possibilities. That is a wonderful conception of things which assures man that
because God knows neither past nor future, neither can man who derives his
consciousness from God, know these periods of time which have no place in
Eternity. One may believe in any series of events, but one can never know what
is not to be known.

All things are being re-created for him who sees beyond the merely visible, but
it requires keenness of perception to note the gradual renovation. It is for this
reason therefore that we cannot agree with those who tell us that the heavenly
vision may come in the twinkling of an eye, and this to one who has had no
prior preparation. Such a phenomenon would indicate partiality or injustice, or
both, unless at some time, either before or after what we call physical birth,
there had been some such longing as would attract the thing desired. When the
case of [20] Pauls' sudden conversion on the road to Damascus is used to
illustrate the miraculous and extraordinary, we need to consider the state of
Paul's mind previous to this occurrence. We are apt to over-emphasize the fact
that he persecuted the followers of Jesus, but we must not forget that even this
he did, believing he was right. Paul was a zealous man who believed it was as
necessary to denounce error as it was to proclaim Truth, and like so many of
similar persuasion, he lost much time and expended much energy which might
have been more profitably employed. He was essentially a Truth-Seeker
however, and since every Truth-Seeker is a fearless analyzer of his own states
of consciousness, he must have been engaged in some such exercise as he
journeyed. It is when men ask questions of their inner monitors concerning
their thoughts and acts, that these questions are answered, and in no uncertain
tone. Only when men ask no questions but do what they feel like doing, is
there no sudden arrestation [21] of impulse. There is always a moment when
that which has been growing in thought tends to express itself in manifestation,
just as there is always a moment when the bird emerges from its shell, or the
chrysalis extricates itself from the cocoon. We do not consider these
occurrences miracles; therefore we should not consider the conversion of Saul
of Tarsus a miracle; and we would not, if we only knew that all things work
according to Law. When these facts are better understood we shall cease to live
as we list, in the mistaken belief that Illumination comes providentially when it
is ready to come, and not before, and that hence there is no advantage to the
wise man over the fool in such matters. Illumination comes to the soul which
has prepared for it, just as light shines though a lamp which has been cleaned
and filled with oil, and the wick of which has been properly inserted and duly
lighted. Step by step does the soul unfold in the direction of the development
of its latent capacities; therefore every hour [22] of delay is a postponement of
blessings which are not afar-off, but close at hand.

In the past, Illumination seemed to be a special dispensation to those rare

individuals whom we have since crowned with the glory of Church approval or
canonization, but this was because they were so few and far between that they
were regarded as set apart by God for special purposes. That they were set
apart is true, but when one examines their lives and conversions one is
constrained to believe that they were set apart by their own consent, their own
willingness to "live the Life." The sun shines always for everyone, but only
those who come out of the shadows enjoy its benignant warmth. Divine Love
is the same for all, but individual man must enter into the spirit of it if he
would taste the blessings it bestows. It were folly to think that spiritual
understanding comes without effort. One must study to become a musician no
matter how much natural aptitude one has for music. No matter how
mathematical one's mentality [23] may be, one cannot calculate the movements
of the heavenly bodies so as to prophesy the day, hour and moment of an
eclipse, save that one applies himself to a painstaking study of the science of
numbers. Who expects a strange miracle to take place in these departments of
investigation? It is one of the proofs of healthy-mindedness that men know
there is no Illumination without investigation, and hence we study. If Jesus had
entertained the opinion that Illumination, or spiritual Realization, was an
inexplicable phenomenon which might come to one who was not seeking it at
all, while to one who hungered for it it might never come, He would not have
said, "Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be
opened unto you." If these words of the Master, the most highly Illuminated
One, do not mean persistent effort, I do not know what they do mean. How
then can some teachers assert that a few lessons, either through personal
instruction or through the methods of the modern correspondence [24] school,
confer upon one the ability to do this without any greater effort than a few
Affirmations of a carefully written formula, when that one may have no higher
conception of Illumination than that it is a means of so employing Thought as
to attract material wealth, which may wither like Dead Sea fruit? Must there
not be something back of all this system of Affirmation, from which these
Affirmations derive their substance, and without which all the Affirmations in
the world would be valueless as a painted fire is valueless to produce heat?
Seeking personal blessings without once considering universal principles,
indicates a woeful ignorance of Law and the working thereof, as set forth in the
advice of Him who spake as never man spake before when He said, "Seek ye
first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be
added unto you."

When the limited area by which primitive man was environed no longer
supplied him with the necessaries of animal existence, [25] he reached out
beyond that environment. Thus exploration began through Necessity, which is
not only, "The mother of invention," but the means to the end of man's
advancement; for where there is no incentive, there is no endeavor, and where
there is no endeavor, there is stagnation and death. The doctrine of Necessity is
far more understandable and demonstrable than is the doctrine of Calvinistic
predestination, or the unexplained doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. The
doctrine of Necessity explains the immutable Law of Cause and Effect, and
reveals that nothing can occupy any other place than the place it is at present
occupying, until Necessity requires a change, and that no one can do otherwise
than he is doing, until consciousness perceives the Necessity of expansion. It is
for this reason that we are told, and we are coming to believe, that "Motive is
to voluntary action in the human mind, what cause is to effect in the material
universe." As nothing happens by chance or accident in the material [26]
world, so no growth takes place in consciousness save as motive impels, and
thus it is that every individual is irresistibly impelled to act as he does act, and
nothing can change this unrecognized law until Necessity compels
consciousness to explore a higher realm. All reformation and all evolution
from a lower to a higher plane is the direct consequence of the discovery that
one's requirements are always in advance of one's possessions. No matter how
much one may have of this world's goods there is never, in material things
alone, that satisfaction which the soul needs, if it is to thrive and be content.
This explains the all too frequent unhappiness of the rich, who, until they find
the Source of riches, which is Christ in themselves, seek in things what can
only be found in thoughts. It also explains why the poor so often remain poor,
notwithstanding that the Supply is always greater than the demand.

*****

Next Section

Divine Science
Home
 Chapter I
THOUGHTS TO BUILD UPON

W. John Murray
Mental Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.

(Continued) There used to be a saying that when a man had experienced a

change of heart so [27] that his character underwent a change for the better, he
had "got religion;" as if getting religion was like getting a new situation or
coming into a fortune suddenly. But regardless of the use we have made of this
expression, it is nevertheless true that success in every sense of the word is
more dependent on getting religion than the average man thinks. If it is true
that "Religion is the perception of the relation in which we stand to the
principle of the universe," then the sooner this perception takes place the
better. Skill in all the arts and sciences rests upon the perception of the relation
which one thing bears to another, for without this perception there can be no
harmonious adjustment, and without harmonious adjustment those
combinations of tone, color and constituent elements which are essential to
music or painting or chemistry, would be impossible. The child, the savage and
the dog see those objects which we call houses and things, by other names, but
they see them as distinct things in themselves, without [28] any reference to
those other things such as brick and morter and wood and iron without which
there would be no houses or other things. It is when simple consciousness
becomes self-consciousness, and apprehension becomes comprehension, that
man, unlike the young child or the animal, begins to perceive the relation
which one thing bears to another, whether it be in the world of art or literature,
music or mechanics, mathematics or metaphysics, all of which sciences are,
notwithstanding their uses and benefits, on the plane of sense. The assertion
that it is as necessary for the soul to rise above the plane of sense in order to
"know God," as it is for the intellect to rise above the general, in order to
understand the particular, is based on the truth that the child must, through
education, gradually learn that a house is a thing composed of many other
things, all of which must bear harmonious relation to every other thing, before
that one thing which he calls a house can become the thing it is. The materialist
sees an objective world, but he does not [29] see the relation which one nation
bears to another nation, or the relation which one individual bears to another
individual, hence his selfishness and sensuality; but when once he perceives
the relation which exists between nations and individuals, he immediately
becomes an altruist, for he recognizes how very dependent and interdependent
we all are. If we accept the theory of evolution, let us say for the purpose of
illustration that the mechanical movements of the atom are superseded by the
sensitive movements of the unconsious plant, which in turn are superseded by
the conscious movements of the animal, which are again superseded by the
intelligent movements of man on the intellectual plane, from which he must
now rise as a spiritual being to the perception of his relation to Great First
Cause. It is at this point of the perception of his relation to First Cause that man
becomes really religious in the truest sense of this word, for it is at this point
that he realizes that an evolution which has gone on until [30] this moment by
Cosmic or subconscious processes must, from now on, continue through
conscious co-operation. He has arrived now where the responsibility of
working out his salvation on a more elevated plane presents itself, and with
such knowledge he springs to his task, not as one who feels that the sooner a
disagreeable duty is performed the better, but as one who knows that all things
are now within his reach and only awaiting the taking and the enjoying.
Equipped with the consciousness of his Divinity, he commences at once to lift
up his thoughts to the hills of Spirit from whence cometh his help. The
ordinary man becomes an extraordinary man in the sense that he accomplishes
now by the aid of his new concept of himself, what he never could have
accomplished so long as he rested under the belief in himself as a material
individual, subject to material laws. Apparently living in a world of chance and
change, he learns that he is really living in a Universe of immutable harmony,
where, "All things (do [31] really) work together for good to them that love
God" (the good). Nay, he sees that all things work for good anyway, whether
he loves God or not, since this is the only way that Law can work; either this or
it works for evil, for Law cannot be a house divided against itself.

Working for Good always on the plane of the Universal, the Law will work for
Good for the individual on the plane of the particular, only as he works
consciously with it. There are those who work unconsciously with the Law
through conformity to moral requirements and thus partake of the benefactions
which always follow such co-operation, but the most "Perfect Way" is the Way
of Understanding. The righteousness which avoids the evil consequences of
wrong-doing is good, but the righteousness which invites the blessings of
Right-thinking is another and a better thing. It is for this reason that Jesus says
to His disciples of old and His disciples of today, "Except your righteousness
exceed the righteousness of [32] the scribes and the pharisees, ye shall in no
case enter into the kingdom of heaven."

We are learning now that the kingdom to which Jesus refers is not something
afar-off and outside of oneself and one's present experiences, but that it is
something near, very near, and inside of oneself, as that state of content which
is based on the knowledge that, "In a universe that is filled with the presence of
God there is no room for evil." Just as man has progressed to the intellectual
method of accounting for all phenomena from the acceptance of these as every
other animal accepts them, without seeking to account for them, so he ascends
to that higher level where the intuitional begins to play a part hitherto
undreamed of, for it is from the intuitional that man derives his conviction of
Truth even when the intellectual affords him no support. Through intellect he
has come up through much reasoning to an appreciation of himself as
something other and better than a two-legged animal, to the point where he
[33] inwardly feels a sense of his relationship to that which can neither be seen,
touched, smelled nor weighed; in short, he intuitively feels that he is not all of
matter but some of Mind, and if this leads him by degrees to an eminence
where he can conceive of himself as being All of Mind and none of matter, it is
just what might reasonably be expected. The steps up from the many to the
One, from the particular to the Universal, are as orderly as the gradations from
the multiplication table to Euclid, and beyond it. Just as when one discovers
that the unit is the basis of the science of numbers, so when one discovers that
Cause, in order to be Cause at all, must be One and Indivisible, he has arrived
where the Whole spreads Itself out before him, inviting him to come and
partake of its Oneness. It is at this point that the individual learns that while he
has seemed to be a law unto himself, he has in reality, through painful
experience, or pleasurable acquisition of Truth, been following the Cosmic
plan and landing at the [34] only place he can possibly land, quickly, if he
seeks; slowly, if he suffers as a result of not seeking.

Free moral agency does not mean in its fullest significance that man is
eternally free to think as he pleases, but that he is temporarily permitted to
think his own thoughts until he learns that it is wiser to "think God's thoughts
after Him." It is when man does not think God's thoughts after Him that he is
in error, and it is when he is in error that he sins and sickens and dies.
Therefore Jesus stated the greatest truth when He said, "Ye shall know the
Truth, and the Truth shall make you free." When through philosophy, man
becomes aware of the Truth of his being, the redemptive process has
commenced by means of which he is to learn the significance of the
Atonement, not as the shedding of one Man's blood in order that all men may
enter into Life eternal, but the appreciation of that Cosmic plan and changeless
order of which the Master was thinking when He said, "I and the Father are
one."

[35] This one-ness of Jesus with the Source of all Being is the one-ness of all
with the Source of Being, for unless the all is one with the Source it is bereft of
reality. The one-ness of the individual, every individual, with the Universal, is
a Truth which can never be offset, but the individual must know this Truth;
otherwise he will never be free from the belief that he is separate, or separated,
from God. It is this belief that we are separated from God which is the cause of
all our woes; therefore it is this conviction that "Nothing shall be able to
separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus," which is to bring
about our emancipation from all that is inimical to health, happiness and
holiness.

When we know the Truth, we follow the advice of Him who said, "Judge not
after appearances." We shall no longer think of man as a body with a soul
inside of it, injected into it at birth and just as summarily ejected from it at
death, for the man of appearance will give place to the man of Reality, [36] in
all our thoughts and considerations. If Man is made in the "image and likeness"
of God, it is necessary for us to know what God is, else how can we know what
His "image and likeness" is? God is represented as everything which can never
be known. We are told that "A God defined is a God dethroned," and we are
told this to prevent us from inquiring into what is called the Inscrutable; yet
Jesus says, "To know me and the Father which sent me is to have Life Eternal
dwelling in you." This does not mean that we are to know God as we know
objects of sense which are known by their length, breadth and thickness, for
God is not matter, but Mind, as is evidenced by those words of Plato wherein
he states,--"Mind is the place of Ideas, and God is Mind." Here is a definition
of God which does not dethrone Him but which exalts Him to a place in human
consciousness such as He had never occupied before; for until then God has
been one of the many deities of the pagan philosophies, or the One God [37] of
Israel with all the human attributes which were assigned to Him by those who
thought of Him as a Superman. The angry God of Moses, separate from the
world of His own creating, becomes now through Plato's higher conception,
that Universal Intelligence which embraces the universe in its all-
inclusiveness, as Mind embracing its own ideas. It is when we see (perceive)
God from this point of view, that we can appreciation His omnipresence; for it
is only as Mind that God can be omnipresent. Again it is when we do so
perceive that we can also perceive Man to be Idea, the changeless, painless
idea of the Mind which formed him. Thinking of God as Mind, we can see how
impossible it is for Him to have "parts or passions," so that that which we
could not understand before, now becomes as light as day. It is that Light
which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world when he has risen
from simple consciousness or the plane of the animal, through self-
consciousness or the plane of the intellectual, to [38] Cosmic consciousness or
the plane of the spiritual. It is on this plane of Cosmic consciousness that man
becomes prepared to have God defined to him satisfactorily. As low as the
woman of Samaria seemed to be in the moral world, she had nevertheless risen
to the place where her inquiring mind wanted to know the Truth, as is
evidenced by her question, "Where is God to be worshipped?" It was nothing
to Jesus that she already had five husbands; the important thing to Him was
that she wanted to know something about God; and this involved a definition
of God such as had never been given before. If God had been defined by Plato
as Mind centuries before, He was now defined by Jesus by another word, when
He said, in answer to the woman's question, "God is Spirit," and they that
worship Him must worship in spirit (thought) and in Truth (understanding).

Spirit was not a something which could be limited to any particular place or
people; therefore it was neither on "this mountain [39] nor yet as Jerusalem"
that the Mind of Plato and the Spirit of Jesus was to be communed with; but
rather, it was in the sactuary of man's understanding mind. The Psalmist
defines God as Health, when he says, "God is the Health of my countenance."
John the Beloved defines God as Love, and the beautiful figures of the Bible
expressing such ideas as, "The same fountain cannot send forth at the same
place both sweet and bitter waters," indicates that God is that single Source or
Fount from which there cannot proceed opposing elements. Through all of
these definitions of God, the idea prevails that He is One, and it is this idea of
One-ness which renders dualism and polytheism alike insupportable. It is also
this idea of the One-ness of God or Unity of cause, which carries us over
naturally and painlessly to the idea of the Trinity of the Godhead, which is not
that inconceivable mixture of three Persons in one Person, but that acceptable
combination of Three qualities in One Eternal Reality. This Trinity in Unity of
[40] the Godhead is the Omnipresence, Omnipotence and Omniscience of that
One and only Mind, which is called by different names in different nations, for
not all nations speak of Deity as God.

Of the first aspect of Divine Mind it might be well for us to consider what is
meant by Omnipresence. The Psalmist says,

"Whither shall I flee from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy
presence? If I ascend into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in
 hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and
dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead
me, and thy right hand shall hold me."

