My Philosophy and My Religion · 2 of 4

Part II: My Philosophy

There has probably been no greater acquisition to the sum of human knowledge during the past few years than the knowledge of the universality of and the supremacy of law. When greater knowledge comes mystery recedes into the background. Mythology was early man’s method of explaining certain phenomena or mysteries that he observed, but whose cause he did not know. It becomes and is recognized as myth when the law and the facts are understood. “Miracle” is the explanation of certain occurrences on the part of those who do not know, that later become the natural and commonplace in the hands of those who know and use the law, by and through which the thing is done.

Over our heads and while still living in the old house, and almost without our realizing it, a new edifice has been built, ampler and more suited to our modern needs. The result is a readjusting of the furniture to meet its own requirements and to serve our own needs. The gods of mythology and the half‑gods go, when we arrive at a knowledge of the creative power that has been and is continually unfolding an orderly universe—a universe whose every phase is governed by law.

There has been no Creator apart from the universe, apart from nature, apart from life. There has been no fiat creation. There has been, there is, intelligence, order, law. The two primary facts are life and law; life the soul of law, law the method by which the force of life works.

We have Being, Life, self‑existent, projecting itself into existence, clothing itself in varied and myriad forms, but always the life and the force in that form, unfolding itself in that form, causing it to grow into an ever higher and higher type of form.

This puts Being, Divine Being, Creative Principle—God—if you prefer the term, in the universe, in all nature, in all life— in this our human life. It makes God imminent as well as transcendent—not God outside of nature, but God in nature, not God outside of man, but God in man—and therefore the life that is man.

God, the Infinite Divine Life, is not only our source, but is our very life itself. When we once come to realize this fact we can then begin to realize the truth and the importance of the most highly illumined of earth’s teachers, Jesus the Christ, when He gave and so repeatedly gave the injunction: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you,” coupling it almost invariably with: “Neither shall they say, ‘Lo here’ or ‘Lo there,’ for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.”

Sometimes and in connection with the same injunction He used the word heaven—the Kingdom of Heaven. Heaven means harmony. Therefore in your mental life come into harmony with the God‑life, the Divine Life within, that is your real life. Think and act from this point of view and the qualities and the powers of the God‑life will become operative in your life. In season and out of season He taught this, and the marvelous results that would follow, and follow inevitably this realization and this method of living.

A wonderful aptitude for the things of the spirit, and with unflinching fidelity to its leading, He taught what He himself had realized, used, and lived. Although almost beyond our comprehension even at this day, He made it one of the great fundamentals of His life work and revelation.

Why, I hear it asked, refer to Jesus in that part of a book that deals with philosophy, rather than in that part that deals with religion. I am using the word philosophy primarily, according to the conception and the definition of Sir William Hamilton— The Science of Effects by Their Causes. Jesus the Christ was not only a great religious teacher, but also a great mystic philosopher. Be was pre‑eminently the greatest of that long line of Hebrew prophets. Moreover the connection between an idealistic philosophy and religion, when both are reduced to their simplest terms—and by their simplest terms I mean when both are brought most intimately in touch with life, and every day life—is very close. Jesus had a wonderful grasp of the fundamentals of things. His power of getting into the very heart of things was so intuitive and so great, and His methods of revealing the truths of life were so simple and direct, that He stands even today as the world’s Master Teacher.

He was a great religious philosopher because His natural aptitude for discerning, for living, for interpreting the things of the spirit was of the first order. It was the intuitive perception of truth. There are those who have this gift or this power to an unusual extent, the same as those who have an unusual aptitude for things along other lines, and which sometimes stamps them as a genius along these lines.

Of this power or faculty in modern times, it is interesting to note the following brief statement by William James in one of those most valuable books of his:1

“In psychology, physiology, and medicine, wherever a debate between the mystics and the scientifics has been once for all decided, 1. “The Will to Believe,” by William James. it is the mystics who have usually proved to be right about the facts, while the scientifics had the better of it in respect to the theories.”

The Christ Jesus was the first fully to evolve to the God‑consciousness, and able therefore to speak with authority concerning the Divine in the human. The Divinity of human nature He perceived, He realized, and He lived so completely Himself that the great burden of His message was to lift the minds and hearts of men up to the realization of this truth, that life might be lived from this center.

It was one of the early Christian writers who said: “From Him there began the interweaving of divine and human nature in order that the human by communion with the divine, might rise to be divine, not in Jesus alone, but in all those who not only believe but enter upon the life which Jesus taught.”

Centuries after it was Emerson who said: “I believe in the still small voice, and that voice is the Christ within me.” It was he who also in the same connection said: “Every soul is not only the inlet but may become the outlet of all there is in God.”

Christ is the universal divine nature in all. The Christ mind is the mind that realizes its God‑consciousness. It is the realization of the Infinite Divine life as its life, and living continually in this thought, so that this real life is always manifest in and through one. The Christ within is this unfolded consciousness that becomes the Center from which the life in all its details radiates and is lived.

