It has always lain heavily on the mind of the race that holiness and health, sin and disease, bear a logical relation to each other. “I have been young and now I am old, yet have I never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread,” shows that not only health of body, but health of affairs has been laid back to the doorway of righteousness.
“Envy is rottenness of bones,” says one. “My words are life to them that find them and health to all their flesh,” says another, when speaking for the words of the Spirit in man.
“The sins of the Fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation,” said Moses. And Jesus said, “No man is your father upon the earth.” Who then is visited by the sins of his parents? The Adam man. Who is it that shall have no consequence of sin visited upon him? The spiritual man. Did Jesus believe in sin? “Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents.” Did He often address himself to the mortal man? Just enough to make it nothing. “Go and sin no more,” He said to the man whose good sight sprang forth as a strong arm when the love of Jesus warmed it forth.
He put away the fleshy appetite. He left the Spirit free. He put denials and affirmations together for a right and left wing of the law of demonstration.
It is often supposed that innocent young children are under the curse of their father’s and mother’s evil thoughts and character, and many have lain down under the burden of scrofula and consumption because they thought it too heavy to carry, if their parents had lain down under it. Many have lain down under bad dispositions and kleptomania and intemperance because they believed their parents had left these things to them as their inheritance.
What kind of a God would visit His own people with such a law as that? Where have the followers of Jesus been tarrying that they have not risen out of thinking such things inevitable with His commands ringing down through the written gospels, “Call no man your father,” “The flesh profiteth nothing.” “Follow Me.” “Keep My sayings.” What a strange imagination against the Lord of hosts to think He sent our evil tendencies in the first place, and the consequences of them in the second place.
Where have we been lagging in the lesson of Mind, that we have overlooked Jeremiah’s information that a man’s word is his only burden? And the proclamation of Jesus that by our words we are justified and condemned? Could God, the principle of thought and speech, invest His people with a richer heritage than the power of the word? Is there anything more majestic than this great principle of every word being full of divine potency when true, and gifted with only seeming greatness when false?
Can a law be more stupendous than that a lie must seem to be reasonable in order to seem anything at all? if there is no law of flesh, because there is no flesh, must not all we say of flesh seem to be true, or not give us any claim on itself? Would it make any difference to you if an insane man told you that your mother stole his watch, when you know he never had one, and your mother is good and upright? But if a noble looking gentleman told you that a shabby woman carried off his purse you would believe him at once, whether he is lying or not, because his story seems plausible.
So when great and learned preachers stand in high pulpits and talk about a great being called God, who made a terrible Satan to tempt good little children to steal and lie, we have felt that it seemed plausible. They were very wise indeed to describe the other side of such a God by saying that He sent His only Son into a swarm of wicked men, who were none of His kind, though He had created them, to be badly used by the only wicked creatures of His own hands. But the whole thing from beginning to end is false.
God is the principle of Holiness, Goodness and Truth. Truth about God is expressing Principle. Lies about God express the opposite of Principle, thus the opposite of Holiness and Goodness.
The experience of the mind of the race concerning holiness and sin has been that they have been indeed the creators of their own destiny by their imagination. Some of the very great lovers of God have been mighty living demonstrations of the power of words. One woman whose mind had become very quick in demonstrating words through constant praise of God, like the mind of Kurosumi, the Japanese, went through a hospital of plague-infested patients, and said: “In the name of Jesus Christ be ye healed,” and many of them arose at once. Then she would say that if God pleased to afflict her with smallpox and otherwise torment her as He did His dear Son, Jesus Christ, she was at that moment ready to receive the calamities. She put up such an expectant mind that she drew those very things to herself. Her words were quick and powerful.
