The text of the third lesson of Spiritual Science is, “God saw the light that it was Good.” God is Mind. Light is Wisdom. Mind perceives that Wisdom is Good. Mind understands the Good. 

You will perceive, as you go on thinking of first principles, that it is your nature to be happy and powerful in proportion to your ability to appreciate what is Good. 

If a beggar child, looking through an open gateway into a beautiful garden, is filled with pleasure at the sight, forgetting his misery for a moment, he has given his own character a new vigor of goodness and has increased the strength of his life in some metaphysical relation of mind to life. He has unwittingly given himself a treatment for prosperity. 

You will note that, for the most part, the heart dwells with grief upon the contrast between its own lot in life and the bounty and happiness it realizes to be near it, and yet far from it. The heart may still cling to its misery while it is observing happiness. Here is where the office of denial comes in. Denial is elimination. In Science we are taught the value of elimination. The secret of freedom is in knowing what ideas are prejudices and should be dropped out of mind. 

Between om and presence is the little syllable ni. Between om and potence is the little syllable ni, — abbreviation for two Latin words. Ni stands for nigellum. Nigellum means nothing. Ni stands for nihil. Nihil means nothing. So, between Om, the Mind, and its rightful possessions of power, place, and Science, or Wisdom, is the claim of darkness, or nigellum, which is negation, standing as if it were something, while it is nothing. 

Thus, between your mind and the attainment of its supreme bliss is the everlasting “ni,” or the very bold assumption of nothing that it is something. By dropping the claims of misery, you step through the valley of the shadow of the apparent reality of misery, into the reality of blessedness divine. 

Now this “ni,” which lies between you and the presence of your Good, is as apt to be one of your virtues as one of your vices. If you are one who takes pride in never speaking or acting from impulse, and who feels a sort of contempt for people who act impulsively, your virtue is the claim to be something when it is nothing. 

Does God take pride in never speaking nor acting from impulse? Let that pride in your virtue be eliminated from your character. Here the apostle Paul on the subject: “Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.” It is “as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” It is well to act with discretion, but your virtue becomes as sounding brass if you take pride in your discretion. 

Suppose you are very prompt in paying your debts and take pride in it, speaking scornfully of people who do not pay promptly; this pride in your virtue hides the virtue. One good day you may believe yourself unable to pay your debts, and if it causes you to be more lenient with people who are careless you will pass the shadow “ni” that stands between your mind and its satisfaction present, so near, yet with the distance of a personal trait between. 

In our last lesson we named these “ideas of absence.” We called our protests against them “denials.” We spoke of the two particular traits of each human being. These are not innocent traits. They are the habits of thinking which belong to our manner of believing in the absence of our particular good. They are strong men, armed to the teeth, with the determination to stay by us as long as we live. Take yourself in hand, and, looking up to heaven, resolve to reason your special traits out of your life. 

Prosperity is the acknowledgment, either consciously or unconsciously, of the presence of God. He who is prosperous has eliminated from his mind some idea which the one who is seemingly not prosperous still holds on to with tenacity. 

We are often surprised to see how prosperous liars seem to be. It is because they have eliminated a belief in absence, which leaves a good opening for what they wish for to rush to them. Some liars make good healers on the same plan. They have dropped the one belief in the absence of Good which the poor healer holds on to. The liars get their hardships in some other way than the absence of abilities. They may have some incurable malady in their own body, or some member of their family may be afflicted. 

There are seven thicknesses of the claims of negation standing between every mind and the security of its Good. Five belong to us in common. The last lesson should have given you a clue to the claims that seem to master you, but over which you are in reality master. You can see that the claim of being ungrateful for your possessions, or for your education, or for your lot in life as it is, when met by you, melts down and leaves you the master you were when you first came forth from Om, the Divine Mind. 

So it is with selfishness, enviousness, jealousy, revengefulness, anger, etc. They are no masters at all, yet they seem to be our masters. So is it with all negation to Good which faces mankind. There is a metaphysical, or mental, process for meeting them all, and utterly dissolving them, as the sun dissolves icebergs. In place of each protest that we make that is, in place of what we deny we put the statement of a great Truth.

What is it that abides here, or where your sickness seems to be? Is it not the fullness of the riches of God? The bold insistence upon what IS here, or there, in reality, has been called affirmation. 