Jesus became the Christ Jesus because of His unique and complete realization of this truth. He became the Messiah, and truly the Saviour of men because He was the first completely to realize, to live, and to reveal this truth. “I and My Father are one,” was His realization. “And as I am ye shall be”—if ye accept My teaching and live My life, the insights and the powers that are Mine shall be yours. As I live and work ye shall live and work. Not only shall ye do these things, but greater than these shall ye do. The following words by that highly illumined philosopher and able executor, Fichte, would seem to follow the same conception of Jesus, that He Himself continually strove to have His disciples and those who heard Him understand:

“Jesus of Nazareth undoubtedly possessed the highest perception containing the foundation of all other Truth, of the absolute identity of Humanity with the Godhead, as regards what is essentially real in the former.

“His self‑consciousness was at once the pure and absolute Truth of Reason itself, self‑existent and independent, the simple fact of consciousness.” Before leaving this thought of Fichte, so clearly and so convincingly expressed, let us note the following, which might be said in very brief form to give his own standing‑ground:

“An insight into the absolute unity of the Human Existence with the Divine is certainly the profoundest knowledge that man can attain. Before Jesus, this knowledge had nowhere existed; and since His time, we may say even down to the present day, it has been again as good as rooted out and lost, at least in profane literature.”

It was difficult for Him to make those whom He taught understand that He was one with them, but one with a supreme God‑consciousness. They were so given to form and ceremony for which He cared as little as possible, that He had great difficulty in making them understand that His revelation to them was that God dwells in man, is the life that is man’s life, and therefore the finding of the Kingdom within, and even when they marveled at the works that He did, He had difficulty in making them understand the connection between this inner realization, and the insight and the power—the Divine direction—that results from it. Faithfully He taught that it is living the God life that gives the God power. It is knowing the law that enables one to do the thing. What they termed miracles were merely the results of His understanding the law whereby the things He did were done.

From the beginning was Being, the animating Force, the Life‑essence, therefore the Life itself clothing itself in all the varied forms that we see in existence.

Being is one not many. As it is the Source of all life there is, then, only one Life and all forms of life are varied forms or moods of the one Life. “The one Divine Being, and this alone is the true Reality in all existence.” Infinite Being, God is then, the Infinite Spirit, the Life Principle, of all, which fills all the universe with Himself alone, so that all life is He, since He is all.

We cannot rightly say that we have life, for we are life, life that clothes itself with and that animates the body, which is its material form of existence in this a material world.

It is thus that in our real selves, that we are one with the Divine, the God life; not the body, but the spirit—for God is Spirit. We are therefore spirit—and have a body.

The God life, Divine Being, is the one life, and there is no life that is apart from it. This is undoubtedly what Max Müller, that great student of both Oriental and Occidental philosophy and religion, had in mind when in a letter received from him before he left us, among other things, he said: “I cannot accept Athanasius when he says that we can become gods; man cannot say, become God, because he is God; what else could he be, if God is the only true and real Being.”

By this he meant that Divine Being manifests itself as life in man. In essence, in quality therefore they are identical. Whatever difference there is is a difference of degree—in quality they are identical. It could not be otherwise if the Divine life, the God‑life is the only life.

And here is the great fact that concerns us as human beings. We are always divine, but that divinity is latent, waiting for realization and therefore expression on our part. To know brings a thing from the latent, the potential, to the actual and the valuable.

In the degree that through the channel of our minds we realize that this Infinite Divine life is our life, in that degree it becomes a force in the life. The germ, the seed germ as it were, is always there. It needs the attention, the co‑operation of the human to supply the condition whereby it can unfold and grow to its fullest. This can be done through the channel of the mind. It is through desire and will that the conditions are made whereby it can unfold and eventually lead and dominate the life.

As a noted writer has said: “The living Christ is within men, and upon invitation the Divine touches the human.” There is an insurgence of the Divine that in time assumes the mastery, when through desire and through will the conditions are made whereby this can be accomplished. We are free agents, and there comes into our lives in growth and unfoldment what we cause to come.

The Divine wisdom and power, which are adjuncts of the Divine life, works in and through and eventually leads the human, in the degree that the human in consciousness realizes its true reality, and makes thereby the condition for the Divine reality to lead the life. It opens, so to speak, a higher order or phase of life.

Starting with the sense‑life, the life of the spirit evolves and in time leads and dominates the sense‑life, which in turn is lifted to successively higher and higher stages. James Rhodes has put a great truth in that fine little couplet:

“Know this, O man, sole root of sin in thee

Is not to know thine own divinity!” When this divine self‑realization comes the man steps from the natural man into the spiritual man, and a distinct step in evolution is taken. It comes through a perfectly natural process; for it is undoubtedly the Divine plan. It rests with the individual as to how quickly this step in his evolution shall come about. When it does come it makes God and man and all nature infinitely grander, and it makes him of vastly greater use. He enters then upon an infinitely larger life.

It was Hegel who said, “All that has value to men, the eternal, the self‑existent, is contained in man himself and has to develop from within himself.”

I do not like the idea that man is a reflection of God; for if there is the one Life, then that Life is our life. It is our part, our privilege—in short, our destiny—to realize this and live in accordance with this realization. The Divine life continually calls us. The principle of evolution by means of which it works is gradually lifting us from the lower to the higher, it is gradually pushing us from the imperfect to the perfect, from our at first human conception to our higher unfoldment which is the divine in the human, and through this unfoldment it will in time enfold and conquer us.

It rests with each as to how tardily or how speedily this process shall be accomplished. If tardily, our losses are very great. If speedily, we step at once into the Kingdom—the Kingdom of God, which is the Kingdom of heaven; for it is harmony with the laws of God.