“By thy words thou art justified and by thy words thou art condemned.” For what the heart feels and believes, the words are sure to speak forth. Words are mighty signals of the heart’s beliefs. Even if you say the man is healed, while your heart aches because he does not show forth health, you know you say he is healed because you believe he is if the Science is true. So, even in this case your belief is in your words, and if you say he is not healed, you speak from what you feel most strongly at that moment. So words are flags. Jesus did not believe in having even our most vigorous belief in evil come forth expressed before the world. He said what to us means: Suppose you have said some violent words, expressions of your strong emotion, like “What a fool I am,” or, “I am terribly abused and an unfortunate person,” and it actually appears today as if you had made some bitter mistakes, or were going to ruin. I say unto you, you may blast such words as Jesus blasted the vigorous fig tree, and never see any fruit of mistakes that bring hurts or misfortunes.
Right here let me tell you that if you are going to remember in your mind how sick your patient looks, you must turn that memory right out of doors. Look at a picture of some beautiful character, or speak some lofty principles over and over, for the memory of how your patient seems while sick will bring out that sickness plainly expressed.
If you are given to imagining how something would seem if it came to hurt you, get right away from the imagination at once, for an imagination is determined to come out some way. If you have taken some good premise in mind “late in life,” as we hear it expressed, you have struck a hard blow to the fears and imaginations you formerly held.
Possibly they may come out in your dreams. Be thankful they get no farther than your sleeping time in their exposure, for they were making ready to come out before all mankind in your affairs.
All evil is blamed to sin, but sin is only a mistaken idea of life, a mistaken idea of who you are, and what world you live in. This is all the sin you or anybody ever committed. You made your mistake in mind, and have lived out that mistake. This Truth erases that mistake. Then your life is free from the cause of its suffering and trouble.
You may often wonder why the Truth student, who claims to believe the doctrine of no sin, no sickness, no death, does not immediately show peaceful, satisfied conditions. Suppose the rain and dust have beaten against the plate glass windows until they are very dirty; do you think the mere cessation of the rain and dust will make the windowpanes clean? So it is with the mind that is covered with years of habitual imaginations. It ceases from imaginations, but practical daily washings of the dust of years must be made. This does not make the sin of imagination, the mistakes about life, a reality, but explains how real it seems to us.
The ninth stone is the topaz, which stands for harmony between thoughts and externals. The world in which we live is the exact record of our thoughts. If we do not like the world we live in, then we do not like our thoughts. This is discord. There are thoughts which we can love greatly while we think them. They make conditions which we love. This is harmony. He who loves his thoughts greatly and loves his words greatly is sure to be a musician of some kind. There is much joy in his life. Let no one be surprised at his not being perfect in his science of music while he does not love his thoughts and enjoy the environments they have made.
Within each of you is the song of the Spirit. By thinking out that song within your mind, it will break forth over your affairs. Some Truth students sing their treatments, they sing their ideas.
You can sing mentally until a joy of heart takes possession of you. This joy will come to pass in happy surroundings sooner or later.
Some of us fret because it takes so long to bring out thoughts of good into our environments.
This is discord. If we are given to discords, let us often say:
“I give thanks and glad praise that God hath given to the Holy Spirit all the joy and song of the universe, and she does not have to pray for it, beg for it, work for it, nor struggle for it; she is joyous and sings because she is joy. I am glad that the Holy Spirit is joy and harmony.” You will uncover your spring of joy that lies within you, and soon you will sing and be joyous without trying to do so.
It is noticeable in almost all religious people that their first idea of goodness is to make life in some way harder for themselves and each other. They drive themselves to get up at five o’clock in the Morning, with their families, and to go without sleep until one or two o’clock each morning, saying that as Spirit needs no rest and is strong enough to do all things, they are as able as Spirit to do that which is most harrowing to the whole family, without murmuring. This may be what you will be tempted to agree to on one subject or another. It is forgetfulness of the way of Jesus, who slept and ate, drank and clothed himself exactly like other people, and only did differently when it pleased Himself to do so, never even asking his disciples to share any of his self-elected hardships.
The yoke of Jesus upon you is easy. God is rest. The violets do not strain and struggle to be in harmony with their life. The mountains do not groan and labor to be great. The hurricane and the simoon of the desert do their mighty tasks easily. It is not being in adjustment with the Divine Mind to be thinking hard lines to travel on. Because we are Spirit, we do that which our own judgment prompts us to do, and lay no burdens on each other because of our ideas.