All science has affirmation and negation. In the science of numbers you subtract what is not wanted from what is wanted. In the science of geology you say, “This is not aqueous rock, this is not igneous rock.” You show as much wisdom by negation as by your affirmations. One tells you that this is a picture of Napoleon and a dear friend wounded in battle. You say, “No, it is Aeneas bearing away his father, Anchises.” One tells you that sin is a terrible evil which God permits. You say, “No God is the only presence, and tolerates no other nature in his realm but his own nature.” If you protest, all sin will seem like a dream of the night, not worth rehearsing. 

There are five affirmations belonging to the negations we make, to which I will now call your attention. These are the five Wise Virgins of the object lesson of Jesus. They are called virgins because they are the most simple and reasonable statements the mind can make when telling why the negations of its Good are not reasonable. The two affirmations that belong to you each in particular we will describe under the miscellaneous affirmations. These affirmations are all mentioned in the Book of the Dead. Your two special affirmations are not virgins. They are strong defenders and providers. They are the strength and wisdom of your own life, in its unique relation to all life. As your mother cannot do your eating for you, nor your breathing, so no one can charge you with the strength of your own denials and affirmations. 

John the Revelator said that the third foundation stone of the Temple was chalcedony. Our character is the Temple, or the Holy City. The chalcedony is the love stone, translucent like the opal, always gleaming with the purity of the diamond and the heavenly blue of the sapphire, shone upon by the hot sunshine of a light that never fails. There is upon the earth no chalcedony stone like that one John saw, gleaming with the white light of primal Truth, of the omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient goodness of God with blue flashes of wisdom and unchallenged peace, and the red gold of love, of truth, and goodness, set on fire by challenging negations. Without this stone, character is not glad and strong and fixed and secure. 

There is no use making the affirmations until we have made the denials. You will see people affirming that they are God, who are quite willing to do ungodly deeds. This is because they have not met the everlasting “ni” of Carlyle with the irresistible NO! They have not taken their unreasonable prejudices by names and told the reasons why they are free from such claims against them. The strange part about the claims of negation is that, whatever they are, everybody seems to see them. So the two mighty appearances of evil in man, not being met by denials, or bold reasons why they are not realities, leave the character making great religious professions but badly inconsistent therewith, and they fill their neighbors with disgust. When the right denials are made, the affirmations will be exceedingly hot and effective. James, the half-brother of Jesus Christ, said, “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” 

The photographer, in a yellow glass room, has light and heat enough for fixing beautiful pictures upon his films, but still there is a mysterious something lacking, and he cannot take the photograph in such light. Thus, in bringing out the answers to our prayers, the actinic ray, which is the cutting, pungent ray of denial, is as necessary as the sun-ray called actinic is necessary in bringing out the images in photography. 

The day set aside for denials gives the mind a clear draught for the finest affirmations to blaze hot on the firmament of our daily life. If a great fire is smouldering under a house, it will never make a bonfire of the house until an opening is made somewhere for a draught. If a powerful steam pressure is set against the machinery of an engine, it will not move a wheel until a valve is opened for a vent for the steam. So the mighty Truth, filling every mind with its energy, waits to move through the sluice-like ways made by scientific protests, like Carlyle’s energetic “I am free.” 

“Let your light shine,” said Jesus Christ. He would not have the great Mind, with which we are all stored, hidden under a bushel. He would have our Mind free. It is a good denial of evil to reason out, as Carlyle did, why we are free. We must then affirm our nature, and hold on steadfastly to our affirmations. 

The race religions have talked about one Word, somewhere in the universe, which contains all the potency of all denials and all affirmations. Jesus Christ used that Word, evidently, but only to the ears attuned to it was its tone clear enough to be heard by man. So, as nobody received it, he told them to repeat His Name. If you will repeat the name of Jesus Christ you will, step by step, come into His quality of mind. Then you will, step by step, become cognizant of the divine nature charging your being. You will feel a delight in your substance. You will see how the wisdom of God is your wisdom. You will see that your wisdom is God. But you will never realize this till you have given free vent, or clear passage, through your mind, for the powerful pressure of the God Mind to speak and think through. 

The syllable “ni” which stands between “om” and “presence,” is the thick wall of belief in the absence of Good. It is sometimes called the dark river. It is often called a veil of flesh. It is sometimes called a bridge, over whose mysterious claims we are to walk into the presence of our Good, or over which our Good comes to us. Many men who have accidentally, as it were, stumbled upon the denials of Science, have made some of the affirmations with good effect. 

