How To Find Yourself

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64923

OSMANIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Call No. 131. 324/L84H Accession No. 3 1 703

Author Long, Stanley.
Tide Hcrw to find yourself

This book should be relumed un or before the date last marked below.

to find Yourself

(9. Stanley Long

WILLING PUBLISHING CO.

P. O. BOX 51
SAN GABRIEL, CALIFORNIA

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA

All rights reserved. No part of this
book may be reproduced in any form
without the permission of the author.

First Printing, December J9-J3
Second Printing, Manh 1944
Third Printing, April J9-J9

WILLING PUBLISHING CO., SAN GABR1I.L, CAII1-*.

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

FOREWORD

I

CAME to write this book because I
have a great deal of sympathy for the man and woman
who rejects the general conception of religion and finds
nothing to admire in the accepted view of the Almighty.

I have been brought into contact with hundreds of
people who felt that religion offered them very little in
times of dire need. From infancy, in school and church,
they have been taught to fear the power of sin, evil, pov-
erty, and sickness in their human experience, and at the
same time they have been told that God is good. Such
an apparent contradiction is not unreasonably ridiculed
by the average man and woman.

A few years ago I preached such doctrine from my
pulpit. When I was called to visit the bereaved and com-
fort the mourning, about the only thing I could say was,
"Perhaps it is for the best" or "We cannot tell the mean-
ing of this sorrow, but we know that there is a wise Provi-
dence behind it all." I fear that such worn utterances
brought little real comfort to the sorrowing ones, for they
almost always failed to understand how the things that
grieved them could come from a loving God.

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HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

Today I know that such statements are a libel on God
and that we need to change our thinking about religion.
I have found out that men and women throughout the
world need nothing in these modern days so much as a
working and practical religion. They need a new order
of society a new integration of religion, morals, politics
and economics. In their bewilderment they are asking,
"Is there no healing balm in religion that will banish
poverty, sorrow, sin, and all other discords? This book
is an effort to explain that there is a healing balm and
that it is found in a better and nobler understanding of
religion.

I have written this book because I believe that any
system of human thought claiming to be a religion must
be applicable to every phase of human living in order to
make good its claim. You have a perfect right to expect
this from religion; and if your religion fails to do this,
you have every right to reject its claims. I believe the
need of the world is for a far more practical interpretation
of religion than has been presented during the last fif-
teen centuries.

I doubt if there is any subject less popular than the
accepted orthodox view of religion -and less understood.
The reason is that we have looked upon religion as some-
thing that does not enter into everyday affairs of life; good

viii

FOREWORD

enough for Sundays, but impractical for the workaday
life.

But true religion is an attitude of thought a way of
living. It requires discipline and continuous effort, but
it is one of the happiest ways through the seeming tangle
of human living. I have learned that God's law of ad-
justment regulates all things.

We need to change our thinking. You may say that
you have no use for religion. I really cannot blame you,
but I sincerely hope that before you have read many
pages in this book you will get a new and better idea of
religion.

It is a new outlook on religion. Not a new religion, but
simply the old rediscovered in the light of its application
to every phase of human living. You can prove it, and
the best time to prove it is when you need to change your
thinking about lack, sickness, unhappiness and a host of
things which make your life miserable.

It is your privilege; yes, more. It is your duty to so
think that you can prove in your life, your home, your
business the harmony of heaven.

C. STANLEY LONG

IX

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

Foreword vii

I. Find Yourself 1

II. You and Freedom 12

III. You and God 24

IV. You and Wrong Thinking 35

V. You and Affirmative Prayer 46

VI. You and Fear 56

VII. You and Healing 66

VIII. You and Supply 77

IX. You and Business 88

X. You and the New World 99

CHAPTER ONE

Find Yourself

Yo,

LOUR SUCCESS, health, and happiness
in life depend upon what sort of God you believe in.

A friend of mine, after many years of preparation for
the ministry, was ordained. During his ministry his faith
received a severe shock. An epidemic overran the city in
which he ministered. Being the pastor of a large congre-
gation, he was called to help relieve the sick. He told me
that the situation was heartbreaking, because he felt so
helpless. He would be asked to pray that God would
spare the lives of his parishioners. He did pray earnestly,
but his faith was giving away. He doubted the truth of
his theology, and in the face of such suffering his God
became a meaningless myth. After months of mental
struggle he became an agnostic and left the ministry. For
a long period he sought the meaning of life, and peace of
mind. Things grew worse; and he became morose and
cynical and held all religion in contempt.

He came to see me a few years ago, and his conversa-

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

tion was full of hatred and prejudice. He told me in very
forceful language what he thought of the whole religious
system.

I spoke to him of a different kind of God, a God who
is love, good, who knows no evil, sin, disease, or suffering.
I pointed out that he was the image of such a God and
that therefore he was reflecting love; not a man without
hope but a child of God. My friend was lifted out of the
abyss of despair when he saw God in this different light.
So you see your whole life depends upon what sort of
God you believe in.

Some people still hold the old anthropomorphic con-
ception of God as sitting on a throne, like a magnified
man. But we are not going to think of God in this way
if we are sane and reasonable people. Before we read
any further let us clean house mentally and- get a right
perspective of God.

I see God as mind, as universal mind, as the one and
only mind there i$ It is said that the brain is not the only
seat of thinking, that there is a great deal of thinking go-
ing on in every part of the human body, that every cell
thinks, that every living thing has intelligence, and that
it is difficult to draw a line between living and dead. If
we could look into all matter, we should find intense ac-
tivitv. When then shall we come to the conclusion that

FIND YOURSELF

everywhere, in everything, there is mind, God, who is uni-
versal intelligence in all things?

What are the impressions that you have of the world ?
They are simply pictures on the retina of your mind; you
project them outside, but they are really pictures inside
your mind. So what you see and experience is the action
of Divine Mind on your mind, and your mind is a reflec-
tion of Divine Mind. There is in reality only one mind,
God, universal mind. This then is what I understand by
God, the true mind that is in us and in every living thing
and every active thing.

Then I see God as love. One could write many books
and not exhaust this view of God. The love of God we
can only say one or two things about it here. The love
of God protects and nourishes at the same time; it is a
father-mother love. We often refer to the Fatherhood of
God, but we make a mistake when we forget the Mother-
hood of God, there is a craving for the Motherhood
of God, the tender side of God emphasized; for who-
ever knows a good mother must feel that she is some-
thing divine. For here is God's love. There is only one
love, and in the good mother's love there is the love of
God. You can get a good idea of God if you think of the
father's protecting care and the mother's nourishing love.

This love of God is universal ; it is for all. Perhaps you

HOW TO FIND rOURSELF

could rise to the height of understanding universal love if
you could really think what it is that you love in the peo-
ple to whom you are deeply attached. As God is every-
where, if we look long enough we shall find and love God
everywhere. There may be one person you like and an-
other you dislike; it is God in your friend that you love.
But God is in the other person too, though you may not
have found Him yet. Look and find Him, and then you
get the idea and meaning of universal love.

Try to think of the love of God as so broad that it
embraces everybody and yet makes you feel as if you
were the only one in God's scheme of things. That is the
marvelous nature of the love of God, so wide, so broad;
and yet you feel as if all the attention were being given to
you, and as if the whole of God's scheme, all the good
possible, had been concentrated in you, to help you, to
give you a healthy, happy life. It is the Father-Mother
love, universal in its scope, yet seemingly particular in its
definite application to you.

This is where you should begin applying these thoughts
to your problems. Why not begin right in your own life?
The nature of God is yours for the taking, yours every
minute of the day. Think of it! The consciousness of
thinking as a child of God, the wisdom and inspiration of
Divine Mind, the possession of the very nature of love

FIND YOURSELF

itself, all belonging to you. Think of these things in the
quiet moments you should take for yourself each day.
Think of the wealth of reality and power here laid at
your feet, greater beyond conception than all the gold in
the treasuries of the world.

Now since God is a God of love, it is obvious that He
can accept nothing less than a perfect world. You can-
not conceive of God ever creating anything imperfect.
If God had created a world of sin, sickness, poverty, and
death, He would not be a loving God but an inhuman
atrocity. These things are not of God's ordering, not of
God's creation, not of His perfect world.

Right here the skeptic may say: "But what about all
the suffering and cruelty in this world? You can't over-
look that. Why the world is full of discord." That is
where people have fallen into the error of an older theol-
ogy. Your religious teaching and training may have
taught you to despise the world. But do you honestly
think that God would have told us to despise and con-
demn what He loved? God destroys the world of sin and
disease and unhappiness. Would God destroy what He
loved? No, the world He loves is that perfect world which
He made, and you are made in that perfect world. We
exist, as it were, in two worlds at the same time.

Yes, we look upon this material world as existing now

HOW TO FIMD YOURSELF

and the other world as some happy land we shall reach
after we have passed through the experience we call
death. How ridiculous! The truth is you live in heaven
as well as on earth. You can raise your thoughts to heaven
if you will. The other world is around you now, the real
world of which this is but the shadow. That is the real
world, which God loves, and you are existing in it now.

What does this mean to us? Why, it means that having
the nature of God, we cannot be slaves of any inhar-
monious condition. Start now to take your stand on this
statement, and you will win out.

The principle of music does not permit response in
harmonious tones if you strike the wrong keys. In the
same way, if you put your thoughts on the side of wrong
conditions you will receive wrong conditions in return.
If you would have what you desire of God, then your
actual thinking, not your words alone, must be on His
side.

Then what of the wrong conditions in human existence
which give us so much trouble? Can you take your un-
happiness, your beliefs of loss and misery, into God's pres-
ence? You can stay in the hell of your own making with
them or you can do your right thinking where God is.
Think this over and ask yourself where you keep the
things that God did not create. Do you fully realize what

6

FIND YOURSELF

God's presence means, and what your relation to it
means? I wonder what kind of thoughts you would con-
sent to think if you realized you were in the actual pres-
ence of God. Go over your thinking for the day and find
out how much of it was done there. Convince yourself
that you are in His presence quite as truly and fully as
you are in your home.

Your thinking is what makes you what you are and
is the one vital thing to take care of. You are only what
your thinking makes you, for neither good nor evil has
any other means of reaching your consciousness. At times
it may appear otherwise, and some person may seem to
make you happy or miserable, but the fact remains that,
knowingly or unknowingly, you yourself open your men-
tal door to happiness or unhappiness. Whether right or
wrong, the thought always precedes the word or act,
which is but the outcome of what we decide to be.

And so in a sense our experiences are original with our-
selves, and we cannot excuse our failures on the ground
of what others may have done before us. Try honestly
to go into this matter with yourself to discover why you
so easily consent to the thoughts that make life so differ-
ent from what it should be.

This is all very simple logic, but it is a logic that is
not merely intellectual, for it enters into the daily ex-

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

perience of every one of us. It is possible that you have
become so accustomed to letting your thoughts gravitate
to the side of inharmony that you do not realize the in-
evitable result in later experience. It is just as sensible to
sow seeds of noxious plants in your garden and then com-
plain of the long and hard work of getting rid of them.

So be watchful, unceasingly and untiringly watchful,
of your thoughts, for out of them come your experiences,
and they will be according to what you are admitting to
yourself, whether health or sickness, plenty or poverty,
joy or sorrow.

Yes, even common logic, such as a child can under-
stand and use, assures us that Truth cannot be changed
into error, and that conditions that are opposites to each
other cannot both be true, else they could exist together
and be from the same source.

Therefore we know that Truth alone is and that its
opposite, evil or error, is not, and that in all the infinitude
of Being there is nothing to recognize error or give it
power. On this simple self-evident logic and the conclu-
sions growing out of it we base our understanding, always
remember that Truth is God.

You can make evil appear very real in your thinking,
but that does not make it real any more than that two
plus two equals five because of your believing it. By the

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FIND YOURSELF

same logic we recognize that the errors that make up
such a large portion of our thinking are unrealities that
have no basis of existence except in our supposition,
which supposition is no part of Truth.

What a wonderful voyage of discovery is open before
you ! To find in yourself the power to conquer by right
thinking the very thought of this possibility is stupen-
dous. Think of the way opened to you by this process of
seeing and knowing yourself as an embodiment or ex-
pression of perpetual and unlimited good. By the side of
this, the thoughts of the passing world, the things that are
even now beginning to pass away, seem immeasurably
trivial. Don't let the mesmerism of physical and material
things become a chronic obsession. So let us look away
from the fading, finite forms of human dreams. Our edu-
cation has been to look to these rather than beyond them
for the true sense of all created things.

But remember that wrong thinking has no claim upon
you. Let that be clear. Your mental attitude toward this
statement will be the outcome of your belief. People nat-
urally think according to what they believe, and their
belief will have its way with them so long as it is enter-
tained. Your only protection from the claims of evil is
not to believe them.

For instance discord in music is not removed until

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HOW TO FIND rOURSELF

the right notes are played. To the extent that a person
takes evil into his belief, it becomes his sense of Truth
and continues thus until he corrects it and replaces it
with right thoughts. Naturally evil becomes more fixed
in our thought and life the longer we believe it. No evil
consciously or intentionally works against itself; and it
is destoyed only as the opposite truth actually replaces it
in our thought and life.

It is not sensible to let wrong thinking work undis-
turbed in our life, however small or trifling it may some-
times seem to be. If our freedom from evil is worth striv-
ing for, should we not be willing to grapple with the er-
rors until they are overcome and we yield ourselves un-
reservedly to God-given thoughts?

Every point where wrong thinking about ourselves and
others is allowed to enter our human experience will
sometime be the battle ground where it must be grappled
with and overcome. The right time to grapple with wrong
thinking is when it engages your conscious attention,
when it comes as a mental suggestion, before it takes defi-
nite form in body or affairs and becomes established in
your consciousness. You know that if you accept a mental
suggestion about yourself, and its terms and implica-
tions are carried out in your experience, it is entirely with
your own consent.