In one of the sacred books of the East, anti‑dating our own Old Testament Scripture, occurs the following: “Round and round, within a wheel, roams the vagrant soul, so long as it fancies itself different and apart from the Supreme. It becomes truly immortal when upheld by Him.”

Referring again to the thought of the philosopher Fichte— and it is from his ripest life thought—in setting forth how universally Divine Being incarnates itself in human life, and but awaits our realization of it as our life, he says: “From the first standing‑point the Eternal Word becomes flesh, assumes a personal, sensible, and human existence, without obstruction or reserve, in all times, and in every individual man who has a living insight into his unity with God, and who actually and in truth gives up his personal life to the Divine Life within him— precisely in the same way as it became incarnate in Jesus Christ.”

Divine self‑realization will make active eternally latent possibilities and powers whereby we become co‑operators with God. These become of value only as they are realized and used. This divine self‑realization and our living and acting always in it, connects us, we might say, with the great central reservoir of the universal life, the self‑existent sustaining Force that is itself life and energy and power. It opens us to this inner realm of wisdom and power, the same as the sense‑mind opens us to all the manifestations of force, as well as all objects, in the material world about us.

We live in two realms or worlds, the interior spiritual realm whence come all our higher intuitions, leadings, and higher promptings, and the sense realm which pertains primarily to the body and its various sense organs, and connects us directly with the material universe about us. It is intended that we live in both. He who however is awake to and lives his life wholly or even primarily in the latter is only fractionally alive. He lives purely as an animal, differing but little from the beast, except that the beast, living ordinarily a more natural life, has certain sense faculties and certain instincts that are finer than his.

The fine sense‑powers of some animals, the wonderful instincts possessed by others, could put man to shame were it not for the fact that he is endowed with faculties, active or latent, that the animal does not have. It is primarily the degree to which these are unfolded and used that distinguishes man from the animal—and going a step farther, it is the difference in the degree of the apprehension, the development, and the use of these inner qualities and powers that pertain to and connect us with the Infinite Spirit of life, that marks the difference between the mere animal or sense man, and the prophets, seers, sages and saviors of all times.

Some of the Hebrew prophets of earlier days—we must not look upon them all as old and bearded, for many were not— apprehended and gave utterance to some wonderful truths along the lines we are considering. Although, perhaps, they did not have a regularly thought‑out system of philosophy, and did not sit down with a pad and pencil, and formulate their thoughts as such, they nevertheless lived such lives, many times out in the open herding their sheep—with nature and with their God—and open always to the voice of their God, that divine revelations of great potency and power, and many times clothed in great beauty, came to them.

Great spiritual truths—truths of the real life—are the same in all ages, and will come to any man and any woman, who will make the conditions whereby they can come. God speaks wherever He finds an humble listening ear, whether it be Jew or Gentile, Hindu or Parsee, American or East Indian, Christian or Bushman.

It is the realm of the inner life that we should wisely give more attention to. The springs of life are all from within. We must make the right mental condition, and we must couple with it faith and expectancy. We should also give sufficient time in the quiet, that we may clearly hear and rightly interpret. The following are true today, or they were not true when they were uttered: “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide in the shadow of the Almighty.” “The Lord in the midst of thee is mighty.” “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” “Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him and He shall bring it to pass.” “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” “Rest in the Lord and He shall bring it to pass.”

These all point to the natural normal life that we can live, and it is intended that we should live. If this is not true, then, as we have already said, in some respects we are inferior to the animals, many of which have marvelous instincts for their care and protection. This no thinking man for a moment will believe. We give so much time to the things that pertain to the sense‑life, that we do not take time to unfold and develop the real life. We give so much time to the mere accessories of life, that we starve the life itself.

It is like taking the body away from the sunshine. It is like taking the plant from the sunshine—or even cutting it off from its root. We would do well to think deeply on and appreciate fully this thought as stated by that eminent scientist and illumined philosopher, Swedenborg: “Every created thing is in itself inanimate and dead, but it is animated and caused to live by this, that the Divine is in it and that it exists in and from the Divine.” And again: “There is only one Fountain of Life, and the life of man is a stream therefrom, which, if it were not continually replenished from its source, would instantly cease to flow.”

To know and to do the right thing at the right time, and in the right way, and to be sure of it, would constitute a wonderful life. To go through life with a constant and absolute sense of care and protection and guidance, would lift many an uncertainty and therefore many a burden from life. Yet this is our heritage and therefore our privilege, when we live life from its real center. The prophet of an earlier day put it in this form: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.” Browning was both prophet and poet when in Paracelsus he said:

“Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise

From outward things, whate’er you may believe.

There is an inmost centre in us all,

—Where truth abides in fulness; and around

Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,

This perfect, clear perception—which is truth.

A baffling and perverting carnal mesh

Binds it, and makes all error; and, to know

Rather consists in opening out a way

Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,

Than in effecting entry for a light

Supposed to be without.”

The inspiration of the poet put a truth in a similar form, when a little later Edwin Markham penned the following stanza:

“At the heart of the cyclone tearing the sky,

And flinging the clouds and the towers by,

Is a place of central calm;

So, here in the roar of mortal things

I have a place where my spirit sings,

In the hollow of God’s palm.”

