Chapter 3
NEW THOUGHT AND THE
CREEDS
Abel Leighton
Allen
The Message
of New Thought
"As
wider skies broke on his
view,
God
greatened in his growing
mind;
Each year he
dreamed his God
anew,
And
left his older God
behind.
He
saw the boundless scheme
dilate
In
star and blossom, sky and
clod;
And
as the universe grew
great,
He
dreamed for it a Greater
God."
THOSE who worship
the immanent God, the indwelling God,
cannot accept the theological opinions
of the orthodox churches for the
further reason that they are all based
on the dogmas of the fall of man and
his separation from God, and on
miracles and other medieval
conceptions. From a careful analysis of
the propositions embraced in the
orthodox theology, it follows as a
necessary and logical conclusion that
each one hinges upon the other and they
must all stand or fall together.
If man never
incurred the displeasure of God and
never was estranged from Him, or, in
other words, never fell, then it
follows that there was no necessity,
occasion, or reason for a vicarious
atonement to establish his relationship
with God. In other words, if man never
was separated from God, no vicarious
atonement was necessary to restore
peace and harmony between him and
God.
It is also apparent
that if man was never in a lost or
fallen state or condition, was never
separated from God, the vicarious
sacrifice of Jesus, the Gentle Seer of
Galilee, was a useless and needless
requirement,--nay, a cruel tragedy. It
follows also that if man was never
separated from God, the necessity for a
belief in the vicarious atonement
cannot possibly exist.
These conclusions
seem to follow logically from a fair,
candid, and careful consideration of
the various propositions embraced in
the orthodox scheme of man's
redemption. It will be observed that
the whole orthodox plan is based on a
dualistic conception of man's relation
with God; in other words, that God
dwells apart from man, separated by a
gulf, and that Jesus is the only
intermediary to bridge that
chasm.
The moral effect of
the doctrine that man was estranged
from God and is by nature weak and
sinful, when viewed from the standpoint
of modern psychology, as well as some
of the tendencies that flow from the
belief in a vicarious atonement,
blotting out of man's iniquities, and
the unethical influences flowing from
such teaching, will be considered in
subsequent chapters.
Perhaps no other
thought of God has produced so much
discord in the human race as the
dualistic conception of God and
man--the dogma that separated man from
God. The Church, instead of uniting
men, has separated them. If its
teachings are true, why is this so?
Truth leads to harmony. Truth is
harmony. Falsehood leads to strife.
Falsehood is strife.
When man was told of
his total depravity, God's displeasure
with him on account of the act of his
first ancestor, and his entire
separation from God, he instinctively
looked for a mediator to plead with God
for a restoration of that lost
relationship. This gave rise to the
idea of priestly mediation and
furnished the priesthood an opportunity
to inject and wedge itself in between
man and God--interpret God's will to
man--and it has held that vantage point
over man for fifteen centuries.
No great teacher
ever separated God from man. Man was
never separated from God except in
consciousness,--only as he believed it.
His theological teaching caused him to
believe it. He felt his degrading
position in the great scheme of Nature.
When the idea of total depravity once
took possession of his mind, he became
the easy prey of those who desired to
control him. Is it strange that man has
at times been weak and vacillating,
when his theology made him an
outcast?
As Emerson wisely
observes: "That which shows God within
me fortifies me. That which shows him
without me makes me a wart and a wen."
Never was a more ingenious idea
invented for the control of man than
his separation from God--that he had
lost the divine image and was a
spiritual mendicant, a wanderer over
the face of the earth, without compass
and without chart.
Out of the
theological mists and miasma of the
past has come duality. Under the glare
of a spiritual sunlight will come
unity--unity of life, unity of
intelligence, unity of man and God. The
adherents of New Thought entertain
different ideas and conceptions of
man's relation to God. Their views are
widely divergent from those of the
orthodox theologian, and these
differences are fundamental. By no
process of reasoning or logic can they
be made to harmonize or blend. They
represent the extreme opposite poles of
thought, the one holding to the dual
conception of God and man, the other,
the unity of God and man.
