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garment of your petty selfishness fall from you, and put on the new garment of universal Love. You will then realize the inward heaven, and it will be reflected in all your outward life.
He who sets his foot firmly upon the path of self-conquest, who walks, aided by the staff of Faith, the highway of self-sacrifice, will assuredly achieve the highest prosperity, and will reap abounding and enduring joy and bliss.
To them that seek the highest good All things subserve the wisest ends;
Nought comes as ill, and wisdom lends Wings to all shapes of evil brood.
The dark’ning sorrow veils a Star
That waits to shine with gladsome light; Hell waits on heaven; and after night Comes golden glory from afar.
Defeats are steps by which we climb With purer aim to nobler ends;
Loss leads to gain, and joy attends True footsteps up the hills of time.
Pain leads to paths of holy bliss,
To thoughts and words and deeds divine-, And clouds that gloom and rays that shine, Along life’s upward highway kiss.
Misfortune does but cloud the way Whose end and summit in the sky
Of bright success, sunkiss’d and high, Awaits our seeking and our stay.
The heavy pall of doubts and fears That clouds the Valley of our hopes, The shades with which the spirit copes, The bitter harvesting of tears,
The heartaches, miseries, and griefs, The bruisings born of broken ties, All these are steps by which we rise To living ways of sound beliefs.
Love, pitying, watchful, runs to meet The Pilgrim from the Land of Fate; All glory and all good await
The coming of obedient feet.
4
The silent power of thought: controlling and directing one’s forces
The most powerful forces in the universe are the silent forces; and in accordance with the intensity of its power does a force become beneficent when rightly directed, and destructive when wrongly employed.
This is a common knowledge in regard to the mechanical forces, such as steam, electricity, etc., but few have yet learned to apply this knowledge to the realm of mind,
where the thought-forces (most powerful of all) are continually being generated and sent forth as currents of salvation or destruction.
At this stage of his evolution, man has entered into the possession of these forces, and the whole trend of his present advancement is their complete subjugation. All the wisdom possible to man on this material earth is to be found only in complete self-mastery, and the command, “Love your enemies,” resolves itself into an exhortation to enter here and now, into the possession of that sublime wisdom by taking hold of, mastering and transmuting, those mind forces to which man is now slavishly subject, and by which he is helplessly borne, like a straw on the stream, upon the currents of selfishness.
The Hebrew prophets, with their perfect knowledge of the Supreme Law, always related outward events to inward thought, and associated national disaster or success with the thoughts and desires that dominated the nation at the time.
The knowledge of the causal power of thought is the basis of all their prophecies, as it is the basis of all real wisdom and power. National events are simply the working out of the psychic forces of the nation.
Wars, plagues, and famines are the meeting and clashing of wrongly-directed thought- forces, the culminating points at which destruction steps in as the agent of the Law.
It is foolish to ascribe war to the influence of one man, or to one body of men. It is the crowning horror of national selfishness. It is the silent and conquering thought-forces which bring all things into manifestation.
The universe grew out of thought. Matter in its last analysis is found to be merely objectivized thought. All men’s accomplishments were first wrought out in thought, and then objectivized.
The author, the inventor, the architect, first builds up his work in thought, and having perfected it in all its parts as a complete and harmonious whole upon the thought-plane. he then commences to materialize it, to bring it down to the material or sense-plane.
When the thought-forces are directed in harmony with the over-ruling Law, they are up- building and preservative, but when subverted they become disintegrating and self- destructive.
To adjust all your thoughts to a perfect and unswerving faith in the omnipotence and supremacy of Good, is to co-operate with that Good, and to realize within yourself the solution and destruction of all evil. Believe and ye shall live.
And here we have the true meaning of salvation; salvation from the darkness and negation of evil, by entering into, and realizing the living light of the Eternal Good.
Where there is fear, worry, anxiety, doubt, trouble, chagrin, or disappointment, there is ignorance and lack of faith.
All these conditions of mind are the direct outcome of selfishness, and are based upon an inherent belief in the power and supremacy of evil; they therefore constitute practical atheism; and to live in, and become subject to, these negative and soul-destroying conditions of mind is the only real atheism.
It is salvation from such conditions that the race needs, and let no man boast of salvation whilst he is their helpless and obedient slave.
To fear or to worry is as sinful as to curse, for how can one fear or worry if he intrinsically believes in the Eternal justice, the Omnipotent Good, the Boundless Love? To fear, to worry, to doubt, is to deny, to dis-believe.
It is from such states of mind that all weakness and failure proceed, for they represent the annulling and disintegrating of the positive thought-forces which would otherwise speed to their object with power, and bring about their own beneficent results.
To overcome these negative conditions is to enter into a life of power, is to cease to be a slave, and to become a master, and there is only one way by which they can be overcome, and that is by steady and persistent growth in inward knowledge.
To mentally deny evil is not sufficient; it must, by daily practice, be risen above and understood. To mentally affirm the good is inadequate; it must, by unswerving endeavor, be entered into and comprehended.
The intelligent practice of self-control, quickly leads to a knowledge of one’s interior thought-forces, and, later on, to the acquisition of that power by which they are rightly employed and directed.
In the measure that you master self, that you control your mental forces instead of being controlled by them, in just such measure will you master affairs and outward circumstances.
Show me a man under whose touch everything crumbles away, and who cannot retain success even when it is placed in his hands, and I will show you a man who dwells continually in those conditions of mind which are the very negation of power.
To be for ever wallowing in the bogs of doubt, to be drawn continually into the quicksands of fear, or blown ceaselessly about by the winds of anxiety, is to be a slave, and to live the life of a slave, even though success and influence be for ever knocking at your door seeking for admittance.
Such a man, being without faith and without self-government, is incapable of the right government of his affairs, and is a slave to circumstances; in reality a slave to himself.
Such are taught by affliction, and ultimately pass from weakness to strength by the stress of bitter experience. Faith and purpose constitute the motive- power of life.
There is nothing that a strong faith and an unflinching purpose may not accomplish. By the daily exercise of silent faith, the thought-forces are gathered together, and by the daily strengthening of silent purpose, those forces are directed toward the object of accomplishment.
Whatever your position in life may be, before you can hope to enter into any measure of success,