SPIRITUAL HEALING
(Part I)
W. John Murray
The Astor
Lectures
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1917, 8th ed.
“Alive I fell among my fellows
slain,
Yet wounded so that each one thought me
dead.
But when I opened first my eyes
again
Night’s curtain black upon the
earth was spread
And through the darkness to my feeble
sight
Appeared the twinkling of a slender
light.
My wounds began to smart, my hurts to
ache:
Two men
appear
With each a lamp in hand, who said
‘O son
In that dear Lord who helps his
servants, trust
Who, ere they ask, grants all things to
the just.’
This said, they mumbled hymns and
psalms and
holy
things,
Which I could neither hear, nor
understand:
‘Arise,’ quoth they; with
that, as I had wings,
All whole and sound I leaped up from
the land.
O miracle, sweet, gentle, strange and
true!
My limbs new strength received and
vigor new.”
--Tasso.
[130] The
Church at Jerusalem was in the throes of
a great persecution, in consequence of
which the Christians, with the exception
of the Apostles, were scattered
throughout the regions of Judea and
Samaria. Saul, at the height of his fame
as a persecutor of the Christians, was
[131] “Making havoc of the
Church.” He had made himself
custodian of the garments of those who
had stoned Stephen to death; in fact,
Saul was really more responsible for that
martyrdom than if he had thrown the
stones. Scarcely a day passed that he did
not enter the houses of the Christians to
drag forth both men and women that he
might commit them to prison.
Philip was
in the city of Samaria preaching the
gospel and simultaneously healing the
sick, “and many taken with palsies,
and they that were lame were healed, and
there was great joy in that city.”
But there was a certain man called Simon
who, by spectacular advertising, had
gathered to himself a credulous
following, people who had mistaken
sorcery for the power of God. Accordingly
at the advent of Philip, who spoke
“with signs following,” the
disciples of the sorcerer abandoned
phenomena for reality and became
followers of Philip’s doctrine.
Simon, seeing himself deserted by his
followers and unwilling to remain alone,
feigned conversion to the doctrine of
Philip, was baptized, and continued with
the Apostle, wondering as he beheld the
miracles.
In the first
century of Christianity it was customary
to administer confirmation immediately
after baptism, but Philip, being a layman
instead of a bishop of the Church, was
unable to confer this sacrament.
Therefore, when the disciples of
Jerusalem heard of the success of his
ministry, they sent Peter and John to
Samaria to receive the new converts into
the shelter [132] of the church. And when
Simon saw that, through the laying on of
the bishop’s hands, or through the
receiving of the sacraments, which meant
little less than their passport to
martyrdom, they received the Holy Ghost
or a fuller understanding of Truth, which
enabled them to heal the sick, Simon
proposed to buy the gift of God. He
offered money to Peter and John, saying
“Give me also this power, that on
whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive
the Holy Ghost.” It was a grave
error on the part of Simon, for the gifts
of God are above price, and may not be
bought or sold, as is done with the
things of the earth. We may not become
proprietors of heavenly graces, which are
free and voluntary.
The error of
the sorcerer who was animated by the
spirit of ambition, pride, and perhaps
avarice, later crept into the church. The
sacraments dwindled to commerce;
martyrdom was supplanted by
ecclesiastical honors; blessings were
exchanged for anathemas; the house of God
became the den of thieves, and the gift
of healing was withdrawn from the church,
as a ray of light is banished from a room
by closed blinds. The beggars still sat
at the beautiful gate of the temple, but
the bishops could no longer bid them
“rise and walk.” What the
church had gained in materiality, it had
lost in spirituality. Its princes could
point to marvelous possessions, to rare
and precious stones and exquisite
statuary, gold, bronze, and priceless
paintings in abundance, but they could no
longer direct the weary [133] and heavy
laden to a healing bishop. In the church
metaphysics had given way to politics,
creed had usurped the place of Christ,
and idealism was swallowed in
materialism. The martyrs became those who
could not subscribe to creeds which had
their inception for the most part in
men’s desire to enlarge the girth
of the church in order that she might
include their sin without losing them
heaven. It was thus that the healing
mission of the church was lost, and a
religion that does not include the
healing of the sick ranks in usefulness
in the same proportion that a skilled
workman without tools ranks in
efficiency, or as a great industrial
plant without machinery would rank as a
producer. Spiritual healing is the
trademark of the Christian belief, the
seal of Christ’s approval of His
Holy Bride.