Those who accept
progressive ideas, as taught by New
Thought, accept evolution as Nature's
method of creation; that, so far as
they can observe, the laws of evolution
are operating throughout the universe,
and that all animate life on this
planet is under the dominion and
control of these laws. Evolution may
now be regarded as universally
acknowledged among scientists, and by
all educated men, in every part of the
world. Evolution, like every new idea
and discovery, was compelled to fight
its way to recognition, because it was
thought it would disturb the then
existing idea of creation, as taught in
Genesis. But a few years' time has
wrought a great change in thought,
regarding the truth of evolution.
When the writer was
a student at the Ohio Wealeyan
University, evolution was universally
frowned upon and stigmatized as an
atheistic doctrine tending to undermine
the foundation of the Christian
religion. On one occasion a
distinguished bishop was brought to the
institution to preach a sermon to the
students against it, who warned them
not to be deceived by its false
teachings. Darwin and Huxley were then
regarded as the arch enemies of
religion. But it is a happy
circumstance that this is all changed,
and that all thoughtful men now accept
evolution as a recognized truth and
Nature's method of creation.
The adherents of New
Thought conceive of man as the result
and product of evolution: that he was
evolved from the lowest form of animal
life; that he is now the acme of all
her operations, representing the
highest and most perfect type of all
intelligent and sentient beings. They
conceive that in the long travail
through the countless ages, from man's
beginning, there may have been periods
when his progress was slow, when his
advance was halted, even intervals when
his steps were backward, but on the
whole, and as one grand triumphal
progression, man's growth has been
steadily, persistently, and eternally
onward and upward, to his present
mental and spiritual stature. Whittier
said:
"Step by step since
time began We see the steady gain of
man. "
They do not regard
man as sinful or weak by nature, or
that he was ever a fallen being, or
that he was ever separated or estranged
from God, or that he ever lost the
divine ideal. They conceive of man as
created, not in the physical image, but
in the moral, intellectual, and
spiritual image, of God.
They cannot agree
with the orthodox conception that God
ever demanded a vicarious atonement for
the redemption of man, or that an
infinitely tender and just God would
exact such a requirement, much less of
so pure and noble a soul as Jesus of
Nazareth.
They cannot think
that God condemned the entire race
forever for one act of their common
ancestor, when that one act was an
effort to step forward and move upward
in the evolution and progress of man,
an effort to rise above the animal and
become a man. Such a conception debases
God and gives Him lower moral qualities
than man.
They look upon the
account of man's disobedience and
expulsion from the Garden of Eden,
related in Genesis, as a bit of
Oriental imagery--an allegory, the
Oriental method of teaching,-- designed
to teach another lesson, rather than
the forced interpretation given by the
theologian. The Western theologian has
employed Western ideas to interpret an
Oriental document, hence he has not
caught its meaning or truth. Alas, how
much error and wrong have crept into
the world to harass and bewilder man,
from an interpretation of allegories as
facts and offering them to the world as
truths.
But someone asks if
the advocates of New Thought believe in
and accept the divinity of Jesus? Yes.
They go even farther than their
orthodox friends in accepting that
divinity· They do not require the
performance of miracles as a necessary
step, to prove the divinity of that
gentle soul. They see divinity in every
act of his life. Whoever in the
sincerity of his soul could utter the
Sermon on the Mount requires no other
proof of his divinity. They see
divinity also in every man,
--slumbering, perhaps, and only waiting
to be called forth into development and
expression.
With most of us the
Christ within is asleep in the ship,
and only as the winds and waves of life
beat therein, threatening us with
shipwreck and destruction, do we find
courage to wake the Gentle Master to
still the raging tempests. If the sole
divinity of Jesus is denied, the
divinity of all men is affirmed.
Jesus taught the
unity of life, the unity of God and
man. He understood the great secret of
life and developed the divine principle
in himself, so that in the
consciousness of truth he could say, I
and the Father are one. He is the one
great masterful ideal, toward whose
perfection man should continually and
forever strive.