They did not make the personal denials. You have seen that personal cleansing is as important as general doctrine. 

David cried out, “Cleanse thou me from secret faults.” You would, like Carlyle, give a reason why there is no reality to the appearance of faults. To the great Om, which is the pressing intelligence and wisdom of your own mind, you would say, “Thou knowest that I am not wicked, for thy hands fashioned me.” You would take your selfish disposition, and to the great Om, or Om Mind, you would say, “Thou knowest that in Spirit and in Truth I am not selfish, for thy thought sent me forth, thy mind thinketh my life, thy hands fashioned me.” 

It would not be long, after wise and earnest denials, before you would be uttering mighty affirmations of Science, and your life would be consistent with them. Certain of the great Greek philosophers illustrate this truth. Pythagoras, in the sixth century B. C., made certain of the denials of Science. Especially he saw that sensation is mental, not a physical exercise. After determining thus, he found himself affirming that our soul is an emanation from the Universal Soul, and partakes of the Divine Nature. The soul in man is the self-moving principle. Anaxagoras, born in 500 B.C., said that matter is only the result of ideas. Soon after this he had to make an affirmation on the subject of matter as being absent, and Spirit as present. He said the force which shapes the world is not in the nature of matter. It is not impersonal force. It is Mind. This Supreme Mind is distinguished from matter by simplicity, independence, knowledge, and supreme power. Plato, a century later, found that evil is a way of believing and not omnipotent. This denial opened the way for him to affirm, “God is Goodness.” A denial and an affirmation always seem to match each other. 

When Jesus sent his messengers forth, He sent them in pairs.

You will see, by reading over the characteristics of the men, that one was positive, while the other was negative and receptive; as, for instance, Peter and John. Peter was impulsive and positive. John was trusting and yielding, and therefore coincided with all the eloquent impulses of Peter. 

Jesus Christ spoke His sentences with negation and affirmation, as, “Call no man your father upon earth, for one is your father, even God.” “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” He put His negations sometimes as if they were realities, as, for instance, He seemed to be admitting the reality of labor and weariness in this quotation, but He called flesh nothingness, so He was not making a reality of its operations. 

A young man who was seemingly very sick indeed, said suddenly, “Satan, get out of the way! God Almighty, do your work!” Now the young man had been brought up without any belief in Satan, so he was only meeting a condition of unreality by a name applied to the whole “ni” of the whole world, to the whole run of evil in creation. Jesus often called our belief in the absence of Good by the name Satan. Job called it Satan. 

A strong Scientist said he had to meet all his lack of supply by a strong negative statement, or form of expression, or his mind would not work it out into view quickly. If he was requiring money he never said, “I am supplied with all I can use.” He said, “I do not need money.” And thus he made a clear way for his bounty to come to him. Some people who cannot sleep will fall into peaceful slumber by saying, “I do not need sleep.” For, you see, they made the word “need” a great reality. It is the name of their belief in the absence of Good. 

The belief in absence takes many ways of exhibiting itself, and clothes itself in many words. Some of you may have the belief in the absence of Good take the form of being grateful that you are so much blessed, more than others. There is no point where one is blessed more than another. It sometimes flatters our vanity to have people tell us how much more of Science we know than they know. Be not deceived into admitting it for an instant. All are partakers of the Divine Mind in equal potency and might. If people cling to us it is because they have not learned to appreciate themselves. When they realize that their understanding, or their wisdom, is good, they will not depend upon you for anything. It is evident, if they do lean upon you, that you ought to think towards them and for them in a way to turn them toward their own relation with their own divine nature. 

If you watch yourself, you are likely to discover that you lean upon someone, for companionship or strength or sympathy. Emerson prophesied that the high laws to be taught in the future would teach mankind to find themselves self-companioning and self- strengthening. This is discovery. It comes with the affirmations of Science. It is evident that you must see, as Divine Mind, that your own nature is self-companioning. 

