My inmost self--the self I trust and try to a.s.sist--is sure that the world is growing better, whatever the hampered intellect may from time to time aver.
For one thing, I FEEL that the world"s mind is slowly yet swiftly changing its adjustment to one supreme reality--Truth.
Always have men believed that they desired only the truth, and always have they sought and found it in part. But then they have immediately wrapped it in packages and stowed it in boxes with elaborate labels. Our nature craves reality, not wrappings and tables of contents. Therefore every age has torn off some of the ancient outer things, and insisted at last on truth alone. More than during all the centuries before, men today demand reality-- just the essential reality a human soul craves, and can recognize, and can use in the building of its life.
Henry Drummond spoke of the adjustment which a great telescope needs for photographing the stars. Let us think of one fixed star.
"No adjustment is ever required on behalf of the star. That is one great fixed point in this shifting universe. But the WORLD MOVES.
And each day, each hour, demands a further motion and adjustment of the soul. A telescope in an observatory follows a star by clock-work, but the clock-work of the soul is the WILL." The world and the man must WILL TO ADJUST TO TRUTH if they would really find and know Truth.
THE WORLD ADJUSTING TO TRUTH.
I hold that the world to-day, more perfectly than ever before, is urging an accurate adjustment of the human soul to truth--that which alone the body demands for health, the mind for development, the deeper self for peace and power.
The old adjustments no longer satisfy. Truth is, indeed, eternal, but our relation must keep pace with it as we swing through the vast heavens of time. The photographs of yesterday do not speak correctly for to-day. We do not deny the stars; we only deny the science that is past.
This adjustment is a huge PRAYER. It is a request for truth, in a sense, but for truth only. And it is an a.s.sURANCE. It expects the truth. Now, that is the best kind of praying I know--Expectation in Adjustment.
When you plant your seed or properly place your telescope, you have created adjustment, and you expect harvest and picture.
EXPECTATION IN ADJUSTMENT IS a.s.sUMPTION.
The world no longer merely ASKS for truth; it harmonizes with Nature and Life, and so, APPROPRIATES.
The World"s New Dawn.
You are invited to make this thought a lifelong affirmation: IN HARMONY _I_ APPROPRIATE ALL GOOD.
Such is one of my reasons for believing that the world is growing better. This att.i.tude toward Truth has influenced for the better every legitimate activity of man. The results are seen in Benevolence, Business, Education, Government, Religion. A new day of splendid, unhampered, happy and growing spiritual life is bursting over the earth. Souls are coming free. Hearts are thrilling with courage. In minds has begun the swing and heave of the sea.
I ask you to take the following lines as a symbol of the world"s wonderful sense of appropriation that is everywhere evident.
The sea, the pine, the stars, the forest deep, Bequeath to me at will their subtle wealth.
Or still days brood, or rough winds round me sweep, Mine is the buoyant earth-man"s vibrant health: All things for love of me their vigils keep-- I am the soul of health, of wealth.
Run, sea, in my heart!
Pine, sing in my heart!
Stars, glow in my heart!
For ye are mine, and my soul, Like ye, is a part Of the Marvelous Whole.
There"s no thing dear to me is not my wealth, And none that sees me I would distant keep; For swift possession is my earth-man"s health, Or still days brood, or rough winds round me sweep: All things for love of me their vigils keep-- I am the soul of health, of wealth.
You are invited, now, to seize and use the spirit of this att.i.tude of appropriation for your own welfare and power.
COURAGE ABROAD.
And I hold that our life is growing better for the reason that I discover, in all this new adjustment to truth, this expectation and a.s.sumption that Good will not withhold itself, and BECAUSE of these things, a new era of courage sweeping the heart of humanity from sea to sea. There is abroad a Universal Breath, manifest of Life. This breath consists of two general activities, that of Denial and that of Affirmation. Courage is a denial of fear and of the reality of fear"s cause. But denial is only the beginning; the really vital thing is confidence in self and in the huge friendly Universe in which we live. Kindly remember this. You are not making progress merely because you turn your back on the Night.
Progress means that you also turn face to the Sun and walk buoyantly into the Day. Courage is affirmation:
I am the spirit of the soul Harmonic with the Perfect Whole.