Arriving at a very fundamental truth from the purely philosophical standpoint, Henri Bergson has put what one might almost term his basic thought as follows: “Everything,” he says, “that exists is the manifestation of a life‑force, the ‘elan vital’ which is perpetually recreating itself. This is the ‘creative evolution’ of which I have written. There is in each of us a particle of life‑force, which is above intellect just as much as it is above our physical powers. We grow and progress because the life‑force wills that we should do so.

“The life‑force which we find in every living thing must have come from a source. That source is unceasing life, action, freedom—you may call it God. It must always have existed, for otherwise there would have been nothing. And nothing is unthinkable. According to my views, the original source always existed in time, but out of space.

“Life is a constant springing upward. To exist is to change, to change is to mature, and to mature is to go on creating oneself indefinitely. In each of us is this life‑force, which is above our intellect and all our other faculties. This life‑force is shown in the form of intuition, which all of us possess more or less, and which at times permits us to catch glimpses of the very nature of our existence.”

And from out the little old‑world city of Jena, hallowed forever in the minds of many with the life there, and the thought, of Goethe, and Schiller, and Hegel, and Fichte, and Schelling, come these thoughts—almost the ripest life thought—of Rudolph Eucken: “The union of the Divine and human nature is the fundamental truth of religion, and its deepest mystery consists in the fact that the Divine enters into the compass of the Human without impairing its Divinity. With this new phase life is completely renewed and elevated. Man becomes immediately conscious of the infinite and eternal, of that within him which transcends the world. For the first time the love of God becomes the ruling motive of his life, and brings him into an inner relation with the whole scope of reality.…Religion is not merely a belief in some supreme Power, nor do I consider it to be the establishment of relations of any kind between this supreme Power and ourselves. It is an inner identification with it and the creation of a new life through it. The problem may be, therefore, defined in this way: Does man in the wholeness of his being experience an impulse to acknowledge a divine element, and if so, can he identify himself with it and rise to its lofty height without transforming his previous condition?…Religion thus understood is judged by the new life which it brings forth.

“As soon as man acknowledges the manifestation of this divine element and participates in this new creation through divine power and grace, life will be altogether transformed. Now, at last, we are standing in the great river of Life, of which we were allowed to touch no more than the brink in our first stage of development; it is here that we find a new self, our true Spiritual Life. The cleavage in the depth of our souls is bridged over at last. That inner estrangement, so often felt, has disappeared and the whole universe is now part of regenerate man’s experience.…That feeling of isolation disappears, which has so often depressed us, and we are conscious of partaking in that ‘inner life’ common to all of us. And this autonomous creation of a true spiritual life is the great wonder, and the only certain evidence on behalf of religion—without this religion no true civilization is possible.

“The life of every individual person is affected by this ‘Problem of Religion.’ I cannot conceive of the development of a powerful personality, a deep‑rooted and profound mind, or a character rising above this world, without his having experienced this divine life.”

I have brought these brief fragments of thought of philosophers and poets from Sweden, from England, from America, from France and from Germany, because I have wanted to show a certain unanimity of thought on the part of them all in connection with the matters we are considering. I want to add to it another brief paragraph, which might be said to contain an epitome, or at least the key note of his philosophy, by Spinoza, the eminent Jewish philosopher who lived in the little old city of Rhijnsburg, near Leiden, in Holland—Spinoza the lens grinder, whose house is still preserved there: “There is a universal substance which is God, the causa immanens, not the causa transiens. This is the origin of all things, the all‑pervading force diffused throughout the universe, ‘the one eternal unity.’ This eternal and universal substance consists of an infinite number of attributes, each one expressing eternal and infinite being. The human mind itself is part of the infinite mind of God.”

And then coming down through the centuries we hear that clear untrammeled voice of the Judean Teacher as out on the hillside, by the lakeside, out under the clear stars of heaven, He gives forth His message of the divinity of man, and the majesty and power of the human spirit when it once realizes its identity with the Divine spirit: God is spirit, and they that worship must worship Him in spirit and in truth. I and my Father are one. As I am ye shall be. Not only shall ye do these things, but greater than these shall ye do. Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. And again: “Say not ‘Lo here,’ and ‘Lo there,’ know ye not that the Kingdom of God is within you?”

The knowledge that has come to the human mind during the last fifty years, the knowledge of the methods through which the creative power works—through the gradual and orderly process of evolution—and all through great systems of law, is to my mind, with possibly one exception, the greatest knowledge that has ever come to the human kind. The other is that Jesus with His wonderful powers of perception, was able to perceive this power as Being, as Life—the one Life—and to identify His own life with it, and taught all men so to identify theirs.

All is law. The process of evolution is still going on, slowly but gradually raising all forms of life to higher and finer levels. The secret of all life is harmony—to know the law and to live in harmony with it.

As human beings we are either pulled or we are pushed, in that we are wise enough and diligent enough to learn the laws of life, the laws of the mental, the physical, and the spiritual life, and the laws of the universe about us, and obey them, by harmonizing our lives with them and reaping the beneficent results that always result through this method; or, through shiftlessness, or ignorance, or willfulness, we fail to observe them, and suffer the ill‑effects, the losses that inevitably come from the violation of law. Whether through ignorance or knowingly, whether unintentionally or intentionally, the violation of law brings its own punishment. It is inherent in the law itself.

God does not punish. He works through great systems of law. He has given us mind, intelligence to apprehend, to know, and to obey these laws. The choice is in ourselves. The law itself will have obedience.