Successful men and women, along any line, have borne about within their own minds strong, native affirmations. Sometimes they took them as children. They are hardly aware how important a part in their lives their positive conclusions have played. High resolves made in intense feeling have been like oak trees. One of the Popes told how, as a boy in the field, he decided to be Pope of Rome. Euripides, the son of a fruit dealer in Greece, took some lofty resolve, as a boy, and rose to be the friend of Socrates. With him the glory of the Athenian stage descended into the tomb, says the historian. Virgil, a baker’s son, lifted his thoughts on high, and they took him to the plane of such ideal concepts that, when he had written his poems, the Roman people would rise in the theatres to show him the reverence they paid their Emperors. Epictetus, a Greek slave, put the thoughts of his young mind to noble principles of life, and though he was deformed and sickly, his noble affirmations lifted him free from being the slave of a cruel master to being the honored companion of lords and princes. 

The young man’s ideals wait for demonstration on the heights of affirmation. The mother, whose tired feet touch the hills of light, shall say, “My God is rest.” She shall see that her thoughts are good. The care -burdened father shall sight the port of the heavenly city of “Well Done,” and God, his God, shall take away his care. “And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.” 

The hill-tops of delight are the true meanings of affirmations. They cannot be reached except by clean feet and pure hearts. All the way of life, with beautiful health, beautiful judgment, and happy success, through spiritual doctrine, lies open to him who, commencing with the jasper stone, feels the love gleam of the chalcedony, the third message of Jesus — “God is Love.” 

The five universal affirmations are: 

1. My Good is my God. My God is Life, Truth, Love, Substance, Intelligence omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. 

2. In God I live and move and have my being. 

3. I am Spirit, Mind, Wisdom, Strength, Wholeness. 

4. The I AM works inevitably through me to will and to do that which ought to be done by me. 

5. I am governed by the law of God and cannot sin or fear sin, sickness, or death. 

Set apart a morning each week to making your mind touch the mountain peaks of the most noble thoughts. They have many ways of being expressed, but these have the substance of them all. 

Your own two affirmations, which, if you would use them would lift your life out of bondage, must be sought out and spoken by yourself. If your life seems turbulent, you had better speak of peace. If your life seems defenseless and unprotected, tell of the defense and protection of the Most High God. If you seem to fail in everything you undertake, tell how your God can take the small and insignificant things of human seeming and glorify His own name and nature thereby. It is not to the seeming failures of your life you must look for your reputation among the angels of light, but to the purpose you have held. 

“What matter smile or frown, 

If angels looking down Shall each to other speak of thee In tones of love continually, 

Until the name on earth but seldom heard Hath come to be in heaven a household word.” 

There is no storm of adversity that can shake your name through the ages, if your affirmations are lofty enough concerning the dealings of your God with you. 

There once was a woman who held on and held out that she must cast all her care on God. She would never admit that she got her support from any other source than Almighty God. She would not admit that her life was assisted, or kept, by any other means than straight from Divine Mind. She feared nothing and nobody, because the everlasting God was her rock and fortress. From being the child of adversity and misfortune, in the seeming, all the conditions of her life grew easy and bright. She took as a principle to hold in her mind, that the yoke of Jesus Christ is easy and his burden is light. You may take any position you like and hold on to it, until it makes your life demonstrate it. It will be your own affirmation. 

Many people change their affirmations. You can add to your affirmations, but you should not change them. You may explain your affirmations, then the repetition of them will help you.

Let us explain the first affirmation that makes the first denial. “My Good is my God.” “My God is Life, Truth, Love, Substance, Intelligence — omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient.” Why do we each say, “My Good?” Because we are each the unit around which our Good swings. If we are right, entirely right, in our relation to our Good, and we can explain how we secured our Good, we can tell the world how to attain its Good. 

Jonathan Edwards made a noble discovery under this point. He said he found the supreme plan to be that he should attend to the salvation of his own soul. He put the idea crudely, and spoke in the language of his time, which called the exhibition of our divine nature the “salvation of the soul.” You can see for yourself that your soul does not need saving; it needs to be made visible. The power of your soul shows itself upon the least little exhibition of determination not to believe in the reality or power of evil. On any plane of thought you will find that the resolve to be on the side of good and right will win victories for you. Health will come plainly into sight. Prosperity is certain to come to you. Happy life comes to you. 

Why do we say, “My Good is my God”? Can we not see that every move we make is to get some good to ourselves? Do we not breathe because we think it will be better for us? If you wish to stop breathing, even that will be because you think it more comfortable not to breathe. You feel deeply that there is Good for you, so all the time you do your best to get that Good. It makes the Good your governor. It makes it the governor of your life. Thus it is your God! It is for you to choose to make your God either the most high principle which Jesus Christ taught, or the incidents and happenings of your everyday lot in life. 

