GIFT F 
 Gorge B.Allen 
 
 

The Voice Eternal 
 
 A SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 OF THE FINE ART OF 
 
 BEING WELL 
 
 By 
 
 Thomas Parker Boyd 
 
 Author of 
 The How and Why of the Emmanuel Movement" 
 
 THE "GOOD MEDICINE" BOOKS 
 No. 2 
 
 Berkeley, Cal. 
 
 THE EMMANUEL PRESS 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
 1912 
 
Copyright. 1912. 
 by Thomas Parker Boyd. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Preface 5 
 
 I. The Life Within 7 
 
 II. A Shining Pathway 15 
 
 III. The Good Medicine 23 
 
 IV. "The Pronoun of Power" 31 
 
 V. The Man on Crutches 43 
 
 VI. The Path of Least Resistance - - - - 54 
 
 VII. The Parable of the Christmas Tree - 65 
 
 VIII. The Last Thing in the World - - - - 73 
 
 IX. The Christ Within 81 
 
 X. The Spiritual Basis of Health - - - 94 
 
 XL The "Word" of Weil-Being - - - 108 
 
 XII. The Law of Suggestion 118 
 
 XIII. Material Accessories to Health - - - - 130 
 
 XIV. A New Generation 144 
 
 XV. Emotional Chemistry - 161 
 
 XVI. Formulas and Affirmations for Self Help 168 
 
 416524 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 r T 1 HE purpose of this book is to furnish a 
 statement of the Spiritual philosophy of life 
 with special reference to physical health, as 
 the author's book, "The How and Why of the 
 Emmanuel Movement" was a study of the mental 
 forces having to do with the same subject. 
 
 If any apology were needed for a new book it 
 could be found in the fact that every marked 
 advance in human welfare has had its literature, 
 so that those who could not enjoy the instruc- 
 tion and enthusiasm of its leaders might at least 
 be intelligently informed as to the underlying 
 principles and methods of the advance movement. 
 The multiplying of books in the new healing phil- 
 osophy of truth which has taken so strong a place 
 in modern religious ideas today is justified in the 
 fact that the same truth from a new view point, 
 or in differing phraseology, as it is projected 
 through different personalities, gives it an accept- 
 ance and helpfulness to many which it could not 
 otherwise have. 
 
 No claim is made for the originality of any 
 ideas here expressed. The substance of these 
 chapters have been given in the author's lectures, 
 to his classes, and to his patients until their help- 
 fulness has been clearly demonstrated, and many 
 urgent requests have been made to have them put 
 into more permanent and available form. 
 
 These chapters are sent forth in the hope that 
 they may bring help to a steadily increasing com- 
 pany of people in the church who are drifting 
 away in search of those material benefits upon 
 
^Preface 
 
 which so little emphasis has been laid by the 
 church that they have felt that the church no 
 longer offers them the comforts so much needed, 
 and which they feel they have a right to expect 
 in this strenuous age of living. Also to the other 
 class in the church whose loyalty to her who is 
 the mother of us all which will not allow them to 
 wander afield in search of the truth and help 
 they need, and who suffer needlessly because they 
 cannot give up so much that is tried and true 
 for that which is not tested by time. The purpose 
 is to interpret the truth in the language of mod- 
 ern thought so that these good people may see that 
 every blessing of the good God, both temporal and 
 spiritual, is available right where they are with- 
 out the necessity of forsaking the leadership of 
 the trained ministers of religion for that of self- 
 appointed vendors of vagaries, and without de- 
 priving themselves of the advice of trained phy- 
 sicians which they often need. Many of the medi- 
 cal profession are using more and more the agen- 
 cies of mental and spiritual forces, and their con- 
 tributions to the advance of a sound mental ther- 
 apeutics is known to anyone who cares to know, 
 although it is usually marked by a conservatism 
 born probably of an instinctive distrust of illog- 
 ical statement and unreasoning enthusiasm. If 
 these purposes are served the author will feel 
 amply repaid for the effort. 
 
 THOMAS PARKER BOYD. 
 BERKELEY, CAL., 1912. 
 
The Voice Eternal. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE LIFE WITHIN. 
 
 LOVE of life is the primal impulse. 
 Self-preservation is the first law of 
 nature. "As thyself" is the final test of 
 man's noblest impulse love. The record 
 of Earth's greatest example of altruism 
 does not suppress the fact that it was 
 "for the joy that was set before him" 
 that "he endured the cross." Existence 
 is sweet, and if we consent to its limita- 
 tion in one sphere it is with the distinct 
 understanding that it will have propor- 
 tionally larger action in another sphere, 
 for the abundant life is the flying goal 
 toward which we move. This instinct for 
 complete life is constitutional with us; 
 we can no more deny it than we can deny 
 ourselves. The pilgrim across the world 
 of sense and sensation voices only one 
 cry "life." And what is life? The 
 answer varies according to one's experi- 
 ence of living. "It is a vapour," answers 
 one. " It is the response to environment, ' ' 
 