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FIND YOURSELF

How may we counteract this wrong thinking? Well,
before it can be eliminated from our thoughts, we must
extinguish our belief in its reality in whatever form it
may be presented, whether as disease, fear, sorrow, un-
happiness, hatred and so on. Now this is done through a
positive reversal of its evidence or by reversing its claims
through a spiritual understanding that God, not evil, is
all that is present in our experience.

Yes, "thinking makes it so," and especially your
thoughts about God and yourself.

CHAPTER TWO

Tou and Freedom

"NE DOES not have to know much
about anything to know that wrong thinking brings bad
results and brings them quickly. Failure comes from
wrong thinking; success and freedom come from right
thinking.

There is that in the thoughts of men which instinctively
revolts against the tyranny and oppression of the ma-
terial world, and the possession of freedom has been
political rather than spiritual, and in religion it has been
a freedom of conscience rather than of consciousness.
Men have believed they are free when they have over-
thrown their despotic oppressors and won the right of
self-government. But there still remains the greater bond-
age to the instincts and passions of their lower nature, to
temperamental weaknesses and selfish pursuits, against
which the race has put up only fitful and feeble rebellion.
Believing that they are largely material, men and women
become the willing servants of material sense, until their

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YOU AND FREEDOM

ease in it turns into disillusionment with physical pleasure
and the emptiness of material existence.

We must learn that freedom lies in the opposite di-
rection to material thinking. So much of our belief re-
garding the desirable things in this world is bound up
with material pleasure and prosperity, that our thought
swings slowly towards the unseen things for the promise
of satisfaction.

You only have to observe the trend of your thoughts
to know that this is so. When you think of health, for
example, you are apt to think of it as the harmony of
physical functions and organs instead of a right state of
mind ; and when a sense of disease presents itself you are
very apt to think of it as a physical disorder, rather than
as an expression of a wrong state of mind. Then, as we
shall see later, there is our concept of being poor it is
not usually considered from a dearth of spiritual under-
standing and activity, but from a lack of material things.
We think of riches as the possession of an abundance of
money, instead of the acquisition of an abundance of
love, and the other things which belong to our fieedom.

The common belief in physical health and financial
prosperity as something to be sought after for its own
sake, is an impoverishing delusion, for it robs us of a
knowledge of spiritual worth, and closes thought to the

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

gaining of those things which are most essential to human
life and happiness.

Since the beginning of history men have sought to
obtain power, pleasure and freedom through material
means, and each generation has had to carry the spiritual
deficit of its predecessor, until the balance on the debit
side is now threatening to overwhelm the world in a
universal collapse. This condition, of course, is currently
referred to in terms of trade, commerce, war costs, un-
employment, and so on; but this superficial view leaves
the underlying and spiritual deficit untouched, and so
these things have gone on unhindered and unsolved.

Now it is idle to go outside our thinking to find the
reasori of our troubles; for however detached from ex-
terior discords, or the worlds' evils, we imagine our
thoughts to be, we will always find some connecting cord
in our belief by which we become responsive to them.
How it came there does not effect the result; it is our job
to get rid of it, if we would be free.

It is not the hours and days and years, but we that are
moving. However static our condition of thought may
seem to have become, it is still in motion, and we are
going with it towards freedom or towards thraldom, al-
though the degrees may be imperceptible to us. By its
very nature life cannot remain inactive; hence no one

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AND FREEDOM

is in quite the same place today that he was yesterday.
Even the dull repetition of yesterday's mistakes or failures
have taken us that much farther on the wrong road. Each
one of us fills his or her own place in this world, and pro-
vides the ultimate success or failure of his or her career.
The fact that each moment finds us moving onward to
good or evil plainly indicates the nature and extent of
our problems ; and we cannot afford to ignore it.

The universal problem of humanity through all the
ages is human existence, freedom or bondage. Men have
vainly sought to know what lies back of the phenomena
of physical life, of its birth and death, of the endless pro-
cession of its vicissitudes, of the laws of nature. What
causes the flowers to bloom and die, or what gives them
their exquisite beauty of form and color and matchless
fragrance? Who or what is the creator of the universe,
and the origin of man? What does it all mean?

The world's accumulation of knowledge and research
cannot answer these questions. If mankind were to con-
tinue in the same routine of material thinking for another
six thousand years, these questions would remain un-
answered, unless some revelation came to human con-
sciousness from beyond the range of its physical sense,
that is from the unseen realm of the eternal.

You would not wish your present limited knowledge

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HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

of things to continue forever. Somewhere along the line
of earthly experience the pleasures of the senses begin to
lose their dependability. Human life keeps moving on to
ever changing experiences, and the former sense of satis-
faction becomes surfeited. Material attractions become
flat and tasteless, lose their charm, and the enslaved self
begins to cry out for freedom.

Next to a right knowledge of God nothing is more
vital to our freedom arid well-being than to know our-
selves. Take time to learn something of your "self," and
what that self means to you. Take every opportunity to
make this self so much like what you want it to be, that
you will not be lonesome when alone, but will feel the
breath, of freedom and that with yourself you are in good
and enjoyable company. This attitude is not egotistical,
so long as you think of yourself from the right standpoint.
If you will cultivate the habit of looking for the divine
manifestation in your own consciousness, you will soon
be free from the things that make life inharmonious. And
that is what most of us want.

So the problems of living are all in your own thinking.
Your freedom, your happiness, is not dependent upon
circumstances; they are not determined by your sur-
roundings. They are altogether in your own hands,
"I alone the music jar"

16

YOU AND FREEDOM

Yes, what you think largely determines the kind of per-
son you arc going to be, a failure or a success, a happy
or unhappy person, a freeman or a surf.

In varying degrees we are hindered by the feeling of
our own insufficiency. We realize that u the sea is very
great, and my boat is very small." Life has many en-
counters with formidable obstacles to our peace and
progress, and not a little of our happiness depends upon
whether \\e face the giants or beat a retreat from them.

So many people are burdened by a sense of inadequacy
for life and are afraid to stand up and face the obstacles
that appear. People today arc frightened of life and
thousands are completely beaten by it. They have never
tasted the fruits of freedom. They would like to fight a
good fight, they would love liberty, but the feeling of
their littleness and helplessness will not let them even
contemplate going up to possess the land of their dreams.

It is an attitude to life that is easy to understand be-
cause we have heard so much from religious teachers
about the power of evil; which to my mind completely
nullifies the teaching that God is the only power. Evil
spells slavery, and God means freedom.

When you allow yourself to be terrorized by fear,
poverty, sickness and other material things you lose your
freedom. If it is difficult to hold your thoughts to the

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

truth of what you are, difficult to remember that good
is the only sphere of being in this world, it means that
you find it easy to forget the basic realities, and this for-
getting is where you lose your freedom.

What a host are the enemies to our freedom as they
throng upon us from day to day the worries, anxieties
and disappointments about so many human things
family relationships, position, needs, and so on; an al-
most endless array of petty demands, annoyances, irri-
tations and fears. What a drag they are on one's feet as
we carry them along with us, and how they blot our
picture of life when we keep them in view.

Perhaps you have never discovered your freedom be-
cause you are afraid of life. There are a lot of people like
that. If so, I would suggest, that you make a point of
trying to do thatjvhichjw do. Attempt

the thing which you are most afraid. Do you feel that
you cannot accomplish what you want to do? You will
never be free until you get out and do it.

Luther Burbank needed that spirit towards life one
day. An impatient fruit-grower was visiting one nursery
after another in an effort to buy twenty thousand prune
trees. As though the order itself were not staggering
enough, he coupled it with a stiff requirement. The trees
must be delivered ready for planting within ten months.

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YOU AND FREEDOM

"Impossible," said one nurseryman after another. But
out in California, Burbank heard about the order and
went after it. The prune trees had to be started im-
mediately, but prunes wouldn't sprout at that time of the
year. Luther Burbank did not give up in despair. He
did some creative day-dreaming. And then he made a
start. To begin, he planted almonds. He had to select
special soil. He had to cover the germinated almonds
with cloth. As they poked their green spikes above the
earth, he had to remove them one at a time to nursery
rows. Twenty thousand almond trees! Burbank was
about to perform a miracle twenty thousand miracles.
When the young almond trees were well along, prune
buds were grafted into them. The tops of the growing
trees were broken off to force new growth. In less than
seven months, Luther Burbank delivered nineteen thou-
sand prune trees ready for planting. He had proved that
the seeming impossible could be accomplished. He had
freed himself from what other men thought to be im-
possible.

I know a great many good people who seek their free-
dom in a certain type of religious thought, only to find
themselves slaves to a narrow interpretation of religion.
There is a lot of so-called righteousness in the world that
is hard and cold, relentless and merciless, exacting and un-

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HOW TO FIND rOURSELF

sympathetic. Such righteousness will never win your free-
dom. If you are zealous for such righteousness you may
work far more harm than good in the world. This type
of righteousness instead of making men and women free,
makes them narrow, it makes them bigots, it makes them
hard in judgment, it makes them intolerant and domi-
neering; sometimes it leads them to become persecutors.

Some peoples moral earnestness and passion for
righteousness may lead them into bondage because all
their emphasis is placed upon their own strivings. Here
is a real difficulty, because such people cannot with all
their striving lift themselves into an atmosphere of free-
dom. They are very much like some animals who become
hypnotized when they look at their enemy; they become
pow r erless to fight or to run away, they gaze helplessly at
their enemy till with a sudden action their enemy de-
stroys them.

Then nothing enslaves men and women more than the
thought of age. What possible point or profit there can
be in classifying people according to age, is more than I
can possibly imagine. We often hear it said that So and
So is over forty or fifty or ninety years old. Well, whose
business is it but his own if he is, although the chances
arc that he is not. Would it make any real difference if
he v ere ninety or nine hundred? Is one's life running out

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YOU AND FREEDOM

with the years ? Or is God less to a man of fifty than to a
child of five? Does the passage of the earth around the
sun subtract anything from eternal life?

I am reminded of a story about a former well-known
public official. It was said he had been at work a very
long time, and some of his associates became quite con-
cerned as to his age. They finally sent one of their num-
ber to interview him, and if possible ascertain the fact.
He said, "Some of us have been talking about your age,
and wondered if you would tell us just how old you are."
With a twinkle in his eyes the man replied, "Well, I have
often wondered about that myself."

The whole trouble is that we measure life by solar
years, instead of by God's eternity. The fact that you can-
not speak of age as real, or as having anything to do with
man, apart from the thought of decay and death, should
startle you into a more sane attitude towards your own
and other's lives. The fact that man is the image of God
implies the recognition that man is not subject to age
or decay either here or elsewhere. A lady traveling in
India, was entertained by a lady of high rank. The visitor
was so impressed with the charm and grace of her hostess
that she exclaimed, "I think that you are perfectly beauti-
ful." To which the Indian lady responded, "I ought to be
beautiful, my dear, I am seventy-four years old."

21

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

It is always a false belief which asserts the thought of
age and decay. There should be nothing old, stale or un-
wholesome in our thoughts of life; they should be as fresh
and unrestrained as the morning sunshine, the fragrance
of flowers, or the smiles of children. The boundlessness of
unfailing life and love is unfolding to us every moment,
and making inertia and decay impossible. Why, then,
should you not revel in that spontaneity of being, like a
child who drinks in the beauty of his world without a
thought of it ever coming to an end?

It is all yours. A belief in time is but a belief of ma-
terial limitation, as you conquer one you have dominion
over the other. Sufficient unto the day is the joy and
beauty of our lives, if we would only have the faith and
vision to live them to the full.

The chief cause of aging is our overstrained emotions
and constant attitude of worry and anxiety. The thought
of time limits, and we need to guard against being drawn
into accepting its conditions. The time sense lays the
claim of age upon every one, and we either intelligently
disown it or submit to it. Wisdom prompts the former
course, for age is a peg upon which material belief hangs
so many uncomfortable conditions.

It is your privilege to be constantly aware of the fact
that you live your own life, and think your own thoughts;

22

YOU AND FREEDOM

and that the freedom or slavery of the future grows out
of the present or the past. Careless or mischievous thinking
and doing are not effaced by the passing of time; they
bequeath to the future the burden of what they are, and
this increasing burden is lifted only as we replace it with
positive thoughts.

Youth can be joined to experience, and when these
two are united in your life, you can conquer the thought
of growing old. Youth is not a time of life it is a state
of mind. It is not a matter of ripe cheeks, red lips and
supple knees it is a temper of the will, a quality of the
imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is a freshness of
the deep springs of life. Nobody grows old by merely
living a number of years; people grow old by deserting
their ideals. If you think of worry, sickness, doubt, fear
and despair these are the long, long years that bow the
head and turn the growing spirit back to dust. You arc as
young as your faith,as old as your doubt as youngas
your self-confidence, as old as your fears,asjoung as
your hope, aToIcTas your despair.^

No power on earth can conquer you except your own
false thoughts.

CHAPTER THREE

You and God

I,

. F YOU WISH to face your problems and
conquer, there is one indispensable requirement. Unless
you have this, there is nothing that I know of that can
heal you. And if you do have it then there is nothing too
difficult for you to achieve.

What is it that is so necessary? Just this: a sense of
union with the power we call God. I know that it is diffi-
cult, but it is the only foundation upon which we can
hope to build a successful, happy life. We are daily con-
fronted with so many suggestions that becloud our sense
of man's unity with God, but the fact remains that it
never changes. Of course you give intellectual assent to
this great truth if you believe in any sort of religion; but
this alone will not, help you. You must have the feeling
that God is actually with you, that He alone governs you,
and that He is the one and only source of your health,
prosperity, and well-being.

The physical senses give no evidence of your unity with
God far from it; so this realization must come from

YOU AND GOD

your spiritual sense. The whole trouble is that you and I
have been taught that we are part of a wicked environ-
ment. By that I mean we have accepted hatred, selfish-
ness, resentment, discouragement, fear, and the like as
a natural part of our thinking. Is it then any wonder that
you have so far failed to find true happiness? You have
believed that you can think, act, and live in some way
apart from God.

Now change your thinking and recognize the fact that
you can think, act, and live independent of wrong con-
ditions, that you can live your life entiiely apart from all
that makes for discord and unhappiness.

