The Right Knock

by Helen Van-Anderson

  CHAPTER XXXII.

  "The power to bind and loose to Truth is given! The mouth that speaks it is the mouth of Heaven. The power, which in a sense belongs to none, Thus understood belongs to every one."

  --_Abraham Coles._

  "Thro' envy, thro' malice, thro' hating, Against the world, early and late, No jot of our courage abating-- Our part is to work and to wait."

  --_Anon._

  MARLOW, October ----.

  "Dear ones at home: Your letters were all received this afternoon. Ampleased to know that Mabel is so interested, for it will help her somuch in her studies and work. I must begin my daily report at once, asthere is not much time before class.

  "There was no lesson yesterday, and about noon Mrs. Dawn came after meto go with her and Mrs. Browning, her hostess, to the dentist's, as Mrs.Browning had to have a tooth extracted. We started, treating her all theway with the quieting, reassuring thoughts that allay fear. Before shewent in we agreed to hold that thought.

  "When Mrs. Browning went into the office, we remained in the waitingroom thinking as intently as possible:

  "'There is not a thing to fear, Lida Browning, there is no tooth-achewith your real self, there is no sensation in matter. You can entertainnothing but the One Life. The One Mind thinks, and you are His idea,perfect as your Creator. Good is all, Love is all, Peace is already withyou, for you are one with the Father.'

  ... "It was done. The dentist was so amazed that he hardly remembered togive his patient a glass of water.

  "'Well, I never knew a cuspidate to come so hard. Didn't it hurtterribly?' he asked sympathetically.

  "'Not a bit except when you first put on the forceps,' was her promptreply as she rinsed out her mouth....

  "I need say no more. You can imagine our pleasure at this victory. Wenever know how little our faith till we see how astonished we are at thedemonstration.

  "You ask if Mrs. Pearl has explained your queries. A few questions werehanded in yesterday, but I had not time to put them in my letter. Onethat always puzzled us, was: What is the origin of evil? The questionsare written on slips of paper and laid on the table. She answers thembefore giving the regular lesson. When she read this slip there was nota little stir among the fifty eager questioners. 'What is the origin ofevil?' she repeated. 'It has no origin,' was the unsatisfactory answer,after a momentary silence. Oh! the blankness of those faces! 'But,' sheresumed presently, 'if you ask how _seeming_ evil originated, I may giveyou the ideas that came to me as a solution of that mortal mindquestion.'

  "You know we might ask questions of each other forever, but unless ourthoughts are tinged with same quality, or run in the same direction, thesatisfactory answer to one may not be at all satisfactory to another. Inother words, we will not recognize the same phase of truth, unless weare in the same stage of development, so if you are not willing to takemy explanation as true, it may be that you are not yet where you canperceive it, or it may be, you require a different illustration toconvey the same thought, or, there may be innumerable reasons, but ofthis one blessed fact be assured: if you hold yourself in the receptiveattitude, and sincerely expect to be guided by the spirit of truth, someday the answer will come to you with such irresistible force andplainness that you can not forget it, or ever be in doubt upon thatpoint again.

  "It was in this way the light came to me. That question had puzzled memore than all else, and I asked every healer whom I met as to thecorrect solution. For several months I pondered and fretted over it. Atlast, in despair, I let it alone, resolving I would not be furthertroubled. But one day it unfolded itself so clearly and beautifully Iwas completely satisfied.

  "Here it is: Taking the first account of creation, we find man made inthe image and likeness of God, given dominion over all things. If webelieve man to be spiritual and not material, if we know that spirit_can not_ change its character or quality, we must know that spirituallyman never fell, but that he _seemed_ to fall through our misconceptionand misunderstanding of appearances.

  "Man now manifests what he believes in; his consciousness of truth isnot fully developed and he mistakes appearances for realities. Havingall possibilities of recognizing only the good, he is perfect. For everymistake that is made he manifests error, the fallen, or rather theundeveloped state. The Truth and Love that he manifests in his life, isthe revealment of his God-like nature. In the glimpses of his true selfhe recognizes his inheritance of power, and in his mistaken conceptionsforgets to acknowledge God. He then judges according to appearances, andsays things are true because they appear true to the senses.

  "The creating principle of life is perfect, but man neglects toacknowledge this divine power in proportion to his selfishness. It istherefore his selfishness that prevents him from recognizing the Good,and causes him to see, name and believe in matter and its consequences;and he thus becomes materially minded, and is known as the 'Adam' in'whom all die.'

  "Adam signifies error, clay, unreality. Christ signifies Truth, Spirit,Reality. If we believe in things that appear to be the creation, we arebelieving in nothingness, which so proves itself by death anddisintegration. If we believe appearances to be the _sign_ of the real,we are acknowledging the spiritual to be the all, hence it proves itselfby making even the body its sign, manifest life, health, perfection.

  "If we cast out all selfishness, pure love takes its place. We must bepurified from the beliefs of the world in selfishness and itsconsequences by recognizing that our 'sufficiency is of God.'