This Omnipresence from which the Psalmist could not escape is something
vastly more than the word "everywhere" implies. When the child answers in
reply to the question "Where is God?" "God is everywhere," he has not stated
the whole truth unless he includes the correlated fact that the opposite of God,
or evil, is nowhere. One might speak of the [41] everywhereness of God as one
speaks of the everywhereness of the atmosphere in which good, bad and
indifferent odors express themselves, but this would not convey the true
significance of the word Omnipresence as related to the all-inclusive
intelligence. God is not everywhere except in the sense that His opposite is
nowhere, for if evil exists it must exist in the everywhere present God or Good;
otherwise it must exist outside of God, in which case God would not be
everywhere. If God is Omnipresent as we declare He is, He must be so to the
exclusion of all that is unlike Him; and hence the spiritual philosopher
declares, "There is no evil," on the assumption that for anything to exist at all it
must exist in that Presence which is all-embracing, and outside of which there
is nothing at all. From this we see how large a meaning the word
Omnipresence has, and how much is involved in the acceptance of its
philosophical significance. Once it is understood, and accepted because it is
understood, and not because it is forced upon one as a [42] matter of faith or
dogma, it confers a power which nothing else can confer. For Jesus to know
that God is the only real Presence, was for Jesus to know that evil of any name
or nature has no place in this Presence; having no place in this one and only
Presence, it has no presence at all. It was this conviction of the Omnipresence
which enabled Jesus to perceive the nothingness of evil so clearly that He
could speak with authority and not as, "the scribes and pharisees." The sins and
sicknesses of poor ignorant humanity were as mere appearances, all alike, and
hence He could say to an adulterous woman, "I will not condemn thee," and to
a palsied man at the Pool of Bethesda, "Take up thy bed and walk." All
seeming evil was alike to him, for it was a lie and "the Truth was not in it." To
Jesus, God was "ALL IN ALL" but He could not have been this if Jesus had
given in His thought or philosophy, any reality or presence to the imperfect,
impure, or impermanent. Apparent as all of these were to the [43] senses, Jesus
knew they had no place in Reality; hence they were illusions, one and all, and
as such He treated them, with instant dismissal; just as the wise man dismisses
the appearance of the mirage when the unwise man may in his delirious thirst
go in the direction of it to his own destruction. All the seeming evil in the
objective world which is real to the natural man, or the man who believes what
he sees with his eyes, is most unreal to the spiritual man who perceives with
his mind that, "Only the Good is True." When Paul came into Cosmic
consciousness or the perception of the Real, he said, "We look not at the things
that are seen, but at the things that are not seen: for the things that are seen are
temporal (illusory), but the things which are not seen are eternal" (real).
Spinoza was said to be "God-intoxicated" because reason and medication led
him to the conclusion that God is the only Substance. One may be considered
mad as Paul was considered mad by Festus, but if one's insanity is of the nature
of [44] Paul's, one will do what Paul did, and Paul healed the sick and raised
the dead by virtue of the fact that he acknowledged no other presence save that
of Him who is eternal Life and Love. Truth and Beauty, Health and
Wholeness.

If this aspect of the Blessed Trinity is accepted, we may proceed to the

consideration of the second aspect, which is the Omnipotence of God. The
Omnipotence of God does not mean that God is one of many powers, greater
than any one of these, or of all of them combined, for "The Lord He is ONE,
and there is none else beside Him." Therefore He is the ONLY power; and
when this is accepted and understood man shall lose his fears, since all man's
fears proceed from the belief in other powers than the One supreme and only
power. Jesus gave no power to aught save Divine Mind, and hence He could
say, "All power is given unto me in heaven (the subjective world of thought)
and on earth (the objective world of experience) for (I am the Idea of that [45]
Mind which expresses Itself through me in terms of its own perfection; All that
my heavenly Father is in Reality I am in manifestation)." Let so-called evil
vaunt itself a power, Jesus would prove at all times and under all
circumstances the falsity of its pretensions. "The prince of this world cometh
and findeth nothing in me." The popular belief in evil might suggest itself, but
it would find nothing in His consciousness to respond to it; therefore it could
neither tempt nor terrify Him; and when a man is neither tempted nor terrified
by a thing it is the same as if that thing did not exist for him. This state of mind
was peculiar to Jesus, not because He was a favorite Son but because He was a
Son who knew His Sonship. So-called evil continues to exist as an appearance,
because men love it as sin and dread it as sickness, but this would not be so if
men once knew that God is ALL, and kept their minds constantly refreshed
with this Truth. Under such conditions any man might then affirm, "The prince
of this world [46] cometh and findeth nothing in me," for where there is no
belief in the reality of evil because of a profound conviction of the Allness of
God or Good, there can be no response to evil suggestions. When Paul arrived
at the conviction of the Omnipotence of God he said, in speaking of all that is
called evil, "None of these things move me." This will be true of you and of
me when we arrive at the same state of consciousness. The omnipotence of
God is a truth which will make of any man who knows it, and tests it in his
hours of trial, a superman.

Now the way has been paved for the definition of the Omniscience of God, a
definition which would be impossible to accept if the other two aspects of the
Blessed Trinity were not understood. If we bear in mind that the Latin word
omni signifies "All" or "The only" it will help us to realize what is meant by
Omniscience when applied to Deity, for while it means all knowledge, it also
means all knowing, in the sense that nothing can be known which is not known
to [47] God. Man may believe appearances, but God only knows Realities;
therefore we can understand that many things which man in his spiritual
ignorance believes, God in His wisdom can never know, since they are not to
be known. Man may believe for instance in a rising sun, but neither God nor
man can ever know such a thing, since it is not a truth. Because the unscientific
man believes in the reality of appearances he would have other men believe
that God sees those appearances. It is this false belief that causes men to ask
concerning all the apparent evil in the world: "Why does God permit all the sin
and sickness and sorrow?" Such a question is as foolish as it would be to ask
why nature permits the illusion or appearance of a rising sun when it is nothing
at all but the opposite effect produced by a revolving earth. God no more
knows or permits evil than nature knows or permits a rising or a setting sun,
for neither God nor nature can know or permit what does not occur. If learned
ignorance takes issue with the statement [48] it will be because learned
ignorance will be doing the only thing it can do--expose itself. When learned
ignorance took issue with the declaration of Galileo concerning the sphericity
of the earth, it did not make that old lie, which said that the sun rose in the east
and set in the west, true. It merely showed how tenaciously learned ignorance
holds to its preconceived theories. Just as certainly as all men who are neither
stupid nor savage, have given up the belief in a rising sun, just so surely will
all men who are neither stupid or savage, give up the belief in evil, when they
learn that the opposite is true; that is, that God is all and in all.

If we seem to lay stress on the understanding of this Trinity in Unity of the

Godhead, it is because we know that it is the foundation upon which every
successful demonstration of mind over matter, and Good over apparent evil,
must be made; for, "Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid,"
and unless we build on this foundation we build on sand. One God implies One
[49] eternal Cause and Creator, One unlimited Presence, Power and Knower,
and only One, since, if there were two or more Causes at work in the world,
there would be incurable chaos and man would be "without hope or God in the
world." It is out from this accepted Oneness of things that the conception of the
unity of substance takes its rise, and we learn that Mind, and not matter, is the
underlying substance from which all real formation springs. We use the word
Mind in this connection as a synonym for Spirit; the word Jesus is used
interchangeably with Deity, if you remember. Substance in its scientific and
philosophic sense means that which is insusceptible of decay and
disintegration; therefore the only Real Substance must be God, since all else
passes away. Man's immortality rests upon his "likeness" to that Substance
which is without beginning of years or end of days.

If the senses say that man is matter and subject to material laws, the senses
imagine a vain thing; for the Science of Christ assures [50] us that Man is now
the Son of God; and since the effect is ever of the nature of its cause, and the
cause of Man is God or Pure Spirit, Man must be spiritual, no matter how
material he seems to be. It is this Nowness of Man's spiritual nature of which
John was thinking when he said, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, (not
going to be) and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: (when we realize this
Truth) but we know that, when He (Spirit) shall appear, (as the only Life and
Mind and Substance of all things, including Man) we shall be like Him; (in
essence and character) for we shall see Him as He is" (and not as He is
represented by the warring creeds).

When we see Him as He is we shall see Him as changeless, Divine Principle,

and not as a fickle personality of heroic proportions. Perhaps no synonym for
Deity has aroused so much antagonism as has this word Principle, and this
because the word has been used by educators and others to signify the
inanimate and unintelligent starting point from [51] which to draw scientific
conclusions, whether it be in music, mathematics or metaphysics. It is difficult
for us to imagine an intelligent Principle, because we have so long associated
the word with non-intelligence, but it is at this point that imagination, not
fancy, is called upon to exercise itself. One may say that in a question which is
purely religious as well as scientific, imagination might well be left out, but if
we leave Imagination out, it is like depriving the sun of its light and heat.
Imagination is to religion what it is to the exact sciences. Are not the principles
of music and mathematics necessary to progress? For where else do they exist
if they do not exist in the "chamber of imagery?" These principles are not
apparent to the senses; therefore they must be assumed principles. However,
shall we quarrel because they are assumed? If man can observe with his eyes a
phenomenal world, can he not assume that there is back of this phenomenal
world a cause for it, even though [52] he cannot see this cause nor understand
its methods? Back of all manifestation there is principle, otherwise
manifestation could not be. Principle may be defined as "Source, Cause, Base,
Foundation, that from which things proceed and that to which things must
ultimately revert;" and it is when this definition of Principle is applied to Deity
that we find that God is the Principle of principles, since every true believer in
God, be he Jew, Christian or Mahommedan, believes God to be the only
Source, Cause, Base, Foundation, and that from which all things proceed and
to which all things must ultimately revert. Then again there is that about this
word when used as a synonym for Deity which is most acceptable, for it
absolves God from many of the charges which have been laid at His door,
while at the same time it helps man to work out his own salvation, not so much
with "fear and trembling" as with love and courage. For Principle, to be
Principle at all, it must be immutable, and this is precisely what God is, if we
are to believe the [53] Scriptures. If God is "the same yesterday, and today, and
for ever," then it follows that He cannot be swerved from His divine purpose;
so that asking God to relent and be merciful is as foolish as it would be to ask
the stars in their course to reverse their natural order. God is the changless
Principle of Being, and His nature is Love, always Love, and ever remains so,
regardless of man's mistakes, which we call sins. Just as the sun shines whether
we come out of our caves or stay in them, and just as the principle of
mathematics remains the same whether we use it or not, so God, the eternal
Principle of all that is, ever has been or ever will be, retains His persistent
immutability. Neither praise nor censure affects Him; neither is He moved by
the joys or sorrows of men, for this would be to make of Him an emotional
God, laughing and crying as men do before they understand His ways and
learn to comport themselves accordingly. "His ways are higher than our ways,
and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts," [54] for the reason that He is
not swayed by externals.

*****

Next Section

Divine Science
Home
 Chapter I
THOUGHTS TO BUILD UPON

W. John Murray
Mental Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.

(Continued) When man learns to govern his life according to Principle rather
than by personal opinion, he will not be swayed by externals. Realizing that he
lives and moves and has his being in that eternal order where Harmony is the
only state of consciousness, he will understand what Jesus meant when He
said, "Nothing shall by any means hurt you;" for he will know that no thing
which has proceeded from Principle, can be in any wise injurious, and he will
acknowledge nothing that does not proceed from this One and Only Principle.
Herein lies the test to be applied to all man's experiences. If they proceed from
Principle, they are true and good; if they are not true and good, they do not
proceed from Principle: and man is empowered by his knowledge of Truth to
free himself from them by saying to them, whatever their name or nature, "Get
thee behind me, Satan." Satan is the name given to that sum total of error
which masquerades as Truth, and [55] whose only reality is the reality which
men give to it by believing in it, and fearing it because they do believe in it. In
the spiritual infancy of the race, Satan was a person of ugly or pleasing mien as
it pleased ignorant humanity to regard him. Then human consciousness
expanded to the point where it robbed Satan of all personality and made of it
what theology called that "principle of evil at work in the world;" and now
consciousness has expanded still farther to where it robs evil of all right to
reality, on the ground that God is all. Its pretentions are exposed until now it
can deceive only those who do not know its nothingness; just as a ghost, so-
called, can frighten a child so long as he does not know its unreality.

With this perception of evil's nothingness, man is now free to consider

intelligently his own relation to the Infinite. No longer does he grope in the
dark concerning his own identity, for having discovered the Principle of his
Being to be God, and having also discovered that this Principle never ultimates
[56] itself in anything unlike itself, his unity with God becomes first an
intellectual persuasion, and then a demonstrable science. It has been said that
"The greatest study of mankind is man," and this would be so were it not that
God is prior to man and hence the study of man rests upon the study of man's
Maker. From time immemorial those divinely inquisitive members of the race
who are ever in advance of those who take everything for granted, have asked
with the Psalmist, "What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man
that thou visitest him?" But this question would never be asked were it not for
the fact that reason assures us that there is more of man than can be contained
"between his hat and his boots," as Whitman puts it. The thoughtful individual
is not content to regard man, especially himself, as so much matter. It is not a
question with him as to how much he weighs, neither is it a question as to how
tall or short he is physically. He is concerned to know what he is mentally and
above all spiritually, [57] and hence his question, which is merely the
repetition of the question asked by the Psalmist, and Carlyle, and others. When
Carlyle asked, "What is man?" he answered himself by saying, "To the eye of
vulgar logic (that which makes its assertions on the evidence gained through
the senses) man is an omnivorous biped wearing breeches." But Carlyle was
not satisfied with vulgar logic's definition and so he asks the question again,
this time of his own intelligence: "To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A
Soul, a Spirit and a divine Apparition."

Now it is a question with each of us as to what we shall be in our own

consciousness, "an omnivorous biped" or a "divine idea." I say in our own
consciousness, because, regardless of any belief we may have concerning our
real selves, the fact will always remain that we are "now the children of God."
Greater than the discovery of gold in the hills, pearls in the sea, electrical
energy in the atmosphere, or the North or South Pole, is the discovery of Self.
It is written in [58] the Scriptures that, "The Lord God formed man of the dust
of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became
a living soul...And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and
he slept: and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
and from the rib, which the Lord God had taken from the man, made He
woman, and brought her unto the man." This is a description of man as he
appears to all of us when we are as yet on the plane of simple consciousness or
that plane of consciousness which we share with animals and young children.
Judging man after the flesh, or according to physical appearances, man is little
better according to his own estimation than the "omnivorous biped." James the
Apostle asks, "What is your life (in the flesh)? It is even a vapor, that
appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away." It is the conviction on the
part of every intelligent man that he is something more than he appears to be,
which compels him to ask, "What am I?" Is it not borne [59] in upon us every
day through human experience that the man of flesh or fleshly inclinations is
not the man which shall "hereafter be"? The word "hereafter" in this
connection is not used with reference to a postmortem condition but with
reference to that state of consciousness and existence which will come here,
after man discovers his oneness with Pure Spirit. In our spiritual infancy we
conceive man to be material and therefore we associate him with all that is
material, and consequently subject him (in belief) to so-called material laws.
"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground;
for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,"
expresses the popular conception of man as we know him through the senses;
but when the first dawn of spiritual consciousness comes we can say with Paul,
"Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have
known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him so no more."
This [60] spiritual illumination by means of which we see through appearances
to Realities, is what is called by Jesus the "new birth," when He says: "except
ye be born again ye cannot enter into the kingdom of God." And He tells us
distinctly to "Call no man your father upon the earth: for One is your Father,
which is in heaven." By this it is not meant that we shall lose our respect for
our earthly parents, but that we shall see them as the channels through which
we came into manifestation. There is but One Father of those we call our
fathers and mothers, as well as of ourselves, for there is but One Divine
Principle, Source, Cause, Origin, Base and Foundation from which all things
including man proceed and to which all things and man must inevitably revert.
When this command of Jesus to call no man our father upon the earth is
observed, because it is understood, we shall have a new law of heredity. We
shall no longer justify ourselves in our moral weaknesses because "Father and
grandfather drank or gambled [61] before us;" neither shall we be afraid of
this, that or the other disease because our progenitors died as the result of it.
Calling no man our father or grandfather upon the earth we shall trace our
ancestry to Him in whom all perfection is, and in the consciousness of this
glorious ancestry we shall claim our divine right to health and holiness. "That
which is born of the flesh (false concept) is flesh (false appearance); and that
which is born of the Spirit (Reality) is Spirit" (manifested).

The teachings of Jesus on this question of spiritual relationship are fraught

with tremendous import and practical value, for not only is it a great spiritual
comfort to realize that we have not inherited sinful or sickly tendencies from
our One and Only Parent, but that we have inherited the very opposite of these
which we may bring into our experience, by Thinking of ourselves, not as the
offspring of the flesh, but as the children on God. The child who was stolen in
his infancy by gypsies and brought up by them to [62] believe he was one of
them, thought as one of them, acted as one of them and made no claim to
anything higher until he was apprised of the facts concerning his princely
relationship, is an illustration of the condition of every man until he is made
aware of his kinship to the King of Kings. For the most part we are worse off
than the child stolen by gypsies, for we labor under the delusion that we are
now the children of men but that at some time we may become the sons of
God. That we must become something is true, but it is not that we must become
the sons of God; it is that we must become aware that we are that already, and
that no mistake on our part can ever make us otherwise. No delusion on the
part of the child stolen by gypsies could ever make him other than the natural
son of the Prince, but it could and it did shut him out from the enjoyment of his
princely privileges; and this is precisely what occurs to all of us so long as we
do not know what we are, in Spirit and in Truth. Occasionally we get fitful
glimpses [63] of our real natures, but we are like the man who "beholdeth
himself (in the glass) and goeth his way and straightway forgetteth what
manner of man he was." Only yesterday a man was taken to the hospital dying
of starvation, whose name, when it appeared in the newspapers, attracted the
attention of a lawyer who associated it at once with that of one whose
whereabouts had been sought for a long time. An estate to which this man was
joint-heir could not be settled until it was ascertained where he was, dead or
alive. Once his identity was established he was removed from the charity ward
to a private room with all that goes with it. Was this man dying from poverty
or from a belief in it? Jesus was the good lawyer who came to inform the man
dying of starvation, spiritually and materially, that an estate was awaiting
settlement which could never be administered so long as one of God's children
remained outside of His universal beneficence. He illustrated this by the one
lost sheep for which the Good Shepherd leaves [64] the ninety and nine to seek
and restore it to the fold.