If it is hard for you to cure your case, you have made the mistake somewhere of believing in hardships for somebody or for yourself. A mistaken idea about God and your own life will break out somewhere.
Jesus Christ would not cast Himself off a pinnacle to show how mentally powerful He was. He moved at the dictation of Spirit along lines not laid down by men or historic precedents. If you watch very carefully you will see that there is not an item of your life in which you are not guided by the Spirit into ways of pleasantness and peace. Any other way is one you have chosen, independent of Jesus Christ principles, and is the sin of your life, that is, the mistake upon which you move about.
The ninth stone is the topaz harmony in peace, and delight with the pathway we are walking. There is one treatment which results in efficiency to manage environment easily. It is this:
“I do not accuse the world or myself of sin; all is well.”
You have no idea how much of the inefficiency of mankind comes from thinking about the wrong-doings of others, and of ourselves. There is nothing more miserable than to feel that by some mistake in life you have not amounted to what you might have, and that your misfortunes all hinge on that mistake. Now while a mistake seems to be so much, its right name is nothingness. God never made any mistakes in Spirit. Your family never made any mistakes in Spirit. None of you can possibly make any mistake in Spirit. As Spirit is all that is real of you, the facing of the worst trouble of your life with the words that the mistakes that brought them being nothing, the troubles are nothing, will have a marvelous effect in putting them in a new relation with you. I do not mean that you will be hardened to bear them, I mean that they will be gone.
The day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night, silently. God, the Truth, taketh away the grief and sickness as a mother comforteth. God is merciful. Be merciful with your people. The Good acts only through mercy. Efficiency comes with letting the goodness of the merciful and tender Spirit speak, instead of your condemning tendencies, wherever evil seems so plain. It is a sign of being farther on in Truth when you can make sin as unreal in your mind as matter. If Spirit is the only substance, matter is no substance. If holiness is the only presence, sin is not present.
You will be sure to be faced up with your case uncured the third time if between seeing it the second and third times you have harbored feelings of how wrongly people have acted. There are a few claims of wrong-doing, or sins, which always bring a case in the third time. There is selfishness. We see that plainly in certain people, we say. By what right do we see selfishness? By right of the Spirit or of the carnal? We speak of enviousness. Who has envy? The Spirit? If the Spirit has not envy, of whom are we talking when we speak of enviousness in others or ourselves? Of nobody, most certainly, for Spirit is all. Then there is no jealousy. Have we accused ourselves of jealousy? We are the Holy Spirit. Do you wonder that accusation brings great infirmity to represent it? If we call anybody malicious, revengeful, or cruel, we have spoken of Life, Mind, Spirit. That fairly ties our own thoughts in chains so that they do not heal well, manage environments well, or do anything in the way of skillfulness that we so much wish they would.
If sin seems so real to you take every Wednesday afternoon and deny the reality of every sin you have ever heard of. Thus will your Spirit stand out in its uncondemned holiness, and, unchained, will do great works for you.
Plato taught that the whole world is a colossal system of shadows. The deepest shade is the belief in wrong-doing. Its shadows throw long stretches of desert and forest over your pathway, which in Truth is all light with the glory of Goodness. It is said of elephants that they sometimes, in eastern countries, fight shadows on the rocks and beat themselves to pieces. Thus our missionaries and philanthropists, fighting the huge shadow of belief of somebody doing great wrongs in the universe, lie down with the feeling of how gigantic the monsters are who have the poor world in their jaws.
Learn that there is a divine harmony between the Mind from whence the true world is springing, and your mind; such a harmony that you yourself are that mighty and good Mind. Isaiah pictures that peaceable kingdom where the wolf and the lamb, the calf and the young lion shall lie down together; and the child shall play with the serpent, and the sting of all that seems to be hurtful shall be removed.
“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” The lamb is meekness, and the lamb is not suspicious. The lamb trusts to your goodness. The Lamb of God is Jesus Christ, who condemned none, forgave all, suspected none, believed in no evil, feared nothing, loved everything. Therefore He healed instantaneously. Therefore He said, “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth.”