Yes, you can either be a free person, what God made
YOU, or you can submit to wrong thinking, allowing your-
self to believe that evil conditions in your experience can-
not be prevented. You are either striving for unity with
the Creator of all that is good or just accepting your
separation from Him and all that goes with it.

We all like to fool ourselves and drift along in the as-
sumption that because we are respectable, good, and
moral all will be well. It is not enough to say that I am
a church member, that I am a child of God, that I am
geneious and kind, unless I am working it out in my daily
life. So many of us go on living in the clouds of religious
respectability, and nothing more. The all-important thing

HOW TO FIND rOURSELF

is to do something about what we know is the Truth
rather than merely to think about it. Anyone can think
very beautiful thoughts about his religion and make him-
self believe that he believes it. The churches are full of
such people, and that is one of the reasons why religion
is so ineffective. But to actually think it, to make it part
of your normal thinking, is a vastly different thing. For
example, it is very easy to declare that you are a child of
God, but to think always of yourself as His perfect child,
in the same spontaneous, natural manner in which you
think of your human identity, is the test of what or how-
much you really understand of your union with God.

What is the secret, the mystery, of man's unity with
God?. Well, there is no mystery about it. It simply means
that you are one with God, one with eternal life, one with
love, one with omnipotent and omnipresent good. It most
assuredly is the very opposite to fear, selfishness, sickness,
or lack. You cannot ally yourself with these things, and
expect health and happiness and prosperity.

Nor can you become one with the divine and think
and act differently from the divine, any more than you
can have light and darkness in the same spot at the same
time. That would be impossible.

Self-evident, isn't it? Your thinking must be the same
as that which you acknowledge to be )our source,

26

YOU AND GOD

whether the source be human or divine. Yet I know
many people, good, religious people, who are always
thinking from a material standpoint. Their whole thought
is about their troubles, their infirmities, their lack of this
world's goods. And that decides their condition and
makes their religion of little value.

But if you have a positive inward conviction that you
are not separate from God, you cannot have a con-
sciousness separate from this conviction. To be one with
God in your thinking is to have the same thinking that
God has. You may open your eyes wide at that statement,
but it is perfectly true.

Now this unity with God does not admit of doubt or
denial. It must be confident, unhesitating, and assured.
You cannot fool yourself about it; if you do it will not
work. You cannot argue with yourself and persuade your-
self that it is true as you have done with so many of the
outworn dogmas of religion. It is as unwavering as your
knowledge that two and two makes four.

What will it mean to you if you accept in your thinking
this fact of your unity with God ? Well, first of all it will
mean that everything that is the opposite of God will not
be manifest in your thinking.

People believe that there is no unhappiness where God
is, no fear, no selfishness, just because the presence of God

27

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

is all that is known in heaven. But the Bible tells us that
the divine presence fills earth as well as heaven. Here I
would ask you, what are you doing with these things
which are not in heaven? Oh, yes, we pray, "Thy will
be done ... on earth." But the trouble is that we do
not realize that God is just as much here as anywhere
else.

God does not give you the povser to think, speak, or
act on the wrong side. These things always belong to the
thought that we are separate from good. Your only pro-
tection is constantly to know that you need not have a
separate mind from God.

Just think for a moment what an influence it would
have on your health and success if you did this, and also
what would be the effect of thinking the opposite
thoughts. Gonsider what it means to know yourself in
union with God. Ask yourself the question, "What are
the qualities that I derive from God? 5 ' Is there anything
discordant, unloving, unkind, selfish, or impure any-
thing unlovely in any direction? You know that nothing
can possibly come from the divine except the reflection of
the divine; that nothing wrong and unkind can come
from God.

Here I have a very simple but important question I
should like you to answer; and if you can give a correct

28

TOU AND GOD

and unqualified answer you can accomplish anything. It
is this: If God is good and if He made all things and if
He has made them good like Himself and if He is the
only Creator there is, then where do sin, disease, sorrow,
worry, death, and all this discord and trouble come from?
If they do not come from God, why do you accept them
as part and parcel of your life? If you accept your unity
with God, you cannot accept these other things as having
any reality or power except in your own thinking.

Deny them, refuse to accept or obey them or to in-
corporate them in your experience. Your journey through
life is made unhappy, diseased, and poor by the things
that are not derived from God. You cannot possibly be
unhappy, poor, or sick through anything coming from
God.

You have probably heard hundreds of times that God
is your Father. It is one of the many timeworn platitudes
of our pulpits. But I doubt if this truth is often really
seriously believed or accepted. The condition of the world
today, with its widespread maladjustment, is a direct re-
sult of the loss of conviction concerning the reality and
true character of God as Father.

I believe that much of the sin, misery, and sorrow in
our experience comes from the fact that the church has
failed to make real and practice man's oneness with God.

HOW TO FIND rOURSBLF

Your realization of the truth is the most priceless pearl
you can possess. If you take care to guard and preserve
your material possessions, which have but a transient
value, you should much more guard this spiritual pos-
session, whose value is beyond price. You would not leave
your money exposed to loss but preserve it for use when
needed.

Now your sense of unity with your Father is the coin
of the spiritual realm. With it alone you can purchase
your freedom from care and sorrow. It means that you
cannot be separated from the things of God's kingdom.
It is your kingdom, and the things it is made up of are
your things.

This kingdom is within your own thought.

God and man are never absent from each other. Think
that little sentence over. You may accept poverty, worry,
sickness, and sorrow, but God is there just the same. The
truth that you cannot be separated from God is always
present, and this truth is all you need. As this knowledge
of your unity with God becomes the reality of your life,
you know that evil in all its form must be as far from
you as it is from God Himself.

This being true, what else is there for you to do but
prove it, not just at special times but at all times? It is
well every morning to remind yourself that there is noth-

30

YOU AND GOD

ing on earth or in heaven that can separate you from the
consciousness of God's presence. Ask yourself how it is
that you are ever induced to accept fake ideas about your-
self, yielding to the suggestion that you are different from
what God made as His image.

The question that most people want answered is, How
can I escape from pain, misery, and want? The way out
lies in getting back to God. There is no other way, and
this way leads through a perception and understanding of
man's unity with God. The right view of man does not
see him as something separate from the kingdom of God,
for man is this kingdom. So wherever you may find your-
self, if your eyes are open to these truths, you will see
God's abundant and constant provision for your care and
safety.

As the image of God you are the actual manifestation
of the divine presence, and because of that fact you can
never be separated from it.

Think well of these things. Think of the possibility of
being conscious that God is your Father, of this Father
as love, boundless, all-pervading, love, and of the power
that this consciousness will give you.

You know that after all the only knowledge that you
can have of yourself must come from God. And God
knows you only as His child, as the embodiment or ex-

3*

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

pression of His nature and qualities. So you can be truly
conscious of yourself only with the intelligence with which
you express Him.

Think of knowing what you are through the mind of
God, that you can have no other self-consciousness, and
that with Him is no knowledge of anything discordant
that can be transmitted to you.

The turning away from our union with God as the sole
mind and consciousness of man, as the only source and
condition of being, and as the universal environment in
which His creatures carry on their individual and collec-
tive activity, has created the sphere of belief in which
present world conditions are having their day. If men
turn from God thev have no choice but to grope among
the shadows oi f their delusions, for the belief of thinking
with another mind than God's and of having a conscious-
ness apart from God is emptiness, whether it be the ex-
perience of an individual or a nation or the world; and
the only remedy possible is to retuin to God.

You know that in mathematical science, \%hcn we
apply the rule and do our work exactly, we ah\ ays come
at the solution of the problem. There is never any chance
about it. We do not say of our work that it should do this,
or should do that, for we kno\\ what it docs when its con-
ditions are complied with absolutely. When we do not

YOU AMD GOD

get the right result we know there is error somewhere, and
this error must be discovered and corrected before the
proper solution can be reached.

We do not say of our use of mathematics that we tried
to know the multiplication table or that we tried to apply
this or that rule. For we know we know, and there is no
doubt about it, and a knowledge of what we do not know
now must be gained through faith, study, and practice.
You must take the same attitude as regards your knowl-
edge of God.

Yes, you must come to the point of really thinking, not
just saying, that you are one with God; that all He has
belongs to you as truly as your own name. Unless this
mental attitude is spontaneously active, in your daily
thinking you are depriving yourself of union with God
and all that this means.

Suppose you ask God to tell you something about
yourself; can you think what it would be? What do you
think He would say you are? Would He describe you
as being sick, tired, poor, and discouraged? Would He
say that you had no business or employment, that your
resources were exhausted, that you had an inferiority
complex, and that you were altogether miserable and
unhappy?

You know perfectly well what He would say to you;

33

HOW TO FIND rOURSELF

what He is saying an the time if you had ears to hear.
You know that God never sees you in any other light
than as His manifestation: perfect, joyous, active, loving,
and expressing the divine government where you are.
Knowing this, why see yourself in any other light? The
daily mental exercise of seeing yourself as God sees you
would soon lead to the exclusion of His unlikeness from
your thought of self and others.

We could all be more joyous, hopeful, and courageous
if we would listen to God more, instead of paying so
much attention to the gloomy fears and forebodings that
false belief is continually suggesting to our thoughts. It
is certain that you will not hear the music of heaven un-
less you tune out the jangle of material thinking.

So take a good look at yourself, an honest look, and see
what God would find there. You know that a dull sur-
face reflects nothing, and nothing takes the reflected
brightness from your life but the attrition of the selfish
things you consent to think and do.

Someone has said that you cannot reflect love with an
angry consciousness, and everyone knows that to be true.
The same applies likewise to every quality that is not di-
vine. When these are allowed to govern your thoughts,
it means that God is not being reflected during that time
and evil finds an open door through which to enter.

34

CHAPTER FOUR

Ton and Wrong Thinking

WE HAVE been taught that evil is a
great power. Evil has been exalted above good in reli-
gious teaching, otherwise evil would have been destroyed
long ago; that is, if God good had been regarded as
the only being.

From childhood it has probably been drilled into your
mind that you are in a state of sin, living in a world of
fear, of want, of transient joys, of disappointment and
loneliness of heart, of hopes that are never realized, of
suffering, of sorrow and death; and a future clouded
with uncertainty.

Now the sad thing is that there is nothing in the whole
round of orthodox theology, philosophy, or science, that
offers any correction for these conditions. Simple as it
may appear, the teachings of the Man, Jesus, are the
only exceptions. He alone based his teaching on the truth
which we discovered in the previous chapter that man
has never been separated from God. What is this appall-
ing demon of wrong thinking, of evil or error, let loose in
the world to destroy the well-being of mankind?

35

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

Nothing so terrible as you have been led to imagine.
Evil is a false mode of thought. Thus all wrong thinking
takes form in human thinking and is the opposite of har-
mony and goodness, and until this false mode of thought
is seen and corrected, its offspring, sin, disease and death
will be regarded in human belief as realities.

If evil were even anything more than supposition, and
false at that, it would not be evil, but truth. Then we
should always keep any and every evil thought in the
realm of false supposition, not of actuality, and we will
more readily see its true nature as negation. The impor-
tant thing to remember is that there is no phase of evil,
or wrong thinking, in your life, which you need to cor-
rect 'which does not come from the supposition that you
are something apart from God.

As the presence of light makes darkness impossible, so
the presence of God makes evil conditions impossible.
Because darkness cannot be where light is, wrong think-
ing cannot be present where good is. Wrong thinking, or
evil, cannot possibly deceive one when truth is under-
stood. Wrong thinking, in all its form of sin and suffering,
seems to be real and present because the truth of being
is not understood.

You know how prone we are to readily see evil and
unpleasantness in other people, because we only see the

36

YOU AND WRONG THINKING

outer shell. But if we understood what loving our neigh-
bor means, if we understood that it is not the outer shell
of the person we are called upon to love at all, but the
God within them, the divine personality that is always
there. So forget the outer personality, and reach the re-
flection of God in everybody. Realize, that in us all, even
in the somebody you just can't stand at any price, there
is the likeness of the Divine. You can't see it, but it's
there.

If you will see the dark side in another person, it
doesn't follow the other side isn't there. If only you will
think less about the evil you believe in in another person,
and think more about the real, the real side will swing
into view. You know, your thinking is like a magnet; it
draws out the real good.

We all know people that seem to be right down in
the very depths of evil and degradation. But even in them
there is the reflection of God. If you want to see this re-
flection in other people, remember that

"In men whom men condemn as ill
I find so much of goodness still,
In men whom men pronounce divine
I find so much of sin and blot;
I hesitate to draw a line
Between the two where God has not."

37

HOW TO FIND TOURSELF

The Prophet of Nazareth went about showing us the
ideal man, not the evil in man. These unpleasant traits
in other people are clouds ; they are passing. See the per-
fect man and the clouds will vanish away. I think the
worst evils which we have to contend with in our thoughts
are slander, evil speaking, unkind criticisms, misrepre-
sentation, gossiping about other's faults, about their fail-
ures or mistakes. In what direction will these thoughts
take you if you continue to give them lodging in your
mind?

Such are the kind of things with which wrong think-
ing would entangle us, and prevent our progress towards
freedom. The best thoughts, motives and desires, are the
only, links which unite us to one another. We are capable
of so much better thoughts than the evil thoughts we
so often think, for the kingdom of heaven is already with-
in us, and the wonderful things which make up that king-
dom are ours now for the using. It is amazing, when you
think of it, that we are so blind and stupid concerning
these things, when they mean everything to us and to
the world.

Begin to find some good in others, instead of making
a reality of what you know is false if you thought for a
moment on the right side. The whole round of crime
really springs from wrong thinking. The thoughts which

38

TOU AND WRONG THINKING

bring about crime are not different from the suggestions
we daily encounter in our own thinking. Hatred, envy,
avarice, anger, dishonesty, jealousy, self-will and self-
interest in all their forms, are not unknown to us, and
with others of their kind they make up the foundation
of crime.