It is this restoration of man to his divine rights that is the crowning glory of the
mission of the Master, and this restoration can never be brought about save as
it is brought about by man's intelligent co-operation with divine law. There can
be no co-operation, however, without understanding or true knowledge; and
this is what Divine Science is intended to convey. Once accept the fact that
Great First Cause is Spirit or Mind, and we must admit that Man as Great First
Effect is spiritual or mental, and that what seems to be material in connection
with man is nothing more nor less than man's material concepts of himself at a
certain period of his mental unfoldment. It is these material concepts that Truth
has come to destroy, so that we may enter into the enjoyment of those things
which God has prepared for us from before the foundation of the world.

First of all there are those false concepts [65] concerning God and man which
the race has entertained through countless ages, and which must be dispelled.
We must no longer think of God as a mammoth man beyond the skies, neither
must we think of man as a material being subject to material conditions over
which he has no control. We must not be afraid to think of God as Principle
instead of personality, as this latter word is commonly used. While God may
be "The Great Unknowable" from the standpoint of personality, He is certainly
not unknowable from the standpoint of Principle, for from this standpoint the
Author of our Being is as knowable as is the principle of the science of
numbers, and just as demonstrable; and it is this demonstrability of Divine
Principle which reveals God as "A very present help in time of trouble."

Is there any time or place where one may not work out a problem in
mathematics? Is it not true that, since the principle of mathematics is
everywhere, it may be utilized in [66] the solution of any problem which
presents itself at any time, and in any place? Men have solved mathematical
problems in prison cells just as they have in palaces, and perhaps with more
ease because of their greater solitude, knowing that a principle which is
demonstrable anywhere is demonstrable everywhere.

If from now on we supplicate Personality less, and demonstrate Principle more,

we shall profit by the change and glorify our Father which is in heaven in ways
of which we never before dreamed. "Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear
much fruit" (accomplish many thing through Truth understood). Having grown
away from the false concepts of a distant God and a material man as His image
and likeness, we must now grow away from the false concept which imposes
itself on all of us in the form of accepted limitation. There will always be an
accepted belief in the negative, forever expressing itself in negative thoughts
and utterances, and consequent negative conduct, [67] until man outgrows the
belief in limitations. Men say, "I can't" almost from force of habit, and the
result of this is that they do not try, and, not trying, they do not succeed; not
succeeding they either blame God or society or economic conditions, when all
the while their lack of success is the consequence of their accepted limitations,
which they do not realize.

We speak of material laws, and this is another false concept we must get away
from, for there are no material laws. All laws are mental, and the sooner we
admit this the better, for it is an admission which will enable us to avail
ourselves of those mental laws, and thus rise above our accepted limitations by
a purely mental process; the process of Thought, for "Thoughts are things" and
the most real things in the universe, notwithstanding the materialists of whom,
thank fortune, there are few left.

If God is Mind, Thought of a necessity is the plastic material with which Mind
works. This fact makes it easy for us to accept the [68] idea that, "The universe
is the Thought of God," and after this we ought not to experience any difficulty
in believing that the world, as we see it in the objective, is the thought of man:
that is, the world is to man what man thinks it is; good if his thought of it is
good; bad if his thought of it is bad, and this according to Shakepeare's
declaration that, "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."

The difference between God's universe and man's world, is the difference
between law and order, and chaos and confusion. The only way for man to
conform his world to God's universe is to learn to form mental pictures of the
Ideal, that is, to think of things as they are in contradistinction to things as they
appear to be, to his disordered senses. We must take the advice of the scientist,
who said: "When thy science and thy senses conflict, cleave unto thy science,"
and of that greater scientist, Jesus of Nazareth, who said: "Judge not after
appearances but judge righteous judgment."

[69] The law of Mind has no limits. We are limited in our application of the
law by our belief that it has limits. We are not merely affected and influenced
by our thoughts, but we are what we are, in actuality and in manifestation--that
which our thoughts have made us. In the Dhammapada, one of the books of the
sealed canon of Buddhism, there is a statement which supports the above
declaration. "All that we are is the result of what we have thought; it is
founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts." So we see that this is
not a new doctrine and that what is called the New Thought is simply a
practical application of a philosophy and a science which is as old as the
Ancient of Days.

Though we should ascend the loftiest heights or descend into the lowest depth,
we shall never go out of our mental realm; it will always be our own thought
that we shall perceive. Emerson substantiates this when he says, "All that you
call the world is the shadow of that substance which you [70] are, the perpetual
creation of the powers of thought, of those that are dependent and those that
are independent of your will."

In view of the fact, therefore, that the most profound thinkers of all ages have
regarded Thought, not as something "light as air" and just as unproductive, but
as that plastic substance from which all form proceeds, ought we not to be as
careful in our use of it as we are now careful in our use of electricity?
Regardless of all the beneficent uses to which electricity is being put, we,
nevertheless, know that there are uses to which it may be put that are hurtful
and injurious; for the same force which may be used to vitalize may also be
used to electrocute.

Just as there is a science of electricity by means of which generic power may

be controlled and directed, so there is a science of righteousness or right-
thinking by means of which injurious thoughts may be cut out or short-
circuited and by means of which helpful thoughts and healing thoughts may be
[71] turned on, as one would turn off and on the electric light; and the one is no
more miraculous than the other. The electrical displays of the twentieth century
would be just as wonderful (miraculous) to the disciples of the first century as
the physical healing by spiritual means of the first century, without any other
form of medication whatever, is to the people of today. "The supernatural is
only the divinely natural not generally understood." Just as we of today dispel
darkness by merely pressing a button and availing ourselves of a law and an
energy and a substance which we can neither understand nor define, so those
early disciples overcame disease by the pressure of their own thoughts upon
that ever-present Force of Mind which is the Source from which all
manifestation takes its rise.

It might be well at this point to show what we mean by the pressure of Thought
and the result of that pressure in our bodies and in our affairs. We read in
"Medicine and Mind": "A lady saw a heavy dish fall [72] on her child's hand,
cutting three of the fingers. She felt great pain in her own hand, and on
examination the corresponding three fingers were swollen and inflamed. In
twenty-four hours incisions were made and pus evacuated."

Dr. Day in the "Medical and Surgical Journal," had a patient "whose lips and
mouth were suddenly enormously swollen from seeing a young child pass a
sharp knife between his lips."

Dr. DeFleury tells us of a girl who dreams she is pursued by a man and falls
into a ditch and breaks her legs. Next morning she wakes bruised and declares
her legs are broken. It is not so; but her legs are paralyzed (by this dream) for
six months.

Dr. A.G. Schofield says, "A gentleman known to me, seeing a friend with
stricture of the gullet, soon experienced an increasing difficulty swallowing,
which ultimately was a cause of death." So much for the pressure of Thought
in a negative way; and [73] this vouched for by most reputable physicians.

The day has come in the evolution of the race when Thought, like any other
natural force which has not been used except in a very limited way, even by
what the world calls Thinkers, is being called upon to yield up its too long
concealed resources. No longer do we feel that Thought is a something which
comes and goes at its own sweet will, regardless of the Thinker, for we now
know that what we are, we are as a result of what we think. Therefore we are
learning to select our thoughts as horticulturists select seeds and bulbs from
which their precious things of color and fragrance are to proceed later on,
knowing, as we do, that ideas and mental pictures formed in the chamber of
imagery are the prototypes of whatever we desire to see in visible
manifestation. If what we are today is what we thought yesterday, then what
we shall be tomorrow will be determined by what we think today, and hence
the necessity of thinking today in such [74] a manner as will be provocative of
the best in the form of health and happiness, peace and prosperity.
Man is free to direct his attention, which is his concentrated thought, as he
chooses; but he must choose in accordance with law and order if he would
have law and order prevail in his affairs; inasmuch as law and order exist in the
mental world as they do in the physical world, which is nothing more nor less
than the mental, expressing itself in objective form. Swedenborg points out this
in his Law of Correspondences. The only limits of mind are those which are
encountered when the thinker would impose conditions on himself or others
which are contrary to the true order of things as they exist in Divine Mind; it is
from this misuse of thought that sin and sickness come into manifestation as if
to rebuke us for our ignorance. No longer does the intelligent man think that
these distressing conditions are visitations from Divine Providence over which
man has no control. He has outlived, [75] or out-thought this ancient error, as
he has out-lived or out-thought the false belief that he could not control those
forces of nature; forces which at one time were considered so destructive as to
defy conquest and subsequent utilization.

When the race subdued the Nile so as to prevent inundation on the one hand
and to produce irrigation on the other, it prefigured what it would later
accomplish in a field far more subtle, the field of modern psychology. The
conquest of external nature is one thing, and a great thing, but if man merely
conquers that which is external to himself, while his inner emotions and
feelings remain untouched and undisciplined, of what avail is it? The glory of
the new psychology of life lies in the fact that it not only theorizes about
mind's supremacy over matter, but it demonstrates it in such manner as to
furnish us with the idea that it was on some such basis that Jesus, the Master
psychologist, performed what we in our ignorance call miracles. Speaking to
the woman [76] who had touched the hem of His garment in the full belief that
if she did so she would be healed, He said, "Thy faith hath made thee whole."
This saying implies that her restoration was due to an idea, or mental picture,
carried to its ultimate conclusion; for this is precisely what faith is,--an idea
conceived in the womb of the mind, carried through a period of gestation or
expectation, until its birth in manifestation is the natural consequence.

The trouble with the faith of most of us is that, while we can conceive what we
want, we cannot carry the idea, or mental image, sufficiently long in thought to
have it make its impression on the subconscious mind; and unless it does
register there it quickly loses its power to reproduce itself. The woman who
touched His garment could not be disuaded from her belief that if she did one
thing, another thing would follow. The "press" or crowd could not prevent her,
invalid as she was, from obtaining her desire. Unlike her, we are discouraged
at the first [77] sign of delay. Do we desire, as this woman desired? If so we
shall be as insistent as she was insistent. Desire which is not continued is
desire which is not gratified. One does not row across a stream with one stroke
of the oars; it requires a "long pull and strong pull," if we would cross the
stream which separates us from the things we desire, but which we often fail to
receive, not because they cannot be received but because our demand is not
sufficiently concentrated to attract supply.
It is the matter of concentration to which we must pay attention, if we would
draw from the Inexhaustible Reservoir those things which God has prepared
for them that love Him.

*****

Table of Contents

Divine Science
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 Chapter II
CONCENTRATION

W. John Murray
Mental Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.

[78] It has been said that the development of true personality depends largely,
if not altogether, on concentration. By this is meant that the focusing of
thought on a specific subject or object is the "one thing needful" to the
understanding of the subject or the acquirement of the object.

When Demosthenes, at the close of a brilliant oration to which he had been

listening, cried, "I too am an orator," it was because that which he had heard
had created a new idea which swept everything before it. He imagined himself
doing what the orator, who had held him spellbound, had done. He was
picturing to himself the day when he too would move multitudes by the force
of his eloquence; and his picture came true when [79] he became the greatest
orator of all time, the model for all who would excell in the art of public
speaking. For the encouragement of those who are too easily discouraged by
accepted personal limitations, we have only to remember what Demosthenes
had to overcome. A feeble constitution had to be strengthened by physical
exercise; a voice which could hardly be heard beyond the first few rows of
seats in the amphitheatre, had to be developed by shouting above the roar of
the sea, as he stood on the beach; an imperfect palate, which he remedied by
the heroic method of holding pebbles in his mouth as he practiced his
memorized declamations. Visualizing the ideal embodied in his sudden
exclamation, "I too am an orator," Demosthenes eliminated all else. Such
elimination is Concentration, or the process by which all that is irrelevant and
unnecessary to cast out, so that that which is relevant and essential may be
retained.

When a boy wishes to set on fire a piece of paper by means of sunlight he uses
a bi-convex [80] lens which he calls a burning-glass. Diffused or universal
sunlight must be focused; that is, it must be gathered to a central point and held
persistently to that point, if it is to accomplish the object desired. When the
marksman wishes to hit the target, he closes one eye so as to exclude from his
vision everything except the thing he is aiming at. In like manner the art of
concentration consists in focusing thought on the ideal to the exclusion of all
else. The mental atmosphere of the world is like diffused sunlight, in this
respect; it is universal, and for this reason it is necessary, in order to attain a
particular result, to direct it to a particular objective. Given all the sunlight and
the most perfect bi-convex lens in the world, and no steadiness of hand, the
paper will not burst into flames. Given all the thought and all the intellect in
the world and no fixity of purpose, no steadiness of mental attention, a man
may be a good encyclopedia but he will never be a creator.

The creative capacity in man is like the [81] creative capacity in God, for it is
and must be the result of unwavering direction. "If thine eye be single thy
whole body shall be full of light," said the Master, and James declares that, "A
double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." These are short but emphatic
statements of the law by which the unmanifest is to be made the manifest, the
universal the particular, the invisible the visible. A man's eye is not single
when his attention is easily drawn away from the thing he desires to be, or to
do. Hence the innumerable failures in the world. A man is "double-minded"
when he has one idea today and another idea tomorrow; therefore he is not
only "unstable in all his ways" but he is unproductive in all his endeavors.

It would be as foolish to blame God, the Universal, for our particular

limitations, as it is to blame the sunlight for not doing that which it can do only
with our intelligent co-operation. To blame nature for not producing the
cultivated strawberry or the spineless cactus is folly. Nature and nature's [82]
God alike bring men and things to a certain stage of evolution, at which stage
man, the expression of infinite Intelligence, must join forces consciously with
Divine Mind if man and things are to be lifted to a higher stage of
development.

By unconscious processes we have been evolved from what we were, to what

we are. What we are to be depends on conscious co-operation with that law of
unfoldment which converts the imperfect into the perfect; the mortal into the
immortal; the son of man into the Son of God. We put off mortality by putting
on immortality, and we put on immortality by concentrating on the Real
instead of the apparent.

Haldane tells us: "What we have to eliminate, if we would get at the nature of
reality, is unconscious and illegitimate assumptions." For instance, it is an
unconscious and illegitimate assumption to suppose that a thing which comes
and goes and never remains the same while it is here is a reality. Such
phenomena are appearances but never [83] realities, in the sense in which the
word is used philosophically. The real may be defined as that which is
insusceptible of discord and decay, chance or change. The real, therefore, is
that "universe of ideas" which Plato distinguishes from the world of
deceptions, and which Jesus must have been thinking about when He cautioned
His disciples to "Judge not after appearances." Nothing so successfully
interferes with true and constructive concentration as the common tendency to
judge after appearances. Appearances may indicate that conditions are greater
than man's capacity to overcome them, and so long as man believes they are,
they will be so to him; the believer will be conquered by his own beliefs,
which is as foolish as it would be to believe that it is the tail which wags the
dog, and not the dog which wags the tail.

When a man thinks or believes that his sins and sicknesses and limitations are
larger than his power to overcome them, he is laboring under a delusion; he is
concentrating [84] on a falsity, and the falsity is his undoing. It is an
"illegitimate assumption" to suppose that imperfection is as real as perfection,
sickness as real as health, or death as real as life, for "A thing and its opposite
cannot be real." Either the thing is real or its opposite is real, for both cannot
be.
Concentration, then, is the art and the science of discrimination. It is the
capacity to separate the wheat of the real from the chaff of the apparent; for it
is only as we are able to do this that error can be overcome by Truth, whether it
be in the domain of mathematics or metaphysics. The apparent would have us
believe that the sky is a solid body and that the stars are like brilliant pins stuck
in this solid body, whereas the real assures us that, "There is no sky," and that
the stars are distinct and separate, and incredibly larger than appearances
would indicate. The apparent would delude us into thinking as our forefathers
thought, that the earth is flat, but the real convinces us of [85] its sphericity;
and just so with a thousand other phases of phenomena, all of which have to be
corrected by what we now know to be the real in the case. The ignorant man is
bewildered by appearances; the wise man is delighted by realities, which he
perceives back of all appearances. The wise man distinguishes things that are
from things that seem to be, and, by concentrating on things that are,
intensifies them.

If the New Psychology is good for anything, it is that it may make practical
that which has existed in theory for so many centuries. It is not a New Thought
that "Thoughts are Things" and that, "There is nothing either good or bad but
thinking makes it so;" but it is a comparatively New Thought that these
statements can be demonstrated in what is called mental healing. Theories
which have hung in the air for centuries are now being crystalized into forms
of health and happiness, peace and prosperity, on the principle that, "The
tendency of an idea, or mental picture, is to [86] externalize itself," unless it is
inhibited by negative thinking. There are three classes of thinkers: those who
are given to thinking in terms of the negative, and by so doing bringing into
their lives negative conditions such as sickness and failure; those who are a
mixture of negative thinking today, and positive thinking tomorrow, and who,
by such vacillating mental states, swing like pendulums between success and
failure, and never really arrive at either extreme. (These last form the great
majority,--the great in-between.) Then there are those who are in the great
minority, those who have discovered the wisdom of dwelling, "In the secret
place of the Most High," which is only another way of saying, "The art of
concentrating on the Positive," or, "To know the Real is to make it appear."

