CHAPTER XVII.
"The soul is not a compensation, but a life. The soul _is_. Under all this sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Existence or God is not a relation or a part, but a whole."--_Emerson._
"MARLOW, September ----.
"Dear husband: I was made very happy this morning by the messages fromhome, and especially Fred's and Jamie's baby efforts. They wanted tosend mamma their love, and the straggling characters meant for words,convey as much meaning as though they were in good English, for theyspeak to me in unmistakable language. Why do I understand so well? Ah,John, I see. Because, being filled with love for them, I recognize thesame quality in what they feel for me, and only need a sign to read themeaning back of it.
"As I write, new light comes to me regarding the real meaning of signsand symbols. Until we are filled with a desire and love for God, we cannot perceive or understand the real meaning of the universe, can notread God's love for us. Until we have a conscious apprehension thatthere is a spiritual knowledge, we can not recognize spiritual truth.
"Oh, I can not help wishing you had been here to-day! It was simplygrand; such an uplifting, such a glimpse of the wondrous Now. We learnedabout what _is_, what we _are_ and how to prove ourselves God'schildren. Mrs. Pearl opened with a few words on the use and necessity ofsilence, after which we were all silent awhile, when she commenced:
"Garfield said, 'The world's history is a divine poem, of which thehistory of every nation is a canto and every man a word. Its strainshave been pealing along down the centuries, and though there have beenthe discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian, thephilosopher, the historian and the humble listener, there has been adivine melody running through the song, which speaks of hope and halcyondays to come.'
"What has made possible this divine melody but the spirit of love andtruth that ever animates the children of God? Were it not for this vein,nay this wholeness of the invisible spirit, what could we have on whichto found hopes of 'halcyon days?'
"Not from the visible man of flesh and blood do all things beautiful andtrue emanate, nor from the material and unstable, but from the onesource that is God, as apprehended and realized by His idea, the real,invisible, spiritual man. Beauty, worth, can only be in idea orunderstanding.
"What made Milton, Shakespeare, Emerson, truly great was theirappropriation and manifestation of the invisible inheritance of spirit,mind.
"What is man without intelligence, without love, without life, withouttruth? The real man is spiritual because he is the idea of Spirit, Mind,God, the only Creator. All that is grand, noble, true in an individualis a manifestation of the God-power and presence. There is but one realMind, and all real or positive thought or intelligence is themanifestation of Mind, which is God. There is but one real Intelligence,and the intelligence manifested by the individual is the Intelligencewhich is God.
"God is absolutely one Verity, the primordial Essence. But how shall weknow this as a fact? How shall we prove it as an incontrovertible truth?you ask.
"By persistent acknowledgement of God and His creation, we become onewith Him, and to be one with God is to know absolute Truth. We areconditioned by the thoughts we think and by the words we speak. Bythinking and speaking right words we manifest true conditions; bythinking and speaking wrong words we manifest false conditions. 'As aman thinketh in his heart so is he.' If we desire to manifest strength,justice or wisdom of God, we must 'acknowledge God in all our ways.'
"'The only salvation,' says George MacDonald, 'is being filled with thespirit of God, having the same mind as Christ.'
"In order to realize the essence of these words, in order to realize theessence of any truth, we must enter into its meaning by becoming onewith it, by making ourselves the expression of its harmony, the pictureof its idea.
"Knowing the potency of the word, we say the true words over and overagain, silently or audibly, we think of them in every possible way, withvaried expression if we will, as it is the thought, the prime idea thatwe are seeking to manifest.
"We want the true salvation; 'we want to be filled with the spirit;' wewant the truth that makes free; we want strength, justice, wisdom. Tosecure these we have only to rid ourselves of the false and be filledwith the true.
"By the positive denial of a lie we annul the lie; by the positiveaffirmation of truth we establish truth, or rather our consciousness oftruth is established; thus, as we deny error or affirm truth, are wecarried forward and upward. These are the 'wonderful words of life' thatclothe us with righteousness.