There has never been any man big enough, keen enough, to violate the law and to escape the punishment that the law inflicts. It is through suffering and loss, and at times degradation even of mind, of body, or of both, that brings him to his senses and to the point where he says: “I will arise and go to my Father.”

To go against the tide is hard, and at times even exhausting. To go with the tide is simply to have common sense enough to recognize the working of the law, and to work in harmony with that law.

All known or knowable facts are already in the universe. We need but to know and to observe the law in order to find them, to utilize them, to make them work for our good.

There is perhaps no more wonderful or more valuable law that man has so far apprehended than the law of vibration. I prefer to say the law of vibration rather than the laws of vibration; for aught we know all may be vibration. Life itself may be vibration, or rather vibration may be the form, the method, through which Life manifests and works. This we do not yet know.

There is one form of vibration that we have learned considerably about. We may be, however, in our infancy concerning it. It relates to sound and the law that governs it.

Our first methods of conveying messages were very crude— the lumbering stage‑coach, then the pony express—the Indians used signal fires, less crude. Then followed through a knowledge of vibration, the conducting of sound through the medium of a wire. Laborious and crudely material lines of telegraph were constructed. Later it was discovered that not only clicks of sound, but with the proper sending and receiving media, even the human voice could be transmitted through or over a wire, at first for short and later for very long distances.

It was then discovered that sound through the law of vibration could be propelled or rather travel through the ether itself without the medium of a wire. Still later we are finding that the human voice itself can be so carried. By means of a comparatively small apparatus a continuous succession of sound waves is emitted, and the human voice itself, speaking through the proper sending medium, is carried through the media of these waves; and through the right receiving instrument properly attuned to the one through which the voice has spoken, can be transmitted and distinctly heard a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand miles away. The time may come, probably will come, when the voice in this way can be made to encircle the globe, and return to a receiving instrument in the very room from which it has spoken.

Here is a law, or a law concerning a force, that has been in the universe not only during the lifetime of this generation or that of a few generations preceding us, but for hundreds of millions of years—and we are now just beginning to apprehend it, to understand it, to utilize it. This is but one of innumerable finer forces in the universe, the laws of which we will apprehend and understand and use, as we evolve in our capacity for apprehending finer forces and powers.

If this is true concerning the material universe about us, what must we conclude concerning the finer forces and powers within us, and the apprehension and the use of the laws that govern them? May we not be greater than we know! The life and the revelations of Jesus as well as the lives and the findings of all the prophets, seers, sages, in the world’s history, all tell us that we are.

When a great and much beloved modern educator, Dr. Hiram Corson, gave utterance to the following, he gave utterance to a truth that will be appreciated more and more as the higher development of man takes place: “It is what man draws up from his sub‑self which is of prime importance in his true education, not what is put into him. It is the occasional uprising of our sub‑selves that causes us, at times, to feel that we are greater than we know.” When we hear the statements of some of the earlier prophets we think they are interesting, and that in some vague way there may be, there probably is, some truth in them. “There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.” The same is true in connection with that saying of Isaiah: “And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand and when ye turn to the left.”

Also that of Zaccharias when he said: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” And again in the saying: “Thou shalt decree a thing and it shall be established unto thee.”

Now unless there is some force that actually operates, to bring about these conditions, these results, then there is no truth whatever in the statements themselves. Something never occurs through nothing—always through the operation of a force. The law of Cause and Effect is absolute. There is never an effect without a cause.

This brings us at once to the most interesting, and by all means the most valuable part, of the entire matter we are considering. If there is but the one Life, Being, the Infinite Spirit of life and power that is back of all, working in and through all—the life of all; if the Divine is in the human, or speaking more accurately, the Divine Life is the life in the human, how can we apprehend this fact more fully, that the qualities and the powers of this Real Life may become operative and effective in our lives? How can they be made of value to lift our common‑place lives up to the pattern of those who have apprehended them, and whose lives have been lifted thereby into great power and beauty?

There is one characteristic that these all had in common, including Jesus. They all spent time more or less, but all adequate time alone in the quiet. They meditated, they desired, they definitely sought the “pearl of great price.” They believed the expression “God working in us and through us.” They gave it the opportunity to prove itself. Definitely they stilled the outer senses, the senses that relate us to the material world about us.

They gave their minds an opportunity to come into harmony with, to become attuned to the spiritual vibrations of the Infinite Divine Life that continually flood and animate the soul, which is the seat or the organ through which it manifests itself in life and in power in the human existence. The exact method we perhaps do not know.

This, however, is how it seems to me. It follows likewise the analogy of the best we know in connection with the higher forces within us and without us.

Constitutionally we are receptive to various impressions or vibrations from the outer world about us, acting through outer sense organs that conduct these vibrations along their own respective nerve or nerve systems, through which they are transmitted to the brain, and the result is that the mind, when awake and attentive, gets the image or the effect so produced. It is through the channel of the five senses, so far as at present we know, that we get all of our communications and have all of our knowledge in connection with the material world that we know about us.

When the mind is awake and active, vibrations from one sense organ or another are continually impinging upon it. The inner soul center, on the other hand, is continually being animated by emanations or vibrations of the Infinite Divine Life. It is continually being flooded by these emanations or vibrations, otherwise the life in the soul would cease to exist, and it could no longer animate the particular body to which it carries life and energy, and which would at once become inert and, as we term it, dead.