8 The Voice Eternal 
 
 says another. "It is to know God/ 7 is the 
 response of still another. "It is the grati- 
 fication of every impulse/' "It is only 
 good morning, good night, and good bye" 
 are other answers. "Life is a mode of 
 motion," says my scientific friend. And 
 what is motion? "A manifestation of 
 force." And what is force? "Active 
 energy ' ' and that ? ' 4 The unseen poten- 
 tiality that fills and constitutes all things 
 an universal substance out of which all 
 material things appear, and back into 
 which they disappear as unseen elements 
 of energy that defy analysis. Of this in- 
 finitely extended substance all things are 
 made and by it they consist." Now this 
 view harmonizes with the statement of 
 that ancient theologian and philosopher 
 who said, "The things which are seen 
 were not made of things which do ap- 
 pear"; and furthermore, "The things 
 which are seen are temporal, but the 
 things which are not seen are eternal." To 
 this infinite substance acting with benefi- 
 cent purpose and intelligent procedure, 
 we attribute personality, and say, "of him 
 are all things." Call it Infinite sub- 
 stance, or mind, or spirit, it is the source 
 
The Life Within 9 
 
 and the goal of existence. We came from 
 it. We return to it. In this excursion 
 out from it we find set all the elements 
 of a drama, ranging all the way from 
 the comic to the tragic, accordingly as we 
 take life's shifting scenes too lightly or 
 too seriously. It takes most people a life- 
 time to discover that, to our senses, things 
 stand in inverse ratio to their reality and 
 value. To our sense-perception, matter 
 and its associated sensations of ease, pain, 
 pleasure, etc., are the dominant things, 
 while to mental and spiritual perceptions, 
 mind with its attendant products of 
 thought and truth are the supreme facts. 
 Matter is changing and transient, but 
 substance or spirit is unchanging and 
 eternal. 
 
 And this Infinite substance, spirit, 
 mind, life, the source and content of all 
 things, is one. It exhibits itself in myriad 
 forms, but be it star or stone, herb, bird, 
 or man, it is one life, one substance. Just 
 as the ocean whose substance fills, and 
 whose heart-throb pulsates throughout 
 every gulf, bay, cove, and strait, leaving 
 each its individuality and relative impor- 
 tance, according to the volume of ocean 
 
10 The Voice Eternal 
 
 it expresses, yet retaining its claim on 
 each as part of the whole, so does this 
 Infinite substance find form and expres- 
 sion in innumerable individual cases, each 
 important according to the degree of the 
 Infinite life finding expression, yet each 
 a part of the One life. And the law of 
 expressing the Infinite life divides these 
 individuals into many varieties of being. 
 For example, the living rock obeys one 
 part of the law of expression, and it has 
 inertia or rest. The worm obeys two parts 
 of the law, and it adds motion to its ex- 
 pression of life. The bird obeys three 
 parts of the law and adds flight and song ; 
 and the more complex the organism, the 
 greater number of laws it can obey, the 
 higher is the order of life, because the 
 larger and richer is the expression and 
 experience of the infinite life. Now man, 
 the most complex of all material organ- 
 isms, can respond to more of these laws, 
 and hence gives the most complete ex- 
 pression of the Infinite life, for above 
 the animal kind, he adds reason, judg- 
 ment, imagination, faith, hope, love, and 
 other attributes and qualities of the di- 
 vine life unknown save in elemental forms 
 
The Life Within 11 
 
 to the lower orders of existence. Now 
 these faculties go to make up the image 
 of the Creator within us, and these moral 
 and spiritual qualities are concrete ex- 
 pressions in us of the divine character 
 which must otherwise remain a dreamy 
 abstraction. 
 
 There is nothing in us that we did not 
 receive from the Infinite source, "the Fa- 
 ther of the spirits of all flesh." Nothing- 
 has been evolved in man, nor will be, that 
 was not involved in the first living cell. 
 Our entire equipment for expressing the 
 divine life, together with "the power both 
 to will and to do" is of that Infinite sub- 
 stance whose image we are. Yet because 
 of the accident of time or place or condi- 
 tion of birth, the influence of heredity, or 
 other causes, few of us express it in equal 
 degree. We have to confess that one man 
 manifests more of the divine life than 
 another, because he furnishes, consciously 
 or otherwise, a better channel through 
 which the divine life may flow. He has 
 more avenues of expression, and is able 
 to keep them open, and hence is a better 
 medium through which the divine life 
 may speak. Or to use a technical figure 
 
12 The Voice Eternal 
 
 of commercial life, as the amperage and 
 voltage one having reference to the vol- 
 ume and the other to the intensity of the 
 electric current determine the action 
 and results of that subtle force, so in a 
 life of large endowment, of many gifts, 
 of ten talents, the amperage is large, and 
 the possibilities for expression of the di- 
 vine life are great; but if the voltage is 
 low, the sense of duty is blunted, the esti- 
 mation of privilege is small, the aim of 
 life is ignoble, then the dynamics of the 
 will are inoperative and the results are 
 small. If in another the amperage is 
 small, the capacity limited, the gifts few, 
 yet the voltage is high, sense of duty ex- 
 alted, ideals noble, purposes inflexible, 
 then the dynamics of the will enable him 
 to blaze and burn his way through the 
 world like a live wire of Omnipotence 
 that he is. Such accomplish more, mani- 
 fest more of the divine life than the large 
 amperage, but low voltage people. But 
 does the ten-talent man, large amperage, 
 have correspondingly high voltage, we 
 shall find such an expression of the divine 
 life as to brand him a genius, and write 
 his name in the gallery of the immortals. 
 