The saint who concentrated on the wounds of our Saviour until the appearance
of those wounds manifested themselves on His own body in what is called
stigmata showed how an uninterrupted mental picture might [87] tend to
superimpose itself on the body; and it is also an illustration of what may be
accomplished in a more intelligent and constructive manner.

The palsy of the man at the Pool of Bethesda was the result of concentration on
the wrong thing, while his cure was the consequence of an intense
concentration on the idea of the perfection of man made in the image and
likeness of God. Jesus had formed the habit of concentrating on the Real or the
things that are made of God, and by so doing it was easy for Him to see
through appearances; and, back of appearances, those eternal realities which
may be obscured by the mists of ignorance, but which can never be destroyed.
To Jesus, palsy in man was like a barnacle on a ship or a fungus growth on a
tree; it was no real part of him; it was an excrescence, an abnormality, a
something which could be removed and the man be all the better for its
removal. Jesus regarded the normal as the real, and the abnormal as the [88]
unreal, while we in our ignorance regard the abnormal as real as the normal;
and then we wonder why we are so persistently tormented by the abnormal and
the unnatural. So long as we continue in this unscientific state of mind we shall
speak of the "awful uncertainty of things." The "awful uncertainty" is not in
things but in ourselves, and it will ever continue to be so until we know the
Truth, and the Truth is that only that is real of which God is the Author.

"All things were made by God, and without Him was not any thing made that
was made."

The Truth is that God never made disease any more than nature made a flat
earth, and the fact that both disease and a flat earth seem to be, does not change
the fact that both are appearances and that appearances are deceptive, and that
we are not to judge after them if we take the advice of Jesus. It was no less
unscientific for Jesus to repudiate disease than it was for Galileo to repudiate a
[89] flat earth; and it is no less unscientific for the New Psychology to
concentrate its attention on the "things that were made of God" to the exclusion
of the abnormal appearances which present themselves to our disordered
senses.

We shall know what are the things that were made by God, when we know that
"God is not the author of confusion but of peace." When we can discern that
whatever is confusing (this includes sin and sickness, anxiety and poverty) is
not of God, no matter how real these seem to be, we shall have arrived at the
place in our spiritual development where we can say with Paul, "None of these
things (appearances) moves me." Then we shall know the meaning of the
words, "To them gave He dominion."

Concentrating on the things that are, the appearances which seem to be, will be
eliminated, and being eliminated from consciousness they will cease to have
power over us; for it is in consciousness we suffer or we suffer not at all. To
fill consciousness, therefore, [90] with the things of God, is to render it empty
of all else, and when consciousness is empty of all else, then God manifests
Himself as Health and Wholeness, for it is only as such He can be manifested.
Just as the sun can manifest itself only in that which is of its own nature, such
as light and heat, so God can manifest Himself only in that which reflects
Beauty and Harmony, Perfection and Purity.

Whatever, then, we desire,--and we desire only that which is good on the

principle that only the good endures,--we should keep on thinking it with the
greatest persistency, for by so doing we shall bring good into our experiences
according to the eternal law of attraction. Do we desire health? Think it, and let
us never allow ourselves to be diverted from thinking it. Concerning all the
virtues, and all the blessings we seek and would enjoy, Paul cautions us to
"think on these things," knowing, as every psychologist knows today, that by
so doing we evolve them.
[91] As certain insects evolve from their own inner being the webs from which
they "rise to higher things" so shall we, by true thinking, evolve those higher
capacities which are in us, as the silk is in the worm, and which are only
awaiting our co-operation to bring them forth.

It is because health is in us that we are able through thinking health to bring it

into manifestation. It is in us as the oak is in the acorn, potentially, but we must
externalize it through the intelligent direction of the only force with which God
has equipped us for this pleasant and profitable duty. This force is the force of
mind, for as James Allen says,

"Man is mind, and evermore

He takes the tool of thought
And, shaping what he wills,
Brings forth a thousand ills,
He thinks in secret and it comes to pass,
Environment is but his looking glass."

*****

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Divine Science
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 Chapter III
THE MEDICINE OF MIND

W. John Murray
Mental Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.

[92] From time immemorial the power of thought to effect bodily changes has
been known to such studious minds as have taken the trouble to seek a reason
for the sudden effect of fear to produce pallor, and of joy to produce that glow
which athletes speak of as "The pink of condition." The ordinary observer sees
these changes but beyond saying, "She was as pale as a ghost," or "She blushed
like a rose," he has no concern; yet it is only as we peer back of these
phenomena that we are able to enter into that world of causes where we learn
that "Thoughts are Things."

Through the New Psychology and kindred studies, medicine is no longer

confined to noxious drugs or unnecessary experimentation in the field of
surgery, for the most [93] advanced thinkers in the healing art are becoming
more than ever aware that the state of the mind is not only the precursor of
disease, but that it may also be used to prevent and heal disease. No longer is it
necessary for the modern physician to stand helpless before the modern
Macbeth. Shakespeare was not addressing himself to one particular person at
one particular time when he said, through Macbeth, to the Doctor:

"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?"

Neither was the Doctor addressing himself to any particular person when he
answered: "Therein the patient must minister to himself."

The helplessness of this particular Doctor still exists, but fortunately it is

disappearing. [94] The most progressive men in the so-called science of
medicine are not so despairing, for when medicine and surgery and diet have
all been resorted to without any result, save a certain lowering of the vitality of
the patient, there are those who resort to mental therapeutics in one form or
another. If these progressives do not practise mental healing themselves, they
recommend it, meanwhile lending all the assistance they can in their own way.
This is one of the most reassuring signs of the times, and an indication of the
tendency to set aside all tradition in the interest of the sick.

Psycho-analysis, in its cleanest form, is an effort to account for present ills in

the individual as the result of some long forgotten shock, which, unless it is
uprooted from the unconscious or rather subconscious mind, will continue to
manifest itself in some form of bodily disease; much as a weed will continue to
appear, and reappear, so long as it is merely cut down by the lawnmower and
not completely uprooted.

[95] In the New Psychology we know that there will be no real and lasting
healing unless we do "pluck from the memory (subconscious mind) a rooted
sorrow" and put in its place a seed of joy; and we know that it is as easy to do
this as it is to uproot a noxious weed and put a pansy seed in its place. A noted
physician and surgeon has given it as his opinion that a very large percentage
of abnormal tumors and uterine cancers are due to "long suppressed grief and
anxiety." This being the case it is wise for us to consider the effect of the
emotions on the bodily organism, and then seek by every means at our
command to overcome all such as are debilitating emotions.

Every thinking person knows that anger can make one nervous, or result in a
headache, or both; but that grief can so lower the vitality as to leave the
individual in such a state as to invite, if not actually to create, a malignant
malady, is not yet a matter of such common knowledge as to put people on
their guard against their worst enemies, [96] which are not outer conditions but
inner states of consciousness. When Jesus said, "A man's enemies are they of
his own household," He established negative thinking as the source of all
physical as well as mental inharmony. It is not our wives, or husbands, or
children, or even mothers-in-law who are most injurious to us. It is our fears,
and doubts, and hatreds, and suspicions, and lusts. These are the enemies of
our own household (mental); the inner guests which make for inharmony and
ill-health. As long as these enemies of purity and peace and prosperity remain
in the mind, we cannot reasonably expect relief or restoration. A wise
physician, knowing the law of correspondences, had a visit from a man who
had gone the rounds of the best specialists but without any lasting benefit. In
addition to his original malady there was a rapidly increasing melancholia with
suicidal tendency. Our wise physician knew that if the best specialists had been
on the case, everything had been done from the [97] purely medical point of
view; therefore a little psycho-analysis might be in order. Through loving
understanding he gained the man's confidence and trust, and presently the cat
was out of the bag. He had misappropriated funds belonging to his brother,
who could never have found this out even if he had been inclined to
investigate. Notwithstanding that years had gone by, the man had never been
able to forgive himself; nor could he return the money without being
discovered. It was not fear of legal punishment that tormented him, but the
possible loss of his brother's affection; otherwise he would have confessed
long before and thus eased his soul. The physician advised, and then
commanded him, to confess it all to his brother and thus do the thing he feared
to do, and by so doing relieve the pressure. Three days of awful dread and
three nights of insomnia brought him to the state where he concluded it was
better to confess than to go through another night. The brother threw his arms
about him and rejoiced with [98] him that the cloud, the only cloud in their
lives, had disappeared. The atmosphere was clear again and his restoration to
health was miraculous to those who did not understand the situation. Through
the application of true psychology, he was able to do what Jesus commanded
the woman to do when He said, "Go thy way and sin no more." The rooted
sorrow having been plucked from his memory or subconscious mind, his
conscious mind was able to divert the force of thought into other and more
healthy channels, and the cure was effected. There was nothing miraculous
about it; it was the natural consequence of natural law, operating on a higher
plane than the usual, that was all. Its very simplicity bewilders us. We cannot
persuade ourselves that this is the explanation, and yet it is.

Why should we marvel that a cure is effected by merely removing the pressure
which causes the malady? We do not marvel that a person breathes when the
pressure on his throat is removed; and in a similar manner we ought not to be
surprised [99] nor regard it as miraculous, when the pressure of fear and
anxiety is removed by Truth and Love, that the patient should be made free
from all disease.

These are well authenticated cases to prove the disastrous effects of fear,
sudden and otherwise. Sudden fear has been known to stop all functioning so
that death has taken place without any physical reason for it. In the case of an
epidemic, the very suggestion of the presence of a certain contagious malady is
enough to prepare susceptible mentalities for the "catching" of it.

Dr. Evans asks, in his "Divine Law of Cure," "If a condemned criminal, from
the trickling of warm water over the arm, and supposing or imagining or
fancying it to be blood from a divided artery, actually died without the loss of a
drop of blood, why may not thought act with the same efficiency in prolonging
life and in effecting those organic and functional changes that constitute the
cure of what we call bodily disease?" This question was asked fifty years ago
and since [100] then the answer has come, for the New Psychology declares
that thought does act with the same degree of efficiency in prolonging life and
healing disease. All true mental healing is based upon the fact that thought has
been tried as a therapeutic agent, and has been found to be the most reliable
and dependable remedy in the world. It was the only thing Jesus ever used. His
method was the substitution of a sanative idea for a sickly one, and the cure
was established on the principle that opposite ideas cannot occupy the mind at
the same time.

The Scriptures declare that, "Perfect Love casteth out fear," and we can grasp
this idea when we remember that fire dries up water; but in both cases there
must be enough. If there is enough fear, any negative condition can be
produced, whether it is sickness or unhappiness or poverty; contrariwise,
where there is enough faith any positive condition can be evolved, whether it
be health or happiness [101] or prosperity; for in this, as in nature, it is the seed
which determines the character and the color of the thing which is to be, and
this according to natural law. "The supernatural is only the divinely natural not
yet understood." Why should it not be understood?

Custom, that monstrous obstacle to all progress, is constantly saying, "Thus far
and no farther," and we stand motionless, when we should leap over every
barrier that would interpose itself between us and the things which belong to us
by divine decree. It is not the will of God that man, made in His image, should
be sick and unhappy; therefore if he is either or both, it is because he has
departed consciously or unconsciously, from natural law, to which he must
consciously return, if he is to be healed of his infirmities.

When we say that the invalid must consciously return to natural law and an
intelligent co-operation therewith, it is because it is not enough for him to
console himself with [102] the notion that he will "get well anyway in time,"
for this is taking a chance: it is ignoring what ought to be destroyed speedily,
lest it grow in consciousness and increase in ferocity. Weeds do not tend to
remove themselves in time: either we remove them or they increase, and it is
none the less true of negative thoughts, which are weeds in the garden of
human life where nothing should be permitted to grow but the flowers and
fruits of healthy and happy thinking.

Until now the great majority have grown up like Topsy, and some have grown
very poorly, but the evolutionary process which has brought them to their
present state of development, requires now this conscious working with Law, if
they are to reach that "fulness of stature of manhood" which includes all that is
really worthwhile, and excludes all that makes for limitation and
ineffectiveness.

First of all we must know what the Law is, for by knowing this we shall know
what our rights are under the Law. The Law is [103] Harmony, and anything
that is not harmonious is contrary to Law; and anything that is contrary to Law,
may be nullified by him who knows the Law. Again the Law of God is the
Will of God; and the Will of God is the Pleasure of God: and "It is the Father's
good pleasure to give you the kingdom" which is the inner consciousness of
health and wholeness, peace and power. By knowing then what is the Law, we
can place ourselves under its protection as certainly as we can have recourse to
the laws of the land in case of injustice; and more so, for these are fallible
while The Law is infallible.

Only know that "It is not the will of my Father which is in heaven that the
sinner (or the sickly) should die, but that all should have everlasting life"--and
the rest is easy. If it is the will of our heavenly Father that the sinner should be
reformed and the sick be made whole, then all that is necessary is for us to
know this. The tragedy has been that we have not known it, as is evidenced by
the fact that the great majority still think [104] that it is not the will of our
Father which is in heaven that we shall be well, but that we shall be ill for
"some inscrutable reason of His own" which we are not to question.

Do we not end our prayers for health and other necessary blessings with the
traditional proviso, "If it be Thy will, O Lord"? What other impression does
this convey than the impression received somewhere in the remote past that it
may not be the will of God that we shall receive what we ask? And yet Jesus
declares, "Ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you."

In the New Psychology we are learning to take Jesus at His word, and
consequently, we dare to protest against everything which is opposed to the
health and happiness of man, on the grounds that discord and disease, being no
part of God's creation, lack divine authority, and, lacking this, they are
destitute of substance and reality in the true meaning of this word. The
materialist may not accept the statement that disease, examined under the lens
of a true science, the [105] Science of Christ, is as much an illusion as is a
rising and a setting sun. Learned ignorance would repudiate this Truth in the
same way that it repudiated the discovery of Galileo, but one day every school
child will know it to be true as every child with any knowledge of rudimentary
astronomy knows today that there is in truth neither sunrise nor sunset.

Just as our opinions have been reversed through increasing understanding of

natural laws, so that we now "know more than all the ancients" concerning
some of the most important truths in the world; so which we know the truth
about the illusions of sense which we call diseases, we shall rise superior to
them, as we now rise superior to the errors of our forefathers in other respects.

We have learned to deny the reality of appearances when those appearances do

not coincide with scientific discovery, and by so doing, the race has advanced
by leaps and bounds; but the appearance of disease is still dignified with names
that are terrifying and [106] appalling. A man who can deny the rising of the
sun on an early summer morning because he knows that it is the earth which is
revolving and thereby giving the sun the appearance of rising, will nevertheless
find it difficult to deny disease. When the psychologist tells him that his
malady is an appearance, a shadow cast upon the body by some error of
thought, he will almost invariably say, "But do I not see it?" What progress
could one make with a person who would persistently reply: "But do I not see
it?" to the teacher of astronomy who strives to teach him that the appearance of
a rising sun is an illusion?

One of the first steps in the practice of mental medicine, as in many of the
other exact sciences, is to learn to correct sense impressions by scientific truth.
When the first sign of disease appears on the body, instead of viewing it as a
forerunner of something worse, a symptom of something with a dreadful name,
we should regard it as we do any other illusion, as something [107] which
cannot be true if natural law is true and science is correct. This mental attitude
will at once prevent us from being afraid of it; thus it will disappear, for fear
aggravates until trifles become torments. Fear is the food upon which disease
thrives. Deprive it of its food and it will starve to death. When we are well, we
are afraid we shall not remain so. When we are ill, as a result of fear, we are
afraid we shall become worse, and we do, for our fears will always master us
until they are overcome; and we can never overcome them so long as we
believe that error is true or that appearances are real.

"To fly the boar the boar pursues,

Were to incense the boar to follow us
And make pursuit where he did mean no chase."
---Shakespeare

*****

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Divine Science
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 Chapter IV
THE AFFIRMATIVE LIFE

W. John Murray
Mental Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.

[108] Negative thoughts attract negative conditions, even if they do not

actually create them, and it must also be evident that there can be no real
happiness until this destructive practice is discontinued; this goes without
saying, but the question is, "What shall we do to be saved?"

Every sensible man and woman who has suffered from negative thinking in the
form of worry, fear, suspicion or jealousy, has also suffered from insomnia,
dyspepsia, or some other form of nervous or bodily discomfort. It is reasonable
to suppose then that they have tried to overcome such thoughts as have made
such misery-producing consequences in their bodies; but how have they tried
to do it? Usually by exercising will-power, and while they have in [109] many
cases suppressed the external manifestation of their inner emotions, it has been
at the cost, all too frequently, of setting up other negative conditions which
have been just as injurious as if they had given them free rein.

Will-power has its limitations; hence, when the will would be something of
itself, it is like a motor car with insufficient gasoline; it can go just so far and
no farther. We cannot, for instance, will ourselves to believe in the sphericity
of the globe and thus assert the nothingness of the sunrise, but we can learn
that the globe is a sphere, or nearly so, and by so learning we can prove to
ourselves that the sphere revolves and the sun stands still. In such a matter the
will does not enter at all, unless it is in the determination to get at the facts in
the case, but it is always this that we must get at if we would arrive at correct
conclusions. "Knowledge is Power;" therefore it is the knowledge of our
inseverable connection with the Source of all Being that is required, [110] if
we would live the affirmative life. The affirmation of Jesus, "I and the Father
are one," angered the rabbis, but it established a truth, which, when once we
grasp it, makes for a power which nothing else in all the world can confer.