These vibrations or emanations stirring the faculties of the soul, transmit their impressions or images, the impressions of all things of which they are the source, to the mind when the mind is open and attentive to them. Through desire and quiet and the attitude of receptivity, these vibrations carrying with them the qualities of the Infinite Divine Life, which they are the transmitters of, make themselves known.

While therefore these vibrations of life carrying with them energy, insight and power are continually animating—flooding, we might say—the inner life of the soul, a part of their effects which is to flood all the higher inner faculties and transmit their messages to the mind, thus bringing them into the conscious life, is lost, unless the mind is brought into that condition of openness and receptivity, whereby these impressions can be transmitted to and received by it. This puts us in touch, or gives us the power of putting ourselves in touch, with the very Source of things.

Intuition, spiritual illumination, has to do with that part of our nature that is behind intellect but related to intellect, and that must be raised into the realm of the conscious mind in order to serve us—just the same as all sense impressions must be conveyed to, and be received in the mind, in order to carry any impressions or messages from the outer world to us.

It is for us to make the conscious receiving medium, the mind, in that initial attitude and then that habitual attitude, that there can be the play and the inter‑play between it and the soul, which relates us with the soul of things, with the Great First Cause, the source of all knowledge, wisdom, insight and power. There is then a great truth upheld by a great law in: “The Lord thy God in the midst of these mighty;” and also in: “There is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.”

We must make our mental attitude one of habitual attention to and love for the higher leadings, that the spirit within stirred by the breath of the Almighty, as it continually is, can transmit its vibrations in impressions to the mind.

The following words speak with peculiar power to me, because they are words of one who had the experience and who therefore knew the facts of which he spoke—and more, he was not bound by a system: “Nothing stirs the central wheel of the soul like the Breath of God. The whole man is quickened, his senses are new senses, his emotions new emotions; his reason, his affections, his imagination, are all newborn. The change is greater than he knows; he marvels at the powers in himself which the Breath is opening and calling forth. He finds his nature to be an unutterable thing; he is sure therefore that the future must have inconceivable surprises in store. And herein lies the evidence, which I commend to my readers, of the existence of God, and of the Eternal human Hope. Let God’s Breath kindle new spring‑time in the soul, start into life its deeply buried germs, lead in heaven’s summer; you will then have as clear evidence of God from within as you have of the universe from without. Indeed, your internal experience of life, and illimitable Hope in God will be nearer to you, and more prevailing, than all your external and superficial experience of nature and the world.”

The above words by a modern prophet are similar in their import to those of an earlier prophet—“With Thee is the fountain of life; in Thy light shall we see light.” If there is truth in the statement: “Thou shalt hear a voice behind thee saying: ‘This is the way, walk ye in it,’” then there is a method by which the voice communicates itself, and a definite method or law whereby you or I can get what it communicates—a method governed by law just as definite as the law that underlies the transmission of the message through the telephone, or using a method less crude, the transmission of the radio‑telephone message.

The message comes, but I, in order to get it, must listen; and it helps me in listening to have the surroundings or conditions so that I can listen in the quiet and the more readily hear. When Elijah was on the mountain it was, the chronicler tells us, after the various physical or material disturbances or commotions, that he heard the “still small voice,” the voice of his own soul by means of which his God was speaking to him.

The following incident illustrates what I mean. The experience was told me during the year by a friend who was for years a close friend of John Burroughs and of John Muir, and at whose home both have stayed, and at times for long periods. It is but one of many occurrences of a similar type that have come into her life. I recalled this one the other day, and sent and asked her if she would be willing to give me the facts in written form as briefly as possible. I give them as received:

“It was over thirty years ago. I had been staying the winter in Los Angeles, California, with my parents, and was to leave on the night train for Ogden, Omaha and Chicago. My husband, who was in the east at the time, was to meet me in Chicago, and from there we were to continue east to Nova Scotia. My son was a little fellow about three years of age.

“The trains made up in Los Angeles for the east, and by going to the station early, one could have the berth made up and retire—the train left about nine o’clock. My parents, also some friends, went to the depot with me about seven o’clock, so I could put my little son to bed, and retire myself before train time.

“About 7:30 my friends left, and I undressed and put my boy to bed, then started to prepare for retiring myself. Something seemed to compel me to stop my preparations; I felt foolish and continued. I was compelled, although I could not tell how, to stop, and was trembling quite perceptibly—I had a sort of a fear and awe. I took my little boy up and began to dress him‑realizing what I was doing, and how foolish it seemed—I put him again to bed and took my clothing partly off, when some unseen force compelled me to dress quite hurriedly and also to dress my little boy. I then could not seem to move fast enough. In a sort of confused state of mind I got my things together, took my baby and baggage and left the car and took a cab to the St. Elmo hotel for the night—as I did not want my parents or friends to know of my ‘foolish’ action—I did not return to my parents’ home.

“In the morning I boarded a train for Chicago, taking a day coach through as I had lost my sleeper and could not well afford to secure another through. On the way I bought a paper in which an account was given of the train, on which I had been, being wrecked on the Dale Creek bridge. There had been nine other people in the sleeper besides myself, and that sleeper had burned after going through the bridge, all being killed—many more on the same train were killed, but I have forgotten the details. I wired at once to my husband and parents that I was all right; but they do not know to this day of my action.”

