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Book Description

FOREWORD

RELIGIONS, beliefs, philosophies, and sciences have come up throughout all time; ever and always men have reasoned themselves back some way into union with the Great First Cause; their reasonings and faiths have lived and died with them, only to be replaced again and again by the new creations of a new race of minds.

The new is always a bursting out of some old thought flame that reaches from a half-forgotten past. The beliefs and faiths of earlier races were but the faint prophecy of what modern thought and science have revealed as facts.

The conscious work built by the human brain must ever find the same goal. One by one the beliefs and religions, and sciences and philosophies of today, will give way to the unfolding of a different expression of thought; but no matter how soon each distinct teaching sinks from sight, no matter what has gone in the past, what is now, or what will be, each bears its own relation to the period and people of its time; each has its own potent power in shaping and influencing the expressions of the people of its own day.

The future always has its origin in the past; our today is the father of our tomorrow. "Nothing happens," but everything is by natural law, and has its part in shaping lives and moulding thought.

New Thought is a product of the twentieth century thought and need; it had its birth in human experiences and human unfoldment; it is God's answer to the now.

Developed man has ceased to be troubled about the future or the past, believing that both are found in the eternal now; that time always has been and always will be the ever present, and all that any one has to do, is to be conscious of infinite union today, which is forever.

New Thought calls for no renunciation; it conquers life, by union not through denial or negation; it permits perfect freedom of mind and thought and method; no one is obliged to submit his reason to unintelligible mysteries, nor to accept blindly what contradicts his common sense.

Science retains its own normal place, so do matter and material functions. Faith and revelation are understood arid appreciated; physical and metaphysical laws are merged into one and taken at a correct valuation; peace, power, pleasure, happiness, joy, beauty, love, home ties, wealth, health, and comradeship with God (good) all become the normal possession and expression of the life which fills itself with the truth of this divine inspiration.

New Thought is Truth to those who know, and to those who do not know, it must forever remain an opinion until, in the day of their own unfoldment, they too will behold the secret of its meaning.

It  takes  its  place  today  in the supply that must always be found for human need; when accepted it is meat and drink to souls astray from consciousness of Infinite union.

It was born on the table-land of illumination and worked out into tangible form on the plane of human reasoning.

The calm clearness of New Thought; its union of profound spiritual insight with perfect simplicity of intellectual research, and its natural sincere expressions, almost, at first, disguise its wonderful illumination. It is only when we see how deep, and full, and complete it is in all of its conclusions, how it satisfies and never tires, that we begin to recognize from what a deep place in the universal consciousness it has come.

New Thought may be read century after century, and it will bring to each new seeker after Truth the same comfort that is found in it here and now. No matter who shall follow its teachings and interpret its meanings, they will find in it "the light upon the pathway of the just, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day,"

It is the consciousness of God in the human soul; higher than this no truth can go, for it is the fullness and richness of Him who fills all.

 

Chapter 1

THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY

THESE were the words of Paul when before King Agrippa he was permitted to speak for himself. Like Paul the line of analysis on which we shall base our higher teaching must be, that the power of healing by union with the conscious-ness of the All-Health, is, indeed, not a thing incredible.

There are many passages of wonder and mystery in the Bible, but as we turn its pages, read and interpret its meaning, we find that they are all more or less obscured by the greater wonder and mystery of the one human history of the Christ life and the healing accomplished for the needy who followed after him.

Jesus was the world's greatest Physician. He healed the sick, made the blind to see, cleansed the lepers, and handed on to his disciples and to those who follow in his footsteps an eternal legacy of joy, power and truth.

Healing was not part of his life, it was the all. He said, "I go about my Father's business," and again, "I do always the things which pleaseth the Father." And those things which he was doing seemed to be only teaching his followers and disciples the blessed work of curing the diseased and afflicted.

He taught everywhere the truth of the power of healing through Faith. He said to the man sick with the palsy: "Believest thou that I can do this thing?" and the man said, "Yea, Lord, I believe," and he was healed. To the woman who touched the hem of his garment, he said, "Thy faith hath made thee whole," and over and over again he taught that "All that my father hath is mine," and in following his teaching we learn to believe with all the strength of our soul that "Every good and perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, in whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

Those who have followed his teaching and interpreted his healing come to believe in this great metaphysical cosmic power the understanding of which is yet only in its infancy, but toward which those who know are looking with eager and expectant eyes.