As the warmth and light of the sun are one with the sun and inseverable from
it, so man in his true relation to the Infinite is one with the Infinite as effect is
one with the cause. This one-ness of man with his Maker is a truth, but unless
we know this truth, it will be of little real use to us, for to be a thing and not to
be aware of it, is the same as if we were not it. The son of a king stolen in
infancy by bandits and raised as a bandit is still the son of a king, but unless he
knows this he gains no advantage from the fact. Looking at ourselves from the
standpoint of the material, merely, and knowing no other law than the material,
we are subject to it with its penalties of poverty, pain, passion and general
unhappiness. We are like men sentenced by the lower [111] courts to
imprisonment for crimes they have never committed, and who do not realize
the fact that there are higher courts to which they may appeal.
The lower court of human ignorance has handed down its decision through
long centuries of spiritual stupidity; that man is doomed to sin and sorrow and
sickness, and man has accepted this unjust sentence almost without a protest.
He has felt the injustice of it all but has accepted his misfortunes as do those
innocents who hear the words of a judge who, not knowing all the facts in the
case, says, "Three months at hard labor." Not realizing that there is a higher
court than that of the too often unintelligent magistrate, men make no appeal,
and in a similar manner live lives of sorrow, and sickness, and poverty when
they might be well, and happy, and prosperous if they could be taught to
appeal to something higher than popular opinion, which is almost invariably
wrong.

For centuries this opinion declared that [112] aerial navigation would never be
made possible. It was "contrary to law" said the wise men, who never
acknowledged the possibility of a thing until it struck them in the face and
blackened their eyes. Aviation would be the abolition of the laws of gravitation
and of God alike, said certain theologians, and therefore it could not be, since
these laws, physical and metaphysical, were opposed to it. It is, however,
strange that the things that "can't be done" are so frequently accomplished, and
this without the wiseacres admitting its possibility.

The affirmative life requires that we admit, first of all, that anything that is
really worthwhile is possible, and secondly that we go to work to prove this
fact; for there will be no attempt to perform a feat, physical or mental, until we
make the admission to ourselves that it is possible of performance. It is getting
out of date to say of anything, "It can't be done." The race has been made to
"take it back" so often that it hesitates to voice its gravest doubts. Despite all
the [113] imperfections of the human mind today it is more receptive to new
ideas than ever before. The New Psychology has not come before its time;
neither is it the voice of one crying in the wilderness; it is the supply for a
demand; the answer to a prayer for more light. Demand does not create supply,
it reveals it. The demand for better conditions of mind, body and estate has not
moved God to create a new supply of peace, power and plenty; it has simply
opened the door of thought inward, so that man may see that the things he
seeks are not external to himself but rather "within" him as God-implanted
potentialities, to be worked out through intelligent affirmations of the eternal
and demonstrable Good in his own nature.

When the prophet Joel cried out to the children of Israel, spent with toil,
warfare and privation, "Let the weak say, I am strong," he was antedating
Coue' by thousands of years and going him one better, for as long as one
continues to say, "Day by day in every way I am getting better and better,"
[114] it will imply that he is not yet well, even if he should continue the
affirmation for centuries.

Paul's statement, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me,"
is more positive and more scientific than the modern disciple's, for it reveals
the Source from which Paul is assured of support. Like his Master he knows
that "of himself he can do nothing;" and this is a very necessary thing for
anyone to know. Without steam in the boiler the most perfect machinery in the
world would be useless; without the underlying spiritual substance of all things
words and affirmations are like "sounding brass and tinkling cymbals." The
reason why results follow affirmations, when there is no knowledge of the
underlying substance which gives them their own power, is due to the fact that
this power is employed even when there is no consciousness of its being
employed; on the same principle that one will get illumination by merely
touching a button even when he knows nothing at all [115] about electrical
science; but we must not remain content merely to touch buttons, for some
time we might be called upon to repair a break or a blowout.

Ignorant compliance with law is a good thing, but intelligent co-operation is

better. This is true of mental healing, as it is true of all other things. What is
called Faith-healing is based upon the belief that prayer in its petitionary form
will move God to destroy whatever is distressing, and when this belief is
sufficiently strong, the cure may be established, not because Divine Mind has
been moved from its original position, but because the human mind by the
force of its strong belief, has appropriated through faith a normal condition,
which is lost through fear. "Thy faith hath made thee whole," said Jesus to the
woman who believed that if she could just touch the hem of His garment she
would be made whole. It was not the hem of His garment nor the spoken word
which effected the cure, but her own mental attitude which assured her that if
she could [116] do one thing, another thing would follow as a natural
consequence. It was not necessary for her to know the Law in order to avail
herself of its beneficent potency, any more than it is necessary for a person to
understand the chemistry of food in order to be sustained by it. However, faith-
cure has its limitations, for while the woman was healed in this remarkable
manner, it does not follow that she understood the process or could apply it
scientifically to the cure of another. "What does it matter," says one, "whether
one understands the law or not, so long as one can be benefited by it?" This is a
question prompted by selfishness, for the most natural thing under such
circumstances would be to ask, "What shall we do that we may work the works
of God?"

The New Psychology is the answer to this question, for it tells us that not only
can we be benefited by the mental or spiritual efforts of another, but that we
can so learn the laws of Mind as to avail ourselves of them even as we avail
ourselves of the laws of mathematics [117] in the construction of bridges,
buildings, ships and railroads.

If the parrot-like repetition of a statement like Mr.Coue's, "Day by day in every

way I am getting better and better," can set in motion a healing energy which
will reinvigorate and rebuild, what may not a higher statement based upon an
understood principle do?

If the invalid can learn to say and to think of himself, "I am well because God
is the health of my countenance," and keep on saying it despite slowness of
results, he will reap the fruit of faith in a radical restoration. If at times there
seems to be an increase or intensification of symptoms, let him intensify his
affirmations, for such conditions are often the indications of that change in
consciousness which precedes the complete eradication from his system of all
that has tended to make him miserable. Shakespeare says,

"Before the curing of a strong disease,

Even in the instant of repair and health, [118]
The fit is strongest; evils that take leave,
On their departure most of all show evil."

When the epileptic boy whom the disciples could not heal was treated by
Jesus, it is written, he "wallowed foaming." We must not expect these violent
disturbances, but if they should come, we must know how to handle them.
Above all the noise of such fermentation we should still affirm that, "In that
eternal Presence all is peace; there is no confusion." This will produce a
change similar to that which is produced when oil is poured on troubled
waters.

Mental Medicine is not limited to "trifles light as air," but, like mathematics, it
contains within itself a solution for any and every problem which may present
itself, simple or complex, functional or organic.

*****

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Divine Science
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 Chapter V
THE EXTERNALIZATION OF THOUGHT

W. John Murray
Mental Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.

[119] One of the most profound truths, and one that is of greatest benefit when
understood, is that thought has for its most persistent tendency the trend to
externalize itself. If it were not for this direction there would be nothing for the
human eye to rest upon but an unimproved material world. Nature would not
till her own soil; neither would she use this soil to construct comfortable
dwelling places for man and beast. The sweet harmonies of music, which
delight our souls when expressed in audible tone, would remain forever silent
were it not for the musical thought of man following its natural course towards
the expression of itself. Architecture, which has been spoken of as "frozen
music," is nothing if it is not [120] thought seeking to give form to a mental
picture. Divine Mind, or the Universal Mind, creates substance, but it is the
human or the particular mind which is to shape this substance into such form
as will serve its immediate purposes. When the Scriptures tell us that "God
(Divine Mind) saw all that He had made and behold it was very good" and that,
"He rested from all His labors," it is Wisdom's way of stating that the patterns
of all that we see, or ever shall see, exist in Universal Mind, and that the
function of the human, or particular mentality, is to bring these perfect ideas or
ideals into visible manifestation. This explains the ceaseless striving to
improve upon existing conditions which we see exhibiting themselves on every
hand in that which we call human restlessness and dissatisfaction.

Humanity instinctively realizes it is not getting all out of life that life holds for
it; and no amount of preaching will ever make it "content with such things as it
has." It knows instinctively that "more than we [121] can ask, or think, or even
hope to receive," the Universal has prepared for it from "before the foundation
of the world," or the visible order of things.

As science, physical and metaphysical, advances, we see the evidences of the

power of thought to produce manifold blessings and conveniences of which
our forefathers never dreamed. Forces which were unknown but which
nevertheless existed long before Adam, have been discovered and are now
being utilized, not only to make life more comfortable but actually to prolong
it. The insistent desire for health is due to an inner or intuitional recognition of
man's inalienable right to be well. The insatiable longing for wealth, or
abundance, is also due to an inner feeling that there is enough for all, and that
limitation is not a God-imposed condition, but a man-accepted state of poverty.

As long as man could be persuaded by church and state that there was "just so
much to go around," and that, if the few had much, the many must have little,
all went [122] comparatively well; but as thought expanded and the "common
people" heard gladly that Supply is inexhaustible, there came a mental uprising
and a universal protest. Strikes and revolutions turn the world upside down for
a time, but very frequently they turn it right side up. In the economic world, the
importunities of labor are similar to disease and poverty in the mental world.

The educated man of today is in a state of revolt against anything, and

everything that interferes with his free enjoyment of all that his instinct tells
him he is entitled to. He is dissatisfied and his dissatisfaction is a healthy
dissatisfaction. It is the kind of dissatisfaction which made the stone plough
give place to the steel, and then made the steel, which ploughed only a single
furrow, as obsolete as the stone plough through the introduction of the gang-
plough of today. There is a satisfaction which makes for atavism, or a return to
conditions outgrown, and there is a dissatisfaction which makes for
progression and a prosperity undreamed [123] of by the ancients, or even by
men of our own day, whose thoughts are limited by their fears and false
beliefs.

Thought protesting against injustice makes for revolution when it sees no other
way of escape: thought, protesting against personal limitation, makes for
evolution when the individual realizes that, "Our remedies oft in ourselves do
lie, which we ascribe to heaven." The world and all that is therein is ruled by
thought, but a man who cannot rule his own thoughts and drive them in the
right direction, is like a man who owns a motor car but who cannot guide it.
Such a man is forever at the mercy of his emotions. "Thought takes man out of
servitude, into freedom," according to Emerson, but there are those who call
themselves Emersonians who have not yet grasped the fullness of Truth
embodied in this statement. They know that thought, the thought of freedom
persisted in, made for the abolition of slavery of the black man, but they do not
realize that their own thoughts of sickness [124] have made them sick, neither
do they know that their own thoughts of health will make them well.

Thought accompanied by action, according to well-known mental laws, always

results in what is called material manifestation, as is evidenced by the poet and
his poetry, the dramatist and his drama, the architect and his building. It is for
this reason that we are cautioned by the author of the "Primitive Mind Cure"
[Northwoods note: Warren Felt Evans] "never to lose sight of the deep law of
our being, that all ideas have an inherent tendency to actualize or externalize
themselves in the corporeal organism."

We speak of the tendency of thought to externalize itself as we speak of the

tendency of water to flow down hill, or the tendency of gas or vapor to rise.
Thought, like any other force, has a tendency, and the sooner we realize what
this trend it, the better; for then we can work with it, instead of against it. Most
of us in our ignorance of mental law, and our capacity to utilize it, are making
[125] of our lives a constant "pulling hard against the stream," which results at
best in our making no headway against it, and at worst being swept backward
by its persistent current.

One does not have to be a profound philosopher in order to see before his eyes
the tendency of joy to actualize itself in a smile, or the tendency of anger to
demonstrate itself in a frown; the mere tendency to be observant, not even very
observant, is sufficient. These common illustrations point to the more
pronounced phases of phenomena, as the poverty-thought tendency to express
itself in financial distress; or the old-age thought in the sure and certain
tendency to express itself in wrinkles and decrepitude.

Those who fear poverty close the channels in consciousness through which
opulence is to flow. Those who fear old age see the accumulating evidences of
its advancement every time they observe themselves in the glass, and the thing
they fear most "comes [126] upon them." Fortunately for us there is such a
thing as reversal of process in the mental as in the mechanical world. In the
mechanical world we see this expressed when we turn the tap one way, so that
water may run, and another way, so that it may cease to flow. This turning of
the tap does not create the supply; it simply draws upon it. Neither does it
destroy supply when the tap is turned off; it simply inhibits it. In this we have
an illustration of what thought may do for the individual in the matter of
obtaining what he wants. Thought is unable to create. God has already done
this, but thought can attract or repel supply, according as it is bountiful or
niggardly, courageous or fearful. If then we can remember that the Universal
Mind is supply, inexhaustible and omnipresent, and that the individual human
mind is the channel through which the Universal flows, and the quality of our
thoughts determines the extent of the flow, we shall think so as to attract the
fullest measure of good, the [127] true, and the beautiful. Let us not lose sight
of the fact that "We cannot get a three-inch stream through a one-inch pipe."
Neither must we blame the reservoir, if we do not draw upon it intelligently.

*****

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Divine Science
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 Chapter VI
THE CONSTRUCTIVE POWER OF IMAGINATION

W. John Murray
Mental Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.

[128] In this chapter we shall deal with that which the popular mind regards as
a sort of thinking in the clouds, or such a form of mental abstraction as
indulges in the unprofitable practice of building "castles in the air."
Imagination has been confounded with fancy, even by those who ought to have
known better. We speak of men of imagination as visionary, meaning by the
word, impractical. We do not realize that where there is no vision
(imagination) the people perish.

Imagination is the art and the science of visioning possibilities where, to the
so-called practical mind, there are no possibilities. It is from visioning, or acts
of imagination, that continents have been discovered, Niagaras [129] have
been spanned, and the waters thereof gathered together to propel the wheels of
industry, and to furnish light to numbers of cities and millions of people.
Imagination sees without eyes, that which the so-called practical mind cannot
see with eyes. It is the prophecy of that which has not yet come to pass, but
which must come to pass if the tendency of an idea is to actualize itself.

Beethoven did not fancy his symphonies as some men fancy they would like to
accomplish great and worthy things, but who never do. He imagined the beauty
and harmony of a multitude of tones to produce certain musical effects, and
formed these into such groups as would correspond with his mental pictures of
color and emotion. It was thus that Beethoven's symphonies became
externalized in that form of beauty which millions have heard with delight, but
which Beethoven himself never heard, unless it was with the inner ear.

Edison did not fancy that invisible electricity [130] could be made visible in
terms of a light more luminous than any light which had appeared before, save
the light of the sun. He imagined a medium through which this intangible,
invisible light substance might be converted into that which humanity was
demanding. Always humanity's needs call forth their men of genius to supply
them: that is, the Source has always in readiness a channel through which to
express itself, and in this case Edison was the medium. This does not imply,
necessarily, that God is a respecter of persons; it simply means that the
Universal always responds most quickly to that individual who is nearest in
consciousness, and that person is the one who has spent most time in
contemplating the working of universal law, whether it be in mechanics or
metaphysics.

To imagine, and not merely to fancy, the possibility of aerial navigation, or

submarine travel, is to take such steps as are necessary to make the ideal real;
and the airship or submarine is the subsequent appearance [131] but not the
real thing. The submarine or the airship could be destroyed, but the real thing,
which is the image in mind, or the pattern from which these things or
appearances have taken their rise, will remain and still serve the purpose for
reconstruction. Napoleon said, "Imagination rules the world." His greatest
victories were won as the result of his imagination. He saw just where to
concentrate his strongest points of attack, and then gathered his forces together
at that point. He also pictured or imagined just what his enemies would
naturally be inclined to do, and, forewarned by imagination, he forestalled
them.

Proud science does not realize under what great obligation it is to imagination.
The astronomer imagines the existence of certain clusters of stars long before
he constructs the instruments by means of which to observe or photograph
them. An astronomer without imagination would be like an observatory
without a telescope.

I think it is Fichte who says: "Imagination [132] is the formative power of the
body." If it is true that desire precedes function, and function precedes
organization, then it is for us to understand that method of creation, or
externalization, which is common to God and man alike. First thought, then the
building of the organ of thought, or the brain; then the objective organization
of that upon which thought centers itself. If man (the soul) is the image of God,
an idea in the mind of God, may it not be that the body of man, with all its
peculiarities of formation and malformation, as well as sensation, is the image
or conception which man entertains of himself? If this is so, may it not be that
imagination, or the image-making faculty, is back of all integration or
disintegration, as the case may be? In other words, is Spencer right when he
says:

"For of the soule the bodie forme doth take;

For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make"?

It is very important for us to know the great part that imagination plays in the
[133] cause and cure of disease. An imaginary disease is not something that
should justify us in being unsympathetic with the person suffering from it, as
we are so often tempted to be; nor is it something at which materialistic
physicians should scoff. To the sufferer, it is very real, and no amount of
ridicule is going to heal it. Nothing but the substitution of a new image will
suffice to eradicate from the chamber of imagery the mental picture or image
of disease which the sufferer is superimposing upon his body. How to
substitute an idea of health for a thought of disease, is the secret which a new
and true psychology has come to teach. Of this we shall speak later; what we
wish to do now is to emphasize the fact that imagination is that faculty of the
mind which conceives an idea, and then leaves it to the will to execute; as
when the architect conceives a plan and then leaves it to the draughtsman to
outline and fill in, and the contractor to construct.

We learn in physical science that inertia is [134] a property, and a necessary

condition of matter. This includes the body of man, as it includes the body of
the world, or what we call physical nature. Matter is not self-acting, but is
always acted upon, whether it be by what we call nature in the case of the
material world of material phenomena, or in the case of thought upon the
human body. What we call changes in the material world are such things as
take place according to nature's processes, and, in like manner, the changes
which take place in the human body are effects which follow mental changes
from the negative to the positive, or vice versa.