The Life Within 13 
 
 In other words, the endowments of a 
 man's life are things determined outside 
 of himself. His native qualifications come 
 into life with him, but the potency of his 
 life for results is determined within him- 
 self. The development of his gifts to 
 their utmost capacity, the cultivation of 
 nobility of purpose, the concentration of 
 his energies to the chosen tasks, in 
 fact, all that means the mastery of self, 
 and the mastery of the world forces 
 about him, are contained in the sov- 
 ereignty of his own will. With the am- 
 perage of life he has no concern, with 
 its voltage he has everything to do. He 
 can do anything that he wants to do and 
 believes that he can do, the very fact that 
 he feels the impulse being the sure sign 
 that the life within him inspires the de- 
 sire, and at the same time promises the 
 power of fulfillment. He can be anything 
 he desires, for his desire is the longing 
 of the Infinite life to find expression 
 through him in that special way. He has 
 only to call out the forces of the life with- 
 in and set them to the task, knowing that 
 " faithful is he that hath promised who 
 also will do it." And herein lies the solu- 
 
14 The Voice Eternal 
 
 tion to the riddle of existence To take 
 a part of the Infinite life, give it individu- 
 ality by incarnating it in human flesh, 
 multiplying and projecting it through hu- 
 man personality, polishing and refining it 
 through the vicissitudes of material en- 
 vironment, until it comes to express so 
 much of the Infinite character that to 
 have seen it is to have seen God. And it 
 must be held as a cardinal principle that 
 the capacity to express life is an expan- 
 sive thing, as surely as the power to do 
 so is a cumulative force. The latent pos- 
 sibilities of divinity are in us awaiting the 
 task of development. They are unlimited, 
 so that a man knows not what he shall 
 be, but if he accepts his task and does it, 
 he shall be like God. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE SHINING PATHWAY. 
 
 LIFE is not stationary, nor can be. The 
 living body is forever changing by 
 the ceaseless vibrations of the life within. 
 The mental powers are forever built up 
 or depleted by the thoughts that flow from 
 them, and the truth that is discovered by 
 them, and that reacts upon them. The 
 bronze figure that stands in the midst of 
 the park fountain through whose uplifted 
 fingers a stream of water rises until it 
 breaks into a mist and falls to the pool 
 below, is a picture of a human life through 
 which the tides of the divine life with its 
 truth and power move forever onward. 
 They make no tarrying. Certain by- 
 products which go to make up character 
 abide, and even character is a progres- 
 sive thing. 
 
 To build up and preserve his body man 
 uses the material forms that are com- 
 pounds of the infinite substance. In the 
 using it yields up certain elements of life 
 that keep the body living. The food he 
 eats, the water he drinks, the air 
 he breathes, all are yielding up their life 
 
16 The Voice Eternal 
 
 to him. This is everywhere true, for the 
 living rock yields up its life to the soil, 
 the soil yields up its life to vegetation, 
 vegetation in turn to the animal, and the 
 animal yields up its life to man, and man 
 yields up his life to and for his fellow, and 
 this but illustrates the method by which 
 the Infinite life ministers to man of its 
 boundless store, and expresses itself in his 
 body, disclosing a shining pathway up 
 which man moves to God, for the mental 
 and spiritual life are ministered after the 
 same principle. Not only was man a 
 thought before he was a thinker but he 
 continues to have his growing mental life 
 by feeding on the living truths which 
 other men have discovered, and for which 
 they have laid dow r n their lives, and also 
 on those which he discovers by responding 
 to the vibrations of that Infinite life with- 
 in him, and for which he is ready to lay 
 down his life. All his emotions, finer feel- 
 ings, aspirations, and longing, and the 
 more spiritual activities are responses to 
 the stimulus of the divine character find- 
 ing expression in him. We are now ready 
 to quote, with the assurance of its mean- 
 ing and truth, a saying of the apostle, 
 
The Shining Pathway 17 
 
 "In God we live and move and have our 
 being." Man lives out his life in the life 
 of God, and he cannot live apart from 
 him. His business in the world is to ex- 
 press the human life in the terms of God. 
 That is his task, although he may make 
 sorry work of it. He may turn his divin- 
 ity to diabolism, but he can never success- 
 fully deny his birthright, nor permanently 
 quench the flame of the divine life, for God 
 cannot die, nor can these divine attributes 
 be so stifled or eradicated that they will 
 not rise again to struggle for mastery, 
 and at last find perfect expression. We 
 are living out our lives in the life of God. 
 Now the converse of the foregoing is 
 also true. God lives out his life in the life 
 of the world and all things therein, his 
 highest expression being man. As the 
 mountain is w r orn down by erosion until 
 the granite becomes the soil of the valley, 
 clothed with vegetation, radiant with 
 color, fragrant with odors and golden 
 with fruitage, so is the material expres- 
 sion of divinity moved up into its highest 
 form, man, and on him and through him 
 the divine life plays until his ani- 
 malism, and crudities, and credulities, are 
 
18 The Voice Eternal 
 
 smoothed out, and his human conscious- 
 ness blooms out into God-consciousness, 
 and the fruits of the living spirit in him 
 are manifest. It may sound easy, but the 
 process is difficult. God is not having a 
 good time. It has taken heat and cold, 
 earthquakes and aeons of time to get the 
 earth ready to manifest forth men, and 
 he has been a long time trying to wrestle 
 the world of men up to princedom, and 
 although the task is slow, the end is sure. 
 In every age some man has attained it, 
 such as Enoch, who walked with God, 
 Abraham, who was a friend of God, and 
 Jacob, who was a prince of God. 
 