Yes, what a tremendous force it is to have within you
the power over thinking. Our belief in anything is only
a state of thought, or mental attitude, which may or may
not apply to actual things. By that I mean we may have
a belief about what is not true; and so in our thinking
we discriminate by calling evil, or wrong thinking, a
false belief.

A fake belief is a perception of the unreal as some-
thing to be believed, and which takes form and substance
to that belief, as in the happenings of dreams. This false
sense, therefore, is the apparent consciousness induced by
belief; it 'has no other origin or foundation, and can con-
tinue no longer nor go farther than the belief itself.

But, you will say, how persistent and real seem these
false beliefs in which we live, and meet our friends, and
conduct our business, and seek our pleasures. How inti-
mately natural these beliefs all seem, and how we would
miss these beliefs if we awakened some morning to find
they had gone. Yet we profess to believe that material

39

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

things in themselves are but the passing shadows of un-
real thoughts. Wrong thinking, in all its forms, is the
land of make believe where materiality seems to be true,
where its shams and its selfishness, its sordid passions and
bitter disappointments occupy the stage.

Right and wrong thinking are not seen from the same
direction. While you look fearfully and believingly at
the evidence of evil, you will see nothing else. If you look
for faults in other people, you will find them, but you
will impoverish yourself to that extent and do them no
good. Why not turn your thoughts in the other direction
until \ou get a vision of things as God sees them, and you
will see evil only as illusion.

As we have seen many evil conditions, and wrong
thinking, come into our consciousness through early as-
sociations, education, religious teaching and environ-
ment, and we are not entirely responsible for their pres-
ence; we do not appreciate to what extent they have be-
come second nature. But we do not have to keep them
there. Our self-interest should prompt us to cease giving
shelter in our mental homes to the things we do not want
there, and which never bring happiness.

The question is not whether the conquest of erroneous
thinking can be accomplished without a struggle, but
whether you are going to do it. It is not always easy to

40

YOU AND WRONG THINKING

eradicate wrong thinking after years of habitual submis-
sion to undisciplined thoughts, but procrastination and
inaction only serve to make it harder. The longer you
let your thoughts drift down stream the farther you have
to row back. How can one in his right mind weigh the
ephemeral thoughts of human existence, against the di-
vine inflow of right thoughts which would destroy evil in
us and others. Wrong thoughts should be seen for what
they are a lie and be corrected by corresponding right
thoughts.

You can control your thinking. That fact is of vital
importance. When you consent to think wrong thoughts,
you make evil real, and admit these thoughts as a legiti-
mate part of human consciousness. It is because of this,
that error and its effects come into human lives; for the
absence of good in one's thinking naturally fills itself with
thoughts of something else.

You know what a large part of unrealities play in hu-
man thinking, and you need constantly to guard against
being drawn into their currents. The unreal is always
unreal, and why allow yourself to think otherwise? You
declare the unlikeness of God to have no existence, and
then consent to make something of nothing. Even omnip-
otence cannot do that, and it is surely foolish of us to
make the attempt.

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

It may be that one of your difficulties is, that you ask
or wish to be normally healthy, and strong, and prosper-
ous without being normally good. In effect you want the
freedom to be angry when you feel like it; to be mean or
unjust or unkind when it is your humor to be so, and still
continue to be well and happy. It is not possible to play
with wrong thoughts that way and escape the snares
which are hidden within them.

All wrong thoughts indicate a degree of mental de-
rangement, whether we like the word or not. A sound
mind does not exist in error, and certainly does not ac-
company it. It is not wise to carry on with the belief that
we can open our thoughts to ungodlike things, and claim
to have a sound and well-balanced mentality. There is
nothing sane or sensible in holding communion with the
carnal mind, or in letting its unwholesome and unloving
suggestions make their home with us and usurp our right
of self-government.

Who fills your own thoughts with fear, and persuades
you to believe in a mind that is not good? Whose wrong
thinking brings disorder into your experience, and binds
you to temperamental faults? Who does the thinking that
disturbs your peace, opposes your spiritual freedom, and
limits your success? Does another commit sins in your
stead, or in mine?

YOU AND WRONG THINKING

When the question comes home to us as to where our
thinking is making its home, shall we charge our failure
to someone else? In common with others we may have
to endure many experiences for which we are not indi-
vidually responsible, but our attitude toward these condi-
tions, and the spirit in which we meet them, are all our
own.

You cannot escape the fact, that the way you consent
to think is the way you consent to live. You cannot afford
to close your eyes to this question of consent. It may seem
to occur involuntarily, but it does not. Impulses do not
act of themselves. No matter how spontaneous one's
words or acts may seem to be, the thinking which leads
up to them is quicker, and is their cause. However beguil-
ing the thought may be, remember there is always a men-
tal interval in which the wrong thought could be resisted,
a point at which your consent is free and unforced.

Do not let yourself become idle at this point. Do not
let material thinking and arguments limit your recogni-
tion of good in any direction. Wrong thinking is always a
lie, and a lie can come to your belief, or operate there,
only in your ignorance of Truth. Hold your thinking to
the position that good is unlimited whether you under-
stand it or not. God does not wait for your demonstration
to be All-in all; He is that every moment; and you must

43

HOW TO FIND TOURSELF

acknowledge this to yourself if you would preserve your
faith and keep your spiritual thinking clear.

If you will recognize in yourself that wrong thinking
of any kind is no thing, person, mind, or substance; that
it is pure unreality, without ability or consciousness to
fight you, with no volition to resist you, and will main-
tain that attitude, you can look at its claims without fear,
and will learn to look through its nothingness to the di-
vine reality beyond it. There is no other logical position to
take; and because there is not, you should consent to
take no other.

Admitting these things as we do, knowing that man
reflects God, should we not encourage the practice of
keeping that in mind, instead of so readily accepting the
opposite evidence? Then rise in your thinking until you
see more'of this reflection in yourself, and let the counter-
feit ego of self-conscious error fade more and more out of
your view of being. Refuse to consider yourself as having
a place in the picture of wrong thinking, and hold fast
to the ideal of man's superiority to everything unlike God.

In this chapter we have seen that it is possible to
substitute right for wrong thinking, Truth for error, and
good for evil, in your thoughts and speech, and thus in
your lives. I could not tell you anything more sure to
keep in the way of health, prosperity and happiness, than

44

YOU AND WRONG THINKING

to keep your thinking above the spectacle of the misery,
and selfishness, and corruption that seem to be rampant
in the earth; and to look at life and humanity with the
eyes of God. Then your heart will be at peace. If you
will do this, if you will put love in the place of hate, re-
sentment and anger, and keep it there, the angels will
have you in their company, and you will never drift be-
yond the Father's love and care.

45

CHAPTER FIVE

Ton and Affirmative Prayer

L KNOW of nothing in popular religion
that is less understood than is prayer. Certainly nothing
is more useless and dangerous in its purpose and pagan
in its idea than the prevalent idea of prayer.

All down the ages mankind has offered petitions to
some form of deity. Superstitious fear has entered largely
into the attempts of humanity to placate a god which is
invested more with vengeance and hate than love and
fatherhood. Before we relegate these practices to the do-
main of the ignorant and childish it might be well to ask,
What do we worship today? It would be true to say that
the god of many mortals is but the magnification of such
mortals in other words, the deification of self ex-
pressed in the emotionalism and temporary exaltation
produced by a wordy prayer. Like those who utter incan-
tations before a graven image we meticulously choose
our words to tell the Almighty how greatly He is to be
feared and how very weak and helpless we are.

Yet the world has progressed spiritually only in the ra-
tio in which its thoughts of God and man have been ex-

YOU AND AFFIRMATIVE PRAYER

alted. A few years ago a man who introduced the subject
of God and prayer into his general conversation would
have been regarded as "queer." Such things were con-
sidered to belong to the professional religionists; the man
in the workaday world as a general rule had no time for
such things or, at any rate, only for an hour once a week
when he visited church. Today these things are discussed
in the newspapers and are topics of daily conversation.

Charles P. Steinmetz, one of the world's foremost engi-
neers, was asked a few years ago, what line of new re-
search he thought would see the greatest development
during the next fifty years. After careful deliberation, he
replied: "I think the greatest discovery will be made
along spiritual lines. Some day people will learn that
material things do not bring happiness and are of little
use in making men and women creative and powerful.
Then the scientists of the world will turn their labora-
tories over to the study of God and prayer and the
spiritual forces which as yet have hardly been guessed at."

Yes, prayer rightly understood and practiced, is the
greatest force in the world, a spiritual force that releases
radiance and power.

Dr. Alexis Carrel, who in 1939 concluded thirty-three
years of brilliant biological research at the Rockefeller
Institute, states that prayer is u the most powerful form of

47

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

energy that one can generate." Doctor Carrel has long
been impressed by the fact that many of life's phenomena
cannot be scientifically explained. He knows that spiritual
healings are possible, and spent weeks studying them, and
he has seen a cancerous sore shrivel to a scar before his
eyes.

Here is what Doctor Carrel said in a recent article :
u The influence of prayer on the human mind and body
is as demonstrable as that of secreting glands. Its results
can be measured in terms of increased physical buoyancy,
greater intellectual vigor, moral stamina, and a deeper
understanding of the realities underlying human relation-
ships . . . Prayer is as real as terrestrial gravity. As a
physician, I have seen men, after all other therapy had
failed, lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene
effort of prayer. It is the only power in the world that
seems to overcome the so-called 'laws of nature'; the
occasions on which prayer has dramatically done this
have been termed 'miracles.' But a constant, quieter
miracle takes place hourly in the hearts of men and
women who have discovered that prayer supplies them
with a steady flow of sustaining power in their daily
lives."

How can we attain such dynamic power in prayer?
To answer that question we must first of all understand

YOU AND AFFIRMATIVE PRAYER

what prayer is. Prayer is not begging "God, give me,
give me" for how can God bestow more than He has
already bestowed upon His creation? It is affirmation
and realization the positive declaration that you, as the
image and likeness of God, possess all that the Creator
is and that God has already supplied you with the im-
pulse and intelligence necessary for every undertaking.
Prayer should always deny evil in your experience and
affirm good. It should deny weakness; affirm strength.
It says,

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He
maketh me to lie down in green pastures : he leadeth me
beside still waters. He restoreth my soul."

There are many people who say that prayer is diffi-
cult and that therefore they do not pray. But it is really
a question of what you understand by prayer. I think
some of our best prayers go up to God when we our-
selves do not realize it. Prayer, put simply, is "the soul's
sincere desire." It is no use taking a prayer upon your
lips if you are contradicting in your heart what you are
saying with your tongue. The only real prayer comes from
the heart. When you say from the heart, "Oh, I wish
for this, for that," you are engaging in a form of prayer;
you are expressing some longing that is in your heart,
and your cry of longing reaches the heart of the Eternal.

49

HOW TO FIND rOURSELF

There does come a time when we fail to trust material
things; and then we must trust something. I am positive
that the world today is suffering from a lack of con-
fidence, a lack of human trust. We cannot trust enough
people. But we must trust someone else when the burden
is too heavy, when the risk is too great. The fact that
someone else is trusting you is always a source of strength
and inspiration; the fact that you are trusted keeps you
going. But there is a point that you reach in life when
your trust in material things and your fellow men cannot
take you beyond that point, and it is then you have to
say, u Oh, God help me."

There is a story of an old miner who said that he did
not .believe in anyone. One day there came a fall of coal
in the mine, and this man said, "Oh, God help me." One
of his fellow workmen said : "There's nothing like a few
lumps of coal to knock the atheism out of a man's head."
We all get to the point where our own self-confidence and
our trust in our fellows cannot avail, and we feel that
there is someone greater whom we must trust. That is
instinctive prayer.

But as a whole the modern world is skeptical about
prayer, and many people who learned to beg God for
things as children have given it up as a bad job since
they have grown up. This however does not detract from

50

YOU AND AFFIRMATIVE PRATER

the efficacy of true prayer, the prayer of affirmation and
realization.

Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick in his book, "The Secret
of Victorious Living 5 ' says,

The trouble with much popular praying is that it is
mainly begging. It conceives the Eternal as a universal or-
ganized charity and of ourselves as impecunious applicants
saying, Give me! Clearly that involves a pagan theory of
God, but worse than that, in actual practice it so damages
men's souls that any minister, dealing intimately with indi-
viduals, should welcome the chance to sound a warning.
One repeatedly hears the familiar complaint : I prayed long
and earnestly about this temptation this habit, this need
and it did no good. Of course it did no good. Habitually
behind that complaint one finds a kind of praying that, far
from doing good, does harm. Prayer holds the object of its
wish in the center of attention; the more earnest a man's
prayer, the more stoutly his need occupies his thought.
Picture then a man praying about sickness, for example,
holding some illness in the center of his solicitude and say-
ing in effect: I am sick, very sick. See how sick I am. Give
me health! Anyone intelligent about psychological processes
knows that the more earnestly a man prays like that the
more sick he is likely to be. Run your imagination out
therefore into other realms of need sexual passion, dis-
couragement, anxiety. You see, the more we hold such
things in the center of attention, even in prayer, the more
they will obsess and control our living.

Yes, true prayer affirms that all that God has His
life.- His wisdom, His bounty is already ours. All we

5'

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

have to do is constantly to proclaim this, recognize it,
freely admit it, in an intelligent, unreserved, thankful and
expectant manner.

But it is not trusting God to declare th$se truths about
Him and then go on worrying as if He did not exist. So
many of our prayers are unanswered because our reliance
is counterbalanced by fear and unbelief. Is it just to God
to declare that He is all there is, that there is nothing
beside Him, and go on being troubled and anxious lest
something beside Him is going to get us? Prayer is not
an effort to persuade God to change His will, which is
always good. It is rather realizing God's perfect will for us.

