by meeting at regular intervals with earnest, sincere, and honest people who have also some definite purpose to accomplish, and talking yourself out to them, and they to you. But when you accept any man or any woman as an infallible guide or authority, and do exactly as they say, you are off the main track; because then you are making the experiments of another person, formed of a certain combination of elements or chemicals, and the result of that person's experiments, the rule for your own individual combination of element, when your combination may be very different, and differently acted on by the elements outside of it.
You have iron and copper and magnesia and phosphorus, and more of other minerals and chemicals, and combination and re-combination of mineral and chemical, in your physical body than earthly science has yet thought of. You have in your spirit or thought the unseen or spiritual correspondences of these minerals still finer and more subtle; and all these are differently combined, and in different proportions, from any other physical or spiritual body. How, then, can anyone find out the peculiar action of this your individual combination, save yourself?
There are certain general laws; but every individual must apply the general law to him or herself. It is a general law that the wind will propel a ship. But every vessel does not use the air in exactly the same fashion. It is a general law that thought is force, and can effect, and is constantly effecting, results to others far from our bodies; and the quality of our thought and its power to affect results depends very much on our associations. But for that reason, if yours is the superior thought or power, and I see that through its use you are moving ahead in the world, I should not choose your character of associates or your manner of life. I can try your methods as experiments; but I must remember they are only experiments. I must avoid that so common error,--the error of slavish copy and idolatry of another.
The Christ of Nazareth once bade certain of his followers not to worship him. "Call me not good," said he. "There is none good save God alone." Christ said, "I am the way and the life," meaning, as the text interprets itself to me, that as to certain general laws of which he was aware, and by which he also as a spirit was governed, he knew and could give certain information. But he never did assert that his individual life, with all the human infirmity or defect that he had "taken upon him," was to be strictly copied. He did pray to the Infinite Spirit of Good for more strength, and deliverance from the SIN OF FEAR when his spirit quailed at the prospect of his crucifixion; and in so doing, he conceded that he, as a spirit (powerful as he was), needed help as much as any other spirit; and knowing this, he refused to pose himself before his followers as God, or the Infinite, but told them that when they desired to bow before that almighty and never-to-be-comprehended power, out of which comes every good at the prayer or demand of human mind, to worship God alone,--God, the eternal and unfathomable moving power of boundless universe; the power that no man has ever seen or ever will see, save as he sees its varying expressions in sun, star, cloud, wind, bird, beast, flower, animal, or in man as the future angel or archangel, and ascending still to grades of mind and grades of power higher and higher still; but ever and ever looking to the source whence comes their power, and never, never worshipping any one form of such expression, and by so doing making the "creature greater than the Creator."
That power is today working on and in and through every man, woman, and child on this planet. Or, to use the biblical expression, it is, "God working in us and through us." We are all parts of the Infinite Power,--a power ever carrying us up to higher, finer, happier grades of being.
Every man or woman, no matter what may be their manner of life or grade of intellect, is a stronger and better man or woman than ever they were before, despite all seeming contradiction. The desire in human nature, and all forms of nature or of spirit expressed through matter, to be more and more refined is, up to a certain growth of mind, an unconscious desire. The god desire is at work on the lowest drunkard rolling in the gutter. That man's spirit wants to get out of the gutter. Ii is at work on the greatest liar, prompting him, if ever so feebly, that the truth is better. It is at work on people you may call despicable and vile. When Christ was asked how often a man should be forgiven any offence, he replied in a manner indicating that there should be no limit to the sum of one man or woman's forgiveness for the defects or immaturity in another. There should be no limit to the kind and helpful thought we think or put out toward another person who falls often, who is struggling with some unnatural appetite. It is a great evil, often done unconsciously, to say or think of an intemperate man, ''Oh, he's gone to the dogs. It's no use doing anything more for him!" because, when we do this, we put hopeless, discouraging thought out in the air. It meets that person. He or she will feel it; and it is to them an element retarding their progress out of the slough they are in, just as some person's similar thought has retarded us in our effort to get out of some slough we were in or are in now,--slough of indecision; slough of despondency; slough of ill-temper; slough of envious, hating thought.
Yet the spirit of man becomes the stronger for all it struggles against. It becomes the stronger for struggling against your censorious, uncharitable thought, until at last it carries a man or woman to a point where they may in thought say to others, "I would rather have your approbation than your censure. But I am not dependent on your approbation or censure, for my most rigid judge and surest punishment for all the evil I do comes of my own mind,--the god or goddess in myself from whose judgment, from whose displeasure, there is no escaping." Yet as the spirit grows clearer and clearer in sight, so does that judge in ourselves become more and more merciful for its own errors; for it knows that, in a sense, as we refine from cruder to finer expression, there must be just so much evil to be contended against, fought against, and finally and inevitably overcome. Every man and woman is predestined to a certain amount of defect, until the spirit overcomes such defect; and overcome it must, for it is the nature of spirit to struggle against defect. It is the one thing impossible for man to take this quality out of his own spirit—the quality of ever rising toward more power and happiness.
If you make this an excuse to sin, or commit excess, or lie or steal or murder, and say, "I can't help it; I'm predestined to it," you will be punished all the same, not possibly by man's law, but by natural or divine law which has its own punishments for every possible sin,--for murder or lust or lying or stealing or evil thinking or gluttony; and these punishments are being constantly inflicted, and today thousands on thousands are suffering for the sins they commit in ignorance of the law of life; and the pain of such punishment has grown so great, and bears so heavily on so many, that there is now a greater desire than ever to know more of these laws; and for that very reason is this desire being met, and these questions are being answered; for it is an inevitable law of nature that what the human mind demands, that it, in time, gets; and the greater the number of minds so demanding, the sooner is the demand met, and the questions answered. Steam but a few years ago relatively met the demand of human mind for greater speed in travel. Electricity met a demand for greater speed in sending intelligence from man to man. These are but as straws pointing to the discovery and use of greater powers, not only in elements outside of man, but in the unseen elements which make man and woman; in the elements unseen which make you and me.
Henceforth our race will commence to be lifted out of evil or cruder forms of expression, not by fear ot the punishments coming through violation of the law, but they will be led to the wiser course through love of the delight which comes of following the law as we discover it for ourselves. You eat moderately, because experience has taught that the greater pleasure comes of moderation. You are gentle, kind, and considerate to your friend, not that you have constantly before your mind the fear of losing that friend if you are not kind and considerate, but because it pleases you, and you love the doing of kind acts. Human law, and even divine law as interpreted by human understanding, have ever been saying in the past, "You must not do this or that, or you'll feel the rod." God has been pictured as a stern, merciless, avenging deity. The burden of the preacher's song has been Penalty and Punishment! Punishment and Penalty! Humanity is to forget all about penalty and punishment, because it is to be won over, and tempted to greater goodness, to purity and refinement by the ever-increasing pleasures brought us as we refine. The warning of penalty was necessary when humanity was cruder. It could only be reached by the rod. The race was blind, and as a necessity of its condition it had to be kept somewhere near the