One day we shall learn that the same power which enables the potter to
transform clay into vases, will enable us to transform, through imagination,
sorrow into joy, weakness into strength, failure into success, fear into faith, and
limitation into abundance.

Imagination is only a mode of thought, and its power is only an illustration of

the power of Thought.

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 Chapter VII
THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND

W. John Murray
Mental Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.

[135] In the science of mind it is doubtful if anything of greater importance has

been brought to light than that vast submerged storehouse of memories which
modern psychologists speak of as the subconscious mind. One likens it to that
infinitely greater portion of an iceberg which is under the water, while all that
appears is a more or less scanty surface. Another speaks of it as that great
depth of the ocean of mind which maintains its perpetual calm despite the
turbulence which may be occurring on the surface; while another speaks of it
as a sort of phonographic disk, which receives impressions only to repeat them
again when proper conditions are provided for the repetition.

Innumerable instances are on record to prove that, independent of the

conscious [136] mind, the subconscious mind may receive impressions which
it will carry out with infallible exactitude. It is because of this that hypnotized
subjects, when all conscious objections to the absurdity of things are inhibited,
carry out those suggestions which are made to them and which cause them to
act as if they were swimming on dry land and climbing up ladders where no
ladders exist. These phases of undoubted phenomena would be of no real value
in themselves were it not for the fact that they point to something higher and
more useful than themselves.

We know that the conscious mind of the individual is the smallest part of the
thinking entity and that it is largely, if not exclusively, limited to that form of
information which reaches it through the avenue of the senses, while the
subconscious mind is open to impressions from three sources. First of all it is
impressed by what is conveyed to it by objective things; then it is impressed by
what reaches it from that stream [137] of thought which is spoken of as "race
belief;" and then again it is impressed by those thoughts which have been
generated by all the high and holy thinking of the spirits of "just men made
perfect."

We are told that the subconscious mind never initiates; that is, it never starts
any train of reasoning on its own account; but follows whatever is conveyed to
it from any of the sources above mentioned. This is why it has been likened to
a phonographic disk which receives impressions only to give them back again
on demand, and this whether these impressions are harmonious or discordant;
for the office of the subconscious mind is not to select but to serve. When this
is better understood we shall be more careful of the thoughts we think and the
suggestions we permit to find their way through the conscious mind into the
subconscious. We shall be on our guard against the suggestions which come to
us from what we see, such as advertisements of patent medicines, which not
infrequently cause the susceptible [138] to fancy they have the malady for
which the patent medicine is recommended; from what we hear in the form of
conversations about recent operations; and what we read in the papers
concerning deaths, divorces and disasters of various names and natures.

Physicians will be more careful and considerate concerning their all too
frequently outspoken diagnosis of certain cases as "incurable," especially
within the hearing of the patient. One day it will be considered unethical to
look hopeless in the presence of an invalid. A physician's smile of
encouragement will be worth more than all his drugs to his patient, while his
increased success in the art of healing will undoubtedly add to his income. A
hint to the wise in the profession is sufficient. Older physicians have seen their
so-called incurables get well and remain well so often that they are somewhat
loath to use the word incurable any longer. Materia medica is not the last word,
for there is that mysterious thing the doctors call vis medicatrix natura which
[139] does strange and unaccountable things, amazing the doctors as well as
delighting their patients.

Vis medicatrix natura may be only another name for that which the modern
psychologist calls race subconsciousness; that vast reservoir which contains all
the thoughts of the race since time began; just as individual subconsciousness
contains all the forgotten as well as remembered thoughts of the individual.
What we call instinct in the sick animal, which causes it to select such food
and herbs as make for restoration, may be nothing other than general
subconsciousness welling up to meet some particular need.

Animals and young children do not oppose subconscious promptings as a rule.

Adults reason themselves away from these suggestions as a result of the bias of
an education, which has not, until recently, taken the subconscious into
consideration. And yet, see what great things are attributable to its processes!
The most vital processes of [140] man's organism are controlled by
subconscious thought. It is the subconscious which forms bones, nerves, and
muscles, and reforms them as old cells give place to new ones. It is the
subconscious mind which governs circulation, assimilation, digestion,
breathing, etc. It is to subconscious processes that the action of the liver, lungs,
and heart are due. Why should not man learn to co-operate consciously with
the subconscious? Is it that he has persuaded himself that this is not possible,
or may it be that he has never given any thought to it at all?

We do not feel that it is enough for us to have a muscular system. We are

convinced that this muscular system needs to be exercised in order to retain its
vigor and elasticity, and we do this exercising consciously and deliberately.
We do not feel that it is enough for us to be provided with intellectual
capacities. We strive with intellectual capacities. We strive to expand these
capacities through study and a keen desire for information, both of which are
exercise for [141] the mind, as walking and other things are exercise for the
body. In the same way we should not feel that it is enough for us to have a
subconscious mind, for unless we make some use of it we might as well not
have it.

If you have ever been in a foundry you must have been interested in that part
of it which is given over to the casting of things. Here is a huge box in which is
kept great quantities of sand, and here are many other boxes, or frames, into
which this sand is put in order to receive the impressions of those patterns
which hang on the walls. When these patterns or moulds have been made in the
sand, the box is then tightly closed, and through an aperture in the top of the
box the molten metal is poured, finding its way into the depressions made for it
by the patterns. When the metal has become cold it is taken out in such forms
or shapes as the patterns are intended to produce. The pattern of the elephant
does not come out as the design of a dog, nor that of the dog [142] as the
elephant: each is true to its own particular form. It is the same with
consciousness and subconsciousness. Consciousness is constantly pouring
liquid thought into the receptive sand of the subconscious mind, and there it
assumes the form of the mental picture of perfection, or of imperfection, as the
case may be.

The liquid thought of fear will not assume the solid shape of courage; neither
will the liquid thought of disease assume the solid form of health; formless
thought like formless metal will assume the shape of that into which it is
poured.

Every thought we think, if we think it persistently, tends to create the prototype

of that which will surely come to pass, unless we reverse the process. The
subconsci"I am ill," it is like an order given to a faithful servant which will be
carried out faithfully and at once, or, if you say or even think, "I am well,"
everything within you [143] will tend at once to carry out this idea. "As a man
thinketh in his heart (subconscious mind), so is he" (in his body and in his
affairs).

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 Chapter VIII
SUGGESTION AND AUTO-SUGGESTION

W. John Murray
Mental Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.

[144] Speaking of suggestion and auto-suggestion, Mr. Coue' says: "It is a

method which every one should follow--the sick to obtain healing, the healthy
to prevent the coming of disease in the future. By its practice we can insure for
ourselves, all our lives long, an excellent state of health, both of the mind and
of the body." Whatever biased physicians may say, there is abundant evidence
to prove that Mr. Coue' has accomplished marvelous results by suggestion, and
that he has also taught those who have come to him to heal themselves by their
own power of auto-suggestion, which he declares is the secret of all the healing
that he has ever accomplished, for it is his opinion that unless the patient
"believes" and acts as if he believed, [145] there will be no lasting benefit; if
indeed there will be any benefit at all.

Has it not been said of One greater than Coue' that "He did there no mighty
works because of their unbelief?"

There are those who believe that the sick can be healed regardless of their
belief or lack of it, but this is as foolish as it is to believe that a person can
communicate with another person over a telephone whether or not he takes
down the receiver. There is as much law back of the communication of a
sanative idea from one mind to another as there is back of a conversation over
the telephone between one person and another. Any suggestion that does not
become an auto-suggestion is valueless on the same principle that any truth
spoken by one to another, which does not become an accepted truth, is as
nothing; for it is as true now as it ever was that, "Ye shall know the Truth, and
the Truth shall make you free."

The numeration table is a suggestion to the child-consciousness of the basis of

mathematics [146] which he is taught to memorize long before he knows what
he is doing, and frequently before he is reconciled to the necessity of it, for the
child would much rather play than memorize numeration tables and alphabets.
What is the object of memorizing if it is not to impress the subconscious mind
of the child with the truth of mathematics, or rather the basis or foundation of
it, so that it will have something to build upon as it advances in understanding?
In the child's future use of the science of numbers, instead of having to look up
in the written or printed numeration tables the relation which one number bears
to another, he will have it at his "finger tips," nay, it will be closer, for it will
be in his "heart" or subconscious mind. When we learn a thing "by heart" it
simply means that we have impressed it upon the subconscious from which it
will spring forth spontaneously as occasion requires, so that we shall do almost
automatically, what once we did through conscious effort.
[147] A suggestion to a patient from another, or an auto-suggestion by the
patient to himself of the truth of his being, so that he will say when he is to all
appearances very ill, "I am well," may have as little real meaning for him as
the suggestion has for the child who says to himself "three and two makes
five," during his period of memorization, but the fact remains that he is
nevertheless memorizing a truth, as time will reveal in both cases, if the
suggestion is persisted in.

Educators have not generally known this; therefore, when the child has said
petulantly, "Why should I repeat this over and over again?" the reply has been,
"You cannot learn it in any other way." Of course this is true, but it is not all of
the truth and the child is no more reconciled than he was before. It should be
explained to the child, as it is by teachers who are students of the new
psychology; for they are teaching their little pupils that every time they repeat
the numeration table, an impression is being made upon something inside of
them; just [148] as every time they strike their lead pencil against a sheet of
white paper a little black mark is made, which will be added to by another
black mark with each successive strike until a patch of black will be the result.

Modern teachers of the languages are now realizing that students are impressed
more by what they hear than by what they see; and so instead of having them
study dry and difficult verbs in silence, words and phrases are memorized as
children memorize them by speaking or reading them aloud. In this way a
vocabulary is evolved, small to be sure, but always on the increase until this
vocabulary can be used to ask questions and to give answers. Rules of
grammar and syntax come later, as they should, when they will not bewilder
and confuse, as they so often do when the cart of verb conjugation is put before
the horse of memorized words and phrases.

Let the student of a foreign language be able to ask for what he wants, no
matter [149] how simply; then there is an incentive to go on; but with a head
full of the grammar of it and a heart filled with fear of giving expression to it,
he is more helpless than the infant who can make its wants known in a
language which has been acquired by a purely subconscious method of
absorption.

As a result of suggestion or auto-suggestion the plastic substance of the

subconscious mind receives our mental pictures and returns them to us, much
in the same fashion that echoes result from sound. Not infrequently we mistake
our own for the thoughts of others, as children are apt to think that the echo of
their own voices are the voices of other children in the far-off hills from which
the sound seems to come. Until we learn that the origin and the remedy alike of
all our ills lies within ourselves, our maladies seem to proceed from other
sources than our own thoughts and emotions. It may not be pleasant to
discover that our difficulties are largely, if not entirely, of our own creating;
but there is vast compensation in the discovery [150] that the same power of
thought which made us ill, will make us well again. The same power which
will make a motor car go forward, will also make it go backward. What
reversal is to the motor car, suggestion is to the man. It is indispensable then
for us to suggest only such things to ourselves and others as will make for
health and happiness.

Man's body and his affairs generally are as sensitive to thought and
imagination as the mercury in the thermometer is sensitive to atmospheric
changes, the difference being that the thermometer cannot resist while man can
and should.

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 Chapter IX
THE SCIENCE OF IMPARTATION

W. John Murray
Mental Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.

[151] It might be well to state just what we mean by impartation before we say
anything on this subject, for when this word is understood, it will make it
easier for us to appreciate the fact that, in the science of mental therapeutics, it
has a spiritual as well as a mental aspect. It is this spiritual aspect which we
reach last but which is the most enduring and the most instantaneous in its
results.

We have given due credit to suggestion, auto and otherwise, but it has its
limitations just as the mathematician has his limitations, until he masters those
phases of higher mathematics which enable him to solve problems which he
could never solve without this higher knowledge, for there are degrees in
everything.

[152] We think we have said everything we can about impartation when we

say that it means "to give off" or to make another a "sharer of," as when the
teacher imparts information to a child who profits by the information without
lessening the teacher's fund of it; or, as when we say, "the sun imparts light and
heat," and this without any diminution of its own energy; but this word
Impartation is now receiving through the new psychology, a significance
which elucidates some of the miracles of the Master, which, when they are
explained, cease to be miracles and reveal themselves as natural consequences.

It is not a miracle that fire should produce heat or that a flower should diffuse
perfume, and one day we shall see that it was not a miracle that a woman was
healed, or that Jesus should say, "I perceive that virtue hath gone out of me,"
when that healing took place. The latter was just as much the outworking of
natural law as the former, but we must understand the quality of what Ian
Maclaren calls "The Mind of The Master" [153] before we can appreciate what
is meant by the saying, "virtue hath gone out of me."

When the sun's rays are utilized for any purpose whatsoever, it does not mean
that the sun has lost any of its energy; when electricity is drawn upon by any
means whatsoever, it does not mean that electricity has become to that extent
devitalized; when a happy person radiates happiness it does not signify that he
becomes less happy in consequence; and so, when virtue went out of Jesus, it
was simply that He imparted or radiated the healing energy of the Holy Spirit
without any sense of personal exhaustion no matter how conscious He was of
the occurrence.

The Mind of the Master was so persistently attuned to the Mind of All that
health and healing flowed through it as light streams through a window-pane
when the shade is raised, and this with no more sense of debilitation than is
occasioned in the window-pane when the light streams through it.
Notwithstanding this, and believing that [154] it is the human mind which
works these changes, many suggestionists, speaking of their work for
humanity, say, "It takes a great deal out of me." It is for this reason, then, that
we must,--would we do the "greater things" He said we should do,--rise higher
than the mere intellectual perception of the supremacy of mind over matter, to
the realization of Spirit over mind and matter alike.

Rejoicing over the steps we have taken in the science of mind, we must not too
readily conclude that we have arrived at our destination when as yet we are
merely at the halfway house. In addition to “thinking the truth” we must "live
the Life," for thus we shall become "endued with power from on high."
Without this spiritual equipment we can do little, if anything, for "The Son can
do nothing of Himself." If this were true of Jesus, how much more so is it to
us?

Speaking of the healing art of Jesus, Evans says: "He identified Himself with
God, and co-operated with this Divine healing [155] conatus in the human
body, and thus greatly intensified its therapeutic action. In raising the patient
from disease to health, He lifted Him in the same direction, and in concert with
God. He plainly asseverates that He did nothing but that which was the will of
His Father." Why may not a sincere disciple of Jesus become in this, a copy of
the Master, and do the same? By acting in unison with the Divine power in
nature, which is perceived already at work in the case, we may be empowered
to restore the sufferer to his normal state of soundness in both mind and body.
This is effected not by a miracle, but by an accelerated process of nature, as in
the case of the cures wrought by Jesus. All the wonderful achievements of
modern science and the useful arts, as telegraphy, photography, and ten
thousand results of machinery, are effected in the same way. In all human
endeavor, conformity to nature is union with God. But there is a higher realm
of nature than that whose laws we generally recognize in [156] our superficial
sciences and shallow philosophies,--an almost unexplored region of law in
relation to the action of Spirit on matter, and of the soul upon its body. If, in
the effort to cure disease, I can find out how God is doing it, and conform my
healing endeavor to the Divine method, I come into line with Him, and march
behind the veiled God-head to the desired result. I can conform my effort to the
creative Thought here, as I can act in accordance with the Divine law of
gravitation in bringing the water from a spring on the mountain side into my
habitation.

It is now the opinion of the most advanced students of the New Psychology
that he who lives most nearly the life of Christ will do the best healing work. If
the spiritualized human consciousness is the channel through which Divine
Mind functions as health and healing, it follows as a natural consequence, that
sin in the healer will be like specks on a window-pane, which, to the extent of
their size and solidity, will obscure that Light, [157] which can alone dissipate
the darkness of a mind diseased.
Suggestion without spirituality may succeed for a time but its limitations will
be exposed at moments of great crisis just as the sorcerers of Egypt failed in
the presence of Aaron's exhibition of Divine power.

There are degrees of power, but the highest degree is that which is closest to
the Source of power, which is God, the Universal Mind.

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 Chapter X
THE PRAYER OF FAITH

W. John Murray
Mental Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.

[158] When James the Apostle said, "The prayer of faith shall save the sick,"
he must have realized that there were many prayers which were not prayers of
faith. Mrs. Browning must have known it also, when she said, "An ill prayer
God uses as a foolishness, to which he gives no answer."

The countless prayers which have received no answer, have resulted in doubt
and despair on one hand, and a foolish attempt to explain the reason for it on
the other. There are some things which even an omnipotent God cannot do and
one of them is to work in opposition to His own laws. During the late war, God
could not answer the individual prayers of those so-called Christians who were
slaughtering each other, and asking Him at the same time for victory to [159]
perch on their respective banners. It is no denial of the omnipotence of God to
say that He could not answer such "foolish prayers;" it is merely a reflection on
the ignorance which would ask an impartial Father to show partiality.

There is a science of prayer just as there is a science of chemistry, and of

mathematics. Who would pray the science of chemistry to make combinations
of elements which cannot be combined? Or who would ask the science of
mathematics to support or justify a false calculation? Believing that God has
made us sick, as so many of us have been taught to believe, and also believing
that God never changes His mind, because He is "immutable," would it not be
more logical to accept the condition and save our breath for other purposes,
than to waste it in useless petition? This does not mean that prayer is valueless
any more than it means that steam is worthless. It simply means that Prayer,
like steam, must be properly employed if it is to have the desired results.