The great day of universal deliverance is near at hand; we feel it and know it; and yet in many places we find ourselves halting, standing apparently still, almost awed into silence before the crowd, endeavoring, and often vainly, to picture and give forth this thing of our own knowledge, in a way that all mankind may know, comprehend, and accept.

How shall we take this great truth of the power of the resurrection of our bodies here and now; and project it in words so powerful that it may be endowed with everlasting life, yet make it so simple that the least of earth's children may understand it, and make it a living fact in their lives?

Wherever we go, we are confronted with this great argument between Faith and Reason. On the one hand Faith says: "Believe, and ye shall be saved," and on the other hand Reason says: "Show me the facts." Our inner being senses an apparently impossible truth, and hastens to telegraph it to our everyday common-sense faculties, and thus reduce it to a sensible basis or factor and make it something to which we can hold and use for our advancement; but it is often turned back again into our inner consciousness without having been given a place for external expression; it could not bear the light of cold, common interpretation, and had to be sent back into that world of dreams where most of our finally great things had their origin.

The mind of man is slow to accept new facts when they first present themselves in the guise of Faith, and often it is only after long and painful preparation that we finally lay down our doubts and objections, and look with wide-open eyes into the face of a new truth.

We find this same condition existing whenever we turn to this inexhaustible subject of sickness and the raising of a diseased body into a perfect expression of health. Many of us have sensed the truth of the possibility of the resurrection of our bodies, here and now; sensed it in the silence of our own mind and soul; many of us who have consecrated our lives to healing the sick, see it accomp-lished over and over again, day after day, before our human eyes; we see the dead bodies of half-dead souls rebuilt and re-born into a new existence, a new expression of health, and we stand daily in the presence of those we have healed, or helped to find healing, and they, like the man of history, are ready to say: "Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not; but one thing I know, that once I was blind, now I sec." Whether we can raise the dead or no, I know not, but one thing I know, once I was sick, now I am healed.

We know the truth of the power of rebuilding the half-dead body, and we work it out in our own life and the lives of others, and then go on in hopeless endeavor to get this truth of resurrection through healing, accepted by many with whom we are daily brought into contact, yet we often fail utterly in our attempt to place it before those who are in the greatest need of it.

It is no small thing to attempt to establish the probability of a truth, such as Spiritual healing, and prove that it is not a thing incredible that God "should raise the dead" within us at our own bidding, and that through the commandment of our own consciousness we may call forth the dead Lazarus from out his sleep of death, and "loose him of his grave-clothes and let him go."

We must work long and earnestly, and never falter in our well-doing, if we hope to make good to ourselves or others the fact that "as the Father raiseth up the dead and quick-eneth them, so hath he given the Son the power to quicken whom he will."

We cannot fail to see when we look deeply into the human expression of life here and now, that it is not more mysterious that we should  heal  ourselves  and  others  from   our infirmities,  than it is  that  we should build ourselves  into them.  When  thinking passes into a fixed power in any life, as it is fully recognized that it can do, and even unconsciously,   almost   destroy   us,   then   what   is more natural than that when joined with the higher power and used consciously for a fixed purpose,  it should  become wholly  constructive, and rescue us from any previous expression of thought building.

We believe that the end and aim of all life is perfect health, perpetual opulence, and divine realization for all mankind, and that there are two ways by which everyone goes in his search after those things; one is along the rose-colored hills of hope, illumined by faith and a soul vision, and made perfect by an all-abiding conviction "that if we will but believe we shall see the glory of God," and the other is the dark roadway of gloom and doubt and despair, and hopeless longings which lead through miasma laden thought swamps of human disease and human effort; one is the line of least, and one the line of most resistance.

If there be no direct evidence of these two ways, the human power of testimony alone would define them and be enough to set a sign-board for the traveler. Go where we will, we have only to look into the faces of our kind, we have only to listen awhile, and by the words of their own mouths we learn which way they are traveling. And it is here that the great question presents itself to the human mind of how to show them the truth, as we sec it, and make it "a thing not incredible" to them that "God should raise the dead," and, thereby help them to come out into the full glory of the resurrection. They are wrapped round about with their grave-clothes, and the napkin of old thought binds their faces.

Sometimes we cannot help them, we can only look and pass on; they have chosen their own path, and we must let them follow it. "There is a sin unto death, and I would not say that ye should pray for these," we are told; so until they are ready to turn and ask the way, we can only leave them to their own choosing, even while we know that every turn on the road they are walking will plunge them into deeper and deeper gloom.