 To make the thought still more definite 
 and significant, it is said at least three 
 times in the Old Testament that "God 
 clothed himself with a man," in each case 
 for a specific purpose, and also to show 
 to their generation, and to us, what God 
 can do for a man who comes to realize his 
 own divine nature, and will allow the In- 
 finite life of God to have full expression 
 in him. The tragedy of it is that few of 
 us accept our birthright in all that 
 it means, and fewer still are bold enough 
 to enter into and claim our heritage of 
 
The Shining Pathway 19 
 
 God dwelling in us. For in very truth 
 he lives out his life in the life of the world 
 and of man. In us he lives and moves 
 and has his being. It is in the sons of men 
 that the divine life finds perfect expres- 
 sion in the terms of humanity. Divine love, 
 and pity, and compassion, and all other 
 similar qualities are, and must remain, 
 unknown quantities to us save as we see 
 and know them in the lives of men with 
 whom God clothes himself. 
 
 The great teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, 
 kept before his disciples the secret of that 
 life of his, so simple in its setting and so 
 marvelous in its power, by repeatedly de- 
 claring that the words which he spoke and 
 the works which he did, were not his but 
 his Father's. Now as God clothed himself 
 with that man of Nazareth, and made him 
 to manifest forth the oneness of the hu- 
 man and the divine life, so Jesus prayed 
 that his disciples might realize their one- 
 ness with God as he realized it, Yet with 
 all the perversity of human misunder- 
 standing, we misread the words and try to 
 foster a oneness with our fellows which is 
 impossible until we first realize our one- 
 ness with God, which in the mind of Jesus 
 
20 The Voice Eternal 
 
 was of supreme importance. This alone 
 could enable them to do the work that he 
 did, and even greater works than he did, 
 so the burden of his most wonderful re- 
 corded prayer was for the realization of 
 this oneness. Here, then, is an enigma 
 in the mathematics of spiritual life, that 
 one and one make one, never more, never 
 less, and He is the one, or you are the one 
 as you have the boldness to claim it. This 
 is a flying goal. Man never is, but al- 
 ways to be blest. 
 
 Of all those qualities of character that 
 place the stamp of the divine charactei 
 upon man, such as love, joy, peace, pa- 
 tience, etc., few of us bring to any degree 
 of perfection more than one or two. Of 
 all man's forty and more faculties only 
 one, two or three at most reach any degree 
 of perfection or fruition in this sphere of 
 existence, but we see enough to know what 
 we shall be, when perfect oneness is real- 
 ized and manifested, when every divine 
 quality shall find perfect expression, and 
 every faculty shall reach its zenith, mani- 
 festing the power that worketh in us, for 
 it discloses a shining pathway of attain- 
 ment which shall share here and hereafter 
 
The Shining Pathway 21 
 
 the throne of the divine power. Here, be<- 
 cause the consciousness of this divine dig- 
 nity begins here, "Beloved now are we 
 the Sons of God, and it doth not yet ap- 
 pear what we shall be, but we know that 
 we shall be like him when he shall ap- 
 pear." Now this appearance is not some 
 flaming apparition in the sky, appealing 
 to the optic nerve, but rather a subjective 
 apprehension by the person who believes 
 God to be the Supreme Good, and hon- 
 estly desires to know him, that he may car- 
 ry out his perfect will. Of such said Je- 
 sus, "Blessed are the pure in heart for 
 they shall see God." Seeing God, he sees 
 everything else in its true proportions. He 
 sees in himself the image of God. He 
 knows that his character, his purposes, 
 and his whole life are at one with God. He 
 sees that divine image in every man. Lov- 
 ing God he must love his image. Hatred 
 can no longer have a place in him. Fear 
 is cast out by a perfect love. Now are 
 we the sons of God. \ 
 
 A Sunday school teacher described the 
 character of Jesus of Nazareth without 
 calling his name and asked her class who it 
 was, was surprised when one little hand 
 
22 The Voice Eternal 
 
 went up and one little voice said, " That's 
 my mamma it sounds just like her." The 
 child was right for he was "the express 
 image of God's person" and so was 
 mother, for the pure mind of the child 
 could see no difference between the love 
 of God exhibited in mother and the love 
 of God in Jesus of Nazareth, for the sim- 
 ple reason that there is no difference. "It 
 doth not appear what we shall be." The 
 perfect manifestation is here in Its incep- 
 tion, and hereafter in its completeness. 
 All of man's faculties are to be 
 brought to completeness. For that 
 purpose all the years of time and 
 the aeons of eternity are God's and ours. 
 All the worlds now and to be, all the poten- 
 cies now at work and yet to unfold are for 
 this one thing, to bring man to full God- 
 likeness. We have entered a way of prog- 
 ress that has no limit to its advance, a 
 shining pathway through the earth and 
 heaven that has no noontide height from 
 which to slowly and sadly decline but that 
 moves onward and upward to the throne of 
 God, and the perfect day. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE GOOD MEDICINE 
 
 A MAN there was who had lost sight of 
 his parentage and lived for years as 
 an orphan. One day he had an invasion 
 of divine joy when he learned that his 
 father, a wealthy and benevolent man, still 
 lived and yearned for his son that he 
 might bestow upon him the things that 
 were his by right. And the dawn of this 
 truth of the indwelling life of God, the 
 inherent oneness of all life in Him, not 
 only brings to the mind a joy that "doeth 
 good like a medicine," but it ushers in the 
 full day of an heritage which alone is 
 adequate to meet the demands of the life 
 within us. 
 