Whatever draws you toward it, making you think it can satisfy you, governs you, and is your God. This is the reason so many have stood upright on their feet and said, “I am my own God.” They thought it better to be self-ruled or governed, than to be governed by appetite for food, hunger for praise, search for home, quest for health, hope for friends, etc. 

It is very safe to say, “My Good is my God.” It is then our privilege to say what is our Good. We have a natural tendency to love life itself. We may have been displeased with our conditions in life, but we do not mean life itself when we are telling how we hate our life, if it is hard and disagreeable. No, we mean we hate the conditions of our life. We do not think that the free elixir of quickening forever, which breathes like a fine wind through the universe, is not Good. So we look straight toward the free, fine elixir that breathes through the universe, and we say, “Life is Good, Good is God, thus life is God.” 

It is natural for our mind to love truth. “What is truth?” asked Pilate of Jesus. Whether he spoke jestingly or scornfully or sincerely makes no difference, the fact remains that every man, woman and child would like to know what is really true. There is, even in the mind of the most devoted religionist, always a doubt as to the absolute truth of what he is talking about, when he tells that God was so angry with the world that His Only Son had to take the part of a scapegoat of the Jews, in order to pacify Him for the world He had made having turned out so badly. It seems strange to see educated, noble looking men, standing on high platforms and proclaiming such a childish-acting being as the Jehovah of Goodness. They doubt it in their secret hearts. But nobody doubts that the free fine Spirit that breathes intelligence through the rocks and through mankind is God. This is Truth. 

The speaking of this truth leads on to other truth. We seek for absolute Truth; thus our God is Truth. Jesus Christ said, “I am the Truth.” He meant that he spoke the Truth. He also said, “I am the Life.” He meant that he understood the fine, free, undivided and eternally abiding Life, that fills and swells and breathes, like a wind of delight, through all the universe. Truth is Good. Good is God. Thus God is Truth. 

There is an uplifting strength which comes with acknowledgment that God is Life and God is Truth, that does not come to the man who says his Good, or his God, is his beer or his horses or his billiards. The face and form show what the thoughts proclaim as your Good. What have you sought after? That was your acknowledged Good. It has marked your face and form. Take a true thought in your conscious mind and say it, either silently or audibly. Soon you will mark your face and form with another light. 

Moses said that the acknowledgment of the right and true God would be like a wind moving across the face of the waters for the light to break over. Waters are conscious thoughts. If we have occupied our thinking mind with what we shall eat, drink, wear, and such subjects, we are in a dark state of mind. It is the Egyptian darkness. If then we begin to occupy our thinking mind with the subjects we call divine principles, we feel the glow of On High shining either suddenly or slowly over and through the mind. 

Again we name our Good. We keep on naming our Good. We say our Good is Love. We do not mean the selfish clutch of some human being upon our time or attention, our body or our thoughts; we do not mean the clutch we sometimes feel upon the time and attention of some other human being. We do not mean the clutch we feel toward money, toward food, toward home, toward animals or friends. No, we mean the free, fine life of delight, that streams with kindness and mercy and gentleness and entrancing beauty through the universe, and draws, with its irresistible kindness, all things and all people to love it and feel its love. 

“I drew them with the bonds of love and they knew not that I healed them,” said the goodness of Divine Love, that never clutches at us, nor is caught by our hungry clutching. It is the Most High Good, nameless in the life of man while he seeks material good, and nameless in our thoughts while ever we think there is some power operating against us; nameless in our thoughts while we believe there is something good absent from us; nameless in our mind while we think we have inferiority or hardship or suffering or loss. The Most High Good is Life, Truth, Love. There is a wonderful uplifting energy in the words “Most High God.” The mind is lifted to higher feelings of truth and love. The Most High Good is higher than any good we have yet realized. So we speak on the lofty heights of our highest words. Out of the reach of words we have the Love that draws the universe, and keeps all things seeking and seeking it, but never finding it, until the mind meets the great plane of unreality, and strikes it with the omnipotent NO! 

“Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.” It is the true and eternal Substance that woos us with its everlasting love. To lay hold upon your Good is to be satisfied. Then there will never be any feeling that what we love and are satisfied with will leave us, or fail or disappoint us. God is Love. Love is God. God is eternal. Eternal Love is God. When we love somebody, and then later do not love, it is only that we have a mental feeling of absence. It shows that while we felt the love, we gave no word to it — that it was eternal God. 