There is a royal road to health and healing, and an equally royal road to disease and pain; we stand between them, and the choosing depends upon the knowledge of our own creative power, and our union with the All-Health.

Someone will say, this is not true; he will show us the holes in his hands, and the wounds in his side, and will say: "Did I choose my cross? would I not gladly be strong if I could, do you think I would be sick or unhappy a day if I could help it?" No; of course he would not, but the point is that he cannot help it in the condition in which he is expressing.

After we have set the pattern and the threads, the work goes through to the end of that weaving with the same figure; but if we know the truth of the resurrection, we do not again fill up our loom of life with the old pattern. There is no law but the one of our own making, which has us go on day after day, year after year, working out the same old figures, in the same old colors; we can choose the hour in which to begin a new pattern. We cannot escape our old conditions until we have learned from the All-Good, the great power of our own refined thought building, and set up a new pattern which, when worked out, will be bound to put us into new conditions, and new connections.

There are many who say they want to do things differently, and in an indefinite way, do believe in the raising of their dead bodies; but through the mistaken methods of their old thought world they have set up certain conditions within their bodies that hinder all attempts in the direction of new conditions. The impulses necessary to create or persist in establishing new lines of action are weak, and it takes a careful and persistent training on our part and their own, before we can hope to teach them how to rescue themselves from disease, and restore again the fallen temple of their bodies.

Often too, even though they really do want to find health, they want more, not to be molested in their old thought attitude, and we often find them hugging to their hearts the haunting thought form of some old terror, or some great sorrow. They are conscious in an indefinite way, that these things separate them from wholeness; but they hope in time to overcome this lack, by the image of union they carry in other directions; they have forgotten that, "with what measure ye mete it is meted unto you."

Their faith has spoken a truth to them today, and their reason and doubt destroy it tomorrow; while they hoped in a certain dilatory fashion for the absolute, the eternal, yet with every breath they have sown the transitory and the fleeting. Day by day, and at night, unconsciously, perhaps, their heart half lives by the truth their lips deny, and they belong to those who find it "incredible that God should raise the dead," for they often do not understand the frailty of their methods.

When we come to those lives, we have only calmly, quietly, and persistently to show them the paths they are following; to tell them the truth about their position; then, by breaking down their old thought habits with a carefully directed blow of words, pass them, over a new line of thinking, into the gentle, easy paths of divine transference of health, through union with the All-Life around them.

Whenever we look down deep into our life, and begin to question which path we are following, we need to start back, away back at the very beginning of the road on which we find ourselves traveling. We are all born into one or the other of these pathways; and whether we remain there, or leave it, whether we go back to the path of health, if we have lost it, or whether we go on in the path of disease, depends on just how fully we sense this truth, first by faith, and then by our reason. The second step depends upon the power of our own personal application; application made first by faith, and later, through the truth of personal experience, pass into knowledge in our life.

We believe that whatever our development was in the dim and distant past is evidenced by our point of beginning here in our child life; in the place, the country, the race, and the family into which we are born, and marks our position with regard to health or sickness. Some lives are born into a direct line of transference for All-Health, the line of least resistance, and the balance is kept for them by nature, and it always will be kept for them unless they outrage some natural law; for by their own line of previous building they put themselves into perfect equilibrium with the cosmic forces. Others are born into a line of transference for disease; they open their eyes in a condition of healing, and if they ever hope for freedom from it, they must awaken within themselves that latent energy which is somehow related to the universal health; they must wake up their faith, until it really does not seem a thing "incredible to them that God should raise the dead,"

We all start, on our journey of life, in one or the other of these pathways. If we begin with an inheritance of ill health it is all the more necessary that we learn the truth, and the whole truth about our position, and know that it is entirely within our own will whether we will continue in it, or whether we will set it aside, cut out a new pathway for ourselves, and stick to it until it leads us into the one of least resistance and physical harmony.

We can accept or decline inherited diseases which are simply dead men's legacies, just according to the amount of our own awakened consciousness.

When we do not want a diseased body, and have really sensed the truth of the universal All-Health, we can begin our resurrection day at once, through the power of our mind. We decide what we want, and that we have the strength to secure it, and begin then and there to pass the simple act of thinking into a fixed power in our life; we refuse to be made a host for a crowd of negative thoughts which we do not enjoy. When we by faith, or reason, sense the image of our possible union with the universal opulence of health, we can, with our own will, hold the image in our field of consciousness until we force the cells of our physical body to receive the picture, and begin building from it.