The advocates of New
Thought conceive of the vicarious
atonement as a plan which permits the
individual to shift his responsibility
to another, and therefore as an evasion
of the law of cause and effect, that
whatsoever a man soweth that shall he
also reap. Let this thought sink deep
into your soul.
Neither do they
agree that a belief in a particular
creed is a prerequisite to man's
eternal welfare. The thinking man
cannot set aside the results of reason
and the voice of intuition, to adopt a
particular belief because he is so
bidden, when the voice of his own soul
conveys a different meaning. Jesus had
little or nothing to say about belief,
but he had much to say of life and
methods of living.
They regard man as
possessing the potential attributes of
divinity within himself and that he is
conscious of these divine qualities
which make him man; that it is man's
privilege, duty, and function to
develop those qualities, attributes,
and possibilities, in the great school
and discipline of life.
They concede that as
God by His creative processes brought
man to his conscious state, so it is
man's business and duty to perfect
himself. This is the true meaning and
purpose of life. Character is the true
vision of the soul, the ideal set
before man, the goal of all his
endeavors. They do not recognize or
accept miracles according to the
orthodox conception and belief as
possible in a universe governed,
controlled, and operated under
universal law. They look upon what many
people regard as miracles, coming as
special interpretations of God or
otherwise than as the result of law, as
having no existence, except as
creations of the imagination of
man.
They cannot conceive
of any reason for bringing any person
into the world by immaculate
conception, but regard Nature's method
of producing man as entirely holy, for
Nature herself is holy. They regard the
accounts of the various immaculate
conceptions of the several saviours of
the world, recorded in history, as
traditions and nothing more, probably
having their origin in the ancient myth
that the sun was born of the dawn, and
the dawn was a virgin. It has been said
that any distrust of the permanence of
law would paralyze the faculties of
man.
In one sense
everything in Nature, from leaf to
planet, is a miracle,--not in the sense
that they are not controlled by
universal law, but only in the sense
that we do not understand them. Man
himself is the standing miracle of
creation. Walt Whitman said: "Seeing,
hearing, feeling are miracles, and each
part and tag of me is a miracle; and a
mouse is miracle enough to stagger
sextillions of infidels." Nevertheless,
they are all under the control and
operation of universal law.
It is a fundamental
idea of New Thought that the universe
in all its parts is governed by
universal law; that from the smallest
atom up through the infinite planetary
systems law reigns supreme; that the
law of compensation prevails and holds
its sway over every thought and act of
man; that whatsoever he sows, that
shall he also reap. This law is written
in luminous letters on the very dome of
the universe. It stands before man's
face, so that none can escape it and
none can deny it. This law is as
inexorable in the mental, moral, and
spiritual world as in the physical
universe. Modern science, reaching out
toward a solution of ultimate
questions, is now pro- claiming the
universal reign of law, the unity of
all substance, and the existence of
universal intelligence in Nature.
The adherents of New
Thought conceive of a universal mind or
divine intelligence pervading and
permeating the universe, manifesting in
all forms of creation; that there
is also a unity of life and that
each individual is a part of that
intelligence and that universal life
and spirit. The visible forms of nature
are the expressions of that divine life
and intelligence, and the same life and
intelligence that seek expression in
the bud, the grass blade, the flower,
the bird and animal, are also seeking
expression in man. This awakens in
man a kinship with all created
things. In man this life and
intelligence find their highest
manifestation and expression. He stands
at the summit of all created beings,
the most finished product in the great
evolutionary struggle. A conscious
being, aware of his own kinship with
God, he walks the earth erect and can
say, I am divine.
Some one has said,
"God sleeps in the rock, smiles in the
flower, and comes to consciousness in
man." This unity of life, this divine
intelligence, pervading all nature and
rising to its highest expression in
man, is the basic fact in the
philosophy of New Thought. The ultimate
purpose of all true religious teaching
is to produce a realizing sense of this
consciousness in man. This
consciousness enlarges the vision of
man's soul and awakens in him a
knowledge and true estimate of the
boundless possibilities within himself.