The gifts of
God cannot be purchased with coin of the
realm; they are not dispensed by the
church; nor are they contained in
“herbs and charms wherewith false
men increase their patient’s
harm.” Where, then, can healing be
obtained? Spiritual healing can only be
found in idealism which is the true
principle of all spiritual healing.
Idealism is best defined as “that
philosophical view which regards what is
thought as alone the
actual,” and thought is that
substance from which everything emanates,
and that to which, in its last analysis,
all things may be reduced. Thought, then
is the immortal substance of the
universe. Ideal thinking is the principle
upon which Jesus the Christ based his
healing [134] power. He taught that
Thought is the substance of all reality
and that the act of thinking gives
shape to Thought. St. John
expressed the same idea when he said that
thought “was made flesh and dwelt
among us full of grace and
truth.”
Jesus was
the ambassador of Spirit representing
divine interests on a mundane plane of
existence; he came to do the will of God,
and he healed the sick by purely
spiritual means. The carpenter’s
son was the Prince of Idealists
“full of zeal and faith, esteeming
lightly all worldly honor, empire,
treasure, might.”
The practice
of medicine was in vogue sixteen
centuries before the advent of Jesus, and
the profession had evolved from the
interpreting of dreams to “venomous
decoctions of reptiles and Spanish flies,
mold from dead men’s skulls, and
woodlice, compounded with lies!”
The evolution of medicine in the last
nineteen hundred years seems more
theoretical than practical. Dr. Mason
Good of London has permitted himself to
say: “The effect of medicine on the
human system is in the highest degree
uncertain, except, indeed, that it has
already destroyed more lives than war,
pestilence, and famine all
combined.” Medicine cannot
“minister to a mind
diseased,” and sickness is a mental
disorder. To cure disease it is necessary
to restore order in the mental realm, and
right thinking is the only thing that can
accomplish this. It is not a nineteenth
century idea that Thought is the only
reality of the [135] universe. Sages have
taught it and poets have echoed it. Byron
has beautifully said:--
“The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its
own
With beings brighter than have been,
and give
A breath to forms that can outlive all
flesh.”
And it is
possible, by the process of spiritual
thinking, to so impregnate the form with
the presence of Life that it becomes
immune from the ravages of death. Jesus
demonstrated this fact in the three days
of his entombment. Thought and existence
are identical; therefore, the nature of
your thought determines the state of your
existence. To change your physical
condition you have only to change the
character of your thinking, and the true
method of healing is to elevate your
thought above the physical. Thought is a
magnet which attracts everything to
itself. To liberate the soul from the
thraldom of sense, it is only necessary
to elevate the thought, and, that
accomplished, the body is raised from its
prison of pain. To empty the mind of
sense testimony and to fill it with the
divine image of perfection and hold it in
contradistinction to sense testimony is
the prayer of faith which shall save the
sick; for the divine rays that emanate
from a perfect vision of Truth will
penetrate the consciousness of the
patient “as [136] unto a light that
shineth in a dark place until the day
dawn.”
It is not
through asking God to heal that we
arrive at the fountain of health, rather
is it the realization of God as the only
Creator that bears the healing on
its wings. Man is the mirror in which God
is most perfectly reflected, “and
the nations of them that are saved shall
walk in the light” of this divine
image in man. Spiritual healing is
begotten of spiritual seeing. Jesus
liberated the sinner from the illusion of
sin; he healed the sick, and he raised
the dead by the simple process of
divinely imaging the facts of being in
contradistinction to the phenomena of the
senses. A leper went to Jesus and
worshiped him. Jesus, oblivious to
appearance, saw the image of God. The
rays of light from that image penetrated
the worshiper’s consciousness, and
in that light he too saw himself as he
was, and immediately “his leprosy
was cleansed.” What, then, is
disease but a phenomena of the senses
that the might of Mind can efface, as
light has the power to decompose chemical
compounds? Is it more strange that
thought can raise the body from its
prison of pain, than that the barometer
is raised or lowered by air pressure? The
pressure of mind is more potent than an
atmospheric impulse; for it is the most
puissant force in nature, and its rays
are the most penetrating. It knows not
time nor space, nor can bronze walls
alter it.
Jesus was
entering Capernaum when He encountered
[137] a Centurion, who said: “Lord,
my servant lieth at home sick of the
palsy, grievously tormented.” The
Master said “I will come and heal
him.” The Centurion expostulated,
saying, “I am unworthy of your
entrance into my house; speak the word
only, for the word proceeds from the
mental image. I know this because I
have men under me, and I say to one, go,
thereby conveying the image in my mind to
the mind of the man and he goes; and to
another, come, and he comes; I say to my
servant, do this, and he does it.”