Our thoughts are our creators, and they create just what we will they should create. It is not their fault if we do not like our own production when they nave finished their work. Had we known enough to direct them, they would have gladly built for perfection, and they show us their willingness in the very hour we come into this knowledge, and begin an intelligent direction of our life. Our field of consciousness recognizes nothing less than perfection, and when our cells cannot build anything else, they find this new pattern always before them, for no matter how imperfect our work may have been in the past, our now becomes a beautiful constructive building, and we pass from the part to the whole; from the letter to the spirit; and our body becomes the expression of our thought world. This is the whole science by which we control our bodies, and by which we build from sickness to All-Health; it is an unwritten law, from which there is no appeal, that an interior correlation of thought-force, will, and does, in time, manifest corresponding external conditions.

Unless sometime, somewhere, we had recognized  disease  in  ourselves  and  others, and worked it out into objective expression for ourselves here and now, we would never have become sick or diseased, and been born into a condition of healing. We first recognize it in the absolute, and then differentiate it into local expression within our own bodies.

We can only hope to become free from this old thought form of building, by going back to the fountain-head, and making union again with the absolute All-Health, by the power of conscious imaging, and work it out through our whole being into physical expression.

Our mind is the great instrument with which we bring everything into our being; we first recognize our power to choose what kind of thought images we wish to entertain, and our will power, holding our mind servant to our higher picture, helps to keep the vital centers alive and active.

 

When we refuse to admit into our bodies thoughts that are not the expression of health there never can be any room for disease or sickness. Our will can be taught to stand as sentinel and force our mind to imbue our currents within us, with only such thoughts as make for wholeness and perfection of mind, soul, and body.

We cannot become sick or old, if every cell of our body is being fed with thoughts of health. Health thought currents are a certain prevention and cure of every form of disease. When we remember that we are living hourly in an inexhaustible ocean of cosmic health or All-Health, and that the very atmosphere which we breathe is filled with pure, vital life abundant, in the very instant that our minds make a conscious contact for absorption, it can be seen how the raising up of our dead becomes not a thing incredible, but a positive, wonderful, possible truth, which anyone may lay hold of and demonstrate for himself.

The most important step in this resurrection of the body is to know that when we are filled with Life we have no place within us for disease; disease is death, and life and death have absolutely no relation to each other. Disease is a function of the physical body, brought about by the control of the objective mind, and health is a function of the higher atomic vibrations, presided over by the divine man or the intelligence of the subjective mind; the one who is filled with Life, by conscious union through his physical life center with the All-Health, has polarized himself in the cosmic energy, and cannot know disease or death, until he wills it.

We separate ourselves every day from the health center by persistently putting ourselves under the control of the conflicting thought currents of the external mind, instead of the direction of the supra-conscious mind. When we live in the control of the objective mind, we become diverse and unsettled, and open to ten thousand drifting thought currents, until after a while we lose the power to direct, and just pass along with everything, like a helpless leaf, drifting and whirling down the stream of life.

There is no escaping the effects of this diverse building, as the hospitals, sanatoriums and asylums plainly show. We finally come to understand the full significance of it, and then we can go on with it if we choose; but we know that if we do, we are doing it at our own risk; "Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment; for by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned."

Whenever we find those who are sick, diseased, and in the process of healing, we know that they have sown for the revealing of the judgment; that they are sitting by the walls which they built for themselves, and beneath the bondage of the kings and rulers whom they endowed with power to conquer them. They will never set themselves free, until the rulers are overthrown by some new thought king, and this king is found in the union of our faith and works and a steadfastness of rebuilding.

In the ages past we have not learned our lessons perfectly, and it is not to be wondered at that we sometimes here and now find ourselves in bondage to some inherited or acquired condition of disease; but it is something to be studied over seriously, when a life goes on in pain and in disease after its eyes have been opened to the truth of the power of its own self resurrection.

It is true that we cannot expect to see equal demonstrations of healing in every life, for healing comes as the result of individual application and living; some may sense the possibility of union, and immediately laying hold of it, express it; but it is also true that, what is possible for one is possible for all, within the degree of their own power of comprehension. When once the soul has opened its eyes to the truth, the truth sets it free, and if it continues in its round of pain and wretchedness, it is because it has not yet come to that cycle m its development when it is ready to make the effort necessary for its redemption. Sometimes the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak; and the power of inhibiting disease thoughts must be built into the conscious brain through months of training before the body can begin its manifestation.

No matter where we stand in our development, there is this blessed hope to comfort us: all life is on its journey Godward, and as we pass on in our cycles of development, this condition of suffering must end somewhere for us all, and we will some day stand free in the expression of perfect health, and will have been born again into the infinity of healing.

