Part 9

Jesus' quick and almost unerring perception enabled him to foresee this. It did not deter him from going forward with his message, standing resolutely and superbly by his revelation, and at the last almost courting death--feeling undoubtedly that the sealing of his revelation and message with his very life blood would but serve to give it its greatest power and endurance. Heroically he met the fate that he perceived was conspiring to end his career, to wreck his teachings and his influence. He went forth to die clear-sighted and unafraid.

He died for the sake of the truth of the message that he lived and so diligently and heroically laboured for--the message of the ineffable love of God for all His children and the bringing of them into the Father's Kingdom. And we must believe from his whole life's teaching, not to save their souls from some future punishment; not through any demand of satisfaction on the part of God; not as any substitutionary sacrifice to appease the demands of an angry God--for it was the exact opposite of this that his whole life teaching endeavoured to make known. It was supremely the love of the Father and His longing for the love and allegiance, therefore the complete life and service of His children. It was the beauty of holiness--the beauty of wholeness--the wholeness of life, the saving of the whole life from the sin and sordidness of self and thereby giving supreme satisfaction to God. It was love, not fear. If not, then almost in a moment he changed the entire purpose and content, the entire intent of all his previous life work. This is unthinkable.

In his last act he did not abrogate his own expressed statement, that the very essence of his message was expressed, as love to God and love to one's neighbour. He did not abrogate his continually repeated declaration that it was the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, which brings man's life into right relations with God and into right relations with his fellow-men, that it was his purpose to reveal and to draw all men to, thereby aiding God's eternal purpose--to establish in this world a state which he designated the Kingdom of Heaven wherein a social order of brotherliness and justice, wrought and maintained through the potency of love, would prevail. In doing this he revealed the character of God by being himself an embodiment of it.

It was the power of a truth that was to save the life that he was always concerned with. Therefore his statement that the Son of Man has come that men might have life and might have it more abundantly--to save men from sin and from failure, and secondarily from their consequences; to make them true Sons of God and fit subjects and fit workers in His Kingdom. Conversion according to Jesus is the fact of this Divine rule in the mind and heart whereby the life is saved--the saving of the soul follows. It is the direct concomitant of the saved life.

In his death he sealed his own statement: "The law and the prophets were until John; since that time the Kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it." Through his death he sealed the message of his life when putting it in another form he said: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word and believeth on Him that sent me hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation: but is passed from death unto life."

In this majestic life divinity and humanity meet. Here is the incarnation. The first of the race consciously, vividly, and fully to realise that God incarnates Himself and has His abode in the hearts and the lives of men, the first therefore to realise his Divine Sonship and become able thereby to reveal and to teach the Divine Fatherhood of God and the Divine Sonship of Man.

In this majestic life is the atonement, the realisation of the at-one-ment of the Divine in the human, made manifest in his own life and in the way that he taught, sealed then by his own blood.

In this majestic life we have the mediator, the medium or connector of the Divine and the human. In it we have the Saviour, the very incarnation of the truth that he taught, and that lifts the minds and thereby the lives of men up to their Divine ideal and pattern, that redeems their lives from the sordidness and selfishness and sin of the hitherto purely material self, and that being thereby saved, makes them fit subjects for the Father's Kingdom.

In this majestic life is the full embodiment of the beauty of holiness--whose words have gone forth and whose spirit is ceaselessly at work in the world, drawing men and women up to their divine ideal, and that will continue so to draw all in proportion as his words of truth and his life are lifted up throughout the world.

X

SOME METHODS OF ATTAINMENT

After this study of the teachings of the Divine Master let us know this. It is the material that is the transient, the temporary; and the mental and spiritual that is the real and the eternal. We must not become slaves to habit. The material alone can never bring happiness--much less satisfaction. These lie deeper. That conversation between Jesus and the rich young man is full of significance for us all, especially in this ambitious, striving, restless age.