Jesus marveled, for he had met a man who
knew that words were the symbols of
ideas, and that if he said the word only,
the idea would manifest itself in the
healing of the servant. And “the
servant was healed in the same
hour.” It was the compassion of the
Master that lent force to his benignity.
He was so gentle with the penitent, so
compassionate with the sick, and so
tender with the tired little children,
that his kindness warmed the
people’s hearts and made them
receptive to the Truth which he
imparted.
It is a
great art to be kind, for kindness is an
ointment that soothes the soul and the
body alike, and he who would heal after
the example of the Nazarene must not lack
in kindness. The sick are victims of
delusions, and to banish these imps of
sense, tact and discretion guided by
intuition are essentially necessary.
Never attempt to liberate a prisoner of
pain by scoffing at his prison. He knows
better than you how [138] hideous it is,
and he feels the bonds of his servitude
to the uttermost. What he does not know
is how to establish his immunity from
sickness and how to secure his pardon.
Habit is a merciless tyrant, and when
sickness has become a habit, it is
necessary to change a person’s
nature before you can rid him of it.
In the
presence of pain we must remember that
habit is involuntary and unintentional
vice; therefore its slave is an object of
compassion and not of ridicule. A person
is not to be condemned for an involuntary
vice any more than he is to be praised
for a compulsory virtue. A breath of
forbearance is more potent to heal the
sick than a cyclone of theories. Example
is as much more powerful than precept as
the heavens are higher than the earth.
Silver tongued oratory will not vanquish
illusions; they must be consumed by the
white flame of Spirit.
The sick
room is no place for argument. The
captives of sense are convinced that
disease is a stern reality. It is the
office of the idealist to disprove the
patient’s belief in the reality of
pain by destroying his distress. To
destroy disease it is but necessary to
realize that Mind is the only reality. He
who would remove the clanking chains from
the bondman of sense, must first liberate
himself from the handcuffs of sin.
Sickness sharpens the sensibilities of
the sufferer, and leaves him or her
susceptible to imperceptible influences.
Men who have gone unflinchingly through
the nameless hell of [139] war have been
known to weep, when ill, over the silent
beauty of a few wild violets. Therefore
for one under subjection to sin to
attempt to release a sick soul is a
caricature on Christ’s mission.
Looking
through the lens of fear, gnats take on
the stature of camels, and compassion on
the part of the divine metaphysician with
these deluded ones will do more toward
correcting the lens than a cataract of
empty words. Error is a negative
condition and is always at the mercy of
positive truth. The higher Truth lifts
her voice, the louder error will roar,
but error is powerless in the presence of
Truth. Evil can never raise an army that
the still small voice of Truth will not
cause to retreat. What men need is to
increase their faith, and this will
minimize their fear, to believe more in
Mind and less in the phenomena of matter,
to have more faith in the Creator and
less dependence on the creature.
When man
lays hold of the principle of Being and
lets go of sense testimony, he will heal
the sick involuntarily. Jesus proved that
life is more than meat and body than
raiment, for life and its manifestation
are eternal, all else is transient and
ephemeral. Let nothing enter your mind
that you do not want to see mirrored in
your body. Affirm the Truth without
ceasing, and the body will reflect
truthful images. Life is one and
indestructible, and its rays are
inseparable from their divine source. To
diagnose [140] disease is to give a name
to nothing, to crown deceit with honor,
and to exalt fraud. God gave the single
name “Good” to everything
that He made, and it would be well to
bear this in mind when we give names to
things. Error is the only illegitimate
thing in creation. Shakespeare speaks of
error thus:--
“Thou never com’st unto
a happy birth,
But kill’st the mother that
engendered thee.”
Could a more
scientific description of evil be given
than this, from the inspired pen of an
immortal poet? Shakespeare has said all
that can be said and leaves nothing
unsaid of error. The more evil is
discussed the more its proportion
increases. Therefore, silence is its most
potent rebuke. Error wears a million
masks; it is always the thing we fear,
and to unmask evil, fear must be
overcome. If it were not for fear, error
could not exist even in appearance, the
only place it does exist. Evil is not
self-sustaining nor self-perpetuating; it
owes its life to humanity’s
ignorance; and its shadow will lurk in
the gloaming until the noon-day of
enlightenment evaporates superstition,
and Truth is enthroned in the mind of
man.
