Preface to the First
Edition
THERE is a golden thread that
runs
through every religion in the world. There is a golden thread that runs
through the lives and the teachings ot all the prophets, seers, sages,
and saviors in the world's history, through the lives of all men and
women of truly great and lasting power. All that they have ever done or
attained to has been done in full accordance with law.
What one has done, all may do. This same golden thread must enter into
the lives of all who today, in this busy work-a-day world of ours,
would exchange impotence for power, weakness and suffering for
abounding health and strength pain and unrest for perfect peace,
poverty of whatever nature for fullness and plenty.
Each is building their own world. We both build from within and we
attract from without. Thought is the force with which we build, for
thoughts are forces. Like builds like and like attracts like. In the
degree that thought is spiritualized does it become more subtle and
powerful in its workings. This spiritualizing is in accordance with law
and is within the power of all.
Everything is first worked out in the unseen before it is manifested in
the seen, in the ideal before it is realized in the real, in the
spiritual before it shows forth in the material. The realm of the
unseen is the realm of cause. The realm of the seen is the realm of
effect. The nature of effect is always determined and conditioned by
the nature of its cause.
To point out the great facts
in
connection with, and the great laws underlying the workings of the
interior, spiritual, thought forces, to point them out so simply and so
clearly that even a child can understand, is the author's aim. To point
them out so simply and so clearly that all can grasp them, that all can
take them and infuse them into everyday life, so as to mold it in all
its details in accordance with what they would have it, is his purpose
That life can be thus molded by them is not a matter of mere
speculation or theory with him, but a matter of positive knowledge
There is a divine sequence running throughout the universe. Within and
above and below the human will incessantly works the Divine will. To
come into harmony with it and thereby with all the higher laws and
forces, to come then into league and to work in conjunction with them,
in order that they can work in league and in conjunction with us, is to
come into the chain of this wonderful sequence. This is the secret of
all success. This is to come into the possession of unknown riches,
into the realization of undreamed-of powers.
R.W.T.
Within
yourself lies the cause of whatever
enters into your
life. To come into the full realization of your own awakened
inner powers is to be able to condition your life in exact
accord with what you would have it.
A New Message from the Author
WE are born into a strange time - a time that tries
men's
souls. Bewilderment and fear hold many; change and uncertainty stalk
through the land - all lands.
Those who keep their courage up and go serenely on are coming through
in a way that those who weaken or lie down cannot know. But to do this
many lives need help—real concrete help. A remark by an old college
friend some years ago has come to my mind every now and then of
late. 'After all,' said he, 'it is well for one to have a little
philosophy in ones life. A farm boy, eager for a better education and
to get ahead pushing his way through college in the face of great odds,
he has been doing a splendid work in a great city, and for his country,
and yet has always remained humble. His own character indicates to me
he has in goodly measure the philosophy which he commended.
'Yes' I replied 'if it has the element of use.' For I had even then
read much in the philosophies of the present and of earlier times, and
was forced to the conclusion that very large parts of them are of
little real value—interesting, but of little real value—because of
their lack of the element ot use; use in the everyday problems of life.
Each of us has their problems of one sort or another, and no life is
free from them. We all need help. This is particularly true at present
because of the peculiar time we have been born into.
I have often said to friend and acquaintance during the last two or
three years that there is perhaps no one quality men and women need so
much, and right down in their hearts long for so much, as the quality
of courage. For courage to me is nothing more or less than a positive,
creative type of thought. It not only keeps us going, but all the time
works out effects on the course of our journeying. Thoughts are forces,
subtle, vital, creative, continually building and shaping our lives
according to their nature. It is in this way that the life always and
inevitably follows the thought.
Thoughts of strength engender strength from within and attract it from
without. Thoughts of weakness actualize weakness within and attract it
from without. Courage therefore begets success, as fear begets failure.
There is something in the universe that responds to intrepid thinking.
The POWER that holds and that moves the stars in their courses
sustains, illumines and fights for the brave and the upright. Courage
has power and magic in it. Faith and hope and courage are great
producers—we cannot fail if we live always in the brave and cheerful
attitude of mind and heart. He alone fails who gives up and lies down.