 Having accepted the fact of his divine 
 heritage, and having fully satisfied him- 
 self as to his title, he begins to take an in- 
 ventory of its content. The first of these 
 is that God is love, truth, health, peace, 
 power, plenty, and that hatred, fear, false- 
 hood, sickness, disease, weakness, and pov- 
 erty can have no place in the perfectly 
 manifested life of the Infinite God. Apart 
 from his material forms of expression, 
 
24 The Voice Eternal 
 
 God is not sick, neither has he pain, nor 
 disease, nor any such thing. 
 
 In connection with this process of work- 
 ing out the Infinite life into material ex- 
 pression, we have to accept the patent fact 
 of pain and disease of the body and dis- 
 tempers of the mind. We can no more 
 deny the fact of them than we can deny 
 the reality of earthquakes in rending the 
 earth's crust and upheaving mountains, 
 or the reality of the pain caused by the 
 tooth of time in wearing do\vn those moun- 
 tains into fertile valleys, ready for rich 
 harvests. We may turn an intellectual 
 somersault and deny the reality of pain, 
 by denying the reality of the material 
 forms in which pain is felt. Let it be 
 granted for a moment that the seen things 
 are temporal, it does not alter the fact 
 that they are forms of expression of the 
 Infinite Substance or Life, and their real- 
 ity cannot be questioned even though their 
 forms change or disappear. And even if 
 our philosophy could persuade us of the 
 non-reality of pain, our experiences of 
 toothache, ague, or ptomaine poisoning are 
 sufficient to smash our ideal philosophy, 
 unless we have lost the rational faculties. 
 
The Good Medicine 25 
 
 We have to accept pain, etc., as inev- 
 itable attendants upon the transformation 
 going on in the material life of God round 
 about us and in us. And this fact becomes 
 at once an interpretation of our experien- 
 ces and a challenge to us to accept and en- 
 ter upon our heritage. This was evidently 
 the view of St. Paul when he said, "For 
 we know that the whole creation groaneth 
 and travaileth together in pain till now 
 . . . waiting for the manifestation of the 
 Sons of God." Everywhere there is the 
 challenge to move up to higher expression 
 of divine life, and always that movement 
 is attended with pain. Take the seed you 
 plant in the springtime in the soft, warm 
 loam of earth. It is a life bound up by a 
 shell, narrow and limited. Pretty soon 
 sun and rain and the influences of the 
 earth move upon it, and the life within the 
 seed hears the call to come up into higher 
 life expression, and there is such a re- 
 sponse that at last it can be no longer 
 bound, and there comes the pain of a new 
 birth, the seed splits its shell and comes 
 forth out of littleness and narrowness to 
 larger expression of life in beauty, fra- 
 grance, and fruitage. So a bird's egg moves 
 
26 The Voice Eternal 
 
 up from a life within a shell into the larg- 
 er expression of life as found in song and 
 flight, but it is attended by the agony of a 
 birth. Now man himself is a creature of 
 time, of the senses, and of animalism. His 
 experiences are mostly of his material life. 
 One day there begins to play upon the life 
 within him the truth that makes men free 
 through a song, a prayer, a beautiful ser- 
 vice, or a good life, until he hears the call 
 of the divine life and there comes the hour 
 of decision, the agony of a new birth, and 
 he becomes a citizen of eternity conscious 
 of the indwelling God. 
 
 At every step of this moving upward 
 into larger life, from seed to man, pain is 
 seen to be an attendant fact. The seed or 
 bird or man could well say, " Thank you 
 pain; by you I have come into higher, 
 larger life." Pain and disease may be 
 results, but they are not punishments. 
 Rather shall we think of them as signal 
 calls announcing wrong conditions and 
 challenging us to move up out of them. 
 They are things we have received from 
 our ancestors ; or have inherited from past 
 years of wrong thinking and wrong living ; 
 or violations of the laws of life, consciously 
 
The Good Medicine 27 
 
 or otherwise, whose penalties have staid 
 with us over-long because we did not learn 
 their meaning, till they have become en- 
 throned in us and obsessed us, and having 
 some psychic quality, they refuse to "go 
 out into the deep" without a struggle, or 
 a mighty, authoritative command. 
 
 Accepting the heritage of your oneness 
 with the Infinite life, talk with yourself : 
 "Why pain? God who dwelleth in me has 
 not pain, nor is he sick, nor has he dis- 
 ease. If I have it, it is the infallible symp- 
 tom that the Infinite life is leading up to 
 some higher expression of itself that as 
 yet it does not fully manifest within me. 
 There is some obstruction in heart, mind, 
 will, or imagination, that impedes the full 
 tides of the Infinite life with His resistless 
 health and perfect peace. It is a call to 
 prepare for a fuller invasion of the divine 
 life. The obstruction must be found and 
 removed. It may be error of thought or 
 action, one or both. I set myself now to 
 the task of setting to right the inner re- 
 cesses of my life, so that there shall be 
 perfect harmony with the divine life, and 
 hence perfect health." 
 
 In this process of opening up the chan- 
 
28 The Voice Eternal 
 
 nels for the flow of the Infinite life, there 
 is as much to unlearn as to learn. A good 
 memory is invaluable, while a good f orget- 
 tery is above the price of rubies. The 
 trouble is that we forget the things w r e 
 should remember, and vice versa. Let us 
 now unlearn some things. Most of our 
 ideas of right and wrong have been learned 
 under the tutelage of "Thou shalt not." 
 As long as we live under this negative mo- 
 tive, we invite fear and worry and the 
 whole brood of attendant ills ; and under 
 the reign of fear, the things we fear sooner 
 or later come upon us. Our fear is the 
 invitation to them to come in and stay. 
 We need to shift our point of view, the 
 motiving of our acts over to the positive 
 side of things. "Thou shalt" is the posi- 
 tive, constructive side of the divine law 
 that makes love and not fear the motive, 
 and this is the highest expression of the 
 divine life within you "God is Love." 
 Dwelling here in the motive of love, you 
 can stand at the gates of the City of Man's 
 Soul and meet all such visitors as fear and 
 worry, with such calmness and assurance 
 of the presence of Infinite love and peace 
 and power that they will vanish away and 
 leave you in peace. 
 