Pope caught a vision of this great
truth:
"All are but parts
of one stupendous whole
Whose body Nature
is, and God the soul;
That changed through
all, and yet in all the same,
Great in the earth,
as in the ethereal frame,
Warms in the sun,
refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars,
and blossoms in the trees."
Someone says, all
that has been said about New Thought is
but a restatement of the
old
pantheistic philosophy. For the sake of
argument, suppose we concede it. What
then? If
pantheism means that God is omnipresent
in the universe, in nature, both spirit
and substance, subject and object,
being all in all, the visible and
invisible, that the universe is a
living whole, expressing itself in
infinite variety, are you still opposed
to pantheism?
When you see in
Nature the manifestation of an
intelligence, in every cell and bud
the
interplay of forces producing movement
and repose, unity and variety, the
recurring seasons, the planets obeying
a hidden law, growth and decay, the
conservation of energy, actions and
reactions, all producing a perfect
equilibrium, does it not suggest to you
an infinite life, a supreme
intelligence, and that all is God, and
God is all?
Is not a spiritual
pantheism more desirable than an
absentee God--a God of finite
proportions dwelling in some distant
part of the universe? We must have one
or the other. Which shall it be?
The highest
conception of religion as taught by New
Thought is to unfold and develop the
soul into harmonious relations with
divine intelligence, and thus come into
spiritual unity with God. As the effect
of the orthodox religions is to
separate God from man, and New Thought
conceives of God as within man, their
ideals of prayer are not the same. The
one prays to an absentee God, the other
to the God within. True prayer is not
debasing the soul in the presence of
divinity. It is lifting the soul up.
The divine intelligence is conscious of
man's innermost thoughts before they
are uttered. Real prayer is not asking
selfish favors. It is bringing the
conscious mind into touch with the
universal or divine mind. It is going
into the closet and closing the door;
that is, shutting out consciousness of
external things, as Jesus taught, and
there communing with infinite
intelligence in secret.
I like the prayer of
Socrates, "Give me inward beauty of
soul, and let the inward and outward
man be at one."
Emerson says,
"Prayer that craves a particular
commodity, anything less than all good,
is vicious." "Prayer is the
contemplation of the facts of life from
the highest point of view. It is the
soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant
soul. It is the spirit of God
pronouncing His works good."
"Be still and know
that I am God" is the voice of the soul
in the true attitude of prayer. Goethe
speaks of prayer as God seeking for
Himself and meeting Himself in man.
Someone has defined prayer as the
intercourse between oneself and our
ideal companion.
Prayer is lifting up
the soul to him who "has no eyes and
yet He is looking at us; no ears and
yet He hears us; no face and yet His
smile greets us." True prayer is
lifting the soul into an atmosphere
where one feels the glow, the beauty
and harmony of the infinite presence
and over his soul play vibrations from
the source of eternal truth and love.
God does not come at the sound of a
bell or the blare of trumpets, but
silently, as the dew is distilled upon
the grass-blade bringing life, growth,
and beauty to the plant, so unheard and
unannounced God comes to refresh the
soul with His unseen presence and
power.
The votaries of New
Thought do not depend upon one book or
all books for their ideas, conceptions,
and knowledge of God. To them that book
only is inspired which inspires man and
awakens in him higher purposes in life
and a closer unity with God. The author
of every book that speaks the truth was
first inspired. If God at any age of
the world inspired the author of a
book, no reason can be conceived why he
should not inspire others in every age,
even this. Why should not God speak to
Emerson as well as to Moses, or to Walt
Whitman as well as to St. Paul?
To attribute the
authorship of a book to God or to
divine inspiration is not an act of
wisdom, unless in every line and
precept it breathes a pure morality and
sets the highest ideals before man. The
mistakes, low standards of morality,
unethical teachings, and unworthy
examples are thereby unduly emphasized.