[160] Prayer is as natural to a soul in sorrow or sickness as a bark is to a dog. It

is a cry of desperation at a certain stage of our development, and an impulse of
aspiration at a higher stage of our unfoldment. Constant importuning on the
part of man is no more commendable than is constant barking on the part of a
dog. The soul should be engaged in something higher than seeking after petty
personal benefactions. It should hold itself in such relation to the Universal that
benefactions would gravitate in the direction of man, as the vivifying warmth
of the sun flows in the direction of the sunflower which opens itself to the light
in the morning.

This is the highest form of prayer; the lower forms we are all perfectly familiar
with. What we need at present is that form of prayer which produces results, as
unerringly as inner calculations in the science of numbers result in outer
solutions of mathematical problems. Limitations, mental, moral, physical and
financial, are the problems that are now pressing for solution, and [161] the old
methods will not do any more than "The old oaken bucket" will suffice for a
city's need of water.

If I were speaking in terms of theology, I would say that, with every increasing
need of humanity, God has provided a way to meet that need, and the need for
a more effective prayer has brought to light a supply for this demand, as it will
for all other demands. "Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the
highest point of view," says Emerson, and if we will examine this statement in
addition to reading it, we shall see more in it than appears on the surface. What
are the facts of life? Science is steadily acquainting us with the facts of the
objective world, but how about the facts of life, or the spiritual universe? Is
there a science by which we can distinguish between the real and the apparent
in the world of mind, as we can in the world of matter? Can we say that a
mirage on land or sea is an appearance to our senses, which must be repudiated
by our science if we are to understand [162] it for the illusion it is? Of course
we can, and no scientist will disagree with us. When we contemplate the facts
of life from the highest point of view, can we say that the mirage of evil is a
something which appears to our senses but which our science must repudiate if
we are to overcome it? Of course we can, and no true philosopher will take
issue with us.

Starting with Divine Principle, as the only Cause from which all real effects
proceed, we are contemplating the facts of life from the scientific point of
view, and as we do this we see things as they are in truth.

In the case of the man with the withered arm, Jesus did no pray God to restore
it to its original usefulness, as we have been taught to believe. His prayer was
not a petition but a recognition, a recognition of a fact of life which was
immutable and unassailable, and as a result of this recognition it was a
command. The recognition of the great fact of life that man, the effect, must be
like God, the Cause, on the principle that [163] "A good tree cannot bring forth
evil fruit," produced a state of mind in Jesus which enabled Him to speak with
authority, and not as "the scribes and pharisees." If Perfection, which God
certainly is, cannot ultimate itself in imperfection, then that which appeared to
His senses as a withered arm must be denied, and when this was denied and the
opposite of it affirmed in Silence, or contemplation, He could say, "Stretch
forth thine hand" and it was as He saw it.

One day we shall understand what the Master psychologist meant when He
said, "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" When we do, our
prayers will be affirmations of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. We shall
deny the power of evil by the recognition of God as the ALL-POWER, which
admits of no other power.

When the science of prayer is understood, and petition gives place to

affirmation, and supplication to the intelligent recognition of the all-power of
Good, discord will disappear as darkness is dissipated when light [164] bursts
upon it. Then the illusion of a withered arm will give place to the actuality of
perfect ones. Let us bear in mind however, that only the prayer of faith will
accomplish this mental transformation.
Faith is not to be limited to trust, no matter how strong this trust is; nor to
belief, no matter how profound this belief may be. It includes these but it
cannot be limited to them. Faith is that which transcends the senses and
perceives that which cannot be seen or known by these senses. It is that
capacity of the soul to see the ideal back of the apparent, and to make the ideal
real. The apparent arm was withered according to sense, but Jesus, looking
through the senses into the realm of the real, saw God where disease seemed to
be. He visualized and His vision or mental picture became actualized as it
always will be if we hold it unwaveringly.

"If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them."--John 13:17

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 Chapter XI
THE HEALING INTENTION

W. John Murray
Mental Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.

[165] According to Fichte in his "Destination of Man," the will (intention) is

the effective cause, the living principle of the world of spirit (mind), as motion
is of the world of sense (matter). "I stand between two opposite worlds; the one
visible, in which the act alone avails, the other invisible and incomprehensible,
acted on only by the will (intention). I am an active force in both these worlds.
My will (intention) embraces both. The will (intention) is in itself a constituent
part of the transcendental world. By my free determination I change and set in
motion something in this transcendental world, and my energy gives birth to an
effect that is new, permanent, and imperishable."

The reason why I have inserted the word [166] "intention" after the word
"will", is in order to distinguish the word "will" from the popular use of it, as
when one speaks of a stubborn person as the wilful or self-willed person.

Then again the word "intention" implies a mental picture of a specific act to be
performed, as when we say, "It is my intention to go home." We have a mental
picture of ourselves doing so, and enjoying the comfort thereof, and this
without any strain, as is the case in the exercise of what we call an effort of the
will. A good intention is an inner consent of the mind to do something
worthwhile without noise or ostentation, and always this intention sees the
thing intended as completed in mind and only requiring the element of time to
complete it in matter or the world of sense.

Back of every good intention there is the omnipotence of Good itself, just as
behind every effort to secure light, physical or material, there is light only
awaiting our intention [167] to possess ourselves of it and utilize it.

In another place Fichte says, "Every virtuous resolution (intention) influences

the omnipotent will, or mind, (if I may be allowed to use such an expression)
not in consequence of a momentary approval, but of an everlasting Law of His
being." The response of electricity to the turning of the switch is not due to
momentary approval, but to the everlasting law of its nature, or being. I think,
when we once understand that responses to prayer are not due to "momentary
approval," but to the action of Universal Mind to our particular good
intentions, we shall have more faith in our affirmations of health and
wholeness, than we ever had when we begged for blessings.

When Fichte says, "By my free determination (or affirmation) I set in motion
something in this trancendental world" (of mind), he is merely in advance of
Haanel in "Mental Chemistry," who says, "Radio-activity consists in setting in
motion certain [168] electric vibrations, which, after passing through the ether,
record themselves on a distant receiver. The whole system depends on the
intangible substance known as ether. It is a substance invisible, colorless,
odorless, inconceivably rarefied, which fills all space."

What ether is to the physical world, mind is to the mental world, and who shall
say where one begins and the other ends, or whether they are not the same
substance under different names? If, through radioactivity, form can be
generated in the formless ether, why should not the intentional activity of
specific thinking generate form in the formless Universal Mind?

Speaking along the same lines from a different point of view Troward says, in
his "Edinburgh Lectures" concerning the impersonality of the Universal Mind,
"It has no intention, because it is impersonal. As I have already said, the
Universal Mind works by a law of averages for the advancement of the race,
and is in no way concerned [169] with the particular wishes of the individual.
If his wishes are in line with the forward movement of the everlasting
principle, there is nowhere in Nature any power to restrict him in their
fulfillment. If they are opposed to the general forward movement, then they
will bring him into collision with it, and it will crush him. From the relation
between them it results that the same principle which shows itself in the
individual mind as will, becomes in the Universal Mind a Law of Tendency;
and the direction of this tendency must always be to life-givingness, because
the universal Mind is the undifferentiated Life-spirit of the universe. Therefore
the test in every case is whether our particular intention is in this same lifeward
direction; and if it is, then we may be absolutely certain that there is no
intention on the part of the Universal Mind to thwart the intention of our own
individual mind: we are dealing with a purely individual force, and it will no
more oppose us by [170] specific plans of its own than will steam or
electricity."

Knowing that the universal tendency of water is to flow down, we provide

such channels as will tend to give such specific direction to it as will insure
irrigation for our lands, and water supply for our homes. Knowing now, in a
more scientific way than we have ever known before, that it is the tendency of
the Universal Mind to flow down into individual minds in terms of "life-
givingness" all we have to do is to provide such channels of thoughts as will
tend to give such direction to Universal Mind as will insure health and
happiness.

Whenever it is our intention to heal ourselves or others by applied psychology,

or the power of directed thought, this intention sets into motion the force or
energy necessary to the production of this result. It first acts in and on the
Universal Mind, as certain electric vibrations act in the ether through which
they pass, into personal experience in the form of that particular blessing we
seek.

[171] If we are working for ourselves, we can make our affirmations aloud, so
that two senses will be effected at the same time; or we can work in Silence
making such affirmations as will be conveyed to the subconscious mind, which
will give back to us through the mediating principle, messenger, or go-
between, the finished product of our mental picture, as when a photograph is
developed in the dark room. If we are working with healing intention for
another, it is preferable at first to approach him through silent affirmation in
order to avoid unnecessary argument and unconscious opposition, which is apt
to occur until one becomes familiar with the laws governing psychology.

As the patient improves he will naturally become more receptive to the new
idea, after which the work will be more in the nature of teaching than of
healing, for if a student is properly taught he can heal himself.

If we comprehend the principles laid down in what has been written so far, we
are in a position to know that Thought is the most [172] active force in the
universe, for it is by means of Thought that all other forces are caused to serve
the highest interests of man. "Thought speaks, and the will responds." Jesus
thinks, and then says, "Take up thy bed and walk," and the will of the palsied
man responds to this command, and what we call a cure is established. It is
merely that the will of one has responded to the thought of the other, and the
combination is a process of mental chemistry which is no more to be marveled
at than that water should be the natural outcome of a combination of hydrogen
and oxygen. Is it a miracle that two invisible gases should, when combined,
result in visible water? Why then consider it a miracle, or an impossibility for
the two invisible gases of thought and intention, or will, when brought
together, to result in such a combination as shows forth in physical healing?

Mr. Coue' is right when he says that imagination is superior to will. The will
alone is like an untrained animal, but under the [173] direction of the
imagination and pure thought, it becomes combined with these in the
production of visible manifestations of invisible substances. When man is no
longer at the mercy of what he calls his strong will, so that when he would do
good he finds his will taking the other direction, he will guide his will as he
now guides his horse or his motor car.

*****

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 Chapter XII
THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE

W. John Murray
Mental Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.

[174] Thought transference is not a new invention by some modern cult; it is a

rediscovery of the most ancient of all methods of communication. When one
stops to think, it is the only way by which man can communicate with God, or
God communicate with man, for there are no convenient material means such
as the wireless. Either we communicate with God in prayer telepathically, or
we communicate not at all.

The communication of thought, from one mind to another without the use of
the spoken word, has been practiced from time immemorial by spiritually
developed men or adepts, and the only reason there are not more adepts is that
there are not more spiritually developed men; and the only reason there are not
more divinely enlightened men [175] is that men as a rule "love darkness
rather than light." Adepts are not especially endowed any more than experts in
any line are especially endowed; they are like geniuses because they have "a
tremendous capacity for hard work." If we conclude that a thing cannot be
accomplished, we shall make no attempt to accomplish it; this does not mean
that another who does believe it cannot effectively accomplish it.

Projecting thought from one mind to another is no more difficult than sending
messages from one ship to another; yet it is only a few years ago that very few
shared Marconi’s "crazy notions" in regard to wireless.

Wireless messages are sent in perfect conformity with natural laws, and what
are called "Absent Treatments" are given effectively in conformity with laws
that are just as natural; for law is law, and all law is One Law, susceptible of
countless methods of application. Thought is not only the most real thing in the
world; it is the most far-reaching [176] thing in the universe. It abolishes time
and space, and renders matter penetrable and unobstructive. Experiments in
telephony and telegraphy are bringing to light the fact that "matter offers no
successful resistance to mind," as every schoolboy knows who listens in on the
radio. There are vibrations of sound too low for us to hear, and there are
vibrations of sound too high for us to hear, but we are told that there are some
forms of life which hear both of the extremes which we cannot hear.

In "Isis Unveiled" we read, "As the physical ear discerns the vibrations of the
atmosphere (or ether) only up to a certain point, not yet definitely fixed, but
varying with the individual, so the adept, whose interior hearing has been
developed, can take the sound at this vanishing-point and hear its vibrations in
the astral light indefinitely. He needs no wires, helices, or sounding-boards; his
will-power (spiritual intention or attention) is all sufficient. Hearing with the
spirit, time and distance offer no impediments, [177] and so he may converse
with another adept at the antipodes with the same ease as though they were in
the same room."

You have not tried this perhaps and so you doubt it, but you must remember
that your doubt cannot upset an established fact. When the old farmer was told
that he could talk with his son in Chicago over the telephone, he himself being
in a lawyer's office in New Jersey, he stubbornly refused to try,
notwithstanding that the matter which needed to be settled required immediate
attention.

It is not necessary to be an adept to get a message over the telephone from

Chicago to New Jersey; all that is essential is to be willing to take up the
receiver, and the trick is done. It is not a trick at all; it is natural when you
know how.

When the centurion went to the Master, asking Him to heal his servant, Jesus
said: "I will come and heal him," but the centurion answered: "Nay Lord, I am
not worthy [178] that thou shouldst enter under my roof. Speak the Word only
and my servant shall be healed." If this is not equivalent to saying, "Project thy
healing Thought by a method of mental action and my servant shall be
restored," I do not know what it is. He was not to shout through space in the
effort to make Himself heard audibly by the man in a far-off place; He was
merely to think truly and the Word or silent communication would do its own
work, as was evidenced by the actual fact when the centurion reached his
home, for it is written, "his servant was healed in the selfsame hour." When we
understand the laws which govern thought-transmission, we shall see that this
incident was as natural and normal as that air should come into a room when
the window is raised or the door opened. We cannot see a sanative idea
projected from one mind to another, but we can feel the beneficial effect of
both, and this is the issue of importance. When the man in the Scriptures [179]
said to those who doubted his cure of blindness: "Whereas I was blind, now I
see," he was acknowledging the blessing even though he could not explain the
modus operandi by which it had been brought about.

This is precisely what thousands of people are doing today. They are testifying
at mid-week meetings, and other places, to cures of so-called incurable
ailments, without making any pretense of comprehending the underlying
principle back of their restorations. It is natural, however, for the inquiring soul
whose body has been restored, to want to know by what means or method
these cures have been accomplished. This accounts for the rapid growth of the
New Psychology, which is nothing more nor less than Primitive Apostolic
Christianity restored to twentieth century progressiveness.

During the war a sensitive mother whose son was at the front was awakened
one night by her son coming into the room and saying to her something which
she interpreted to mean that he had been badly [180] wounded. She aroused
her husband and told him of her experience which was as real to her as if it had
happened in broad daylight. She was fully awake. Her husband sought to calm
her, and finally succeeded in getting her back to sleep. Weeks went by and no
word came until one day news arrived from the War Office informing them
that the son had been badly wounded on the exact date of his mother's
experience and that he had passed away as a result of his injuries.

Such things have happened so often that they can neither be ascribed to miracle
nor coincidence, and since this is true, it is the purpose of the New Psychology
to discover the law and work with it intelligently. We have no idea how much
we are helped or injured by the thoughts of others. The more delicately attuned
we are to the spiritual the more sensitive we are to thoughts; if these are good
and pure we can accept them and make them our own; if they are bad we can
reject them and cast them out of consciousness.

[181] Cornelius Agrippa is credited with saying, "Out of everybody proceed

images, individual substances, and on that account a man is in a condition to
impart his thoughts to another man who is hundreds of miles away." Now, if
you wish to put this to the test, try sometime when someone dear to you is ill,
so far away that you cannot reach him in person, to reach him in spirit. Go into
your room alone; compose yourself. Relax all over. "Be still and know" that
God is all in all, in your beloved one as in all things else. Fill your
consciousness with the conviction of the abiding Presence, and fill it so full
with this conviction that the belief in the presence of anything else will be
impossible to you. Feel that just as the atmosphere in which you live and
breathe is everywhere, so the presence of God is in every place, surrounding
and permeating your loved one, as ether surrounds and permeates all things.
Realize that in this Presence there is nothing "that maketh or worketh a lie" and
that sickness is a lie, "and the [182] Truth is not in it." Know that if God is the
Author of sickness it is incurable, for that which He creates shall stand forever.
Know that if God does not create sickness, it is a shadow cast by wrong
thinking which you, by right-thinking, or righteousness, can cure. Silently tell
your loved one there is nothing to fear, and this will tend to calm his troubled
thoughts as the assurances of the mother tends to dissipate fear from the mind
of her child. The worst feature of all disease is fear, and when this is overcome,
the sick will rise as a spring rises when a weight is removed from it. Fear is a
weight which keeps a patient down when he should be up and about. Do not be
afraid that your unspoken thoughts will not reach your distant patient. The
Marconi operator is not afraid that his message will not reach the ship to which
he is sending it merely because there are no wires between. Take your example
from him and keep on telling your loved one in the Silence that he is well,
perfectly well, because God made him so and [183] keeps him so. See him
with your mind's eye in the full possession of that perfect health to which man,
made in God's image, is entitled. Expect a good report in due time, as you
expect an answer to your wireless, and then dismiss the case from your mind
until evening or morning as the case may be. Above all things, have faith in
your unspoken message of Truth, and it shall not return unto you void.