If you feel all the time as though you ought to be protecting yourself from mankind, either financially, or as to reputation, stop and think over these Wednesday afternoon words. You must not put up umbrellas against things which do not exist. Umbrellas are a burden in pleasant weather. By this I mean, if God is your world, what have you to fear? So your fears are a burden. Belief that I have made a mistake terrifies me. Belief that you have made a mistake terrifies you. And so with all the world. If now we are told so strongly that it takes effect in our blood and our bones, and if we are convinced that it is true that we never could make any mistake, then our fear is gone.
“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is staid on Thee.” “I will fear no evil, for Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.” Rod means activity, and staff means rest of mind. We act wisely and rest comfortably, therefore we are comforted. Deny the inheritance of sin. “The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father,” saith the Lord. Deny the race iniquities. “For am I not God? Do I not fill heaven and earth?” Deny contagion of sin. Fear nothing from suggestion of evil. “There shall no evil touch thee,” “Thou shalt be hid from the scourge of the tongue.” Deny the personal sin. “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents.” Deny that you ever wronged anyone, for in you is God only.
Socrates, on being asked, “What is the most troublesome to good men?” answered, “The prosperity of the wicked.” People who have made certain mistakes do not touch their finances or environments with those mistakes. They touch only their bodies. Some people’s mistakes touch their environment entirely, while their bodies are very well indeed. There has been no statement of cause and effect yet given forth which has been entirely accurate in describing how a selfish disposition or an envious one should affect the business of a man or the health of a man. Injustice in money matters does not always bring financial disaster to the actor. It may break out in his children instead of himself.
Each one of us has all he can do to look to the ways of his own heart, and make his harmony between his own heart thoughts and his world, by thinking as his heart is really thinking at its spiritual center, instead of from the mistakes of his thoughts about life and God, which are not his heart but his imagination. Let us imagine nothing, let us speak Truth. Sometimes people feel that all the talk about even the presence and character of God as Good, as Life, Truth, Love, Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Omniscience, is pure imagination, because nobody has seen or heard or felt such a being or such a principle. They resolve everything into imagination. Well, if imagination can take its choice between imagining life, holy and omnipresent, or death, evil and pain, and can bring into outer manifestation according to its ideas so imagined, we will see that it is a higher and nobler imagination to conceive of Omnipotent Good, than to conceive of evil.
Man naturally thinks there is a God. You think so. If every book that you picked up said there is no God, you would dispute it. It is not in anyone to dispute, however, if we point out the truth that there is no such God as some have imagined one sending afflictions and pain upon the good and innocent of the world. We are ready to give up such an imagination at once when the reasonable idea is presented that Almighty Goodness did not create a Satan, nor create passions and appetites and deceptions. He made only the good and the holy. The bad and the wicked are not made — they only seem to be made. They are the shadows of the substance of the Good.
A good trait in you, like generosity, is seen to throw down a dark opposite to itself. You show jealousy. There was hardly ever a generous person without the opposite trait called jealousy showing its dark streak. Jealousy is the long headlight of generosity. The jealousy is nothing, it is not there. The generosity is something. It is God’s presence. So, of all that is not desirable, the pure goodness being called substance, and the bad called shadow, the goodness comes into plainer sight, and the badness disappears altogether.
Moses took a figure of speech to illustrate principles. Paul told his friends to take a little wine instead of so much water. He means to take strong statements, go forward in thought, instead of thinking the old religious ideas. Each mind naturally clings to its former idea of God.
In spite of their high reasonings, often you will find some Truth students falling into begging a great being on a throne in the air to help them, even after they know that there is no such God, but that instead there is the Almighty Principle of Truth and Goodness. Paul’s young friend, Timothy, was inclined to think sometimes in the old ways. It is a weak way to think. Take some wine of doctrine, stronger and warmer ideas of life.
Moses in this ninth lesson says, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life.” Waters mean thoughts. The living creatures of the thoughts are the environments alive, the people, the friendships, the society, the children. Let your flowing thoughts, warmed at the fountain of pure reason, be rich in affection, love, life, joy, harmony. Swedenborg said that Moses meant affection by living creatures.