The truth is that in popular religion people are afraid
to 'say, "Thy will be done." They are afraid of that propo-
sition. They are too anxious for their own petty wills to
be done in the matters that involve their affairs, the
human wills are so much distorted by selfish incentive
that they are always unsafe guides for the betterment of
the individual. The fact is that if it were possible for the
divine will to be done in every place of activity in this
world, the whole earth would be a paradise. God's will
is that perfect harmony shall prevail. It is the interference
with divine will that gets the affairs of human beings all
mixed up. If we could keep our ear attuned to the divine
order, if we could keep ourselves in touch with divine de-

52

YOU AND AFFIRMATIVE PRATER

sires, if we could maintain such contact with their central
spiritual government that the plan of divinity could be
worked out, and that we as individuals could be used as
agents for the carrying out of such plans, we should find
life very satisfactory.

But for some reason or other, through the operation of
the innate selfishness of the human mind, people are
generally afraid to say, "Thy will be done." They are
afraid that something they do not want will be done.
They believe they know better what they want and what
is best for them than all the wisdom of the supreme in-
telligence.

To whom should you pray, and what is prayer? Your
answer to these questions will determine the result of your
prayers. If you pray to a deity who you believe is cog-
nizant of and actually sends suffering, sorrow, and death,
how far are you removed from the ancient worshipers
of heathen gods? If on the other hand you profess that
God is ever present, why do you talk about Him as being
far removed from you and your daily problems, as living
"above the clear blue sky"? If you say that God knows
all, why do you spend so much time in telling Him about
your distress and trials, instead of realizing each day that
He will supply your needs. And if you believe that God
is omnipotent all power how comes it that you ex-

53

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

haust every human approach for help before you feel
driven to seek His ever-present aid?

We shall understand something of the meaning of
prayer when we translate profession into practice; when
we look for the best in those around us; when we stop
asking for things and begin expressing gratitude for what
we already have.

A friend of mine once gave me the most complete in-
terpretation of prayer I have yet heard. He said: "Once
I used to say, 'Please.' Now I say, 'Thank you.' " The
daily realization of the presence of God, divine love, and
of the fact that "the kingdom of heaven is at hand" will
prove the truth that "there shall no evil befall thee,
neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling." For
prayer is protection; that is, affirmative prayer. It says,
I am one with God. Evil has no personality through
whom or upon whom to act. It cannot cause pain,
disease, accident, sin, failure, sorrow, doubt, or fear. It
is not and never was a law, power or cause. It cannot act.
It is nothing. No one can harm me, and I cannot be made
to harm myself or others. I am a manifestation of Divine
Mind, God, and my health and immortality are safe in
the infinitude of life and love.

So if we are to pray at all we must learn to pray with
intelligence. We shall then realize that the big thing in

54

YOU AND AFFIRMATIVE PRAYER

life is not to be saved from physical danger but to get
the courage to meet it. There are risks in life that have
to be taken if we are to live fully. But it is better to face
them, whatever happens, than to live wrapped up in
cotton wool. Our prayer must be that we might in all cir-
cumstances have the Christian spirit. The courage, re-
source, and unselfishness that come through prayer may
be the very means of avoiding some dangers and over-
coming others. Fear always weakens and blinds. By run-
ning away from danger we may run into it. By being
afraid of trouble we may even bring it on ourselves. Jesus
wanted His disciples to be strong men, able to meet
trouble and not be daunted by it. He asked that they be
given the power to meet evil and not to be coarsened
or degraded by it and so lose their souls. "I pray not that
thou shouldest take them from the world, but that thou
shouldest keep them from the evil." That is what you can
pray with a clear mind.

55

CHAPTER SIX

Ton and Fear

M,

AND WOMEN fear for their future,
for their daily bread; they fear sickness and disaster. They
fear the laws of commerce, the laws governing the busi-
ness world. They fear popular opinion, climate, politics,
and a hundred other elements.

When you come to think of it, is it reasonable to be-
lieve that such things are able to hurt us, while we stand
helplessly by and don't make an intelligent protest?

The whole problem is in our thinking. Our happiness
is not dependent upon circumstances; it is not determined
by the hostility of the world or the unfriendliness of men.
It is altogether in our own hands. What we think deter-
mines the kind of person we are going to be and whether
we are going to be a failure or a success. Adopt an atti-
tude of fear toward life, make retreat from life a habit,
and you will become an easy prey to half a score of un-
healthy emotions that will soon have you in their power.

There is no reason why you should retreat from life.
Stand up to life, its fears and its antagonisms. Until you
do that even God can do little for you. As long as fearful

56

YOU AND FEAR

thoughts govern us we shall be at the mercy of fear,
anxiety, and sickness. Human progress out of material
thinking is in our own hands, and there is but one way
to accomplish it. That is by discarding the fearful, ma-
terial mode of thinking in all its phases and adopting the
spiritual.

The right to think for ourselves is an inalienable pos-
session, and because of this no one can challenge our
freedom and ability to change our thinking from the
false to the true. We must realize the truth of this, and
not excuse any failure to take advantage of it on the
ground of heredity, education, environment, or circum-
stance. The moment we make excuses for our attitude of
fear and defeatism we begin to play into the hands of
the enemy, and thus weaken our conscious ability to
think and act as free men and women.

Because of this we should stand uncompromisingly for
our divinely inherited power to think rightly, even though
our progress may seem to fall short of that of others or
to disappoint our own expectations. To admit discourage-
ment or to think that we have an inferiority complex is
equivalent to walking backward or letting ourselves for
the time being drift. Arguing our fears is never intelli-
gent ; it always adds to our burden and clutters our path
to freedom.

57

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

Fear always presents itself in some material shape, or
argues with us through our belief in its power. Try to
analyze the reason that fear possesses your thoughts so
easily, or why you haven't the faith to conquer it.

Most people are easily discouraged, and once they lose
faith in themselves the way is opened for a hundred dif-
ferent kinds of fear to enter their thoughts. The cure for
discouragement is a livelier appreciation of the good we
already have and increased attention to what we know
is possible. It is always possible to do better. Defeat argues
that we have done our best and have failed; but who
says that we have done either? Do the principles of
mathematics or of music discourage the student because
he has not yet succeeded in solving some problem?

We are so prone to live in the past and carry the de-
feats of yesterday over into the present and future. I have
been brought into contact with hundreds of young people
who felt that the inner defeats in their lives had marred
their future. Today is yours. The past need not influence
the present, and you have nothing to fear from the
future; for God is always present, guarding and guiding.
Now is the time when good is all-powerful, and your
happiness and usefulness are safe in the infinitude of life
and love. There is no limit to what you can accomplish
through a readiness to understand the mind of God.

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YOU AND FEAR

This is not argument; it is experience. Here is a power
that can dispel the mist of yesterday's failures. Nothing is
to be gained by prolonging the misery or discouragement
caused by past failures, shortcomings, or mistakes. Let
your yesterdays bury their dead. You have always the
opportunity to do better. Be grateful for that, and do
not darken the sunshine of today with the shadows of
yesterday.

The law of good has never failed to work. The failure
is yours in not holding fast to what you know to be true
in the face of contrary arguments. Will the mental atti-
tude that cries defeat help you to succeed, to renew your
efforts, or to add to your courage? However long you
consent to grovel in that state of mind, you will eventually
have to gather up what you have left, and begin your
spiritual journey again from where you found yourself.
How much better and more profitable to stand guard
over what you have, small though it may seem, than to
listen to this croaking devil.

Our sense of failure and fear too often springs from
our not thinking metaphysically. We allow thought to be
influenced by material evidence, in place of steadfastly
looking past it to the unconquerable truth of man's
spiritual being. Instead of going down into the valley of
material thinking, we should stand up to life and be

59

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

climbing those sublime heights where the reality of God's
infinity can be seen and understood. The choice is ours
to go up or down, to stand or fall, in our own thinking,
and it should be decided by our strength of purpose and
confidence in Truth and not by the weakness of our
fears.

Nothing is more tyrannical than the fears we entertain,
haunting, oppressing, and torturing us at every turn. Yet
these fears which make us cowards cannot think, they
have no personality, no mind; they are but the spectral
products of our thought.

It is certain they have no possible place in spiritual
thought and understanding. Nothing can frighten our
consciousness of spiritual being, for we know that suffer-
ing, loss, or lack cannot invade this realm of our thought.

If all fear both latent and active could be eliminated
from our consciousness, we should be the happiest people
on earth, we should be in heaven; but this will not be
realized while a sense of evil remains. To remove fear
permanently from our experience we must remove its
foundation and destroy its source, and this we need to
recognize if we are to work intelligently and effectively
toward our freedom from its tyranny.

There are some questions you should face right here.
Are you standing up to life or are you running away from

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YOU AND FEAR

it? Are you fighting your battle against fear or are you
shirking it? Is your attitude toward life that of fear and
defeat or that of faith? Are you in dread of tomorrow?
Are you anxious about many things?

You were not intended to be beaten and eaten up with
anxiety. You were not destined to sit at the feet of cir-
cumstance. God intends you to live a full and complete
life, to tackle your problems with zest, and to overcome
all obstacles. We all follow a leader who has power and
who communicates it to us. Religion can be a means of
helping us overcome fears and of taking the minus signs
away so that we may be conquerors and more than con-
querors.

We all know what a large part unrealities play in
human fears. Yet if we do realize that the unreal is al-
ways unreal, why do we allow ourselves to think other-
wise? Fear prevents men and women from believing in
themselves, in one another, and in a higher power. But
man was made for the heights, and if he cannot yet at-
tain them, he must continue to aspire to them.

So stand up to your fears and in time you will com-
pletely master them. Perhaps you are shy and your shy-
ness has become an obsession. You dread meeting people.
But this form of fear can be overcome. It is said that
George Bernard Shaw when a young man was so shy

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HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

that when he had a call to pay in a certain street he
would walk up and down the street several times before
he could overcome his shyness and knock at the door.
You could say many things today about G. B. S., but
no one would say that he is shy.

Cease retreating from life. Form the habit of standing
up bravely to life's challenges. Of course you will have
problems to solve, hard things to do; but go through
with it, face the error that seeks to rob you of your son-
ship. Remember that you have God to help you.

Faith not courage, is the opposite of fear. Courage
is very needful; it has been described as "the basic virtue
on which all other virtues are built." But we cannot all
of us- summon up courage to order, and those of us who
can face life with a stout heart find that it does not carry
us all the way.

Bunyan's Mr. Fearing "was always afraid that he
should come short of whither he had a desire to go."
In the story he could not pluck up courage to cross the
Slough of Despond, yet he would not go back again; and
when at last he did get over he could scarce believe it.
In the Valley of the Shadow he was nearly ready to die
of fear, crying out that the hobgoblins would have him.
But the valley was as quiet when he went through it as
it had ever been, and when at last Bunyan got his timid

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YOU AND FEAR

pilgrim to the edge of the river, where there was no
bridge, there comes the stroke of genius in the story; for
"the water of that river was lower at this time than ever
I saw it in all my life"; so Mr. Fearing "went over at
last, not much above wet-shod."

Yes, so many of our anxieties are concerned with the
events that we are afraid will happen, our fears are "fears
of coming short of whither we have a desire to go." If
you are going to face your problems with courage you
must have faith. It is no wonder that life is filled with
fear, for contemporary poetry, prose, drama, and religion
seem to be saturated with gloom and fear.

The question is how we can overcome ou r fears. One
way is to believe that man is the outstanding achievement
of the Creator. There is no single force that can compete
with Divine Mind. The universe is filled with wonder,
but behind it all is Mind. The stars are splendid, but
they do not feel! The forests are impressive, but they do
not think ! Man is God's unique creation. He alone sub-
dues the earth and creates institutions to his fancy. There
are no limits. How prone we are to overlook the fact that
man was created to have dominion.

There are people who shrink in fear from facing the
worries and brutalities of human existence. The fact that
they aic created in the image of God makes no difference

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

whatsoever. The fact that man outwits, outthinks and
outgenerals all the lower forms of life fails to challenge
these people. They tell you that life is unyielding, in-
flexible, merciless.

The start of all successful living is to affirm that we
belong to all that is best and noblest in divine achieve-
ment.

Another way to get rid of fear is to believe that your
life has value whether it possess few or many gifts.
Through all creation both big and little have their place.
The eagle is spectacular, but the robin is necessary. The
pine tree is impressive, but the blade of grass is essential.
The least is as vital as the greatest.

Perhaps the easiest way to get rid of fear is to know
that you and God are partners. All life is bound up with
God. When you come to believe this, fear will pass away
like night before dawn. Nothing can harm you because
you are protected by a supervising Mind. If you fear
some things you will produce them, by the same sign if
you have faith you will create their opposite. When faith
in good stands guard, fear falls down.

Here then are some reasons why we should stand up
to life and march on with hope and confidence.

Man is made in the image of God.

Every life has value.

YOU AND FEAR

Man, because he is a son of God, has the power to
rise from slavery to glorious freedom.

So you may well ask yourself the question, Why these
fears; why this spirit of defeat? God does not change.
One is forced to the conclusion that a fearful attitude
toward life has its origin in some doubt of the power of
God, some uncertainty in our own heart, some material
weakness, lack of grip, lack of vital faith in life.

But this spirit does not really belong to us. Ours is the
spirit of power, of conscious ability, of successful accom-
plishment. Think of it ! There is no suggestion here of de-
feat; for the spirit of power is the Spirit of God, the
Spirit of omnipotence, which has all of God behind it
and which knows itself to be irresistible.

The defeat of fear means freedom.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Ton and Healing

YEARS AGO when I was very sick
I discovered for the first time in my experience how a
right understanding of God could change everything.

I had been a patient in a hospital for nearly a year
with an illness that is often regarded as fatal. One day
my physician informed me that I should be confined to
bed for at least another twelve months. The prospect
filled me with fear for the future and bitter resentment
at my condition, which seemed at the time to ruin my
career and usefulness. At that time a friend visited me
and expressed great surprise that i should be so entirely
dependent on material aid. "What about your belief
in God?" he inquired. This simple question changed my
whole thinking, and I began to know that "With God
all things are possible" ; that such a condition could not
possibly come from a loving Father. It was simply a
change in my thinking. I had been thinking sickly
thoughts and was full of self-pity. The change came

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YOU AND HEALING

when I acknowledged that God is all in all, that He is
good, that He is the source and creator of all that really
exists, that He could not possibly be the author of sick-
ness. Simply by my declaring God to be the only real
power my phyical condition was quickly changed, and in
the short period of one month I was able to return to
my family and active work.