It has been found by every person who is engaged in mental or spiritual

healing, that when a patient at a distance is in a receptive mood and is anxious
to be healed, the silent impartation of the truth of his being is taken up by his
subconscious mind, which commences at once to work out in objective form
the mental picture of health imposed upon it.
It goes without saying that the same principle which will work for another will
also work in the direction of self-healing. If erroneous thinking is manifesting
itself in some form of bodily discomfort or disease, [184] we must seek the
seclusion of our rooms and take ourselves in hand, and talk to ourselves as we
would to another person, remembering that it is to the subconscious mind we
are addressing ourselves, and also remembering that this mind is extremely
sensitive to suggestion and that its creative power will work accurately to
produce whatever impression is given to it in the silence.

There is relativity in metaphysics as there is in mathematics, and it should be

our object in self-healing to take thought out of the relative and lift it through
truth to the plane of the absolute where all is perfection. Apart from all that is
relative we must impress the subconscious mind with those "facts of life"
which obtain on the plane of the perfect or pure spirit.

Unless we do this we are not working as Jesus worked, and unless we labor as
Jesus labored, we shall not get the results that characterized His efforts. The
most practical method of procedure, according to the Christ method, is to look
away from "appearances," [185] or "relativity," to the "real" which is the
"ideal." We must learn to think of things as they are in the spiritual universe,
for by so doing we form in consciousness a true mental picture of what we are
in spirit, and of what we wish to be in outward expression; it is the
externalization of this mental picture which will effect the desired results. It is
the seed from which the flower of health will proceed, but we must water and
nurture it by constant affirmation.

We must daily weed our garden of thought so that no tares shall spring up in it
to choke the seed of health of its vitality; for then we shall rejoice in that "Life
more abundant" that is promised to them that think truly.

Remember that you are today what you thought yesterday, and you will be
tomorrow what you think today; therefore, always think the best. Think health,
and health shall be your portion; think abundance, and abundance shall flow
through you; think peace, and you shall manifest it in tranquility.

*****

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 Chapter XIII
THE WISDOM OF EXPECTATION

W. John Murray
Mental Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.

[186] We have so often seen the words hope and expectation used in prose and
poetry as if they were synonymous, that we feel it will not be time wasted if we
venture to explain their difference. Hope carries within itself the element of

al
uncertainty, so that men hope against hope itself. James Fenimore Cooper says
that "Hope is the most treacherous of all human fancies," but Henry Ward
Beecher affirms that, "The greatest architect and the one most needed is hope."

i
Hope has been defined as "the poor man's bread," meaning that when he has

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nothing else he may still have hope though it lead to nothing but death and "the
hope of eternal life, of which he may have no certitude."

Benjamin Franklin says, "He that lives upon hopes will die fasting," and we

rd. F
have [187] seen this come true literally. A strange fact that is not commonly
iza D
observed is that we seem to have the most hope when we have the most fear.
The approaching calamity is so appaling that we are blinded by it, and all we
have or can have under such circumstances is that hope which if it is deferred
dfw P
too long, as it frequently is, "maketh the heart sick."

True, it is better to have hope than not to have it, but it is a poor substitute for
w.p om

that attitude of mind which does the thing and expects the results. An opiate
may be a good thing when one is in intense pain, but it is not a remedy for the
pain-producing disease. Hope is frequently an opiate which puts the mind to
sleep when it should be wide awake and "about the Father’s business." To go
cuC

through the world hoping that something will "turn up" while doing nothing to
turn it up, is to have the world turn up its nose at us and blast our hopes by
disregarding them. The mechanic does not hope that his machine will serve his
purpose; all things properly attended to, he expects it will; indeed [188] he
would be surprised if it does not; but how frequently the man who takes it out
ww

in hoping, is surprised when the thing he hopes for actually comes to pass. The
Do

farmer does not merely hope that his corn will come up and ripen; he expects it
will and goes about his other business. The commuter who takes the seven
o'clock train expects to get to his office on time. That both the farmer and
commuter are sometimes disappointed does not change the fact that
expectation is better than hope, for it carries within itself that mental
magnetism which attracts the thing expected. Not every piece of steel attracts
another piece of steel, but only that which is properly magnetized. We need to
be magnetized by a conscious contact with that all-sufficing Supply if we
would attract to ourselves the things we hope for and which we so seldom
receive because we do not expect them. But to expect everything and prepare
for nothing, is as foolish as to hope for something and make no effort to bring
it to pass. In the same man expectation and [189] preparation are the chemical
properties of mind which always result in a third condition, namely,
actualization.
 When the multitude which followed Jesus were hungry and hoped for food he
bade them sit down in groups. This created an expectant attitude of mind as of
body, for that which their mere hopes could never have obtained their
expectation made possible. For the loaves and fishes were multiplied in
accordance with the law, proving that which you expect you get, whether it is
poverty or prosperity, sickness or health.

Expectation creates a neutral path in the brain into which tumbles the thing we
expect whether it is good or ill, and which then flows into our experience as
water flows into the ditch we prepare for it.

al
If Jesus hoped for an increase of the loaves and fishes and expected no
increase, He would have been like the majority of mankind. The thing that
distinguished Him from other men was the thing that distinguishes any

i
successful man from the vast [190] majority. Expectation is that state of mind

com Tr
which sees the thing expected actually coming to pass despite all appearances.
Sometimes this is called visualization, but visualization in this sense is not idle
fancy; it is rather the intensification of thought on a specific reality, in short, it
is the method of making the ideal real.

rd. F
iza D
When the metaphysician sees or visualizes an abstract idea or mental picture
and predicts its appearance in visible form, it is only a question of time when
the mathematician will support the reality of this idea, whether it is in the field
dfw P
of astronomy or electricity, and then it is only a question of further time when
the man in the street will be able to see it by means provided mechanically, as
when one sees through a telescope what he could never see without it.
w.p om

The New Psychology is to the eye of the mind what the telescope is to the eye
of the body. It enlarges one's vision of mind, which will presently be made
manifest on the plane of matter, if one really expects [191] it. Just as the
cuC

plainsman whose eyes are trained to great distances observes on the horizon
what the ordinary person cannot distinguish, and as the mariner sees objects at
sea long before the landsman sees them, so the illumined consciousness
perceives changes in circumstances and understands what the Bible means
when it says, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand," and this when there is
ww

no visible evidence of it.

Do

Just before dawn one might say on the evidence of his senses, "It is getting
darker and darker," but the fact would be that "It is getting lighter and lighter,"
and so Coue' is right when he instructs his followers to say, "Day by day in
every way I am getting better and better," though the evidence of their senses
does not bear immediate testimony to the truth of the statement. Declaring the
truth and expecting the verification of it in improved health, improvement must
come to pass.

*****

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 Chapter XIV
THE OPULENT CONSCIOUSNESS

W. John Murray
Mental Medicine
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1923.

[192] In concluding this attempt to point out a few of the working principles of
the New Psychology, I feel that it would not be complete were I to overlook or
avoid one of its most essential aspects, which is its usefulness in the field of

al
success, using the word as every businessman uses it. I shall not indulge in any
of those high-flown definitions of success, which would have us believe that a
man is a success if he is as poor as a church mouse and still maintains his

i
integrity, for I see no reason why a businessman should not succeed financially

com Tr
and still maintain his integrity. The day has gone by when success is a
synonym for unscrupulousness. Poverty is not a virtue, as some princes and
parsons would have us believe. If it is, then let such persons cultivate it on
[193] their own account, and stop recommending it to others. Poverty is a

rd. F
disease of the intellect through which foolish men convince themselves that
prosperity is only for the few. This is as foolish as it would be to conclude that
iza D
life belongs only to the minority, and then to shoot one's self. The belief that
poverty is an insuperable obstacle in the path of progress robs man of
dfw P
initiative, depletes his energies, and produces the very things he fears.

A man who fears poverty is deprived of his natural courage, so that he stays
w.p om

with a poorly-paid position or job until he is too old to look for, or even hold, a
better one if he could get it. Poverty (in thought) begets parsimoniousness and
fear of investment...True, some investments are not the surest way to success,
but this is frequently because a certain type of investor in his greed buys gold-
cuC

bricks from smooth talkers.

[194] Bruyere says, "Poverty is the mother of crimes," and one does not have
to be a very profound philosopher in order to appreciate that wherever it shows
itself in its most brazen forms, it becomes the father of theft, drunkeness,
ww

harlotry and murder.

Do

When a certain rich man said, "Poverty is not ignoble," it was because he was
not afflicted with it. Let him once suffer its pangs and he will sing a different
tune. It is not much comfort to be told that, "God loves the poor," unless the
poor can be persuaded that there is escape for them through Divine Love.
Poverty is all right in a play, but in a home it is a different thing and no
honorable man wants it there. It forms cataracts on the eyes so that no man can
see things in their true relations; neither can he see (appreciate) the "goodness
of God in the land of the living." When bloated capitalists tell us that poverty is
a divine necessity, an incentive to industry, and a stepping stone to greater
things, it is their way of sugar-coating an unpalatable medicine destined to
produce [195] a reaction in the form of a revolution later on. Dionysius affirms
that, "A generous and noble spirit cannot be expected to dwell in the breasts of
men who are struggling for their daily bread." Voluntary poverty in the case of
 one man is his own concern, but a whole people should not have it thrust upon
them, nor should any individual accept it as a visitation of divine providence.

There are many antidotes recommended for the poison of poverty. Among
these are industry, truthfulness, thrift; yet we have seen, despite the possession
of all these virtues, such poverty as makes the heart sick and the spirit revolt
against a system which makes the many poor so that the few may be unduly
rich.

New Psychology is assuring us that the conquest of poverty, like the conquest
of disease, is a matter of thought functioning on a higher plane than that of

al
accepted limitation. The thrift of the old school is giving place to the thought
of the new school, so [196] that now it is an error to believe that we must stint
and starve ourselves in the pleasant day in order to avoid the "rainy day" that

i
may never come. Such an attitude of mind is an unconscious limitation of the

com Tr
power of God to supply our needs in old age; as if God were particularly
partial to youth, which can shift for itself. If poverty is so frequently associated
with old age, there is a psychological reason for it.

rd. F
Listen to the ordinary conversations of people and it will at once become
iza D
apparent to you how preponderant the belief is that poverty and old age are
twin sisters. One and all we seem to be imbued with the idea that "we must
provide against our old age," and by this we mean that we must have
dfw P
something "laid by." To save as a matter of custom is one thing, but to save
with the mental picture of poverty in old age is another and dangerous thing.
We are only now beginning to realize that we induce the things upon which we
w.p om

think most frequently.

As I write, sitting on my little balcony in [197] Italy, I can see a woman sitting
at the same window at which I have seen her every year that I have come here.
cuC

She talks incessantly for hours at a time in a voice that is strong and powerful.
She lives in the past, prior to the time when a faithless husband left her for
another, as a result of which she lost her reason. Despite the fact that she is
kept under lock and key so that she never leaves her room, which I understand
is not overly hygienic, the neighbors tell me that she has not aged a day so far
ww

as appearances indicate, and she is now over ninety years of age. Old age is
Do

largely a state of mind, but I would not suggest that one should lose one's
reason in order to preserve perpetual youth. I merely state that the less we look
forward to old age and poverty the better.

We have referred again and again to the creative power of our own thought,
and we are told that this is unlimited, save by the limitations we place upon it
through doubt and fear; and we have said that the Source of all power is
unlimited. Therefore it follows [198] that the Source of all Substance is
unrestricted, and for this reason we need not be afraid that we shall overdraw
our account.

The difficulty does not lie with any sense of limitation in the Source; it lies in
our ignorance of how to draw from the Source. One may have ever so much in
the bank, but there are certain formalities which he must go through, before he
 can get what is actually his. Opulence is ours by divine right, but we can only
get it as we comply with certain conditions. First of all we must know that it is,
and second we must know that we have a right to it as the children of God, and
third we must affirm that we have it. This is what Jesus meant when He said,
"When ye pray, (affirm) pray knowing that ye have received." That is, when
we pray or affirm that we are one with the Source of all supply, we must know
that this Source is as willing to give as we are to receive, and that it is only
awaiting our demand upon It [199] as a reservoir awaits the turning on of a tap
before it can flow through the pipe.

There are certain Bible verses which will serve to enable us first to rise above

al
our fear of lack, and then to enable us to identify ourselves with opulence.
When one is afraid of approaching financial distress he can say to himself,
"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want," and this will impress the

i
subconscious mind with hope and expectation; and as these increase, fear and

com Tr
doubt will decrease. A new outlook will present itself, and, while conditions
may not change immediately, our mental attitude toward them will change, and
this is no small advantage.

rd. F
After we learn that, "God is able to make all grace abound toward us; that we,
always having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work,"
iza D
we may then go on to affirm: "My God (Source of my abundance) shall supply
all my needs according to His riches. This affirmation, taking root in the
dfw P
subconscious mind, will commence [200] at once to work the impression out
into actual experience, on the principle that ideas or mental pictures tend to
externalize themselves in objective manifestation.
w.p om

We must learn not to look to any particular channel such as a particular person
or a particular position, for the Source selects its own channels with greater
wisdom than ours. We must think opulence in its absolute reality, and then it
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will flow to us through channels of which we never dreamed. Positions will be

given to us, opportunities will present themselves; helpful people will be
attracted to us, for these are the means which the Universal Mind employs in
order to minister to our particular necessities. In 1st Hermas Vision 1:10, we
read: "A righteous man thinketh that which is righteous. And whilst he does so,
ww

and walketh uprightly, he shall have the Lord in Heaven favorable unto him in
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all his business." A righteous man is not a merely moral man, he is this plus.
We shall see how a man can be moral without being righteous, and we [201]
shall see how it can be that a merely moral man can meet with disasters,
notwithstanding his morality; and this will answer the question so often asked
when morally good men meet with failure after failure; "Why does so much
calamity come to a man [who is] so good?" The marvel of all the centuries has
been that good men should fail while evil men succeed. It is no consolation to
a moral man who is a failure to be told that God is depriving him of things here
so that he may have more hereafter. It were better to seek some other and more
rational explanation. Is it not written that, "No good thing will He withold from
them that walk uprightly." It seems to me that this removes the responsibility
from our heavenly Father and places it directly where it belongs.
 We all know that a man may be very moral and yet be extremely fearful and
apprehensive for the future. We have seen very moral men who did not dare to
say their souls were their own. On the other hand, we have seen immoral men
who seemed to [202] have no fear of the future, or of anything else, and we
have seen them succeed, but we have not suspected how large an influence fear
has exercised over the moral man in keeping him poor; neither have we
realized how important a factor fearlessness has been in the success of the
immoral man. It is not a question of morality quite so much as it is a question
of mentality, and the sooner we realize this, the sooner we shall discontinue
ascribing to heaven earth’s most dismal failures.

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We are not to infer from this that "'twere folly to be good," but rather we are to
know that in addition to our goodness, fearlessness is necessary, and that
fearlessness can be cultivated. The timid saint can suggest to his subconscious

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mind that he is not afraid, and his suggestion will banish his life-long enemy.

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He has Scriptural authority for this. He can say, "God has not given me the
spirit (thought) of fear, but of power and of love, and of a sound mind," and he
can also say, "I can do all things through [203] Christ which strengtheneth
me." By making these affirmations to himself, he can add to his moral

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goodness, moral courage, which is the fundamental necessity to all success.
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Let us dwell for a moment on just two words which appear in one of the above
affirmations,--"sound mind." A mind is sound as an apple is sound, when there
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is neither worm nor decay in it. Fear is a worm in an otherwise sound mind; it
is the soft spot which indicates decay of power and decrease of efficiency, and
he who has fear knows that, "Fear hath torment." Now there is no convenient
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antidote in the pharmacy for fear, and so it is to spiritual knowing that we must
turn, if we would rout this blighter of our hopes and the enemy of our success.

But someone says, "The fearless bad man succeeds in spite of his badness."
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Wherein then lies the value of being good, even if one does succeed? The
trained psychologist has seen the fearless bad man, who has succeeded
financially, under other circumstances which [204] tried his soul and we have
seen that, while he did not fear poverty, he feared disease and death; for all
men seem to have their particular fears. We have seen good men afraid of
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poverty, and we have seen bad men afraid of disease, and we have seen that,
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like Job, "The thing they feared most came upon them."

The lesson to be gained from all this is that law governs and that "like attracts
like." If the good poor man attracts more poverty and the bad rich man attracts
disease and death, and each through his particular brand of fear, it is because of
the magnetism of thought. There is no other explanation. "He lived just long
enough to get comfortably settled in his new home, and then almost without
warning he passed away," was said of a man who, during the process of
construction of his palatial residence, would ask, "What if I should not live
long enough to see it completed?" How many builders of new homes have
entertained this thought [205] sometimes without breathing it to their loved
ones?
 To the bad rich man who does not fear poverty but who does fear death, I
would suggest that he add to his riches morality, and to the good poor man
who fears poverty I would suggest that he add to his morality a fuller trust in
God to provide his every need. Fear will master us whichever direction it takes.
It lends strength to our weakness and by so doing, doubles the odds against us
and our best interests. In conclusion then, I recommend that to obtain such
things as you desire in the world of the Good and the Successful and the
Beautiful, you "think on these things."

"I hold it true that thoughts are things;

They're endowed with bodies and breath and wings;

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And that we send them forth to fill
The world with good results, or ill.
That which we call our secret thought

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Speeds forth to earth's remotest spot,

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Leaving its blessings or its woes
Like tracks behind it as it goes.

"We build our future, thought by thought,

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For good or ill, yet know it not.
Yet so the universe was wrought.
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Thought is another name for fate;
Choose, then, thy destiny and wait,
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For love brings love and hate brings hate."
---Henry Van Dyke
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