It is by use of the right word to all things that they show their real character and do not hide from us. The delight that we now feel in the little glimpse of the feeling called love is a foretaste of a substance that we have here at hand, hidden only by our feeling that our Good we were to lay hold upon is absent. 

One and another of the world’s great thinkers have found that there is a shadow system gathered over us that is a great dark something, hiding us from the Good we are seeking. If you study into the matter you will see that it is all a mental state. Rise, as Carlyle did, and proclaim your freedom from the claims of your incompetency and ignorance. It will vanish, and you can stretch out your hand and lay hold of some new good each moment. 

You will first notice your freedom from sickness. Then you will see how much better you get on with people who seemed before to be hard and ugly. You will notice that your own disposition is better. You will soon be more prosperous. Many things will change in your favor that hurt you before. It is the only way offered to mankind to change by a method at all worthy of the idea of the easy yoke and light burden Jesus promised, by accomplishing great works through a doctrine. 

To some it seems an easy task to sit down alone by themselves and reason out their freedom. To others it seems almost like nonsense. The reasoning seems right enough, but its basis is so different from that of the world that it seems that there is a fallacy in it somewhere. To such we recommend the fact that many have stumbled upon the process without knowing they had touched the keynote to all power of God for all men. 

For instance: a Russian General once said that when it seemed as if his body were too sick or weary to undertake the hard tasks of the day, he would say to it, “You must be strong and able; you cannot be sick or feeble. Do as I wish you to do. Be up and about your business.” Soon he got his body so trained that it would rise from a great claim of misery. 

The father of Henry Ward Beecher would say to his overtaxed mind, “Go out, every thought. I will have none of you in my mind; I will shut the doors and lock you all out.” After awhile he could shut out every thought. Napoleon Bonaparte could do the same thing. If it is hard for you to fasten your mind to a treatment, such as this, write down just what you would like your body to do and be, and read it over at intervals. Read it aloud. By and by you will accomplish with your body exactly what you wish. We are entirely built up and moved by our thoughts. 

In the “Theologia Germanica,” a religious book written about the time of Martin Luther by an unknown writer, we read that if any practice in religion seems at first hard and almost impossible, one should persevere in practicing it, until it becomes easy and natural. 

In this statement of what God is, we say, “God is Life, Truth, Love, Substance, Intelligence, Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Omniscience.” Everything that is evil seems present enough. That which we call good may seem to fail us easily. Presence which endures is Substance. That which we can take hold of, and keep, is the kind of Good we would have. Paul tells us to feel after God. God is Substance. God is Good. Our Good is Substance. It is a very good part of the statement of Truth to say that God is Substance, present with us. Our Good is substantial presence. For people who believe that their Good is absent it is a helpful word. There is no poverty, no lack, no loss, no want in this word Substance. Our God is near as Substance. 

If you are one who believes that you are absent from your beloved friends, this part of the statement of Truth will bring you great satisfaction in some marvelous way. 

Nothing is out of reach of the power of these statements. After awhile they come around with their fruit like seeds to fruitage, or like planets to their orbits. 

It must not dismay you if you do not work with your mind as quickly as others. There is always one thing in which each one of us is quicker than others. It is a great practice to offer glad praises that God has made the way of the Holy Spirit through you so successfully. There is a self- supporting power in the Holy Spirit which, when you let it operate unhindered through you, leads straight to your substantial support. People will think you fortunate, but it will be simply because you have thought on a high plane of provisions till you have opened a gateway of mind. Support is Substance. Skill in action is Substance. If you can do things skillfully you have the substantial action of the Holy Spirit. The Most High Good lets fall the easy touches of her all-powerful fingers. Give glad, joyous praises every night, before going to sleep, to the Most High Good, that the Holy Spirit fills your thoughts with ardor, and fires your affairs to splendid achievements. 

Your Good is practical, substantial satisfaction. You must be satisfied in mind to be utterly satisfied, must you not? If the beggar child, looking through the window into a home of plenty, and forgetting her physical misery because her mind is so happy, can keep that up for five minutes, she can cause her mind to draw someone to feed her body that very day. Suppose you multiply your soul’s delight in the knowledge that God is the very substance of the things you want, by a number of degrees more than her delight, the arm of the Lord is not shortened that it cannot save you from every want. 