To open ourselves to this sustaining POWER, to live continually under
its guidance, this is our part. Those of us who do our part will keep
free from fear, and therefore from a weakening, corroding worry, the
two black twins that carry the germs of despair and defeat, costly for
ourselves, unfair for our families, our friends and as our neighbors,
costly even for our country.
Years ago, shortly after this book was written, I used on the title
page of a little book, as a sort of keynote, the sentence: 'The moment
we fully and vitally realize who and what we are, we then begin to
build our own world even as God builds His.'
What is the fundamental fact, the fundamental principle of life, the
real basis of any healthy or even worthy philosophy of life—Can we find
it and know it? There's the rub. But long ago there came one
who with a great aptitude for discerning the things of the mind and the
spirit, a great clarity of perception that enabled Him to understand
the reality of life, the One Life, and to identify His own life with
it—the Infinite Spirit of life and power that is back of all, animating
and working through all, the life of all.
So direct and intimate was His understanding of it that He used the
term Father: I and my Father are one. And to make it of value in that
it was not for Him alone, He said: As I am you shall be. My
consciousness of the One Life shall be your consciousness, My insight
and power shall be your insight and power, if you will receive My
message and do the things I tell you. And truly He handled the stuff of
life with a wonderful artistry. This is the message that the Master,
Jesus of Galilee, tried so hard to get over into the world. It is
through this that He becomes the supreme Way-revealer, the Way-revealer
to us men and women of earth.
The Way He showed is what man so sadly needs for a higher and a more
efficient individual life, and what the world needs for a more
efficient and harmonious and co-operative life. Here is the basis of
all idealistic philosophy - a philosophy, a religion of power, of
concrete creative power and therefore of use. All are partakers and
individual expressions of the One Life, all related and interrelated.
As we open ourselves fully to the realization of this we bring harmony
into our individual lives, and out of that harmony we create a world of
harmony and co-operation, in which each individual and each country
enjoys freedom and the fruits of labor, instead of enslavement, of
disruption, and of eventual destruction.
Yes, from the conception of the One Life flows the inevitable reality
that all men are brothers. There is great gain, there is even an
obvious self-interest in building our individual lives and our world
life upon that reality. If we do so, we will establish a just and
therefore more lasting peace.
What a frightful price we have now to pay for our ignorance, our
negligence, our self-seeking, our forgetting that the good of all is
the only real and lasting good! Out of all the travail good may come,
but again that will depend on us.
We must keep our courage up, must keep our vision clear, must keep our
balance, so that we may free ourselves and others with us from the
frightful dangers dislocation and disorder that are the results of the
great world conflicts.
A single stanza by Edwin Markham voices the poet's inspiration:
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.
This was the poet's way of expressing the great truth we are
considering and I know he believed it thoroughly, for we talked it over
many times together. This was his belief as to the mission and the
revelation of the Master, and the Kingdom of God that comes into being
when all men realize they are brothers, and are wise enough to live and
to act as brothers.
In this again lie the truth and the song that arose from it and sang
itself through our earlier poet Whittier, good Quaker and true always
to the "Inner Light":
I know not where His
islands lift
Their fronded
palms
in air,
I only know I
cannot
drift
Beyond His
love and
care.
A dark age can come only if we men and women of earth fail to do our
part. We will not fail. We cannot fail. But the sands in the hour-glass
may be running lower than we know. We must bestir ourselves.
R.W.T.
Prelude
THE optimist is right. The
pessimist
is
right. The one differs from the other as the light from the dark. Yet
both are right. Each is right from their own particular point of view,
and this point of view is the determining factor in the life of each.
It determines as to whether it is a life of power or of impotence, of
peace or of pain, of success or of failure.
The optimist has the power of seeing things in their entirety and in
their right relations. The pessimist looks from a limited and a
one-sided point of view. The one has their understanding illuminated by
wisdom, the understanding of the other is darkened by ignorance. Each
is building their world from within, and the result of the building are
determined by the point of view of each The optimist, by their superior
wisdom and insight, is making their own heaven, and in the degree that
they make their own heaven are helping to make one for all the world
beside. The pessimist, by virtue of their limitations, are making their
own hell, and in the degree that they make their own hell are they
helping to make one for all mankind.