Why, the att.i.tude of healthy denial is everywhere apparent. Permit me to run over some of the things that are coming more and more to be refused acceptance. You will understand that the items are ill.u.s.trations only. We are denying: The divine right of kings; the littleness and unholiness of fundamental human nature; a G.o.d who is a kind of huge carpenter; a Deity who needs to be appeased; a Providence which punishes; the idea that some people are created for toil and service and others for ease and to be served; the notion that we must eschew all drugs or depend only on drugs; the thought which makes disease an ent.i.ty; the fancy that the illness of some is a divine will; the feeling that wealth should not be craved, or that it exists for a favored few; the creed that "evil"
is a necessary existence; the faith that heaven is reserved for the "elect" who "believe" a number of things; the horror of an eternal h.e.l.l; the heresy that religion, the spiritual, need have anything to do with creeds, rites or ceremonies; the feeling that success is only for the favored ones of earth; and so on, and so on.
These are merely miscellaneous examples of the thousand old-time "truths" which are now more and more denied. Many pages would be required to set forth the ideas and dogmas which are unceasingly and emphatically being rejected, thoughtfully, deliberately, and in a wholesale manner throughout the world of earnest men and women to-day.
But when you deny, it is a great mistake if you do not affirm something better. The breath of courage which is sweeping over the earth, therefore, is splendidly declaring for ten thousand deathless realities to take the place of mistaken beliefs. I have s.p.a.ce simply for a few ill.u.s.trations. Are we not affirming somewhat as follows at the present time?
SIGNS OF THE NEW LIFE.
Deity is neither Jew nor Gentile; He is the Infinite All-Good--the Eternal White Life.
The Infinite and Eternal White Life is evolving a Universe toward the ultimate perfection of absolute harmony.
All HUMAN BEINGS are in fundamental nature divine.
We are here for the purpose of GROWING TO BEST ESTATE.
Every man, woman and child in the world is ENt.i.tLED TO HEALTH, HAPPINESS, POWER.
"EVIL" is derangement in individual life induced by individual and world-thought gone wrong. As such derangement "evil" is real, but this reality is not necessary or essential, and it may be banished totally and forever.
DISEASE is dis-eas.e.m.e.nt of the matter of a body induced by dis- eas.e.m.e.nt of soul in a body. The self creates or builds its own body, and the condition of the self determines the condition of the body. In "Power For Success" I have stated what I believe to be the growing conviction in this regard. "The sound body is a perfect material expression of the Universal Forces playing into its field, and its physical character is determined by the psychic character of its owner." "In a state of health, all physical movements must necessarily cooperate harmoniously with one another and with the Universal Forces."
What we call MIND is a collection of powers organized for use by the self, and these powers are rightly developed only by the good, the true, the beautiful. If the feeling of goodness, or of trueness, or of beauty, is deep within the subconscious phase of the self, mind-life exhibits as mental health. Mental health is a universal right.
The "SPIRIT"--not to refine on philosophy--is the real self which builds body and may unfold mind. The highest state of the individual, therefore, is religious at the top. This is spirituality. But the only conceivable essential to spirituality is a belief in, and an intelligent (truth-using) surrender to, the White Life--conceived in one"s own way--for harmony and oneness therewith.
HAPPINESS consists in being consciously harmonized with the true, the good and the beautiful. It is not necessary, however, although it is, of course, better, to know these words. The child vibrates with goodness without understanding the name "goodness." And so on.
POWER IS PERSONALITY RECEIVING ITS OWN IN THE REALMS OF LIFE.
All things exist for all beings.
Such are some of the realities that are being quietly and potently a.s.sumed and affirmed to-day throughout the world. Of course the language of a.s.sertion will vary with each individual, but this is immaterial. The essences affirmed are beyond cavil. Other ill.u.s.trations might be given, but they would be mere phases of that one breath of new hope and courage that is stirring in every land, to "spread contagion on mankind," of the "life which really is."
These higher thoughts, however, are of the Dawn only. The full Day is not yet with us. Shadows still there are, and error, disease and pain. Why must these false "realities" remain? Solely because of three things that linger on:
FALSE THOUGHT--SELFISHNESS--FEAR.
And when fear vanishes, replaced by the WHITE LIFE, selfishness will die as impossible, and thought will no longer be false for the reason that only truth will be possessed.
If the whole world, then, would but thrust out fear and receive the spirit of courage, I do not know any "evils" that could endure a century.
And if you who read these pages will but swing up to the WHITE- LIFE harmony-plane, Health, Happiness and Power must be yours as surely as air rushes into a broken vacuum. If you ask, "What are the limits of this truth?" I answer, "I don"t know." To speak otherwise would be mere speculation. I affirm the great truth: All things are yours. That YOU, if stricken through and through with dis-harmony, may be ABLE to receive ALL you crave, I may not affirm. Nevertheless, it is permitted to say:" Launch out! Launch out in the New Thought of Life, and receive, as you do so, whatever is rightly your own, as you are increasingly able to do so."