"The words that we use first are statements of fundamental Truth,acknowledging who and what God is, what we are, and in what relation westand to our Father.
"1. God is Life, Truth, Love, Substance.
"2. God is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent.
"3. I am the idea of God, and in Him I have my being.
"4. God is my sufficiency in all work and my will in all ways.
"5. I am subject to God's law and can not sin, suffer or die.
"Over and over again we speak the words, and by marvelous law newmeanings flash upon us, new thoughts are born, new interpretations cometo efface the more obscure ones of the past. It may be easier to followevery denial with its corresponding affirmation; if so, study the lessonthat way.
"_Hold to each affirmation till it yields its pearl._ Take the first,'God is Life;' say the words over and over, think of them in everyconceivable way. Make every tiny leaf and slender blade of grass tellyou something of the infinite Life. Bear in mind that every where lifeis manifested, whether in plant, animal or man, wherever we look thereis omnipresent Life.
"God is Life. This same Life is our life, which can not be taken awayfrom us. This Life is good, and in It we live even as God lives in us.Oh, wondrous life that flows on and on, without beginning, without end,even as the river sings: 'Men may come and men may go, but I go onforever.'
"God is Truth, all truth, wheresoever or by whomsoever recognized, isthe everlasting Truth that must forever be.
"There is not a community or church, not a society or family, but isorganized and held together by some phase of the all-embracing andperfect Truth. The different sects and parties are only differentbecause certain people see the same side of Truth, and preferring to beof one mind, they separate or unite and build their respectivesanctuaries.
"'Truth is always present, and we only need to lift the iron lids of themind's eye to read its oracles,' said Emerson. When the 'iron lids' arelifted we shall see as one, we shall belong to the Church of theuniverse and the oracle shall reveal to us its deepest secrets and mostsacred mysteries.
"Truth _is_. All that we have, can have, or will have or can conceiveof, exists in the ever present Here and Now. It only remains for us torecognize and acknowledge it.
"God is Love. To realize the mighty sea of omnipotent Love that enfoldsand blesses humanity, would be to plunge into the healing waters ofBethesda. Like the sick man, we wait until the majestic Christ commandsus to arise--help ourselves, instead of waiting for others to put usinto the cleansing current. Let us recognize, then, the allness, thetenderness, the sacredness of this divine Love by submerging ourselvesin it, until all thoughts of evil, suffering or hatred are lost in itsembrace.
"'Lift up the gates that the king of glory may enter in,' sang David,and we too cry aloud with earnest aspiration that the gates shall belifted away, that into our consciousness may come the high tide ofomnipresent Love. 'Love alone is wisdom, love alone is power, and whenlove seems to fail it is where self has stepped in and dulled thepotency of its rays.'
"God is our substance. True substance alone is reliable. God is our rodand our staff. Firmly relying on the Rock of substance which is God, wecan not be shaken, can not be destroyed. Though all seeming powerstotter and fall around us, the One is ever the same, indivisible,unchangeable I Am. When we are one with the eternal Substance, weakness,danger, fail
ure shrink into cowering nothingness.
"Study to know, and know to live, should be our motto. Deny all errorand affirm all Truth is the way to appropriate whatsoever we desire tomanifest. Deny weakness and affirm strength, deny discord and affirmharmony, deny sickness and affirm health. Why? Because we erase thefalse beliefs of weakness, discord, sickness, by the denial, andappropriate strength, harmony, wholeness by affirmation.
"Can the spiritual self be ignorant, weak, sick or sinful? we argue.Impossible, for God is our sufficiency, is all there is. We refuse toadmit any belief of dullness and ignorance, but gratefully acknowledgeour likeness to God our Wisdom. We refuse to entertain anything contraryto the Good, but fellowship only with God-like qualities. They are oursby right of inheritance. We gladly claim them and prove our claim by ourmanifestation.
"Cleansing our consciousness from false conceptions, what wondrous powermay we not reflect! Our sufficiency is of God, not of ourselves, and toHim we ascribe all honor and glory.