The Good Medicine 29 
 
 And this impelling force of love will not 
 be a passing spasm of emotional joy, but 
 a glorious joy of service, a sense of divine 
 right and place in the world. The common- 
 est task becomes clothed with the charac- 
 ter of a sacrament ; work will have a new 
 dignity; rest a new refreshment; sleep 
 a sublime renewing; eating^ will be no 
 longer a bolting of things down with just 
 enough chewing to keep the food from 
 scratching the skin off the throat, or for 
 mere gustatory pleasure, but a process 
 whose thoroughness measures an imparta- 
 tion of the divine life. Keeping the laws 
 of life will not be a perfunctory winning a 
 bonbon, or "getting home to heaven/ 7 but 
 the spontaneous action of love that finds 
 obedience to the law the only means of per- 
 fectly expressing the divine life in us. 
 
 Prepare then for this invasion of love, 
 health, peace, and power by opening every 
 avenue of life for the flood tides of the In- 
 finite Being. Put away fear, worry, 
 doubt, tradition, negatives and self- 
 limitations of every kind. Replace 
 them with positives. Do it now. If 
 you have accepted the fact of your 
 oneness with the Infinite life, yet do 
 
30 The Voice Eternal 
 
 not realize the experience of its perfect 
 peace and power and health, do not try to 
 force these any more than you would try 
 to force darkness out of a room. Calmly 
 hold before your mind seven times a day 
 this perfect ideal as yours by right and 
 choice, and that must be yours by realiza- 
 tion if you earnestly desire, fully believe, 
 and firmly will it so to be; and just as 
 sunlight presses upon the world to replace 
 the darkness with light, so does the 
 Infinite press upon you from every side, 
 through every avenue to banish pain and 
 disease and gloom and fear and worry, 
 by filling you with ease and peace and joy 
 and hope and cheerfulness. Just " clear 
 the darkened windows" darkened by 
 fear and doubt and error "and let the 
 blessed sunlight in." The truth is, most 
 people who fail to enter into a realization 
 of oneness with the Infinite do so because 
 they have been too busy looking for some 
 imaginary line to cross that divides the 
 human from the divine. There is no line 
 in fact. Let a man calmly accept the fact, 
 claim the fact, declare it, and he will in- 
 evitably pass out of human-consciousness 
 into God-consciousness. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 "THE PRONOUN OF POWER." 
 
 THIS is the age of Egoism gone to seed ; 
 the assertion of the ego as the most 
 important thing in the world; the adjust- 
 ment of all facts to the self ; the converg- 
 ing of all the lines of perspective to find 
 a common point in the self. Just what 
 this self is has not been determined. It 
 refuses to go under the microscope, or sub- 
 mit to chemical analysis or mental solu- 
 tion. But it does submit to be talked about, 
 and so pleasant is that experience, that it 
 proceeds to talk about itself. It is ludi- 
 crous to hear a neurasthenic dwell upon 
 his woes and ills and troubles, real or im- 
 aginary mostly the latter. One might 
 smile were not the havoc wrought so pa- 
 thetic. But egotism, this thing of dwelling 
 so much on oneself, is a common fault with 
 a multitude who are not classed as "nerv- 
 ous. ' ' Nothing bores any of us so much as 
 to have someone insist on talking about 
 himself, when we want to talk about our- 
 selves. And egotism reaches the limit of 
 sufferance when it takes on an air of mock 
 humility and the language of pious cant, 
 
32 The Voice Eternal 
 
 and talks in public and private of "poor 
 unworthy me," and "I'm a poor, weak 
 worm of the dust." They tell the truth, 
 and as long as they think and talk that 
 way, they will stay that way. 
 
 Now egoism may also pave the way to 
 your real part and place in the world. 
 Lift up your head, put out your chest, 
 walk a little heavier on your heels, accept 
 your nature, character, and destiny as 
 divine. Let your egoism find vent in union 
 with the Infinite Ego. Take your place in 
 the world as a son of God. As one in whose 
 flesh and life God walks among men. Does 
 it seem a far cry from what you actually 
 realize and manifest of this incarnate life, 
 to what the ideal is? To what you may 
 be? It is only a seeming. The distance 
 is a creation of your own thought. The 
 earthliness of your humanity makes such 
 a racket, that you cannot hear the voice, 
 nor realize the nearness and reality of 
 your divinity. 
 
 It took the impetuous, fiery Moses, forty 
 years at the onerous and lonesome task of 
 herding sheep, before he could get himself 
 still enough to hear the voice of the "I 
 am that I am" within him. While egoism 
 
'The Pronoun of Power" 33 
 
 the "I am' 7 of Moses is the limit of his 
 progress in consciousness, he is still, and 
 only, the "Son of Pharoah's daughter/' 
 But when, after long years in the 
 solitudes, his self-consciousness became 
 merged into the consciousness of God, and 
 he could hear the voice within him saying, 
 "I am that I am," he ceased to be called 
 the Son of Pharoah's daughter, for he had 
 become the mouthpiece, the incarnated 
 presence and power of Jehovah's personal- 
 ity, ready and comissioned to deliver Is- 
 rael. From that hour, in every time of 
 perplexity, he had only to call upon this 
 Infinite life within himself, to realize that 
 Infinite resources were at hand to divide 
 a sea, to feed a multitude, or to shake a 
 kingdom. 
 