God is Spirit. Then you see the Substance you long for is Spirit. Very well, be spiritually happy, and the material shadows, the affairs of your life, must be happy. This is the process of intelligence. We have to use our intelligence to be acquainted with our Good. God is Intelligence. When we know God we have touched the very substance which can inform us how to work each minute wisely, so as to be clothed and fed and housed and healed, without any other process than simply knowing God. 

To know God is to be God. We are exactly like what we know. Does it not take intelligence to know intelligence? The more we can appreciate that the mind is God, and that it is the only intelligence there is operating through the universe, the more we know in and of ourselves. It keeps fixing the mind to new intelligence to say, “God is Intelligence.” The Psalmist wrote how the mind of God is forever saying, “Acquaint now thyself with Me and be at peace.” In you is all knowledge. By saying that God is Intelligence, that God within you begins to show forth through yourself great wisdom, along some line. You may be very wise in healing the sick. You may be very wise in speaking in public. You might suddenly be able to speak in many languages, as did the apostles of old. 

The words applied to the Most High Good, as “omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience,” will enlarge your sphere of action, by lifting your mind away toward the heights and depths which do contain God, the eternal changeless Principle. You are the mind that stands back and uses great words to express your ideas about the Most High Good. Do not get entangled in your own words. You are greater than any words you ever used. At present you use words to approach unto your own Good. There will come a time when you will not use words. 

The Eastern mystic repeats the word “OM” by drawing in his breath and speaking the word twelve times. Then he holds his breath and repeats the word twenty-four times. Finally he feels that he himself is “OM”. To feel that Om is your substance, your life, your mind, is greater than to feel that the words you say are OM. 

The only words you can speak and be identified with, wisely, are, “I am my own understanding of God.” These words bring you face to face with the highest of yourself. You can be identified with your own understanding of God. Understanding, as far as you have it, is the Mind of God. It is perfect as far as you have it. To speak of it as yourself increases it within yourself. People who speak of God as a wonderful being sending calamities are not exhibiting their understanding of God. They are hiding it. 

In you is the understanding of God in perfection. Speaking of your understanding intensifies it. So, the second affirmation, which is, “In God I live and move and have my being,” has always meant “in my own understanding of God.” 

There is a great intensifying of fine intelligence in the mind that stands up and identifies itself with its own understanding of God. No word can express your understanding of God. You are it. Live in the second affirmation much, “I am my own understanding of God,” or this one, “All that God is, I am.” It balances the denial, “There is no matter,” for understanding is not material, it is spiritual. And what understanding of God you really feel, or really show is all the substance you show. Your understanding is your substance. This is true of everything. Its only substance is its understanding of God. This leaves Spirit the only substance. 

The third affirmation is, “I am spirit, mind, identical with God, wisdom, strength, wholeness.” This is your understanding, which is the same substance that God is. If we have called God Spirit, then we are also Spirit. If we have called God Mind, then we are also Mind. If we have called God the Universal Breath of Life, then we also shed abroad the Universal Breath of Life. 

It will seem to cause fine, free nature to make itself felt through you in power. Wisdom will beam from your countenance. Did not Aristides tell Socrates that his presence illuminated him with wisdom? So, all who let the Spirit be themselves, as it is God, will show the same spirit as God. So, all who let the Mind be themselves, as it is God, will speak and think the thoughts of God in wisdom. There will be no loss of mind, no weakness of mind. Thoughts will flow free and strong. Thoughts will shed abroad healing. Thoughts will reflect their thinker. That is, we mean by reflect, that they will shed abroad the Mind of God by wonderful thoughts, which can accomplish great and wonderful things. 

All power is given unto Mind. All accomplishments are given under the power of thoughts. The world will uncover from its shadows of grief and sin by right thought. The world has covered itself with pain and poverty by wrong thought. 

The fourth affirmation is, “God works through me to will and to do whatsoever ought to be done by me.” That is true. Our understanding does ah that is done for us. We are clothed and fed and housed and healed, we have ah our blessings by our understanding. This is God. If we would have these marvelous works increased or perfected, we must intensify our understanding. This is being more of God. We may be ah of God or we may be as little of God as we please. Being free to speak what we please, and thus free to make our understanding show forth great or small, free to make our world, we therefore make what we now experience by our understanding of God. 