This is what I mean when I say that unless we have intuitive powers, the power of receiving impressions—of being communicated to—in this way, then we are inferior to many of the animals. The natural normal life, which is the life awake to the Life within—the source of the higher wisdom and power— guides us and guards us, not only in the face of harm or danger, but in every detail of life, if we will love it, open ourselves to it, live it, heed it. It will not necessarily prevent the bridge going down, but it will prevent our taking the train that goes down with the bridge.

When we get to the point of fully realizing that everything is governed by law, that there is natural law in the spiritual world, the same as there is natural law in what we term the natural world, we will then realize that many of the remarkable statements in the Bible, and in the sacred books of other peoples, are no longer enigmas, but statements of facts. Our own Bible will then become of far greater value for numbers of people for whom today it has but little value.

When we get to the point of dropping the word “miracle” in reference to the works of Jesus, or rather the various things that were done by Him, and look upon Him as a great spiritual explorer as well as prophet and teacher, who by His wonderful aptitude for the things of the spirit perceived the faculties of the inner spirit as related to the mind, and as a consequence the inner powers and forces, thereby translating them into life and action, we will find His life of vastly more significance in the life of the world today, and also to our own individual lives.

By virtue of His unique powers He was able to anticipate, and He did anticipate the facts pertaining to certain laws and forces that the most advanced psychology, metaphysics and philosophy, and some by actual experimentation, are finding only today. It will mark for many the difference between speculations about God and knowing God.

It will mark for many the difference between following enervating theories or even systems about Jesus, and striking hands with Him as a great virile Thinker and Teacher, and thereby appropriating to their own lives the great truths of life that He perceived, lived and taught. Happily also the great central truth that He perceived was intimately to know God, and the fundamental truth that He taught was that other men should know God, how they could know Him, and to live their lives in God, with all its attendant beauties and riches and added powers, even as He lived His.

Thus He becomes truly the Saviour of those who diligently follow Him; for He saves them from their lower selves and all their little meannesses and pettinesses, and limitations, and losses, leading them to a knowledge of their higher, diviner selves, and the living of their lives in the life of God. It is truly the atonement that He taught, the at‑one‑ment of the individual life with the life of God—“My God and your God.”

The almost startling revelation of the essential oneness of the human with the Divine was His revelation—and that life should be lived in and from this Divine Center. In all His thoughts and acts He gave allegiance, and He took pains to make known to His hearers His allegiance to this Divine guidance and power— Of myself I can do nothing: it is the Father that worketh in me.

It was Renan in his Life of Jesus, who said: “The highest consciousness of God that ever existed in the breast of humanity was that of Jesus.” “The only death to be feared,” said Paracelsus, “is separation from the life of God.” It was Buddha, the inspired one, who on account of his great vision and the beauty of his life, became God’s messenger to many millions of God’s other children but a short time before Jesus’ advent, who said: “Men are in bondage because they have not yet removed the idea of I.”

Intuition, which in its higher unfoldment becomes spiritual illumination, is a function of the spiritual nature which conveys to the mind impressions and knowledge from the Divine Center of our being. It is the function or faculty that connects the active thinking mind with the divine life within. It is an inner spiritual sense, the channel through which the divine wisdom and illumination communicates itself to the individual life. When sufficiently unfolded it grows into that divine illumination whereby the will and the purposes of the Divine life and power are revealed to man, and it also gives to him access to the inner life and soul of men and things.

It is a faculty or power that is latent or more or less developed in all people. Although different individuals have it in varying degrees in the different stages of their development, it is a faculty as natural and normal to the inner faculties of the soul, as are the sense organs that open outwardly, and give us the knowledge of the phenomena and the forces of the material world about us.

This higher spiritual realization which becomes in reality a new birth, raising the natural man into the kingdom of the spiritual man, marks a new and distinct step in evolution. It was due nineteen hundred years ago. It got well under way and bore splendid fruit for over two hundred years after Jesus’ time. Encrustations then formed, a system was evolved, and His simple direct message of the divinity of man was changed to the depravity and the fall of man. With it came stagnation and death to that marvelous spirit with its resultant works, that had started so splendidly.

The last fifty years have brought such facts to light from the realms of science, archaeology, and a knowledge of a definite process of evolution through which the Divine Power works, that the latter has crumpled through its very falsity. There gets into the personality of the man or woman open to this inner divine life a certain indefinable quality that all men feel and are influenced by. It makes a personality that is at once marked, and both subtle and wholesome in its influence. It engenders confidence and trust, and without confidence and trust all the amenities and relations of life must go by the board.

We influence people with whom we come in contact in accordance with the trust that they feel in us, and this feeling of trust is almost invariably instinctive.

There is undoubtedly a double or twofold reason for this. He who realizes his true identity, who realizes that it is the Divine Life that is his life, realizes that the real life‑essence in every other man or woman is the same, and hence there is no inferior and no superior—the only difference is a difference in self realization, unfoldment, at any given time. This gives a genuine feeling of Brotherhood, for children of the same father must be brothers, and to realize this fully makes the fact of brotherhood a living and ever present reality.

If one, therefore, loves Life, the Life that manifests as himself, he will love the Life that manifests as his brother, whatever the difference in the rank, or station, or attainments may be at any particular time; for tomorrow or a year hence a greater degree of self knowledge and therefore of divine self realization, and the relative status of the two may be vastly different.