 The only safety valve for this exagger- 
 ated self -consciousness which today pos- 
 sesses the world of rational men, is 
 to merge it into God-consciousness ; to let 
 the egoism the "I am" be lost in the 
 Infinite Ego the ' ' I am that I am. ' ' And 
 why should you wait forty years for the 
 fiery passions of life to die out, or even 
 for forty days, to realize the "I am that 
 I am" within you? You need not seek 
 
34 The Voice Eternal 
 
 the silence of the desert, nor the seclusion 
 of the cloister. Follow the directions of 
 the Master who taught us the secret of 
 oneness with the Father. "Enter into thy 
 closet, and when thoii hast shut thy door." 
 You will not hear this great voice of the 
 spirit speak at first save in the solitude. 
 You must find time daily alone. Into this 
 aloneness you may not take your dearest 
 earthly friend. After a while you will 
 learn to hear the voice within in the midst 
 of any tumult ; but at first you must enter 
 in and shut the door. Wherever you are, 
 as you read this line, enter now this great 
 within, close up the eyes, ears, and all the 
 doors of sense. You can do it. Have you 
 not had your attention so engrossed on 
 some magnificent scene, or some work of 
 art, that you did not hear your friend 
 at your elbow speak; or have you not 
 been listening to something or "thinking" 
 and passed your friend on the street, look- 
 ing straight at him with no sign of recog- 
 nition, and "come to" with a start after 
 you had passed? So abstract your mind 
 away from the things of time and sense, 
 enter into this dumb house, insulated, and 
 isolated, and be still! Contemplate your 
 
"The Pronoun of Power" 35 
 
 divine birthright, to realize and manifest 
 the fulness of the Infinite life. Pass up 
 the path trod by prophets and seers in 
 every age, "take off thy shoes from thy 
 feet," let your approach be so reverent 
 and trustful, that it needs give no warning 
 of approach. Walk up and stand before 
 God. Bathe your spirit in His Infinite 
 life and peace and love and health. See in 
 him as in a mirror your own true self. 
 Settle here for yourself that old conflict 
 that nearly rent the early Christian church 
 namely, is this living God, before whom 
 you stand, the same substance of which 
 you are made, or just like it, but not the 
 same? In Greek there is but an ' 'iota's" 
 difference in expressing it, but to you it 
 means the difference of being a son or an 
 alien. Tarry here until the "I am" is lost 
 in the greater "I am that I am." Then 
 with your oneness assured, return to your 
 earthly walk, in full possession of all the 
 resources for health and wealth, for power 
 and service, for "thy Father which seeth 
 in secret shall reward thee openly." 
 Henceforth the works that you do are not 
 yours, but "thy Father's." These vast 
 resources are not yours, nor for your sake, 
 
36 The Voice Eternal 
 
 but they are rather given for the perfect 
 manifestation of the Infinite life for your 
 own and for others' welfare. This is the 
 first degree of the Abundant Life, and its 
 password is, "I am that I am." 
 
 It was said of Jesus that "he spake as 
 one having authority." He didn't argue, 
 nor try to prove anything. No intellec- 
 tual heat is apparent in the tremendous 
 truths he uttered. He didn't seem to dis- 
 cover any new truth by logical process, 
 but he did speak what he himself was, 
 and having announced the truth, he let 
 men do what they would with it. The po- 
 tency of his words lay in the fact that they 
 were not his, but the God's who sent him. 
 They were not what he thought, but what 
 he was. And with the consciousness of his 
 oneness with God, there came the sense of 
 authority to speak, and "it was done"; 
 to command, and "it stood fast." Deaf 
 ears heard at his touch, blind eyes opened 
 at his word, the lame man leaped as an 
 hart, and the tongue of the dumb spake. 
 Even the elements obeyed his command. 
 With that consciousness of oneness there 
 was never a moment's hesitation. "Take 
 up thy bed and walk" "I will, be thou 
 
'The Pronoun of Power" 37 
 
 clean." The omnipotent "I can," had its 
 seat of authority in him, because God 
 dwelt in him, and he knew and asserted 
 it with all that it meant. Just when this 
 oneness became a fact is not so important 
 as when he became conscious of the fact. 
 And that is the supreme moment to us all. 
 Sooner or later the time comes when we 
 accept and enter into our divine heritage, 
 and we see something of what lies before 
 us. There is the break with bigotry and 
 narrowness ; the going forth to a world of 
 divine men, most of whom do not know it, 
 and will not receive it, and like swine, on 
 whose level they live, will turn and rend 
 you when you have cast this pearl of truth 
 before them. Facing such a career, more 
 than one man has said, "Mine hour is not 
 yet come." Yet the hour arrives when 
 perplexed men appeal to you, when the 
 hungry must be fed, the thirsty given 
 drink, the needy helped, the diseased and 
 pain-ridden and obsessed must be set free, 
 and you will face the great question 
 "Can I manifest the divine *I am' in this 
 case?" Your hour is come, and the "I 
 am that I am" of Infinite potentiality be- 
 comes the "I can" of achievement. At 
 