"The Master taught the divineness of yielding our will wholly to God,'Not my will but thine be done,' He prayed. This is the highestconception of the denial of self. The mortal self is to be set aside,our immortal consciousness awakened into oneness with the Father.
"MacDonald has beautifully said, 'Oneness with the mighty All is the oneend of life--God or chaos is the only alternative.' We say God worksthrough man to will and to do, and implicitly trust the divineIntelligence that guides every waiting child.
"We choose the Good and reverently await our leadings. In every stormytrial, in every doubtful moment, in every hard-pressed circumstance westand aside and let the divine will work through us. There can be nomistaking this standing aside. It is not to sit down idly with nothought of responsibility or effort, but it is to do the best we can sofar as we know, constantly awaiting more knowledge of God's will andmore strength to do.
"When the will of man is at one with the will of God, when man realizeshis mortal nothingness and the allness of God, there is divine andperfect healing. The poet was right when he wrote,
'Our wills are ours we know not how, Our wills are ours to make them Thine.'
"'I am subject to the law of God and can not sin, suffer nor die.' Thereal _I_ is governed by spirit, as an idea is governed by the mind thatthinks it. The real creation, being spiritual, can not be subject tomortal beliefs or 'carnal mind which is at enmity with God.' With spiritthere can be no sin, sickness nor death, for these are enemies to beovercome by the Son of God, the Christ within. 'Thou wilt keep him inperfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.' 'The last enemy (belief) tobe overcome is death.'
"Until we persistently refuse to judge according to appearances, andacknowledge the true and invisible, we will continue in our old code ofbeliefs and be at the mercy of the consequences.
"When we recognize the Christ or God principle within, we are then trulythe sons and daughters of God. Spiritual insight gives a logical and tosome, a new meaning to the term Christ. Christ means Truth and Truthmeans God. 'In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God andthe Word was God, and the Word was made manifest in the flesh, or theWord was made flesh and dwelt among us.'
"'Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth.' Jesus said ofHimself, 'I am the way, the truth and the life.' But He did not speakthis of His physical body, He referred to the spirit or Christ within,which was one with the Father, that was and is, literally the way, thetruth and the life. If you will substitute Truth for Christ any place inthe Bible, with this understanding, you will be able to read andapprehend as never before. In this line of thought read the thirty-fifthchapter of Isaiah, the title of which is 'The joyful flourishing ofChrist's (Truth's) kingdom.' With this understanding, we so much moreclearly see what Paul meant when he said such things as 'Your life ishid with Christ in God,' 'Christ in you, the hope of glory,' 'UntilChrist be formed in you,' and many other similar expressions. In theeighth chapter of Romans, especially the first verse, it is much clearerby reading with this new spiritual signification. 'There is, therefore,now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus (Truth), who walknot after the flesh but after the spirit.' Who could ever believe thephysical Jesus was meant? No: Christ was exactly what the first chapterof John says He was, the Word (or Truth) made manifest in the flesh, andthe name of the flesh was Jesus.
"Jesus Christ means Jesus, the manifestation of Truth, and this explainsmany hitherto obscure passages, which are exceedingly hard tounderstand, when the flesh and spirit are regarded as one.
"What vast possibilities unfold to the human being persistent in hissearch for truth! What a glorious realm of knowledge, what wonderfulpower, what blissful peace, for he will have 'put on the new man, whichis renewed in knowledge after the image of him that creates him.' Hewill have attained the clear vision of liberty, for he will no longer bebound to the 'letter that killeth' but be filled with the 'spirit thatgiveth life.'
"The silence at the close seemed like a baptism of peace. To me came therealization of the intimate relationship of God's children to theirFather, whose love ever comes as a benediction to those who will or can,recognize and appropriate it.
"With love to you all, I am,
"YOUR MARION.
"P. S. I take great pains to have the quotations accurate, andfortunately I have made the acquaintance of the shorthand reporter inthe class who sits next to me; she takes notes and as a special favor,reads the quotations for me after the class is dismissed.
"Once more, good-bye. M."
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