If you
educate children to believe in ghosts,
you may succeed, in their more mature
years, in destroying the shape that the
ghost has assumed in the childish mind,
but you will find it difficult, if not
impossible, to remove the impression
[141] of fear that the belief in the
ghost has inculcated. The original ghost
may be destroyed, but the specters that
will come to take its place only Truth
can displace. The fear of sickness is the
ghost story that loving parents introduce
into the childish mind. It is one of the
first things they learn, and it is the
last thing they forget! It is, therefore,
incumbent upon parents to know more about
Truth and less about illusion. The child
is the product of the parent’s
thought, and the adult in turn is the
victim of the world’s belief in the
reality of evil. The body is the product
of the mind. It has not action apart from
that with which the mind endows it.
Therefore, regulate the mind and the body
will respond to that regulation. Like the
face of a clock, the body never changes.
It is the action of the mind, even as it
is the moving of the hands on the dial
which is responsible in either case for
that which the time piece or the body
registers, whether it be true or false.
In a follower of Christ, conceit has no
place, for pride precedes a fall.
“Who climbeth high on earth he
hardest lights,
And lowest falls attend the highest
flights.”
It is always
well to remember in prosperity’s
shallow sea that we sail, “But with
Christ’s wind.” When you
suffer for righteousness’ sake, and
the exemption from sorrow on the part of
the worldling seems to mock you,
rejoice:--
[142] “The thunderbolt on
highest mountains lights,
It never strikes the lower
plane.”
If your
understanding of Truth is not equal to
every demand that others may make upon
it, do not be discouraged or become
faint-hearted. Use all that you have, and
God will refill your spiritual reservoir.
No judgment is the only admissible
judgment, for who may say that under the
same strain of temptation he or she might
not have done likewise or worse? No man
may measure the strength of temptation
until after he has been tried. The only
man who overcame all temptation never
judged anyone. It has been written that
all who live godly shall suffer
persecution, but “the steps of a
good man are ordered by the Lord; though
he fall, he shall not be utterly cast
down, for the Lord upholdeth him with His
hand,” and “strong is the
hand of God.” (Psalm 87:13.)
A
sufferer’s willingness to be rid of
his disease is in favor of his cure, but
it is more difficult to rid one of the
gyves of sin, because the stronghold of
error is the belief that there is a
pleasure in sinning; the evil-doer does
not realize that the pleasures of sin are
death. The power of God is not diminished
that it cannot save, but the evil-doer
must save himself from the effect of sin
by forsaking wrongdoing.
Ignorance is
the mother of fear, and both are in
subjection to Enlightenment. Mind
is all and moves all, and every
organ in the body responds [143] to the
spiritual understanding of this law.
There is no desert in which God cannot
spread a repast, nor has ignorance ever
devised a crime, or fear of disease, that
Mind cannot overcome, for God is supreme
good, and God is Mind. There is nothing
too difficult for spirit to perform,
albeit some people yield themselves to
the influence of Truth less willingly
than others, but “As marble stones
are pierced by drops of rain,”
Spirit makes its impress on hearts of
adamant.
Materiality
has lowered the standard of Truth, and
only Mind can raise it to its pristine
glory. Hatred poisons the hater,
therefore there is no injury that
warrants hate. Courage is the only weapon
permissible to the Idealist, and it is
the sword of Spirit. In the furnace of
affliction a divine purpose is
strengthened as a fire increases flame,
and sorrow augments the faith of the
righteous, for it turns them from sense
to soul. “He that sows godly sorrow
reaps joy by heaps,” but beware
of
“The brazen trump of iron
winged fame
That mingles faithful troth with forged
lies,
While it hides Spirit’s
fame.”
Love is the
substance of Spirit. Disease is
invariably caused by the insufficiency of
this substance, and to cure disease Love
is the only remedy required. Love is the
preventive as well as the curative factor
in disease, and it is [144] the only
peacemaker; history is the proclamation
of the prophecy that, “he who
scorneth peace shall have his fill of
war.”
Emotion must
not be mistaken for love; the former is
as variable as waves at sea or leaves in
wind, the latter as constant and
imperishable as the mighty Alps. Love is
not blind, but it refuses to see
aught but the ideal. The healing power of
the God-Man was accomplished through
Love. It was the only baggage that Jesus
ever carried, the only medicine which he
used or ever recommended to others, and
it answered every requirement.