If you put up with many small annoyances, thinking that by such conduct you smooth things out, is it not your understanding of Good which causes you to act that way? If you would have your conditions perform to please you better, you must understand a larger Good. Whatever you do, and whichever way you turn, it is certainly by your understanding of Good. The statement, “God works through me to will and to do that which ought to be done by me,” can be put in this way, “My understanding makes my world according to itself.” Either way of putting the affirmation will perfect your understanding. Yet, when I say, “perfect your understanding” I do not mean that your understanding can be perfected. What I mean is that you have never loved your understanding enough. There is nothing you can be so well pleased with as your understanding. Watch it, and give it credit for ah the Good you receive. You will soon love it, and this is loving God. Thus you will be in the same idea with God who saw the light that it Good. It is the mind seeing that its power of understanding is Good, that brings it all its Good. 

The fifth affirmation, which matches the fifth denial is, “I am governed by the law of God, and cannot sin, cannot suffer for sin, fear sin, sickness or death.” Do you remember the fifth denial? 

It was, “There is no sin, sickness nor death.” 

Why do we call them regular denials and affirmations? Because they are those reasonings which, step by step, come forth after saying that first foundation sentence, that there is One Power, One Presence and One Mind. That One Mind, which occupies all things, says there is Good. The conviction is understandable, thus all-powerful. The Good is. The Good is God. Thus God is. There is One Mind and that is Good. Thus God is Mind. There is One Power and that is Good. Thus God is Power. There is one everywhere present idea that is Good, thus God is omnipresent as the idea of Good. After reasoning this way from your own mind you cannot help making the denials of Science. 

Remember, denials mean rejecting the appearances against Good. Appearances against Good are the negative of Good. This we meet by denying the evil and proclaiming the Good. It is as if something denied the Good. We meet the lie with the Truth. We meet the appearance with reality. We meet the claim of absence with the truth of presence. This we have sometimes called the omnipresent “No.” We have called it universal negation. 

Logic is mental reasoning. We are reasoning out the laws of the action of Mind as it conquers the universe with righteousness, when we step along in ideas with Moses and Jesus. All mankind sets out to overcome evil; to overcome ignorance, pain, sickness and grief. But it is by instituting other forms of ignorance, pain, sickness and grief, that all achievements of the earth are wrought. Wars and hardships, and cruelty of man to man mark the great works of the world. By way of Jesus Christ there is peace on earth, good will to all men. It is by taking hold of a doctrine which, by thoughts and words of a certain character, lets all things come to pass as God wills. It is that action of the mind whereby all mankind would let the reign of God come on earth, and be glad to let it come. Their whole nature is changed by seeing the reasonableness of the reasoning. 

The fifth affirmation is the same as saying, “I govern my world by my understanding of Good, without sin, sickness, or death. I understand God, therefore I love God.” You certainly do govern your world by your understanding of God as Good; and if you have agreed to say that you see how it is possible to get along without sin, sickness or death in your world, it is your privilege to say so. You realize that you are governed by your understanding of Good. This is your understanding of Good. This is your God. It is God. It is all the God there is. It is Principle — high Principle. 

He who knows the unreality of sin does not fear it nor grieve about it. He who knows the unreality of death pays no attention to it. To him there is no sin, no sickness, no death. To him there are other affirmations easy to believe. He can say with the Psalmist, “With me is understanding! I am strength!” He can heed the Voice that came to the prophet, “Say not, I am a child. See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms.” You will feel that you are a transcendent nature. 

You cannot help feeling that all power is yours to use. You cannot help using your divine wisdom and power. You cannot help understanding Christ, and as you understand Jesus Christ you have His mind. When you have His mind wholly, you have an understanding of the apostle’s injunction to let the same mind be in you that was in Jesus Christ. Then you will understand how so many Scientists spoken of their divine nature as God, and you will see that it is through not yet understanding that others have criticized them. Your nature is God. Your possessions are power, wisdom, and substance. 

Between you and your possessions lies the claim of the absence thereof. You proclaim your right of way, and down falls every evil. Try it, and so prove your divinity. It is written in the Scriptures, “Prove thyself.” We prove ourselves. By uniting with our power we are married to God, our Good. We are identified with our understanding. This is marriage. Jesus Christ was married to God in that He was united to His understanding. 

All your noblest aspirations are to be fulfilled by being in full understanding of God. 

Set apart one hour, or one day, each week, to affirm your divine relation to God — your God.