  "This was very plain to me, John, and I hope you will find it so too,but if you do not, wait, and as soon as you are ready for it, the answerwill come to you.

  "The lesson to-day was on deception and personal influences. The wholeworld has been deceived into believing man is fleshly instead ofspiritual, so many false thoughts and beliefs have arisen, which are thecause of all disease and trouble. Universally we are deceived,individually we are deceived, and it is not only because we are makingour beliefs visible on the body, but because we suffer from themmentally and physically that it is necessary to discover what they areand cast them out.

  "The term deception will cover the mistakes believed and made inignorance, and deceitfulness will include the beliefs in and expressionof deceitfulness. On the second day the patient is treated for theworld's next greatest beliefs, which are deception and deceitfulness,and as before, we set him free from this belief, as possibly reflectedor absorbed through one or more or all of these five avenues wementioned in the first treatment.

  "Because the world has admitted the first great lie, that the materialcreation is the true one, or synonymous with the true, we have 'yieldedourselves servants to sin,' hence will see the consequences of suchfalse conclusion, until we deny the lie and affirm the truth.

  'Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive,'

  is a couplet I remember learning long ago, when I was a child, and howapplicable it is to this problem of deception. Truly, it is a tangledweb, and the only way to get it untangled is to break off the thread andgo back to the beginning where we can truly say, I am created free andperfect and whole in His image, and can not be influenced by anythingdifferent from Him.

  "This is _always_ spiritually true, but if we deal with the worldlybeliefs, we find that according to appearances, we are under theinfluence of our own and every other person's wrong thought. We say ofsome people, 'how happy I am in their company, how it uplifts me to bein their presence.' With others we feel a nameless depression, afearful, unhappy feeling, and shun their company. As Emerson so aptlysays: 'With some I walk among the stars, whilst others pin me to thewall.'

  "Now, in reality, no good ever comes from personal influence, althoughin the first instance it might seem so. Personal, from the word_persona_, a mask, is only applied to the physical self or carnal mind;therefore we can receive no benefit from the _personal_ quality of ourfriend, but we are benefited and uplifted by his freedom frompersonality, or in other words by the divine indiv
iduality flowingthrough him and expressed by his benevolence, his love, hischeerfulness, his wisdom. Inasmuch as he is free from personal orselfish thoughts, he is filled and permeated with gifts from the divineFountain of _all_ benevolence, _all_ love, _all_ cheerfulness, _all_wisdom.

  "There is a difference between personality and individuality which mostpeople do not recognize. Personality only pertains to the physical,while individuality is the term properly applied to the spiritual self.'There is but one Mind, the Universal Mind, which, if we can lay holdon, will give us all knowledge, wisdom and power,' said Emerson.

  "When we can throw aside a belief in personality, or personal influence,we will be free. The negative thoughts sent out by the world have nopower over one who has become filled with positive thoughts ofrighteousness. When we trust wholly to the Good, and become wholly atone with the Good, recognizing the supremacy of the Good, we are freefrom all belief in miseries or burdens. We breathe purer air, which isinvisible but life-giving; we feed on heavenly manna, the true word thatis divinely nourishing; we escape the awful bondage of fear, knowing theperfect love that casts out fear. We can not fear any false beliefs orwrong thoughts, for we are so filled with true thoughts, no suchfalsities can enter our mind.

  "Some people talk as though we have great cause to tremble at this awfulcounterfeit power of mortal mind, but if they would not talk of it, norfear it as having power, it would vanish as mist before the morning sun.

  "The great sin is in admitting a lie. Admit the belief of sickness as areality and you will see many witnesses to prove it. 'Agree with thineadversary quickly, lest he turn and rend thee,' means make haste todispose of the lie that will throttle you, if you fellowship with itever so little. Let us not be deceived, but let us 'awake torighteousness and sin not.'

  "Another question, and a very important one, was: 'What is thedifference between the different teachers of Christian Healing?' I canbest give the substance of Mrs. Pearl's reply by reference to Mrs.Fuller, the healer from Trenton.

  "You remember when she gave her parlor lecture at Mrs. Haight's, shesaid: 'Everything that did not come from her teacher was mesmerism, thatit was altogether false, and it was so much of a power that it wasindeed to be feared, for there was no telling what its subtlety andcunning would suggest and execute; that no cure effected by it waspermanent, but that the patients would sooner or later be worse thanbefore.'

  "Oh, dear, I must not rehearse it, for of course you remember how my oldheadache overtook me when I got home, and how wrought up I was allnight. Now I know what caused it, and _now_ I know the difference.

  "In the first place, these people are taught the pure and beautifulfoundation of pure Christian Healing, but instead of holding to theirpremise that all is good, they begin to talk about people and thingsthat are _not_ good, imputing false motives, and giving false power tothose who, as they say, are not in the truth.

  "If they would only remember that counterfeits can have no power exceptas it is delegated to them, that unreal thoughts must disappear in thepresence of true thoughts, they would not be troubled and puzzled.Adhering to the law, they would recognize and talk about the Good only.