The eighth lesson was about having light. The true religion is the true light. Light is warmth. The brighter the sun the hotter it shines. The hotter the sun the surer the rivers are to bring forth living creatures in abundance. So, the hotter your religion, the warmer your love for the world, for God, for Truth. The warmer your love, the more friends and pleasures and conditions of joy surround you. This is confidence in your doctrine. It might be called self-confidence.
People who lack self-confidence are those who have not warmed into confidence in their doctrine. They are given to accusation of sin, but they as often accuse themselves of sin as their neighbors. Nothing alive and solid with success ever stays in the hands of people who are given to accusing others or themselves of sin. By this I mean, prosperity will always seem just ahead of you if you think of people or yourself as selfish, envious, jealous, revengeful, or cruel. Your health will always seem just out of your reach. Your healing power will always be slipping through your fingers. Just as you think your case is cured it is not cured. Every time it can be traced to your accusing of sin. Stop that, and your waters of mind will gather prosperity so tangibly that you cannot mistake judgments. Your waters of mind will breed new healing power. New affairs, new schemes in some line, will please and satisfy you.
If anyone tells you of there being a principle of evil, deny it. If anybody tells you of there being a Satan, deny it. If anybody tells you of there being a fall of man from his God estate, deny it. If you read of sin, deny it. You must not have a poor opinion of yourself. Your substance, your intelligence, your nature is God. If the Spirit of you arises in its strength, you will have great confidence in your own mission, your own work, your own powers.
General Taylor, during the Mexican War, called a council of Mexicans. They told him that in numbers and artillery his enemies were so far ahead that he stood no chance of victory. “We will dismiss this council until after the battle,” he said. His confidence in his principle of action was so aroused that he brought forth substantial victory.
Your principle of life is worth believing in with all your soul, or it is not worth believing in at all. Come, make up your mind decidedly. Do you believe there is any sin in the whole universe? If you do, but wish you did not, then you have light on your waters, but not heat enough to create good, tangible success.
People who ignore the sins of their neighbors the most are most beloved, and they love most. They are our best healers. People who believe in their own doctrine with all their might and main succeed every time. Make up your mind about this sin question, and you will settle the ninth point in Truth. You will polish the topaz stone of harmony with your life. Discords and strife will cease. New creations will spring forth as the result of your new thoughts.
Klopstock, the German poet, who wrote “Creation,” was waited upon in Hamburg by some students who walked all the way from Gottingen to ask him what he meant by a certain passage in his composition. “I do not just now recall what I meant, gentlemen,” he said, “but it would pay you to spend your lifetime trying to find out what I meant.” He had such implicit confidence in the accuracy of the genius that inspired him, that he saw it must have burned with a glory out of the reach of his own ordinary mind to have spoken beyond what, in calm moments, he could comprehend. Rogers, the poet, always read his own compositions. He believed in his own genius. He was greatly honored. Wordsworth always wanted to have his own writings read to him, for he trusted and loved his own genius. He was greatly honored. Michelangelo, Dickens, Pericles all believed in their own inspiration. “If I said it, it is so, and if it is so, I said it,” said one who never opened his lips carelessly, never exaggerated, never misrepresented, wrote what he meant about God, human reason and Satan, so that even his contemporaries listened to him.
Hannibal swore eternal hate to Rome, and he believed so implicitly in the genius of his oath that when the Romans wanted to scare their children, they cried, “Hannibal is at the gate.” On every plan of your campaign believe in your principles, whatever they are. Hannibal’s principle was destruction of the Romans. Poetry records of him that “The pages of his history with tears of blood are wet.” It shows how confidence in the principle with which you work will work it out in your life. Moses calls works of religious confidence “living creatures of good things that make glad.” No crying, no killing, no sickness, or death in them. Religious teachings at their best have no pain in them. They have living Good. So when you once wake up to conscious confidence in your religion, you bring forth works, with great prosperity for yourself and for everyone.