It is marvelous what a transformation can come into a human life when one realizes the true reality of his life. When Phillips Brooks described personality as a conscious relationship with God, he gave expression to a God‑consciousness that he himself possessed to a marked degree, that all who knew him felt, and that gave such commanding force and power to all his utterances. Those who heard him felt that they were listening to one truly inspired—and they were.

In the second place a force continually emanates from each individual, that takes its stamp and its characteristics from the real soul qualities of that individual. This force is felt first and primarily by the more sensitively organized, and also to a greater or less extent by all. The large, the unself‑centered, those whose minds and hearts kindle with love for their fellows, through the great elemental law that like produces like, kindle in turn the same feelings of love and the same kindly emotions in the minds and the hearts of all those with whom they come in contact. On the other hand the little, the critical, the cynical, the envious—in short, the more undeveloped—give rise to a force that is either repellent in its effects and influence, or that not infrequently arouses a positive feeling of antagonism in others.

Love, sympathy and goodwill inspire, and inevitably, these same qualities in others, and their warming and ennobling influences always come back to the one from whose mind and heart they emanate.

This realization of kinship with the Divine brings that sense of humility, that element of simplicity which is always the characteristic of the balanced normal life. A man realizes— whatever his attainment or position may be—how little, how inconsequential he, as an individual, is, in connection with the great life of the world and the universe. A simplicity comes that is always a characteristic of the truly great. Fame, prestige, position, are accounted as little by really strong men. They are free from that vice of fools that Pope so knowingly describes:

“Of all the causes which conspire to blind

Man’s erring judgment, and mislead the mind,

What the weak head with strongest bias rules,

Is Pride—that never‑failing vice of fools.”

There seems also to be a law that is absolute, in that “Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” There is on the other hand a sense of dignity and power that comes to the one who realizes the oneness of his real life with the Divine Life; but that is tempered with a constant sense of humility.

We cannot take ourselves away from the air, we cannot take our bodies away from water, or from food, for any length of time, without the body suffering thereby, or even ceasing to function. But on the other hand, the greatest of all, the very life itself, and the power that sustains it, we give but little conscious attention to—and the losses we sustain thereby are very great.

May this not be what Jesus had in mind when He said: “The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.” I think it probably is. And when He said, “There is nothing secret which shall not be revealed, nor hidden, which shall not be disclosed,” He undoubtedly had in mind in connection with them the faculties and the powers of an inner kingdom that He taught is all men’s birthright.

As the unfoldment of these faculties in their higher aspects is one of the concomitants of the seeking and the finding of that inner kingdom—the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, which He said was not only the highest good, but led to the highest conditions in life, anything that will point the way to the method of that unfoldment must be a boon to any life. There is a method that leads to this end. It is simple, but effective. Its key‑note is desire and quiet. It is attention to, desire for, and the will to open the mind and the heart to the leading and domination of the Spirit of infinite life and love and wisdom and power that is our source. It is bringing ourselves into that condition of receptivity, through quiet, that our being in its very center can be so stirred, so vibrated, if you please, by the inflowing tide of the Divine Life, that it is able to well up and impress its vibrations on the mind. It is the conscious co‑ordinating of our minds with the Divine Life within through the agency of prayer, which is aspiration, the soul’s sincere desire, coupled with faith. There is but one method of prayer according again to the Great Teacher; all other methods He either discouraged or condemned. His direction for effective prayer is very definite: “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.” I like that other and more literal translation for a portion of this: “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into the retired place of thee.” There can be but one meaning to this—to retire into the quiet of our inner being. It gives us the opportunity in the very center of our being, of feeling the vibrations of the One‑Life, of having our souls sensitized to the inflowing tide of this life, so that its vibrations will well up with sufficient power to write their impressions upon the mind.

Although Jesus often used the term Father, and God, He early made it known—God is spirit. Worship to Him was aspiration, prayer—the desire for the reign of God in the mind and heart, that the human will become one with the will of God. The Kingdom of Heaven which is to be found within, He said, is this harmony with the life of God within. And when this harmony is brought about, the life will be in harmony with the laws of God. They will become clear to the soul’s inner vision.

With God, He taught, all things are possible, meaning clearly, that in conjunction with God all things are possible. The mind and heart that works in harmony with God’s mind, has God’s laws so clearly revealed to it that their observance brings their accomplishment. Jesus takes no half‑way stand in regard to prayer. All can be summed up in His remarkable statement: “All things whatsoever ye desire when ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them.” It is a remarkable statement, but one that the whole tenor of His life gave authority to.

The power of the Divine Mind is unmeasurable, and if our mind is so harmonized that it vibrates with the Divine Mind, then we have these same powers to draw and to command that He Himself, through the same method and process had. No one realized more clearly than Jesus the power of thought— thought as a force—when sensitized by the power of the spirit within.

God will not help him who does not help himself. All help is within and becomes operative and even dynamic when rightly called upon and rightly used. It is primarily a matter of realizing and demanding our own. “The power of silent demand,” is but the recognition and the intelligent use of a force that is an inherent faculty of the mind that realizes its life as one with the Life Principle, the Infinite Creative Life of the universe. It is being understood, and is being effectively used by men and women in increasing numbers today.