It is the consensus of opinion among
profound thinkers that many things
contained in the Bible might have been
omitted with resulting profit to the
race. It records that some of God's
chosen people, those held up to the
world as the highest exponents of
wisdom, freely indulged in the custom
of taking many wives and concubines. In
the same volume are accounts of
trickery and deceptions in business
matters, cruelties and conduct in wars,
that would not be tolerated in this or
any other civilized age, and the God of
the Jews apparently gave it all his
approving smile.
Every man pictures
God according to the qualities of his
own thought. If he is material and
gross, he worships a gross God. If he
is spiritual, he worships a spiritual
God. Every man's God is a reflex of
himself. We read much in the Bible of
an anthropomorphic God. Much there is
written of an angry, revengeful, and
jealous God. These are not commendable
traits in man; how much less must they
be in a God? Such examples set low
ideals for man.
It has been said
that he that knows but one Bible, knows
none. There is perhaps much truth in
the statement. The Vedas and Zend
Avesta contain many truths later found
in the Hebrew Bible. How many who
accept the Bible literally and as the
inspired word of God, ever read those
ancient Bibles?
We can find much
wisdom outside of written books. The
book of Nature is always an open
volume, and we may read God's thoughts
and secrets from its pages and thereby
get wisdom and understanding. The rocks
and trees and running brooks preach
sermons more eloquently than the human
voice and teach profounder lessons than
were ever read in books or taught by
man to man. In the book of Nature we
catch glimpses of eternal beauty, of an
ever-pervading harmony, of infinite
power, of universal order, of an
abiding and constant love. In that book
man's kinship with divinity is
revealed.
''The music of his
voice is heard,
In every message of
the bird;
This carpet of the
good green grass,
Where softest feet
of springtime pass,
It is the cover of
his book,
Wherein we only need
to look,
To read how patient
we should be,
That have his gifts
of grass and tree."
"The spiritual
principle within men can know and
interpret Nature, because the link that
binds together all parts of Nature into
one organic, correlated whole is itself
a spiritual principle. My mind can
understand Nature, because Nature
herself is the revelation of mind, the
manifestation of a principle, the
expression of one root idea."
To him whose soul is
attuned to Nature's laws, God appears
in the starry vault of night, in the
mellow glow of the sunset, in the
flower by the wayside, in the music of
the child's voice, and in the majestic
qualities of man. We do not all read
these meanings and discover these
beauties and harmonies in Nature's
symbols. Nature gives us back only what
we lay at her feet. If we come to
Nature with an unseeing eye, we see
not; if we listen to her message with a
dull ear, we hear not; if we call to
her with listless purpose, she answers
not.
"Till one appears
who hears, all nature silent is,
Silent forever
more,
Breaking its waves
of force, upon an unanswering
shore,
Till one appears who
hears.''
Nature is God's true
revelation. All supposed revelations
given direct to man, translated into
language and handed down through the
centuries, convey at best only an
imperfect and indistinct substitute for
the original message. Language is
imperfect. Thought is changed in its
transmission. The message is not the
same to the recipient as the giver, nor
does it convey the same meaning to two
individuals.
If we turn to the
Hebrew Bible for a guide in our quest
for an ideal of God, we find language
rich in metaphor, expressing different
conceptions of deity, reflecting the
varied and diverse views of those who
thus conveyed their thoughts to the
world. We can read therein of an
anthropomorphic God, a God of revenge,
a jealous God, a God who disliked a
part of his children and made others
his chosen people, a God of limited
powers, an omnipotent God, a provincial
God, a distant God, and an indwelling
God. The ideals are but the expression
of finite minds; the blind struggle of
men attempting to write down and
transmit to man their impressions and
conceptions of an infinite God.
But Nature ever
speaks with the same symbols. As often
as we wander from the narrow path,
under the spell of phantasms and
illusions, so often does she recall us
from our somnambulisms and bring us
back to truth and reality. We do not
plant in autumn, because Nature has
taught us the winter is at hand; every
recurring season and every phenomenon
of Nature has its message of
truth. Man caught his first ideas
of law, of order, of beauty, of
movement and repose from an observation
of the symbols and operations of
Nature.