Abundance of life is determined not alone by one's material possessions, but primarily by one's riches of mind and spirit. A world of truth is contained in these words: "Life is what we are alive to. It is not a length, but breadth. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, mere luxury or idleness, pride or money-making, and not to goodness and kindness, purity and love, history, poetry, and music, flowers, God and eternal hopes, is to be all but dead."

Why be so eager to gain possession of the hundred thousand or the half-million acres, of so many millions of dollars? Soon, and it may be before you realise it, all must be left. It is as if a man made it his ambition to accumulate a thousand or a hundred thousand automobiles. All soon will become junk. But so it is with all material things beyond what we can actually and profitably use for our good and the good of others--and that we actually do so use.

A man can eat just so many meals during the year or during life. If he tries to eat more he suffers thereby. He can wear only so many suits of clothing; if he tries to wear more, he merely wears himself out taking off and putting on. Again it is as Jesus said: "For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own life?" And right there is the crux of the whole matter. All the time spent in accumulating these things beyond the reasonable amount, is so much taken from the life--from the things of the mind and the spirit. It is in the development and the pursuit of these that all true satisfaction lies. Elemental law has so decreed.

We have made wonderful progress, or rather have developed wonderful skill in connection with things. We need now to go back and catch up the thread and develop like skill in making the life.

Little wonder that brains are addled, that nerves are depleted, that nervous dyspepsia, that chronic weariness, are not the exception but rather the rule. Little wonder that sanitariums are always full; that asylums are full and overflowing--and still more to be built. No wonder that so many men, so many good men break and go to pieces, and so many lose the life here at from fifty to sixty years, when they should be in the very prime of life, in the full vigour of manhood; at the very age when they are capable of enjoying life the most and are most capable of rendering the greatest service to their fellows, to their community, because of greater growth, experience, means, and therefore leisure. Jesus was right--What doth it profit? And think of the real riches that in the meantime are missed.

It is like an addled-brain driver in making a trip across the continent. He is possessed, obsessed with the insane desire of making a record. He plunges on and on night and day, good weather and foul--and all the time he is missing all the beauties, all the benefits to health and spirit along the way. He has none of these when he arrives--he has missed them all. He has only the fact that he has made a record drive--or nearly made one. And those with him he has not only robbed of the beauties along the way; but he has subjected them to all the discomforts along the way. And what really underlies the making of a record? It is primarily the spirit of vanity.

When the mental beauties of life, when the spiritual verities are sacrificed by self-surrender to and domination by the material, one of the heavy penalties that inexorable law imposes is the drying up, so to speak, of the finer human perceptions--the very faculties of enjoyment. It presents to the world many times, and all unconscious to himself, a stunted, shrivelled human being--that eternal type that the Master had in mind when he said: "Thou fool, this night shall thy soul be required of thee." He whose sole employment or even whose primary employment becomes the building of bigger and still bigger barns to take care of his accumulated grain, becomes incapable of realising that life and the things that pertain to it are of infinitely more value than barns, or houses, or acres, or stocks, or bonds, or railroad ties. These all have their place, all are of value; but they can never be made the life. A recent poem by James Oppenheim presents a type that is known to nearly every one:[B]

I heard the preacher preaching at the funeral: He moved the relatives to tears telling them of the father, husband, and friend that was dead: Of the sweet memories left behind him: Of a life that was good and kind.

I happened to know the man, And I wondered whether the relatives would have wept if the preacher had told the truth: Let us say like this:

"The only good thing this man ever did in his life, Was day before yesterday: _He died_.... But he didn't even do that of his own volition.... He was the meanest man in business on Manhattan Island, The most treacherous friend, the crudest and stingiest husband, And a father so hard that his children left home as soon as they were old enough.... Of course he had divinity: everything human has: But he kept it so carefully hidden away that he might just as well not have had it....

"Wife! good cheer! now you can go your own way and live your own life! Children, give praise! you have his money: the only good thing he ever gave you.... Friends! you have one less traitor to deal with.... This is indeed a day of rejoicing and exultation! Thank God this man is dead!"