Now when you stop to think about it, there is nothing
out of the ordinary in such an experience. If you really
believe that God is all power, then such experiences are
the natural fulfillment of God's law. If you doubt this,
then you must believe that it is possible for you to find
yourself in a condition where God cannot help you. For
after all, the test of religion is found in its practical ap-
plication to every need of human life. It should solve
every problem with which you are confronted, answer
every question, deliver you from all fear and doubt re-
garding the present and the future, and heal every form
of disease.

That this has been accomplished is a self-evident fact.
There are literally tens of thousands of people in the
world today who can testify to spiritual healing. Count-
less numbers of men and women have been healed after
they had been given up by medical science. I know that
such healings are possible, for I have spent ten years

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

helping men and women overcome thoughts of disease.
I have seen almost every sickness known to medical
science healed by a right understanding of man's re-
lationship to God.

Who are they? Naive, illiterate, and untrained indi-
viduals ready to try out any new theory? No. Far from it.
They are for the most part intellectual, sophisticated
people, conservative business and professional men and
women; good orthodox people in my parish who have
rediscovered the power of God.

Let it be understood before we go any further that
there is only one correct way to spiritual healing and that
is the unqualified acceptance in our thinking of one per-
fect Creator and one perfect creation. Because God is
the only creator of all that is, because God is good, is life,
is love, there can be no opposite of God, no evil, no sick-
ness, except in mens' wrong thinking, and this logical
reasoning, unreservedly accepted, comes to the sick to
heal and to give the right understanding of spiritual ex-
istence.

This basic truth may be illustrated by another case.
We'll take a young woman who is today prominent in
the theatrical world. I knew her first as a very talented
young soloist in my cathedral choir. Later she became a
well-known radio singer. Some time ago she wrote me

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YOU AND HEALING

that she was attending a medical clinic in Chicago for
cancer and that she knew the doctors felt she could not
live for another twelve months. Her letter was full of
self-pity and a bitter tirade against God. She wrote that
her religion had proved worthless in a time of need and
distress. She told me that she had gone from one church
to another searching for some ray of hope. Her belief in a
God of love had given place to disbelief and cynical con-
tempt for all religion. She wrote me in desperation and
asked if I could help her.

In reply to all this I pointed out that her sickness did
not come from God and was therefore powerless to de-
stroy life, that she was a child of God, and that the real
self could not be sick, for God knows nothing of mortal
belief. I tried to make clear that in reality there is no
power except God. I told her to change her thinking and
rely wholly upon God to heal and reminded her that
there is no law of God to cause cancer or to perpetuate it.
And since God is the only real lawmaker, there is no so-
called material law that could cause the disease to de-
velop or continue. Health is real and disease nothing
more than a mental mirage.

Several months passed l^efore I heard from her again,
and then she wrote me that she had been able to resume
her work. In her letter she says: "I have been healed of

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HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

the physical difficulty and have been able to do my neces-
sary work better and more joyously. My healing was
gradual because I was full of fear, but as the understand-
ing of perfect God and perfect man unfolded in my con-
sciousness the discordant condition vanished. When it
was necessary for me to have a physical examination be-
fore starting my work again, the physician who had
originally attended me said the healing was nothing short
of miraculous. I now see how good God is."

Sickness belongs to a belief that man has a life apart
from God. Every experience of disorder, every condition
of suffering and disease, everything that contributes to
the torment of earthly existence, springs from the belief
that God is absent from us and that in His absence we
are at the mercy of material ills from which there is no
appeal or defense.

Yes, we need to change our thinking. We are ac-
customed to think in terms of matter and of what matter
can do to us. Since the leading scientists of the world
are now teaching that matter is only a changing mental
concept, why are we so afraid of the body and what it
can do to us?

So it should be readily apparent that until we stop
thinking wrong things we shall not stop suffering from
them; for so long as our thoughts dwell on sickness, we

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YOU AND HEALING

shall be afraid of something and to that extent be sus-
ceptible to disease.

"As he thinketh within himself, so is he." Dr. Edward
Weiss of Philadelphia, a distinguished member of the
American College of Physicians and Surgeons, once stated
that as many as forty-five per cent of all persons seeking
medical help are suffering entirely or partially from some
sort of emotional problem. The medical profession is
coming into the understanding that physical conditions
can in a very large percentage of cases be definitely
traced to a mental cause. Not long ago, Dr. William
Brady, the well-known New York and California phy-
sician who conducts a health column for a number of
papers declared: "Worry, anxiety, fear, retard or inhibit
the digestive process . . . Anger, hatred, jealousy, ma-
levolence, all have marked inhibiting action . . . These
unpleasant emotions throw the brake on the normal
processes of digestion. That is how a little flare-up of
anger or jealousy just before dinner drives away the
appetite."

If the frequent indulgence of ill temper finds its way
to the body in the course of time and disturbs its normal
functions, can one rightly expect radically to heal this
physical discord without dealing with the antecedent con-
dition? Physically diagnosed, such conditions are said to

7'

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

be caused by impurities in the system which obstruct nor-
mal action; metaphysically considered, these impurities
are wrong mental states, which disturb and frighten our
thoughts. When the thoughts are corrected and elimi-
nated, normal conditions are restored, and a physician
would say that the morbid secretion or accumulation had
been carried off.

The old orthodox alibi for sickness is always to blame
God. People say that "God sends this or that disease for
some good purpose." A little child dies, and they say to
the distracted parents that it was "God's will." Religion
has blamed its God for so much of the sorrow, disease,
and disaster in the world. But the truth is that until we
stop thinking wrong thoughts we shall not stop suffering
from their effects. For instance, has pain any place in the
presence of God? Would you think of looking for disease
there? We all talk so much about our nerves, or heart, or
stomach, and so on, that our whole thinking is at last
saturated with thoughts of disease. How long are you
going to go on accepting these false suggestions?

Let us suppose that you were invited to a party at
which the doorkeeper fastened on each guest as he en-
tered a label that bore some grotesque description of his
character or person. You would treat it in the light of a
joke, a sort of masquerade, and would never dream of

72

YOU AND HEALING

accepting the description as really applying to you. If it
were suggested to you that you were a native Hottentot
or a Chinese cooley, would you start for Africa or China
to carry it out? You would treat the suggestion as pre-
posterous, would you not, and forget all about it. Yet
we go through life accepting the constant suggestions
that we are sick, and naturally these suggestions manifest
themselves in our body as sickness.

William Randolph Hearst made this discovery. In his
column Mr. Hearst related the following amusing epi-
sode:

Many years ago your columnist thought he had heart
trouble. He probably had Welsh-rarebit trouble or some-
thing of that kind. Anyhow he was on a train going to the
Grand Canyon and woke up in the middle of the night.
His heart was pounding. The train was standing still. He
rang for the porter and gasped: "Porter, get me a little
brandy or something quick. My heart can't stand the
high altitude of the Grand Canyon."

"Mister Man," said the porter, "dey ain't no brandy and
dey ain't no altitude and dey ain't no Grand Canyon.
Where we is stopping is Needles and Needles, de sign says,
is jus' fifty feet above de sea level." Well, friends, your
columnist was suddenly and miraculously cured and has
not had heart failure since. There is a lot of imagination
in most illnesses and particularly in heart trouble. Your
columnist . . . has always wondered why so many people

73

HOW TO FIND 1OURSELF

are willing to believe themselves sick and so few are willing
to believe themselves well.

It is now recognized by eminent medical authorities
that sickness is often a direct result of fear. The disease
* 'expresses" the fear. The sickness is the language that
fear uses. It talks through the physical conditions of be-
lief in pain. Destroy the fear. Realize the groundlessness
of fear that there is no need to be afraid. Know that
there is no power present in God's world except good.

Disease can be likened to a dream. Now no matter
what hideous condition a person may be passing through
in a nightmare, you know that when he awakes the con-
dition is gone; although it seemed real enough at the
time. Yes, all disease is a dream, real to you only so long
as you continue to dream. The real man does not know it.
If God is all, all-knowing, no one can know anything else.

Organic life is not the true expression of man's immor-
tality. It is certainly not the life that God made in His
image. The body dies, the organs decay, and so they have
no more connection with God's creation than your
shadow, reflected in a lake, has with your human self.
Spiritual man is the only true reflection of God and, like
his Maker, is neither structural nor organic.

If you want to remove the opportunity for organic
disease, then you must correct the belief that the real

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YOU AND HEALING

you, the God-created you, is in organic life. Destroy the
belief that your life is in matter, and know that you are
spiritual and indestructible, and you remove fear and
danger.

You are more than a physical personality, passing like
a shooting star between birth and death and doomed to
spend your time in a struggle for health, food and shelter.
You are an individual representative of the Creator of the
universe, thinking and working with Him, and having a
glorious and eternal destiny before you. The errors of
human thought that bring disorder into individual lives,
and disease to the bodily senses, are removed only as
one's thinking actually changes to the standpoint of God.

The pattern of your life is being woven from the
threads of your own thinking, and the finished product
will express your thoughts: sick thoughts, fearful
thoughts, or else healthy, strong thoughts. Your life will
be modeled after the picture you have in mind. Is it of
no moment to you what is being woven into your indi-
vidual experience? If you want the pattern to vibrate with
health and beauty and youth, these things must be fur-
nished by you.

We are altogether too lenient with the suggestions of
sickness and disease. We are too apt to think of them as
something to get rid of, instead of something that never

75

HOW TO FIJVD YOURSELF

had a true existence and whose only seeming power is
the belief or thought we entertain of them.

Health, comfort, and life are not at the mercy of physi-
cal conditions. If you have entertained thoughts that tell
you you are weak and.sick, you need not continue to con-
form to these thoughts. Deny them and know that God
bestows unlimited health and power.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ton and Supply

V VHAT, you may ask, can right thinking
do for my income? The sense of lack sums up the whole
question of our struggle to make both ends meet. It is
nothing more than just a sense of emptiness of good, of
life, of joy, of freedom.

This emptiness in our consciousness of the good things
of life is what is known as poverty. Emptiness is nothing
more than negation or the absence of plenty ; and human
thought, not yet realizing that supply is universal, sup-
poses this negation to be a reality in addition to good.

This lack of good is universal, and wherever you look
you find men and women who tell you that they have not
enough of this world's good, not alone among the poor
but among the rich; there is something in the human
mind that prompts us all to believe that we are limited
and need more. It is always the absence of something that
disturbs us; and the only remedy whatever it may be, is
to become aware that something is actually present;
then the illusion of its absence, with the fears occasioned

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HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

by it, disappears. The sense of the absence of good in our
thinking is the only lack there ever is, and that exists only
in the illusion of seeing things falsely.

Deceived by this supposition, the human mind thinks
in accordance with it, and its fears fill this mental empti-
ness with the countless forms that a belief in the opposite
of good assumes. We think far too much about limitation,
with the result that the awful dread of not having suffi-
cient to live on is one of the many ogres of the material
world that makes life so unhappy.

I think we have a wrong sense of what really consti-
tutes our possessions. You know wealth that can be lost
is not really possessed, for a man's real possessions can-
ndt be separated from him. If our capital or stock in trade
consists of only what the fleeting things of the world
provide, such as money or commodities, with nothing
higher than financial gain to eke out our satisfactions it
soon begets covetousness, envy, avarice, and self-interest.
A dollar bill has not even any intrinsic material value;
its worth depends on something outside it, and so it is
fluctuating and temporal. The value of stocks, bonds, and
real estate cannot be maintained with certainty; it may
be up today and down tomorrow.

I was dean of a large cathedral church in Florida dur-
ing the time of the land boom and the financial crash

78

AND SUPPLY

that followed. Men and women had become accustomed
to thinking and talking of enormous wealth in term^of
land values and stock quotations, and many had accu-
mulated great wealth. Then it was swept away almost
overnight. The present uncertain world conditions make
it evident that we must look to something far more per-
manent than material things for our supply and satisfac-
tion.

Men and women are far more afraid of the hell of this
world than of any hell in a world to come. The question
uppermost now is, What shall we do to be saved from
want, from financial loss, from the lack of those things
which are regarded as the necessities and comforts of life?
This grim specter of the fear of want dogs the footsteps of
everyone until he understands that in reality supply is
limitless.

Now this sense of God's absence in our consciousness is
the only lack there is, and it exists only in the illusion of
seeing things falsely. The question is, Where do we believe
we are living, in God or in an unstable material world?
Is our consciousness of being embodied in a sense of
things, and are we therefore always calling upon the ma-
terial world to supply our wants and never being satisfied?
Is this world the dwelling place of our thoughts? If it is,
that is how we define our needs, and we come under the

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HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

conditions and limitations that pertain to a material sense
of life and happiness.

This question of right thinking is inseparable from the
question of supply. If you believe that your supply comes
from the material world alone, then you are supplied by
it, then you have no appeal from its discordant condi-
tions. But very few people really believe that. Although
you may only prove it in part because you understand
only in part you know that you live in God. You know
that this truth implies provision for all the needs of your
present human experience. This means that you are not
at the mercy of chance events or changing circumstances,
but that you have access to those infinite resources which
show neither lack nor loss.

This truth is being constantly proved. A friend of mine
recently received an inheritance from her father, who
passed on in England just after World War II started.
It seemed impossible, owing to the strict British foreign-
exchange regulations, for her to receive a single penny
from her inheritance. The executor of the estate made
application to the Bank of England for permission to re-
mit the money, and he was told that it was impossible
for the money to leave England until after the conclusion
of the war. In fact the Bank of England gave a polite but
grim refusal. My friend found herself in great need, in

80

YOU AND SUPPLY

fact in debt. She had used her life's savings to make a
down payment on a home, planning to complete the pur-
chase from the money her father had left her. Her banker
in America told her that the refusal of the Bank of Eng-
land to grant permission to remit the money was final and
that nothing more could be done about the matter. The
situation appeared to be desperate. At this point a friend,
who learned of it, declared earnestly that nothing was
impossible with God and that there could not possibly be
any lack or need, because infinite supply is omnipresent.
Within a few days a cable arrived from the Bank of Eng-
land stating that they had reconsidered her application
and that permission had been granted to forward the
money. This was indeed proof of a right understanding
of the ever-operative supply of God.