Jesus Christ taught the making of gold by this law stopping the conscious waters of mind with hot words full of substance. He taught the making of bread by the conscious confidence of mind in the Spirit that flows through it. You must believe that God works through you to will and to do some peculiar mission. Have confidence that if one man does to you what seems to be a wrong, your genius, your Spirit, your God is that moment working good for you. The man is the instrument. This is your religion taken exactly word for word from Jesus Christ: “For if you love them that love you, what reward have you? Love them that hate you, and do good to them that despitefully use you.” God is then working the reward in the new delight right at hand.
Despise not the creatures of the sea. The rivers of Mind, flowing with true rewards, are legal creations. You have a right to rewards, said Jesus. They are the product of confidence in your religion, says Truth. Certain ideas produce certain conditions. If you believe that something evil is going to happen to you because you once committed an injustice against somebody which you do not forgive yourself for, and you have not confidence in the Spirit of God as having made that wrong nothingness, your confidence will bring it forth, especially if you feel keenly about the matter. You won’t like it, but you believe that way. Of course you know that fear of a thing is confidence enough in it to bring it to pass. Job said, “The thing that I feared hath come upon me.”
It is a singular fact that people who lament much over anything always have liver complaint. Jeremiah wrote, “Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured out upon the earth.” You see he speaks of three maladies from lamentations, viz: poor eyesight, bowel trouble, and liver complaint. This may often be a hint to you in denying the cause of these three sicknesses. But back of the lamenting there must have been something believed worth lamenting about, and that is always some wrong done by somebody. That wrong never took place in God’s Kingdom, so there was nothing to lament about, and the Spirit never laments. Therefore, there is no disease. This reasoning put mentally to your patient is the flowing of a river of Truth through his dry lands. It will wash away the history of his disease. It will bring out living health in his organs. In the Scriptures you can find many instances of reasoning like that of Jeremiah.
The early practitioners of healing always got a history of the case of their patients, then they negatived it by saying: “You had no cause to mourn; having no cause to mourn, you never could mourn; therefore you have no failing eyesight, for there has nothing transpired to affect your eyes. You see with spiritual vision, which no mortal condition can interfere with.” If, now, you remember somebody with failing eyesight, stop and repeat this treatment.
For these three maladies, so-called, we use a scientific argument for the whole race. Take yesterday’s treatment, nullifying hypocrisy, deception, lies, psychological influences, and give it to the whole world. And when your patient arrives for the second time you will not have to treat him against deception and its effects. Something will come very strongly to you, and as you are bringing out your healing river by a scientific process, you can explain how others can heal as well as yourself. Tell that the whole world is absolutely well. “The inhabitants shall not say, I am sick, any more.”
The reason so much is said about bodily cure and not about moral reformation and prosperity is because if the body is well the man can catch the tones of Truth on the larger and more intricate problems of life. Bodily healing often depends upon moral rectitude. It often depends upon prosperity. So you must focus your mind to the word “Health” for the world, expecting to touch each separate need of a man the moment you look at him.
It is a great principle to understand that if you know the law of the Good, how it works when truth is told, that health and intelligence will spring forth from the face and through the bodily frame of whomsoever you speak to, whether mentally or audibly. The moment you see that the Good is really working through you, everything looks different to you from what it did before. The man’s voice does not seem so rough as it did before. The child’s cough seems free, it acts as if it were passing away, soon to be forgotten.
You have no idea how soon you forget evil when you have sight of the Good. The sight of Good surely acting with you makes you love it. Then you have confidence in it. Then you do good work. This is formulating Truth. When you see someone who seems to be selfish, what will you say? You will say, “Spirit never formulates in selfishness.” Or you will say, “Truth never expresses in selfishness.” And you will be sure to say, “I do not accuse myself or my world of selfishness.”
Why do you say, “I do not accuse myself of selfishness”? Because every person you see is the expression of your own traits of character. When he is set right, you are set right. The business man you know best represents your business matters. Get him prosperous and satisfied, and you will be prosperous and satisfied. The musician you know best expresses one of your ideas on some subject. Get that idea right and he will be a fine musician. The singer whose voice you do not enjoy is one of your own thoughts out of chord with God. Tell her mentally that she is the voice of the Holy Spirit to you, and that you will not feel her imperfection. She will be gone from your ears, and her mission to you will be plain. You will feel a love, a warmth towards the Spirit that will soon bring the good news about something quite different from singing.