Nature first
furnished and displayed the symbols of
geometry. Man first saw the squares,
the right-angled and equilateral
triangles in the starry heavens above.
Nature is the fountain and prototype of
all law. She furnished the law of cause
and effect, the most valuable law ever
vouchsafed to man. Nature has her own
methods of imparting knowledge, and the
nearer we follow them the more wisdom
we display. She does not reveal all her
meanings and mysteries. She conceals as
well as reveals. She spreads her
symbols before man, and leaves a work
for him to perform. She supplies an
innuendo, and bids him interpret and
translate its meaning.
Nature is the
manifestation of the divine, the
expression of the infinite God. We may
learn of nature, but we cannot master
her meaning. Forever the infinite
stretches away before us. Eternity
alone will suffice to encompass and
master her secrets.
Here man can observe
the wisdom of divinity. Man is ever the
learner, but never the master. If man
were master of all Nature's meanings,
her mysteries and secrets, his ideals
would be destroyed, his vision would be
lost. If man understood God, and could
fathom the mysteries of the universe,
he would become tired of God and weary
of the universe, he would weave his
dreams about a greater and more
mysterious God. He would reach out
toward the infinite, for new mysteries,
a new universe that he might learn
their hidden secrets.
Stagnation is decay
and death; advancement is life, is
growth. There is no joy like that of
eternal progression. It is the
flowering pathway that stretches before
man and lures him toward a haven of
eternal peace. That alone satisfies the
soul; it is the divine wanderlust of
man.
The adherents of New
Thought entertain not the least glimmer
of doubt of the conscious identity of
the soul after the change we call
death. This conclusion does not rest on
written revelation so much as on the
inner revelation of man. It is written
in man's nature; the soul feels it and
speaks its own divine message. The soul
is divine, and that which is divine is
eternal. This life is but a threshold
of a larger and fuller life. This
conclusion is borne out by many facts,
experiences, reasons, and in the
whisperings of intuition. Profound
thinkers in these days agree on the
unity of life; that we are part of the
great life current of the universe,
that the soul has divine attributes and
is a part of the great divine
soul.
These ideas found
expression in many ancient religions
and philosophies, and find a receptive
chord in the human understanding. The
kingdom of God is within you, so spoke
the Gentle Seer of Galilee. Science is
now voicing the same great truth. That
which is divine cannot cease to
live.
There are times when
we feel a conscious harmony with God
and Nature, and the soul's vision
brings us unmistakable glimpses and
presages of a future life. It is the
utterance of the divine to the divine
in man.
Science teaches that
nothing in the physical universe is
lost. "Atoms are indestructible, force
is indestructible, the soul is
indestructible," says Flammarion. Sir
Oliver Lodge, in commenting on this
ever-recurring question, observes that
there is a unity running through the
universe, and a kinship between the
human and the divine. Here are some of
his further conclusions:
"Meanwhile what has
our experience been here? We have not
been left solitary. Every newcomer to
the planet, however helpless and
strange he be, finds friends awaiting
him, devoted and self-sacrificing
friends eager to care for and protect
his infancy and to train him in the
ways of this curious world. It is
typical of what goes on throughout
conscious existence; the guidance,
which we exert, and to which we are
subject, now, is but a phase of
something running through the universe.
When the time comes for us to quit this
sphere and enter some larger field of
action, I doubt not that we shall find
there also that kindness and help, and
patience and love, without which no
existence would be tolerable or even at
some stages possible."
Let us listen to
Addison speak across the years: "Among
other excellent arguments for the
immortality of the soul, there is the
one drawn from the perpetual progress
of the soul to its perfection, without
a possibility of ever arriving at it.
How can it enter into the thoughts of
man, that the soul which is capable of
such immense perfection and of
receiving new improvements to all
eternity, shall fall away into nothing
almost as soon as it is created?"