If lack and need seem to dominate your thinking, you
should rise above the camouflage of want and bask in
the presence of infinite supply. There is plenty to satisfy
your wants. No other conclusion can be reached when it
is remembered that the Creator and governor of the uni-
verse is love. But there are seeming forces at work in our
human experience, among them rivalry and greed and
dishonesty, which would deprive us of the abundance
divinely provided. They would divert from you those
good things which God expects you to enjoy.

81

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

There is no need for you to wait until you get to some
distant heaven to learn that the material does not feed
and clothe you. It is this confidence in material things as
providing the necessities and luxuries of human life which
is at the bottom of all world depressions. This being true,
what recourse have you but to reverse this attitude, turn
your thoughts toward the Truth of Being and rest your
confidence in God.

You cannot go on looking to your occupation, business,
profession, or this or that person or thing as the source
of supply, and then expect entire protection from the
changing circumstances and conditions of human belief.
It is the old story of trying to look in opposite directions
at the same time. We may deceive ourselves into believing
that we are not doing this, until we are suddenly faced
with the problem of finding new channels of supply be-
cause of a loss of position or loss of income that we re-
garded as permanent. Then we begin to realize how
much we had relied upon some source besides God for
our support.

This attitude is similar to the attitude toward physical
health. You are not apt to feel concerned so long as the
sense of physical ease and strength continues; nor do you
feel disturbed over the question of supply so long as your
position continues or you have a good balance at the

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YOU AND SUPPLY

bank. But a belief in health and supply based upon ma-
terial evidence is not the reality and must sometimes be
replaced by an understanding of what health and supply
really are; because a belief in physical health or in ma-
terial supply is just as false as a belief in disease or lack.

This fact is readily seen when we consider that a false
sense of anything cannot last indefinitely. We declare that
the real man is spiritual; then we should know that his
needs are spiritual; and when we truly recognize this, we
shall cease looking to a false source for our supply.

You must begin to acknowledge God in all your ways,
in all your affairs, however material they may seem to be;
and you can begin looking in a spiritual direction for the
supply of your human needs and for the right adjustment
of every situation.

Nineteen centuries ago Jesus taught men and women
to say, "Give us this day our daily bread." This clearly
means much more than material food. Jesus was not con-
cerned so much with the physical needs of mortals as He
was with bringing them a practical knowledge of their
relation to God as Father. He knew that this would bring
them the supply of all their earthly needs. He made this
very plain in His well-known statement, with reference to
food and clothing, "Seek ye first his kingdom, and his
righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto

8.9

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

you." Centuries before a writer of songs had prayed, "Re-
new a right spirit within me." This surely means: Give
me a gracious spirit, the spirit that expresses spontane-
ously the divine qualities of good will, joy, peace, gentle-
ness, loving-kindness, patience, courage, humility, fidelity,
hope, faith, and an unshaken confidence in good. To im-
bibe daily of this spirit from the unfailing fountain of
divinity is our first need. When this actually takes the
first place in our thoughts, the needs of the body will not
go unprovided for.

The demands of the physical consciousness of being
seem so constant and insistent that they press for first at-
tention in the thoughts of men and women, and as a
jule they receive it. They clamor for our notice through
the argument of necessity. We must work to provide
shelter, food, and clothing; we must attend to bodily
comforts, to proper exercise, recreation, and other things,
and so we have little time for the needs of our higher na-
ture. It is a necessity to attend to the physical creature
lest it should weaken or die.

But we have not been taught that the things of the
Spirit are vital or necessary. We believe that these can be
neglected or ignored althogether without affecting our
prosperity. You cannot treat your spiritual self as you
would the beggar to whom you throw a crust of bread or

YOU AND SUPPLY

a coin just to please yourself or to silence your conscience.
It is possible to take this attitude and maintain it for years
or even for a human lifetime; but the awakening from
this delusion comes sooner or later.

Yes, the divine law of supply does exist in the so-called
material realm. It was clearly apprehended by the old
prophets, by the mystics of later years, and in a larger
degree by Jesus. We have regarded their proofs of a
spiritual source of supply, invisible to material sense, as
spectacular wonders rather than as an indication of the
presence and availability of a spiritual law or method
by means of which we, when sufficiently enlightened, may-
lay hold of that true substance which meets and satisfies
all human need.

Every person is intimately concerned in the problem
of supply, for however fortunately he may be situated he
feels the need of something to complete his sense of satis-
faction. The mistake is in looking to material things for
the solution of this problem, since at best they only serve
to meet the sense of lack temporarily. Even from a ma-
terial standpoint the wide-spread belief in lack is not
produced by a famine or things necessary, for there is
enough and to spare for all. It is a famine of love. The
kindlier feelings inherent in the hearts of men, the divine
impulses that lift the human above the animal, have been

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HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

suppressed and starved by brute greed and selfishness,
and the void left in the life of the world is like a desolat-
ing famine. It is the hearts and not the stomachs of men
that are in need, and the grace of God alone can meet it.
Riches and poverty are but the extremes of the belief that
matter supplies the necessities of life and is the source of
wealth and power; and so men are willing to sacrifice al-
most anything for its possession.

What then is there in all the range of human acquisi-
tion that can assure man that he shall prosper? What
would not this assurance be worth today to those who
are well-nigh overwhelmed by fears of failure and to
whom every channel of supply seems to be closed? Yet
this assurance waits for everyone who understands the
truth of man's oneness with the Creator. It is only when
we look to some other source to maintain and prosper
us that fears creep in and things go wrong. It should be
self-evident that that which brings man into being and
maintains him must be that which underlies and supports
all expressions of life, power, and intelligence; and this
underlying cause must also exist because of itself or it
would long ago have become extinct from lack of suste-
nance. This being true, whatever threatens the well-
being of man, not coming from God, must be an error of
self-deception without any support in the reality of things.

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YOU AMD SUPPLY

But the false thoughts that threaten your peace of mind
by suggesting a limitation of your supply have they any
reality at all? Can they think about you or your affairs?
Since the source and supply of good are infinite, there
cannot be any reality to lack. God furnishes unlimited
bounty everywhere, and we should acknowledge no other
source.

So in seeking to correct a sense of lack you might well
ask, What do I expect to be supplied with, the things of
earth or the things of heaven? In working out this ques-
tion of supply we are frequently tempted to think of it
in terms of money instead of an increase in spiritual
understanding.

Know that lack is not a condition of existence in God.
The opportunity to know God is the only one we have.
This opportunity gives us all we need, no matter what
it may be.

To know God and His presence, His expression through
you is all you need. If you accept these things as true,
then you cannot think of yourself or of any thing or
condition as separate from God.

CHAPTER NINE

Ton and Business

I?ROM time to time the business world
gets very sick, and the remedies of the past have lost even
their palliative value. But there is a cure. Right thinking
can do much for business. If it is true that wrong thinking
produces physical discord, it is equally true that wrong
thinking brings a diseased condition in business.

In the world of business and industry we find striking
contrasts poverty in the presence of plenty, idleness
without knowledge to enjoy it. Now that ingenuity has
brought forth machinery which greatly increases the
power of production and all but releases men and wom-
en from toil, people are bewildered. They know not
how to distribute their products or how to utilize their
leisure. As yet they have not been able to capitalize their
new-found freedom. They appear to be in a world of
confusion, even of alarm and want. Whereas, as we have
seen, they are in a world of abundance where their chief

88

YOU AND BUSINESS

occupation, from now on, should be cultural and spiritual
development.

Invention is despoiling mankind of slavery and drudg-
ery ; the curse that man shall earn his bread by the s\\ eat
of his brow is being abolished. Surely this is not disaster;
this is not a time to despair. The intelligence which has
brought the human race thus far can be trusted to com-
plete the journey and lead it into new and higher realms
where work is unlabored and highly productive. It must
not be overlooked that man as God's representative can-
not be otherwise than busy and active, since God has a
purpose for him and will not permit him to lapse into
uselessness.

There is work and business, of a finer order perhaps
than has yet been known at hand today for those who
have the vision to see. And men and women are gaining
that vision. Human intelligence is advancing at a tre-
mendous pace. Civilization is destined to reach still higher
heights. In the movement toward better human condi-
tions right metaphysical thinking is bound to play a
great part.

But the fact remains that business has so far tried
everything but this and in times of world depressions
which follow wars; business has failed. There is certainly

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

a great difference between the man who firmly believes
that some material power can run his business and the
man who knows that God governs him and all his busi-
ness relations to others.

To the business man, staggering under a load of fear,
and a false sense of personal endeavor, right thinking
offers a remedy so simple in its applicability that all
may prove it. The business man has a natural right to
expect that his religion will be quite as usable in his rela-
tions with his fellows on work days, as it is in church on
Sundays.

Jesus has been called a business man. We are all busi-
ness men and women if we are in earnest about the work
before us. One does not need to sell goods or engage in
commerce in order to be a business man or woman. Busi-
ness may be defined as that which requires ones atten-
tion, or which calls for the expenditure of energy, time
and thought. A business is what one follows regularly
rather than at intervals.

Then we should know that business has a legitimate
and commendable place in the community, in that it
affords needed employment and produces or distributes
needed commodities. If you are a business man or woman
you should know that God sustains and directs you in

90

YOU AND BUSINESS

your enterprise, and nullifies unprincipled forces, or
rivalry calculated to undermine your right efforts.

You should realize that divine Mind governs you and
everybody connected with your business, and therefore
mistakes, inefficiency, confusion cannot interfere with
the success of your business. In this way God becomes
your business partner in a unity of interest and capital.
You can work with the infinite principle of all that is
real, and this brings into your business a priceless sense
of confidence in the omnipotence and omnipresence of
good, faith in success, and a recognition of your heri-
tage, as a child of God, which entitles you to draw upon
His infinite resources of courage, wisdom, judgment, op-
portunity and good will.

To introduce into your business enterprises an intelli-
gent and understanding conception of God is more than
expression of religious sentiment; it is the soundest busi-
ness policy, and it would do more to stabilize the world's
finances than all the gold in existence.

If your capital or stock in trade consists only of what
a material sense provides, such as money or commodities,
with nothing higher to outweigh the satisfaction of finan-
cial gain, it fosters and develops such unwholesome and
destructive conditions as worldly self-interest and self-
satisfaction, covetousness, envy, avarice, sordidness, and

9'

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

the possible loss of those kindlier feelings of sympathy
charity, and human brotherhood which make earthly
existence endurable.

But if on the other hand your capital is right thinking,
understood in the form of the qualities or ideas that ex-
press God's nature and presence, arid if the material side
of business or activity is seen to be secondary and sub-
servient to the spiritual, then its prosperity comes from
a divine source which is limitless.

We are here as representatives of this great invisible
cause of all that is real, by virtue of an irresistible law
that transcends all human conception; and the business
of our life is to be a visible witness of the divine presence,
x>wer, and love. In this business there is no possibility
}f lack or loss, since the substance of all being fills all space
and time and there can be no absence of reality.

When the accustomed avenues of trade and income
seem closed to you, that fact may be the one great oppor-
tunity you need to turn your thought to a more spiritual
conception of life. You may have been placing your reli-
ance upon some human source, and your need may be tc
learn the lesson of this experience. Regarding some per-
sonality, position, or business as the one source of youi
income confines thought to that human agency and
causes you to be fearful of possible loss or calamity.

9*

YOU AND BUSINESS

Spiritual ideas are the avenues through which our
real supply flows into consciousness. The problem for
you, more important than obtaining a supply of material
things, is to keep these avenues open from your side. If
the pipes that conduct water into your home became
choked, you would not let them stay that way nor would
you wait until you suffered from thirst. Why, are you
more careless about God's channels becoming obstructed
at your end of the line?

When thoughts and motives that do not express your
true self, such as irritability, criticism, doubt, impatience,
disturb your peace, does it not mean that some of these
channels are choked up at your end of the line, else the
opposites of these evil conditions would be flowing into
consciousness and maintaining prosperity there?

Any limitation which you are experiencing in your
business is on your side, not on God's, for the fountain
of His infinite supply is constantly giving out more than
you have room to receive. While your thinking is clut-
tered up with fears, discouragement, and other things,
how can you expect to get an abundance of good things ?

Now, suppose a magnificent home and a beautiful es-
tate were placed at your disposal, and that you were free
to live and enjoy it so long as you wanted, how would you
feel about it? I don't think that you would prefer to live

95

HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

in some uncomfortable shack, with mean surroundings,
where life was full of hard conditions, and the outlook
for the future was dreary and depressing. And here you
have free access to the Source of all supply, a home of
delightful comfort, with surroundings of enchanting
beauty to revel in, a life of abundance and joy, and a
future of unlimited goodness.

So why stay any longer in the realm of lack, haunted
by its spectres of bad business, disappointment and want,
bound by its limitations, burdened by its uncertainties,
impoverished by its selfishness and tormented by its cease-
less fears? If God is infinite, as we say He is, then it fol-
lows that always and everywhere is the overflowing
bounty of life and plenty.

There is no poor business or need in the consciousness
of God, and that is where you are. He is not something
removed from you, or from your business and daily needs.
He is the activity and intelligence of your being, of what
you are and what you do, of your capacities, opportuni-
ties, and business environment. No matter where you
seem to yourself to be, or in whatever circumstances, you
have only to turn from wrong thinking to find the truth.
It is always at hand.

Experience teaches that we need to be protected more
from our fearful thoughts, than from so-called business

94

YOU AND BUSINESS

conditions, external to ourselves. We are free to reject
every suggestion which seeks to deprive us of our rightful
heritage to support ourselves.