An unknown enjoyment and profit to him is the world's great field of literature, the world's great thinkers, the inspirers of so many through all the ages. That splendid verse by Emily Dickinson means as much to him as it would to a dumb stolid ox:

He ate and drank the precious words, His spirit grew robust, He knew no more that he was poor, Nor that his frame was dust; He danced along the dingy days, And this bequest of wings Was but a book! What liberty A loosened spirit brings!

Yes, life and its manifold possibilities of unfoldment and avenues of enjoyment--life, and the things that pertain to it--is an infinitely greater thing than the mere accessories of life.

What infinite avenues of enjoyment, what peace of mind, what serenity of soul may be the possession of all men and all women who are alive to the inner possibilities of life as portrayed by our own prophet, Emerson, when he said:

Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home, I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome; And when I am stretched beneath the pines, Where the evening star so holy shines, I laugh at the lore and pride of man, At the Sophist schools and the learned clan; For what are they all in their high conceit, When man in the bush with God may meet?

It was he who has exerted such a world-wide influence upon the minds and lives of men and women who also said: "Great men are they who see that spirituality is stronger than any material force: that thoughts rule the world." And this is true not only of the world in general, but it is true likewise in regard to the individual life.

One of the great secrets of all successful living is unquestionably the striking of the right balance in life. The material has its place--and a very important place. Fools indeed were we to ignore or to attempt to ignore this fact. We cannot, however, except to our detriment, put the cart before the horse. Things may contribute to happiness, but things cannot bring happiness--and sad indeed, and crippled and dwarfed and stunted becomes the life of every one who is not capable of realising this fact. Eternally true indeed is it that the life is more than meat and the body more than raiment.

All life is from an inner centre outward. As within, so without. As we think we become. Which means simply this: our prevailing thoughts and emotions are never static, but dynamic. Thoughts are forces--like creates like, and like attracts like. It is therefore for us to choose whether we shall be interested primarily in the great spiritual forces and powers of life, or whether we shall be interested solely in the material things of life.

But there is a wonderful law which we must not lose sight of. It is to the effect that when we become sufficiently alive to the inner powers and forces, to the inner springs of life, the material things of life will not only follow in a natural and healthy sequence, but they will also assume their right proportions. They will take their right places.

It was the recognition of this great fundamental fact of life that Jesus had in mind when he said: "But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you,"--meaning, as he so distinctly stated, the kingdom of the mind and spirit made open and translucent to the leading of the Divine Wisdom inherent in the human soul, when that leading is sought and when through the right ordering of the mind we make the conditions whereby it may become operative in the individual life.

The great value of God as taught by Jesus is that God dwells in us. It is truly Emmanuel--God with us. The law must be observed--the conditions must be met. "The Lord is with you while ye be with him; and if ye will seek him, he will be found of you." "The spirit of the living God dwelleth in you." "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering." That there is a Divine law underlying prayer that helps to release the inner springs of wisdom, which in turn leads to power, was well known to Jesus, for his life abundantly proved it.

His great aptitude for the things of the spirit enabled him intuitively to realise this, to understand it, to use it. And there was no mystery, no secret, no subterfuge on the part of Jesus as to the source of his power. In clear and unmistakable words he made it known--and why should he not? It was the truth, the truth of this inner kingdom that would make men free that he came to reveal. "The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." "My Father worketh hitherto and I work.... For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself.... I can of mine own self do nothing." As he followed the conditions whereby this higher illumination can come so must we.

The injunction that Jesus gave in regard to prayer is unquestionably the method that he found so effective and that he himself used. How many times we are told that he withdrew to the mountain for his quiet period, for communion with the Father, that the realisation of his oneness with God might be preserved intact. In this continual realisation--I and my Father are one--lay his unusual insight and power. And his distinct statement which he made in speaking of his own powers--as I am ye shall be--shows clearly the possibilities of human unfoldment and attainment, since he realised and lived and then revealed the way.