The blessed hope that absorbs us, is to make that hour strike for us here and now; there is no time after all but the eternal now; no place but right here, and nothing to do but to begin, and all we have to do in order to make our approach to union is just to lock this truth of the All-Health within our souls, beginning today and forever, to live under the law of construction to which we  have taught our new body to respond, then taking our picture of absolute whole-ness into our field of consciousness, walk on in our daily life, expecting our desire to be filled and never laying down our thought building, until it does begin to manifest for us.

We are told that a thousand years is but as one day, and we may pass from death into life in just the instant that we make a conscious union with the All-Life, and then all that is left is to help our body rebuild through the  law  of structural  change,  until  it  is  a perfect expression  of the  health our hearts have known  and accepted. 

Healing begins at any point on the cycle that the soul awakens to its kinship with the Father, and knows that "All that my Father hath is mine," and it passes into perfect health just as soon as it has proved itself a good steward for its Father's bounty.

Healing demands the absolute, the eternal, and is not begun, nor health secured by "fear" nor vague "perhaps" nor "I do hope I may get well some day." This will never raise us from the dead, nor quicken us.

Healing and health come from within, not from without; it is a condition that can only be brought about by ourselves; often by the aid of others who awaken us to our true position, but always in the last analysis it is our own consciousness fanning the vital spark within us.

"Thy faith hath made thee whole," and this wholeness results when we join faith and works within our being. It becomes a powerful illumination, carried with us until we must, by natural law, come into actualization.

Perfect faith in the abundance of supply, and the Infinite All-Health, a perfect power of imaging the "Divine ideation," an unfaltering strength within our own body, these make us one with the Infinite.

When we train our minds, day after day, to fill our vital centers with thoughts of the life abundant, then harmoniz-ing our daily physical expressions into a beautiful creative force vibration, we will soon become the perfect expression of health that we are seeking and the grave-clothes of our dead endeavors will fall from us like a worn-out cloak, and the spoken word of health will robe itself in living manifestations not only for ourselves, but for all to whom we direct it.

We cannot only heal ourselves, but we can in truth give absent treatments, and our desire will be accomplished. We will be so filled with the truth of the All-Health that although we looked with wide open eyes into a gaping wound, we will only see God and his wholeness, and that will heal it. We will be deaf, and dumb, and blind to the absence of wholeness, and live, and move, and have being only, in that great thought world of peace and health and perfect realization.

We must look for this center of health within our own being, and find it; we will say it is not there at first, and when we search we find only discord; but we must look deeper, and still deeper. There is a naturally obscure fount of health, and healing, within every living being, though it may be hidden and utterly obscured from their vision and knowledge; if we look for it, knowing of a certainty that it is there, we will find it, and once having found it, we will easily recognize its relation to the universal life around us.

Then, holding fast to our new position of understanding, we can rejoice in all that we have learned in the past, even though the pathway has been hard and perilous; and taking this wisdom with us into a glorious future of diviner possibilities, we can go on with a glad heart, and in our new power "fling our past behind us like a robe, worn threadbare at the seams and out of date."

This, then, is the message that we should carry out into the world of diseased and dying humanity, "The righteous are in the hands of their God, and their life is full of immor-tality."

We are living hourly on the threshold of the resurrection morning, and whether we believe it or not, whether we know it or not, the "Spirit beareth witness with our spirit that we  are  the  children  of  God,  and if children, then his heirs, heirs  of God,  and joint  heirs  with  Christ";   and  in the hour that the  soul  knows  this, it becomes free from the law of loss and pain and disease, and is born again on  the planes of a consciousness so high that in the power of its divine imaging it builds again a body of health and beauty,  and  the  new  thought creature thus becomes so radiant with the universal God energy that it has entire possession of the heaven of All-Good within itself; it passes with one great, conscious leap over the chasm of disease and pain, and stands free in its own inspired dream, Lord indeed of all this lower kingdom.

We build again a body of health, beauty, and  wholeness  with the power of our own divine imaging, and the new  expression of the new building thus becomes so vibrant, that we radiate the universal God energy, so full, so free, that from far and near, the sick and needy lives of the multitudes will come and gather around  us, and by the very touch of our love upon their lives the law will be fulfilled within their own being; they will stand face to face with the immortal truth which their soul knows, and to which their lips bear witness, and it will indeed no longer be "a thing incredible to them that God should raise the dead."