The Prince
of Idealists replaced ten commandments
with a single admonition
“Love.” Love is the greatest
thing in the world; it is the only thing
in heaven. If a pitiful sufferer from a
belief in anemia which seems to destroy
the human body fibre by fibre, freezing
the skin, and wasting the energies, could
be brought to comprehend that the
practical understanding and demonstration
of his own love would heal him, he would
be up and about his Father’s
business, healing the soul-sick, feeding
the poor, and suffering the little ones
to come unto him and receive their
portion of God’s abundance. To love
humanity and serve mankind is to put
one’s self in the attitude of mind
necessary to the reception of the divine
influx of spiritual healing.
Jesus has
said that little children always behold
the face of their Father; therefore, to
serve the little children is to be in
touch with God. [145] Death is a total
eclipse of existence, but it does not
touch Life. Humanity dies of many things
of different names with different strange
phenomena, but in truth it is not
physical disease that eclipses their
existence; it is dearth of the love of
God scientifically understood. Why
minister to the body when it is the mind
that is sick? Physical examinations do
not point the metaphysician to the mental
travail that is responsible for the
physical effect. The body is the result
of thought, and to have a harmonious
body, it is necessary to have your
thoughts governed by Truth and not by
sense testimony. If the tares of
selfishness are choking newborn blades of
Truth, the remedy lies in removing the
tares and making room for the wheat of
righteousness. Mind, not matter, is the
only cause. Guard your thoughts, for
Satan in the form of suggestion is
“Ever ready ere men
need,
If once they think to make them do the
deed.”
Christianity
understood is Christliness proved. If we
are Christians we must be willing to
follow Christ through the gloaming as
well as on the heights, for the best work
is done in the tomb, the clearing house
of matter. Congestions is a universal
cause of disease, but the congestion is
mental, not physical, and its cure lies
in restoring circulation in the mind by
the realization of harmony as ever
present [146] and omnipotent. The body is
an earthen vessel which owes its
illumination to the lamp of Spirit. It is
not the will of God that “the body
be neglected, wherein so noble Light doth
burn,” but it is the divine will
that the body be transformed by the
renewing of the mind. Every physical
effect is wrought in the realm of
Mind.
To go
through the eye of the needle (a small
gate in the walls of Jerusalem opened to
belated merchants after nightfall), it
was necessary that the merchants unload
the camel’s burdens in order to
drag them through the small aperture on
their knees; after that they carried the
merchandise through and reloaded the
animals on the other side of the gate.
The gateway of Spirit is narrow, and to
enter the New Jerusalem we may be
required to unload our minds of such
superfluities as pride, hypocrisy,
stolidity, and inhumanity, in each and
all of their various disguises, but
unlike the merchants of old we shall not
have to carry these burdens through the
gate. Physical existence bears the same
relation to Spiritual life that the moon
does to the sun; while it is not part of
life, it nevertheless receives its
illumination from life. Thus we put off
existence at the close of a day much as
the locust discards its sheath or the
chrysalis of another insect is left
behind, the earthen vessel painlessly
dissolving while the lamp’s flame
increases in luminosity and spiritual
penetration. The soul of life seems to be
retiring [147] to a “more inward
and subtle region where it perchance
nourishes an even brighter flame than
before,” and existence is left
behind without regret. It was in this way
that the patriarchs passed away, and no
mention is made of sickness in the Old
Testament until the time for the passing
of Israel, when someone told Joseph,
“Behold, thy father is sick.”
It was thus that death, for the first
time was associated with sickness, in
which the impartial reaper has no part.
If the sick could be persuaded to take no
anxious thought for the body, healing
would be their quick reward. “Jesus
forgave the beautiful Magdalen because
she loved much!” If the follower in
the sacred pilgrimage of the Nazarene has
enough spiritual insight to discern love,
albeit frozen in every human breast, he
will be able to emulate the divine
example and heal with “signs
following.”
The
heart’s needful nutriment is the
love that is expressed in a tender
compassion and infinite sympathy with the
patient’s foibles, the love that is
sufficiently charitable to see only the
free woman of Spirit, instead of the
bondwoman of sense. You can only give
that which you have, and therefore he who
would heal spiritually must ever increase
his capacity to love. Live peaceably with
all mankind, as far, says Paul, as it
lies in you. Expect all good things and
exact nothing, for what your Father has
for you will come to you.
[148]
“Give every man thy ear; but
few thy voice;
Take every man’s censure: but
reserve thy judgment;
This above all; to thine own self be
true;
And it must follow, as the night the
day,
Thou canst not then be false to any
man.”