Were not this Divine source of wisdom and power the heritage of every human soul, distinctly untrue then would be Jesus' saying: "For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened." Infinitely better is it to know that one has this inner source of guidance and wisdom which as he opens himself to it becomes continually more distinct, more clear and more unerring in its guidance, than to be continually seeking advice from outside sources, and being confused in regard to the advice given. This is unquestionably the way of the natural and the normal life, made so simple and so plain by Jesus, and that was foreshadowed by Isaiah when he said: "Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth fainteth not, neither is weary? He giveth power to the faint and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint."

Not that problems and trials will not come. They will come. There never has been and there never will be a life free from them. Life isn't conceivable on any other terms. But the wonderful source of consolation and strength, the source that gives freedom from worry and freedom from fear is the realisation of the fact that the guiding force and the moulding power is within us. It becomes active and controlling in the degree that we realise and in the degree that we are able to open ourselves so that the Divine intelligence and power can speak to and can work through us.

Judicious physical exercise induces greater bodily strength and vigour. An active and alert mental life, in other words mental activity, induces greater intellectual power. And under the same general law the same is true in regard to the development and the use of spiritual power. It, however, although the most important of all because it has to do more fundamentally with the life itself, we are most apt to neglect. The losses, moreover, resulting from this neglect are almost beyond calculation.

To establish one's centre aright is to make all of life's activities and events and results flow from this centre in orderly sequence. A modern writer of great insight has said: "The understanding that God is, and _all there is_, will establish you upon a foundation from which you can never be moved." To know that the power that is God is the power that works in us is knowledge of transcendent import.

To know that the spirit of Infinite wisdom and power which is the creating, the moving, and the sustaining force in all life, thinks and acts in and through us as our own very life, in the degree that we consciously and deliberately desire it to become the guiding and the animating force in our lives, and open ourselves fully to its leadings, and follow its leadings, is to attain to that state of conscious oneness with the Divine that Jesus realised, lived and revealed, and that he taught as the method of the natural and the normal life for all men.

We are so occupied with the matters of the sense-life that all unconsciously we become dominated, ruled by the things of the senses. Now in the real life there is the recognition of the fact that the springs of life are all from within, and that the inner always leads and rules the outer. Under the elemental law of Cause and Effect this is always done--whether we are conscious of it or not. But the difference lies here: The master of life consciously and definitely allies himself in mind and spirit with the great central Force and rules his world from within. The creature of circumstances, through lack of desire or through weakness of will, fails to do this, and, lacking guiding and directing force, drifts and becomes thereby the creature of circumstance.

One of deep insight has said: "That we do not spontaneously see and know God, as we see and know one another, and so manifest the God-nature as we do the sense-nature, is because that nature is yet latent, and in a sense slumbering within us. Yet the God-nature within us connects us as directly and vitally with the Being and Kingdom of God within, behind, and above the world, as does the sense-nature with the world external to us. Hence as the sense-consciousness was awakened and established by the recognition of and communication with the outward world through the senses, so the God-consciousness must be awakened by the corresponding recognition of, and communication with the Being and Kingdom of God through intuition--the spiritual sense of the inner man.... The true prayer--the prayer of silence--is the only door that opens the soul to the direct revelation of God, and brings thereby the realisation of the God-nature in ourselves."

As the keynote to the world of sense is activity, so the keynote to spiritual light and power is quiet. The individual consciousness must be brought into harmony with the Cosmic consciousness. Paul speaks of the "sons of God." And in a single sentence he describes what he means by the term--"For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." An older prophet has said: "The Lord in the midst of thee is mighty." Jesus with his deep insight perceived the identity of his real life with the Divine life, the indwelling Wisdom and Power,--the "Father in me." The whole course of his ministry was his attempt "to show those who listened to him how he was related to the Father, and to teach them that they were related to the same Father in exactly the same way."