A woman was eating her dinner, and a telegram about the death of her son came to her. The hardness with which she received the news hardened the food in her stomach, and for years afterward she had dyspepsia. A healer told her that Spirit never received bad news, never was shocked, was always free and strong. She was cured of indigestion that day. So this doctrine, always telling of God and life and health and prosperity, does not seem to be a tangible machine like a grist mill or factory, yet it grinds out the desires of the heart in happy, satisfying conditions by its own mysterious lowliness and power.
We have new circumstances by its mystic fingers. It loves to feel you in harmony with it, for then it works freely through you to will and to do. All the time it is your own mind speaking that which you call spirit. Let this be clear to you: “There is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding.” It is your own breath of Omnipotence when you think forth great thoughts of God. It is your own in- breathing of Omnipotence when you are pleased with something in your life. That pleasure came to pass because from the deeps of your spirit along the way somewhere you spoke truth or thought truth.
People think more truly than you give them credit for. The grumbler has some great truth which he speaks or thinks often. It makes him successful. He has many happy moments. The rest is shadow, vanity, absence. The evil is nothingness. He would change his habits entirely if you would think the truth toward him, that he is searching so restlessly for the good. The thief would drop everything and praise and bless Jesus Christ if you would breathe toward him the thoughts his mind is restlessly searching around for. The sick man would be well at once if you would breathe toward him the thoughts his heart has fainted for lack of.
“Who shall save us from our sin save he that seeth no sin in us?” If we punish sin by any other method then denying its reality, we make it more manifest than ever. So the Jesus Christ method of a blameless life, free from condemnation, peaceable, forgiving, mild, gentle, unpretentious, all the time shedding a fine radiance of inner light abroad, is the only way of setting free from sin. If you have a steady habit of thinking high thoughts, your presence will be helpful to people.
It was said of Socrates, you remember, that his presence, even without speaking, would regulate a man’s judgment. If you have a strict moral rectitude, you can balance a man’s health without treating him. You can clarify a man’s ideas without speaking to him. Often you will have an entirely different effect upon people from what your treatments read. For instance, you might treat one for deafness, and turn his thoughts into new channels, yet not touch his deafness. This shows that your mind works that way. You must be pleased with whatever way your mind works. Pleasure at even a remote good will bring other good into your manner of action.
I have been speaking to you about a supposed case of disease. You know very well that there never was any disease. Why, then, do I speak of one, and tell you to take a case of some kind to cure? Because we take all the appearances in one lot and tell the truth. We look at the child’s arithmetical problem and say “No” where it is not true. We say “Yes” to what is true. So we meet the children who are working out their life problems. We know wherein it is not the truth they speak by the sight they show. We know wherein we have not spoken the truth by the life we lead. If I am in bondage, I have had some extreme error about God and His relation to my life. The truth tells me how to erase that error. Jesus Christ erased errors very rapidly. You and I will erase errors rapidly or slowly according to our nature. If we stumble at the calling of sin nothingness, unreality, absence in this sea of omnipresence, we shall be slow in demonstration. We shall not be joyous. Our singing will be poor.
We cannot be like God until we speak and think of sin as God does. You do not believe that God looks at sin. You know that “His eyes are too pure to behold iniquity.” You believe that God sees everything. Then He would see sin if there was any to see. What is this that looks like a man striking a child? In Truth there is no such action taking place. What was that when a man shot his little son? In Truth he never did. It is all the figment of the imagination. You have dreamed the stories. “Awake, thou that sleepest,” shouted Paul. There is a spirit in those you have spoken of that knows nothing of those actions which you name. Look toward the Spirit. Fix your eyes there. Hear now the direction of the Almighty as to what you are to do while you are looking toward that Spirit. “Their sin will I remember no more against them forever.”