In Italy a
plant is found which comes from the
deserts of Syria; a plant not unlike that
which we call the field daisy and which
bears a somewhat similar flower. It is
called the Rose of Jericho. In the dry
seasons, when the earth about the roots
of the plant is devitalized and only dry
sand remains, the plant is guided by
Intelligence to separate itself from the
earth’s grasp and to wrap itself,
flower, root and all, into what appears
as a little ball. It is then carried on
the wings of the wind until it reaches
some fresh, sheltered spot, where it
unfolds, takes root once more in the
earth, raises its head, and quietly
blooms once more. It is thus with the
individual soul. When it outgrows the
sand of formalism, of necessity it must
detach itself from the outgrown
institution, and recommence its life in
the new soil of Spirit. The hour comes
when every disciple of Truth must stand
alone with his own soul and rise into
higher manifestation of power, or fall
into a lesser expression, according to
his spiritual knowledge. So narrow is the
path which the pilgrim must tread in his
ascent up the mountain [149] of Spirit
that many times he must, of necessity,
travel alone; but one with God is
a majority, and the traveler’s
heavenly guide, the Lord Christ Jesus, is
always within call, although higher up on
the mountain.
To be alone
with God is to be with all that is
real. Human affection may fail; the
most sacred earthly ties may be broken,
cherished friends absent in the hour of
our extremity, but the love which is God
is ever present and omnipotent. The hour
of material desertion is the moment of
our Spiritual birth; for only as we rise
above a material dependence can the
angels of the Christ’s presence
come and minister unto us. Always the
never setting sun of God’s
protection, although behind a silver
cloud, is streaming out its beams on
every side. When Love has disarmed your
life of every conventional defense, then,
in deed and in Truth has God become the
rock of your salvation. Trials of faith
are followed by heavenly calm and a
tender sense of God’s nearness. The
God-inspired are neither deterred nor
alarmed by torment, slaughter, fire, or
sword. Hate and spite may devise slander,
“for the thirst for glory can no
partner bide,” but God who has sent
you on His mission “thee with His
hand shall guide, keep and
defend.”
Fear is an
indication that more Love is required. It
is better to rise and fall than to sit
still afraid to move, for “the fear
of ill exceeds the ill we fear.” To
overcome fear it [150] is often necessary
to encounter the condition which we would
avoid and thereby prove the nothingness
of it.
Mind and
form are one, and both are Spiritual and
Eternal. What has been called
“mortal mind and body” are
but the superstitious beliefs concerning
Mind and Form, the limitations preceded
by ignorance of the illimitable and
eternal. In the presence of ignorance it
is well to remember that she
“caused the soul to decay;
therefore, desert her platitudes for
rugged enlightenment.”
If you are
made a victim of the pitiful jealousy of
such ones as the rays of your light may
have attracted from the mire of
ungodliness, and if these sting you or
yours, “as stings a snake that to
the fire is brought which harmless lay,
benumbed with cold before,” be glad
that you are counted worthy to
participate in the Lord’s Supper.
When you are persecuted for the good
which you have done, fear not, “Men
propose, but high gods dispose,”
and the disposition will be made in favor
of God’s instrument. Men would do
better if they knew better, and it is the
business of the true apostle to educate
them and heal them. It requires infinite
patience to instruct humanity in the way
of righteousness. The senses of men are
as blind to the beams of Truth as are
“owls to the sun’s
rays.” And often it is necessary to
merge slowly in introducing the deep
things of Truth into unprepared soil. To
rouse people from [151] sin takes time,
and we must not expect the adamant of
habit to yield at the first blow of the
spiritual hammer. Let men walk by the
light of your example until they have
drawn the oil of Spirit from the
universal supply, and having filled their
lamp and lit it, they can walk by their
own light, that light which is God.
Life is
never dependent on bodily conditions,
either before or after death. Life is God
and is as inseparable from God as a
sunbeam is inseparable from its source.
The rays of Life illumine the body, but
they are not of the body. To believe that
life depends on bodily structure, or that
because its rays cease to function in a
certain body, the individual is dead, is
to reveal our ignorance of what Life
really is. Life was never limited to a
body. It merely shone there temporarily,
passing on its way to eternity, and it
will ever continue to shine in the same
individuality although we no longer see
the personality, the limitation of our
senses having blinded us to its form.
“There are more things in
Heaven and Earth
Than are dreamt of in our
philosophy.”
Continued.
* * * * *
Next
Section
* * * * *
The Astor Lectures
Table of
Contents
(Formerly at
Northwoods Divine Science Resource
Center)