Carlyle says:
"Pierce through the time element,
glance into the eternal, believe what
thou findest written in the sanctuaries
of man's soul, even as thinkers in all
ages have devoutly read it there; that
time and space are not God, but
creatures of God, as it is a universal
here, so it is an everlasting now. Know
of a truth that only the time shadows
have perished or are perishable; that
the real being of whatever was and
whatever is and whatever will be, is
even now and forever."
The soul is divine,
the real in man. It is the revealer of
its own truth, it speaks its own
language, the fact of its own eternal
existence. "It cannot wander from the
present which is infinite to a future
which is finite."
A confident reliance
on the soul's continued existence is
innate in man. It is a universal
belief. It is not there to mock man in
this universal hope. Nature is not so
unjust or cruel. Our vision may not
span the gulf that separates us from
the unknown, but an unseen power
brought us safely to the earth and an
abiding trust tells us that it will
safely bear us away and care for our
every need. He who unerringly guides
the bird along the pathless coasts and
trackless wastes, "In the long way that
I must tread alone, Will lead my steps
aright.''
This faith was
planted in man for a high moral
purpose. It is necessary for man's
spiritual growth, for the development
of character. It is the potent
influence that makes man more than the
animal, that leads him along the upward
path to the highest moral and spiritual
endeavor.
Let us listen to the
message of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps:
"Whatever this globe was put here for,
it was not for failure. Whatever the
unit was made for, the race was not
made for hopelessness. However black
the past, however blind the present, a
bright future is a philosophical
necessity. What has the king, the
priest, or the prophet of your dreary
creed to look to, compared with the
promise open to the obscurest human
soul, that knows itself a deathless
thing?"
Let us turn to
Addison once more: "If man considers
his being as circumscribed by the
uncertain term of a few years, his
designs will be contracted into the
same narrow span he imagines is to
bound his existence. How can he exalt
his thoughts to anything great and
noble, who only believes that after a
short term on the stage of this world
he is to sink into oblivion and to lose
his consciousness forever?"
The late Senator
Ingalls, in pronouncing a eulogy on the
memory of his departed friend, spoke
these memorable words:
"If the existence of
Burns was but a troubled dream, if his
death oblivion, what avails it that the
Senate should pause to recount his
virtues? Neither veneration nor
reverence are due the dead. They are
but dust.
"No cenotaph should
be reared to preserve for posterity the
memory of their achievements. Those who
come after them are only to be their
successors in annihilation and
extinction. If in this world we have
only hope and consciousness, duty must
be chimera. Our pleasures and passions
should be the guides of conduct,
and virtue is indeed a superstition if
life ends at the grave.
"Such is the
conclusion which the philosophy of
negation must accept at last. Such is
the felicity of those degrading
precepts which make the epitaph the
end. If the life of Burns is a taper
that is burned out, then we treasure
his memory and his example in vain, and
the latest prayer of his departing
spirit has no more sanctity to us who
sooner or later must follow him, than
the whisper of winds that stir the
leaves of the protesting forest, or the
murmur of waves that break upon the
complaining shore."
New Thought is in
harmony with the latest utterances of
science and philosophy, regarding the
unity of life, that it pervades and
animates all nature and all created
beings. Only as we recognize this fact
can we find a rational and substantial
basis for the brotherhood of man.
To the extent that
we realize and understand that the same
life, the same divine current, that
flows through our being is the life
current in all men; that we have the
same divine source and are governed by
the same universal law, shall we be
able to grasp the true meaning and
significance of the brotherhood of
man.
When we look beyond
the outer form and see a divine soul in
every man, and can say with Walt
Whitman, "I shall meet the real
landlord, and know that the great
cosmic soul is in and over all, seeking
expression," can we truthfully and
sincerely address our fellowman as
Brother.
"The heart in thee
is the heart of all;
Not a valve, not a
wall,
Not an intersection,
is there anywhere in nature,
But one blood rolls
uninterruptedly, an endless
Circulation, through
all men, as the water of the
Globe is all one
sea, and truly seen its tide is
one."
Chapter
4
* * * * *
The Message of New Thought
Table of
Contents
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