So never think failure and disaster if you do not want
these conditions in your business. Your business is a legiti-
mate undertaking, so try to realize that you have all the
intelligence that is necessary for success and that God is
equal to any emergency. You can prove it, and the best
time to prove it is when you are down and out in your
chinking. Charles Spurgeon once said; "Let it never be
forgotten that when a man is down he has a grand op-
portunity for trusting God. A false faith can only float
in smooth water, but true faith, like a life boat, is at home
in storms. If our religion does not bear us up in time of
trial, what is the use of it? If we cannot believe God when
our circumstances appear to be against us, we do not
believe Him at all. We trust a thief as far as we can see
him. Shall we dare trust God in that fashion?"

It may be the lack of some divine quality that is keep-
ing your business poor. Perhaps your consciousness is be-
coming starved for lack of more of the spirit of real reli-
gion, such as kindness instead of cold indifference, char-
ity and goodwill instead of condemnation, loving help-
fulness instead of criticism, thoughtful service instead of
deadening self-ease, faith instead of doubt and unbelief.

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Find out what your lack of these things are, and you will
discover the cause of your material lack. It is as certain
that morning follows night, or that the earth's atmosphere
will persist, or that the trees will keep on growing, that if
men and women would busy themselves in supplying
their thoughts with the elements of good which they now
lack, there would be a speedy and permanent end to
business worries.

You need to outgrow your dependence upon outside
things. The knowledge that man has everything which
the Creator provides is the only permanent remedy to
wrong business conditions. The difficulty you may find in
using it practically is due to past material education. We
have all been taught to believe that we are physically con-
scious beings, and must look to material things and condi-
tions for life and happiness. This belief holds thought to
dependence upon personal sense for what the Creator
of the Universe alone can supply, and induces mental
fretfulness and self-pity when the personal demands are
not satisfied.

Now, you as the image or reflection of divine individu-
ality, have the expression of unlimited harmony, activity,
intelligence, and power not as a solitary being, but as
radiating that spirit of completeness among countless other
ideas. Do you believe it is true that God reflects Himself,

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all that is good, in you ; and that because of this you and
your business can lack nothing? You have a natural right
to expect that from your religion, and if it does not fulfill
these conditions, then you had better find out what's
wrong with it.

But you say, the laws of commerce, the laws governing
the business world, are unjust and tyrannical. But a wise
Creator never made them, and you have a right to har-
mony and success in spite of them. Is it reasonable to
think that you are set adrift in the world, and told to
make a living, and that there are then loosed upon you a
merciless pack of laws, which try to destroy your legiti-
mate occupation? Is it reasonable to believe that the state
of politics, popular fancy, whims, any one or all of a hun-
dred lawless elements, are able to ruin your business,
while you stand helplessly by?

The right thinking which destroys such suggestions is
that in reality there is one infinite Mind. In business, as
in other things, oneness with this Mind, God, is essential
to success. There should not be to us another power. If
you are one with all that is real in your business, what
more can you ask? You should now begin to realize the
wonderful significance of this world that men strive after.

Do you know the names of the commodities most on
demand today? Confidence, faith, trust !

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HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

Do you know the name of the stock that will pay you
the best dividends? A stock of courage. No sword has
ever prospered against these.

This is a time in which to hold to this age-old counsel :
"Be not faithless, but believing."

CHAPTER TEN

Ton and the New World

WHAT we are witnessing today is more
than a recurring period of disturbed conditions; it is the
passing of the old order, and it is passing because it will
no longer satisfy a thinking age; which means that the
new order has already gained a foothold in the thoughts
of thinkers.

The social, industrial, and economic systems which
have been in vogue, were not born of spiritual progress,
nor of the recognition of human rights, but were the
outcome of individual self-interest, and the domination
of the strong over the weak. Well may we think of
Lowell's well-known words :

"Truth forever on the scaffold. Wrong forever on the

throne.
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim

unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above

His own."

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HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

Because right is right, wrong must be redressed; and
we shall have changes in the social order until justice,
righteousness, and love reign unopposed in the hearts of
all men.

How will the religious organizations answer for their
moral weakness in permitting the evils of centuries to go
unrebuked, or for their failure to challenge the wicked-
ness they knew to exist in high places? The churches
have held the key to the freedom of the oppressed and
the downtrodden, and to the accomplishment of moral
and social reforms, but they have too often lacked the
courage or the devotion to use it. To my mind the
churches have approached the whole question from a
wrong angle. Certainly their feeble united efforts have
so far accomplished very little. War, greed, poverty, avar-
ice and sin still stalk through the world, and so far organ-
ized religions have failed to stop their march of destruc-
tion.

Now, how can these conditions be eradicated? We
must first of all realize that these evils are in the thinking
of mankind, and one's thinking does not always change
in a hurry; it follows the line which past generations
have laid down for it, and many of these beliefs have
been strongly entrenched in human consciousness ages
before our time,

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To whom do we look to bring to the world the remedy
for its social, political, economic, national and interna-
tional failure and disorder? So far we have depended on
the churches, financial experts, or economic specialists to
lead mankind out of their disaster into permanent good-
ness and prosperity. That they have failed to bring in the
brotherhood of man and turn the nations into the way of
peace and safety, will not, I think, be disputed by even
the most earnest social reformer.

A few years ago we started to throw away guns and
sink battle-ships in the hope that in so doing we should
make the hearts of men and nations kind and loving and
unselfish. Did that banish the greed and the jealousy and
the fear which have upset the order of the world since
the beginning of time? Men did not wait for the manu-
facture of swords and guns before they began to fight.
And if we could dump all the world's instruments of war
and destruction into the sea, it would not remove the
cause of strife or make men live as brothers.

The trouble lies in the fact that the followers of the
Prophet of Nazareth, while outwardly espousing his cause,
have not wholly lived the spirit of his teaching. The high
task of the churches to mankind is to transform human
consciousness from its present material basis to the spir-
itual. It means the redemption of religion, education,

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HOW TO FIND rOURSELF

politics, government, finance, commerce, and all that
enters into the life of the world, from the perversive influ-
ences, false ideals and selfish interests which have too long
controlled them.

We are all linked together by the common necessity
of finding a way of salvation from the ills and evils which
are disturbing the peace and prosperity of the world.
This is not a matter of religious or emotional sentiment,
but of a sane and sensible policy of life, of business, or of
government.

What we are facing today is the problem which has
confronted the world from the beginning, namely, that
of human consciousness itself, a consciousness, or think-
ing, which has accepted something besides good as a
natural and normal part of its identity and being, and,
which has thereby consigned itself to constant strife and
discord until the disturbing element of evil is destroyed.

That is true of you as an individual as well as of na-
tions. One who believes in the presence and power of
that which is destructive to life and happiness finds no
resting place for his thoughts, and no place where he can
feel safe from evil. There is no possible escape from this
condition except through a change in human thought,
and that in a nutshell is the problem which the world
has to face and solve before it can be at peace.

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Now, the only thing I know that will bring about this
change, and solve the problem of the world, is a radical
change in thinking from the human to the Godlike. It
must be obvious to anyone that a mental condition com-
posed mainly of wrong thoughts, whether it be in an indi-
vidual or a nation, or the world, must sooner or later
crumble into decay. I have pointed out again and again
in this book that the only correct way to look at things
is from the standpoint of God; your Creator, and the
Creator of the world. It is perfectly logical that the man
who produces a machine is, naturally, the one who un-
derstands it best. If we really believe that God alone
creates and governs man and the universe, we shall have
no desire to regard them in any other light. The univer-
sally accepted statement of Christendom is that God is
all power and all presence. But does this honestly repre-
sent our own view while we consent to the dominion of
other powers? We say that God is all-knowing, knowing
and seeing no evil, but at the same time we go on ad-
mitting evil in our thinking.

The only thing which can bring about this change in
our thinking, and solve the problems of the world, is a
change in thinking from the human to the divine. It was
thinking which brought the universe into being, that
constitutes its conditions, and decides the whole of hu-

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man experience. It is thinking which makes up the king-
dom of heaven, or the kingdom of hell. There is no possi-
ble way by which you may gain admittance to the king-
dom of heaven upon earth, except to become heavenly
minded. That may seem a long road to travel, but there
is no shorter way.

The question is sometimes asked if the time will come
when evil will be forever dispelled from human experi-
ence. It will come when the supposition of a mind apart
from God, good, disappears. When it was discovered that
the earth is round, the belief that it was flat disappeared
from human belief, not only in that particular period but
for all time, and this may serve to illustrate the final end
'of evil. When it shall be universally understood that God
is all-inclusive, men and women will no longer believe,
or be taught, that there is a power, intelligence, or pres-
ence beside good, and evil will disappear. Evil is no more
than a thought condition; it is not a person, power, or
law. It can only be reversed through an intelligent under-
standing of God's allness. This leaves evil without a place
to enact its delusions. It awakens the dreamer to the
emptiness of the material dream, and to the sufficiency of
God in all things.

Now, because we have a God of Love, He could ac-
cept nothing less than a perfect world. God could never

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YOU AND THE NEW WORLD

have created anything imperfect. If God had created a
world of war, hatred, and sin, He would not be a God
of Love. What then you may ask, is the world God cre-
ated? He had made a glorious heaven in our midst here,
and if we only closed our senses to this world we should
become aware of the real world.

This is a good day to be here, for in all history it is
nearest to the destruction and disappearance of the world
of evil, and the dawning of that morning when all shall
know the truth and be free. If we keep our gaze on the
clouds, they are all we shall see, but we know there is
sunshine and beauty and glory behind the clouds, how-
ever dark and threatening they may seem. The old world
of evil is dying reluctantly and hard, and that is what
all the fuss is about. It is far better for the world to be
roughly shaken out of its satisfaction with material pros-
perity for its own sake, and to be rudely awakened from
its dream of selfish power, than to sink into spiritual bank-
ruptcy.

Of course it would be much pleasanter to grow spir-
itually strong during the times of peace, if we only would ;
but it has been found that the storms of life are what
make men strong and courageous, not the warm sun and
the soft breezes. During these strenuous days men and
women have developed strength and faith and courage,

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HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

in whom years of prosperity had kept these qualities
largely hidden. If you feel inclined to rebel at the sore
trials of these days, think of the terrific pounding which
is necessary to free the kernels of grain from their en-
cumbering hulls. Times of great world trouble are neces-
sary to turn the thoughts of men to God; and we have
been passing through that very time.

A timely question to ask yourself, and one which you
should not leave until you are satisfied with the answer,
is, What kind of world do you believe you are living in?
You should refuse to be carried along by the current
of general belief, else you shall be subject to the same
condition as those who believe that "the world is very
evil." The mesmerism of mass opinion must be counter-
acted in your thoughts if you are to realize the freedom
of right thinkng.

If it were generally recognized that in God alone is the
key to world prosperity and peace, that only failure and
disaster are to be found in the opposite direction, there
would be such a turning to God as would both solve and
dissolve present difficulties and open the road to a new
world order. The so-called material world is not God's
world, even as the so-called physical man is not God's
man; what is seen in both of these cases represents hu-
man ignorance of the reality. If you believe in an evil

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YOU AND THE NEW WORLD

world that implies a corresponding ignorance of Truth,
or the reality of things. To live in ignorance of the reality
of things of the reality of Life, Love, is to live in a
fictitious state of thought, or in the realm of illusion.
That is a plain and logical conclusion which is undeni-
able.

The eventual outcome of the present world revolution
will be the acknowledgment and adoption of the divine
order. The old material world needs a new spiritual
vision; we need it. It is impossible for peace and goodwill
to reign in the earth until evil in men's minds is replaced
with a sense of good; but this will not be so long as the
claims of evil are believed and obeyed by mankind.

Professor Einstein in his theory of space and time says,
"It is not too much to say that the whole universe has
been created, and is being directed by Mind." Men of
science have long ago arrived at the conclusion that there
is a divine Mind behind the universe that is governing it.
When I insist that divine Mind is supreme in the uni-
verse, I do not mean to suggest that everything that hap-
pens in the world comes from Him. Many dreadful things
happen in the material world which He has never de-
creed. God is supreme over all He creates, and what He
creates is only good; not evil. We think of the terrible
disasters that happen in the earth involving the death and

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HOW TO FIND YOURSELF

suffering of thousands. We cannot believe that such
things are "acts of God"; because- we know that Love
does not so express itself.

And so it is your privilege to know that beneath the
fear, turmoil and panic of these days, "the Lord God
omnipotent reigneth," and the conditions which now
seem to exist, and which are so rampant, are only destroy-
ing themselves upon the rock of Truth. The loss of ma-
terial things does not lessen the value of your spiritual
possessions.

In the present conflict what is humanity's means of
resisting the attack against its liberty? Correctly analyz-
ing the nature of the attack, the defense against wrong
thinking is obviously in right thinking. In spite of the
many defects in our democratic system, basically it is
nearer right, than are those which would strive to over-
throw it. God is omnipotent. Even a glimpse of that truth
gives immense power, a fact which has been proved his-
torically time and again. Imbued with moral might and
the confidence it inspires, material means will be forth-
coming to deal with those material weapons which ap-
pear so formidable today, but first and foremost the
essential element of success is the lightness of our cause.
Unshakable confidence is an inevitable and natural
sequel.

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Let it be clearly recognized that this evil of mental ag-
gression is primarily aimed at destroying man's faith in
one God. In proportion to our adherence to the power of
God, in that degree is the insidious propaganda of de-
featism incapable of making us afraid or weak. We have
been given a great trust in our democratic institutions.
Let us prove faithful and we will assuredly see them firmly
established for the benefit of all mankind, for they are
built on the rock, eternal Principle.

Right thinking is essential if you wish to fully realize
these spiritual possessions. In these days, as the clouds
grow thicker and faith grows stronger, the world is pass-
ing through the birth pangs of a new era in human his-
tory. It is the dawn in consciousness of a new order to
material thinking, God's order. We are on the eve of
tremendous changes in the course of human develop-
ment. We have reached the great divide. Either human-
ity is going to slip back, or we are going forward to a
great freedom. Freedom from war, lack, fear, sickness,
greed, hatred and evil.

Go forward in faith, that you may possess the kingdom
of God here and now.

THE END