  "Ah, John, here is the secret of Jesus' words, 'Resist not evil.' If weresist anything, we recognize it as something. If we regard evil as anentity, we can not help fearing or fighting it, but if we know it isnothingness claiming to be something, we deal with it accordingly.

  "Whoever resists evil or calls evil a power, has not denied the realityof evil faithfully enough. To talk of anything as having power, is tobelieve in the power and become entangled in its meshes. That explainsMrs. Fuller's remark that she was 'actually afraid to meet one of thosefalse teachers on the street, and always took pains to warn peopleagainst them.' I speak of Mrs. Fuller because you know so well what shedid and said, that you will understand this explanation better.

  "Another remark she made was, that 'this power of mortal mind is whollyignored by these false teachers, although they secretly use it soeffectually and disastrously.' Because they do not talk so much of evil,she thinks they ignore it, while really they silently but earnestly andvigorously deny it, thereby getting a sure control over it. She wastaught to call this seeming power of mortal thought Mesmerism, andAnimal Magnetism, and after giving it such formidable names, and somighty a place, it is most natural for her to say that it affectsherself and family or her patients, causing them to be slow in yieldingto treatment. Thus you can readily see how she accounts for herfailures.

  "Mrs. Pearl teaches that we can deal with this influence of carnal ormortal mind, by denying for the patient the conscious or unconsciousreflection of it from these five different sources. To the patient whois ignorant of truth, mortal thought has a power, because he hasacknowledged it as having power, but in our silent conviction of itspowerlessness, we speak the true word that sets him free. The wholesecret lies in our own freedom from belief in this false power.

  "The name Mesmerism or Magnetism makes it seem like some awful monster,lurking in every corner, ready to devour us, while, as Mrs. Pearl says,we go our way, quietly denying all appearance of evil, proving the lawof Good by recognizing only the Good in thought and speech.

  "How beautiful this teaching is! and how wonderfully the spirit leads usinto all truth. But it can not teach us if we talk error, ordeliberately judge others. Never till we are faithful in acknowledgingthe one Principle of Life will it prove itself the only power over us.

  "After the questions, Mrs. Pearl spoke of the third treatment. We treatfor everything we might have missed in the first two treatments.Sometimes this is called the sin treatment, for it takes up so manythings that belong more or less to everybody, according to the world'sbelief. A more explicit naming is selfishness.

  "Selfishness is the beginning, the mother of all the rest. It remindsone of the seven devils from which poor Mary Magdalen was freed. It isnot unlikely these were their names: Selfishness, pride, envy, avarice,jealousy, malice and cruelty. This we deny for the patient through thefive different sources, and you can see how apt it will be to touch him,for who is there of all earth's children that is perfectly free fromany of these qualities. With our strong faith in the law and power ofthe word, we sturdily deny everything that might be the shadowobstructing his light.

  "As we go on in this study, we learn the meaning of these outshowings ofdisease. Every visible thing is the expression of a thought, whetherGod-given or man-supposed. We look into a patient's face and read orinterpret the signs of his thought. Is he selfish, unkind or severe inhis disposition, there are the lines and expressions that betray him. Ishe lovely, gentle and kind, a nameless feeling of peace and trust stealsover us.

  "In the moments or times of silence that every healer should seek, theremay come something to hint of the truth, some word or text ormind-picture that will teach what no book or teacher could tell, for'the spirit of truth leads us into all truth,' and the ways and meansare varied according to our capacity to receive.

  "A mind-picture is a symbol representing some thought. For instance:Suppose while I sit in the silence, there comes to my consciousness afragment of landscape, a child's face, a storm, a sun. These are ideassymbolized. If it be a pleasant scene, it may be to me a glimpse of the'green pastures and still waters' that David sang about when depictingthe life of the righteous. It would mean peace for my patient. If thesymbol be a child's face, it may mean that I must become as a littlechild in order to be led into the kingdom. A storm may signify that mypatient is passing through a crisis of mental commotion, in which case Imust use the invariable rule, deny the false and affirm the true.

  "On the other hand I may never see a symbol, but some suggestive textmay come into my mind. If I were depressed or discouraged, these wordsmight give me new courage and hope: 'Fear not, for I am with thee;''wait patiently on the Lord, and He will give thee the desires of thineheart.'

  "Or I might not be conscious of anything while I am sitting thus in thesilence. The answer to my silent question may come
to me in the mostcommonplace way days or weeks after it is asked. Some person may saysomething that will be the very clue I am seeking. We are not to beanxious or troubled if many questions perplex us, or many problems seeminsoluble, but wait, trusting that 'he is faithful who promised.' Wemust not be wishing for the same signs or powers that others have, butappreciate what is given to us, for faithfulness shall receive its fullreward in due time 'if we faint not.'

  "No more to-day. Love to the babies. How glad I am to know they are sowell and happy.

  "Faithfully, MARION."