You need not harbor the memory of sin if God does not.
A woman was greatly persecuted, as it seemed to her, by people who wished to get her position from her. Suddenly while she was riding in a street car amid the smoke and noise of the city where she lived, she said, “How would God regard persecutions? Would He cry and mourn about them, or ignore them? He certainly would not know anything about them. Neither will I.” This treatment took away all her grief and fear.
Is it not to you a great rest that your true and real substance does not know anything about sin, sickness, or death? When you are tempted to mix up with misery by feeling miserable, remember your noble spirit, which knows no sorrows, no pains, no sickness, no unkindness, no burden. Is it not a joy to you that you have the power right within yourself to annul every evil thing? If there is no reality in sin, rise to agree with the principle and love it. There have, as yet, been only a few to whom sin was as unreal as matter. They have had great power in healing where matter was the first unreality to them. Stopping at either of these milestones you do not harmonize with the world around you. Stepping past them, by the leading of the spirit, you harmonize your life.
If you will notice the topaz stone you will see it has a happy light. It is the peaceful light of satisfaction with your thoughts as they fold themselves around you in good friendships, good healing power, and reformed conduct of men. I use the word “reformed” in the same sense that I use “healing.” God needs no healing, therefore there is no healing to be done. God needs no reforming, therefore there is no reforming to be done. What then? We tell the truth, and as the whole and perfect man steps forth, he looks on the sense plane as if he were being healed. We tell the truth, and on the sense plane it looks as if the upright son of God were reforming his actions.
I know and you know that there is no work to be done. Does God work? Is not all finished in God? Yet this very saying that there is no work to be done, gives us the appearance of accomplishing miracles, because as the signs of the heavenly estates appear they push the earthly estates aside. The rolling of the earthly conditions away looks like activity. It is really the rest of God. Have you ever watched a star come into sight on a summer evening? It was there all the time, in solemn repose, but as the night deepens the star seems to be shot towards you. At first it is startling. Thus with the last day of earth. The heavenly land swiftly speeds into our sight, the earth rolls aside her curtains.
The topaz light of your thoughts bringing out your word swiftly, is the leaping up of the heart into the mouth with joyous song. The joyous heart is a healing presence. Do you remember how Solomon said, “The merry heart doeth good like a medicine?” “Smile and sing ye the songs of Zion.” Sing the thoughts of this truth you bring out. Spirit can heal the whole world if it never yields to lamentations. Will you now take the case you remembered yesterday, and call his or her name? Bow your head and let the Spirit say within you:
“I have never accused the world or myself of sin — all is Good.”
Now to the patient, your friend, speak as I am addressing my friend:
You are not covered with formulations of sin; therefore you are not diseased,
You have not received an inheritance of sin in disease. You came forth from God.
You are not surrounded by a race of sin; you are surrounded by God.
You do not hear sin, see sin, feel sin, fear sin, from anywhere; therefore you are free in purity.
There is no gathering of the consequences of sin around the Spirit; therefore you are free from the consequence of sin.
You have not gathered your own sins together in disease. You are free from disease.
There is no cause for disease in Spirit.
I do not lay any burden of belief in my own sinfulness upon you.
The sins of carnal mind I do not believe in. I do not believe in selfishness. I do not believe in envy. I do not believe in jealousy. I do not believe in revenge. I do not believe in cruelty. I do not believe in the outshowing of these claims against mankind.
I believe mankind is God and God is mankind, without sin, sickness, disease, or death.
Therefore your life is Good, and cannot be threatened with death, nor yield to death, nor fear death in any part of your being.
Your health is God, and cannot be threatened with disease, nor fear disease, nor yield to disease in any part of you.
Your strength is Good; it cannot be threatened with weakness, nor fear weakness, nor yield to weakness in any part of you.
You are ready to acknowledge that you are healed. You say this freely to all, to yourself, to me, now.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, I pronounce you every whit whole.
Give this treatment three times before you sleep tonight. While you give it, write it out as nearly as you can. Sing it to yourself. Have confidence in it. This is what Moses meant by, “Let the waters bring forth living creatures.”