You and I have the predominating characteristics of an optimist or the
predominating characteristics of a pessimist. We then are making, hour
by hour, our own heaven or our own hell; and in the degree that we are
making the one or the other for ourselves are we helping make it for
all the world beside.
The word heaven means harmony. The word hell is from the Old English
hell, meaning to build a wall around, to separate; to be helled was to
be shut off from. Now if there is such a thing as harmony there must be
that something one can be in right relations with; for to be in right
relations with anything is to be in harmony with it. Again, if there is
such a thing as being helled, shut off, separated from, there must be
that something from which one is helled, shut off, or separated.
The
Supreme Fact
of the Universe
THE great central fact of the
universe
is that Spirit of Infinite Life and Power that is behind all, that
animates all, that manifests itself in and through all; that
self-existent principle of life from which all has come, and not only
from which all has come, but from which all is continually coming. If
there is an individual life, there must of necessity be an infinite
source of life from which it comes. If there is a quality or a force of
love, there must of necessity be an infinite source of love whence it
comes. If there is wisdom, there must be the all-wise source behind it
from which it springs. The same is true in regard to peace, the same in
regard to power, the same in regard to what we call material things.
There is then this Spirit of Infinite Life and Power behind all, which
is the source of all. This Infinite Power is creating, working, ruling
through the agency of great immutable laws and forces that run through
all the universe that surrounds us on every side. Every act of our
everyday lives is governed by these same great laws and forces. Every
flower that blooms by the wayside, springs up, grows, blooms, fades,
according to certain great immutable laws. Every snowflake that plays
between earth and heaven, forms, falls, melts, according to
certain great unchangeable laws.
In a sense there is nothing in all the great universe but law. If this
is true there must of necessity be a force behind it all that is maker
of these laws, and a force greater than the laws that are made. This
Spirit of Infinite Life and Power that is behind all is what I call
God. I care not what term you may use, be it Kindly Light, Providence,
the Over Soul, Omnipotence, or whatever term may be most convenient. I
care not what the term may be as long as we are agreed in regard to the
great central fact itself.
God, then, is this Infinite Spirit which fills all the universe with
Himself alone, so that all is from Him and in Him, and there is nothing
that is outside. Indeed and in truth, then, in Him we live and move and
have our being. He is the life of our life, our very life itself. We
have received, we are continually receiving our life from Him. We are
partakers of the life of God; and though we differ from Him in that we
are individualized spirits, while He is the Spirit including us as well as
all else beside, yet in essence the
life of God and the life of man are identically the same, and so are
one. They differ not in essence, in quality; they differ in
degree.
A
Resolve
for Today
THE following little motto—a
resolve
for
today—may contain a little aid for the following of the Way.
I AM
RESOLVED
I believe that my Master intended
that
I
take His teachings in the simple, frank, and open manner in which He
gave them, out on the hill-side, by the calm blue waters of the
Galilean sea, and out under the stars of heaven.
I believe that He knew what He
meant,
and that He meant what He said, when He gave the substance of all
religion and the duty of man as love to God, and love and service for
His fellow-man.
I am therefore resolved at this,
the
beginning of another day, this fresh beginning of life, to go forth
eager and happy and unafraid, in that I can come into the same filial
relations of love and guidance and care with my Father in Heaven that
my Master realized and lived, and going before revealed to me.
I shall listen intently to know,
and
shall run with eager feet to do my Father's will, calm and quiet
within, knowing that I shall have the Divine guidance and care, and
that no harm therefore shall befall me; for I am now living in God's
life and there I shall live forever.
I am resolved in all human
contact
to meet petulance with patience, questionings with kindness, hatred
with love, eager always to do the kindly deed that brings the joy of
service—and that alone makes human life truly human. I shall seek no
advantage for myself to the detriment or the harm of my neighbor,
knowing that it is only through the law of mutuality that I can fully
enjoy what I gain—or can even be a man.
I am resolved therefore
so
to live
this day that, when the twilight comes and the night falls, I shall be
not only another day's journey nearer home; but I shall have lived a
man's part and done a man's work in the world and shall indeed deserve
my Father's love and care.