38 The Voice Eternal 
 
 your touch pain will depart, at your word 
 of comfort sorrow will flee away; your 
 hand shall wipe away the tears, and at 
 your word of command the devils of psy- 
 chic obsession will make haste to depart ; 
 and you will so manifest the power of God 
 that you will realize that you have passed 
 into the second degree of the Life More 
 Abundant, whose password is "/ can/' 
 
 Pause here for a moment. Enter the 
 chamber of reflection. Ponder the mean- 
 ing of the resources that are yours. Im- 
 agination cannot sound the height and 
 depth of the "I am that I am" and "I 
 can" to which you have attained. And 
 here a voice will speak to you and say: 
 "If this be true, if you be the Son of 
 God, if you have a divine gift, if the ful- 
 ness of divine life dwells in you, you can 
 command that these stones be made bread. 
 Sell out this gift for bread. Business is 
 business, and you can make money out 
 of this power. ' ' Will you sell out, or will 
 you answer : "I cannot live by bread alone. 
 There are other things as important and 
 these I should lose if I sold out for bread." 
 Before you answer, recall that "all things 
 are yours, and you are Christ's and Christ 
 
"The Pronoun of Power" 39 
 
 is God's." Then why should you barter 
 this divine gift for something that is po- 
 tentially yours already, but the complete 
 and full possession of which might prove 
 a handicap to higher service. 
 
 Again will a voice say to you: "If di- 
 vine power is in you, if you have a gift of 
 God, make a display of it. Set the multi- 
 tudes agape with the wonders you can 
 show them, make a show of yourself it 
 doesn't matter what you do, you cannot 
 fail." Be careful here. Remember that 
 one who "did not many mighty works" in 
 a certain place, "because of their unbe- 
 lief. ' ' All results are conditioned on some- 
 thing. Even God might fail if he violated 
 the conditions of the operation of his own 
 laws. Spectacular as were some of the 
 works of Jesus, the demand for him to do 
 them for "show" was ever met with the 
 answer: "There shall no sign be given." 
 
 And the tempter will say once more: 
 "Granted that you are a Son of God, that 
 you and God are one, that the Infinite 'I 
 am' dwells in you is you call it by some 
 other name, fall down and worship the 
 traditions of the past, the accepted order 
 of things. Why should you choose the 
 
40 The Voice Eternal 
 
 cross of persecution that the pharisees of 
 sectarianism will lay upon you? Why 
 court the derision of the doctors of medi- 
 cine, by presuming to live in health, or 
 even to die without their assistance? 
 Choose an easier way. ' ' Here then is your 
 final test. Will you claim your birthright 
 and call it by its right name, and in that 
 name go forth to manifest its power ? Look 
 at your motive. Do you desire perfect 
 health, that you may fully manifest the 
 Infinite health, and that you may serve in 
 full vigor, ministering health to others? 
 Do you desire the Peace of God, so that 
 dwelling in perfect peace you may speak 
 the word of peace to the troubled ones of 
 earth? Do you desire wealth that you 
 may have leisure to serve and means to 
 lighten the load of the heavy-laden? Do 
 these motives seem to you worthy of one 
 who can say, "I am that I am?" If so, 
 then speak that word that spoke worlds 
 into existence, bringing order out of 
 chaos, and man out of dust the word 
 upon which pivots your whole future des- 
 tiny "I will" and enter the third de- 
 gree of the most Abundant Life, of which 
 "I will" is the password. 
 
"The Pronoun of Power" 41 
 
 Let these words, "I am," "I can," "I 
 will," be the one triune potentiality be- 
 fore which you bow and say: "Whose I 
 am, and whom I serve." For these are 
 the words that marshal all the God-like 
 powers, and cause them to move out with 
 resistless force to assault the gates of 
 pain, poverty, fear, disease, and death, and 
 to end them with the challenge : "Oh pain, 
 sin, death, where is thy sting or thy vic- 
 tory 1" 
 
 Avoid two mistakes, one of which is to 
 wait until you realize the fulness of the 
 divine power before claiming it and be- 
 ginning to manifest it. Rather respond to 
 the first call that will surely head your 
 way. Speak to it in the name of the "I 
 am that I am," and you will marvel at 
 the result; and each successive use will 
 enlarge your manifesting power. The oth- 
 er is, beware of thinking that you can 
 keep unused this Infinite life. Remem- 
 ber that the Dead Sea is dead because it 
 gathers but never gives, except by evapo- 
 ration. You are not an evaporator, you 
 are a channel. As you freely pour out 
 of this life, the flood tides of Infinite Life 
 will pour in, "pressed down, shaken to- 
 
42 The Voice Eternal 
 
 gether, running over." In a city of the 
 northwest, there may be seen at the dis- 
 tance of forty miles a snow-crowned peak 
 lifting its head far above all about it, and 
 at its foot a beautiful lake of ice-cold 
 water, clear as crystal. On a street of this 
 city, you will find an immense watering- 
 trough, where a constant procession of 
 thirsty teams are stopping to drink deeply 
 of its crystal liquid, yet never for a mo- 
 ment is the supply depleted. When the 
 trough is just so full, the supply automat- 
 ically shuts off; and when it drops below 
 its normal level, it automatically opens 
 and that exhaustless reservoir far away 
 pours in its fresh, sweet supply. And this 
 is the parable of the Abundant Life, 
 whose flood gates are opened by the pro- 
 noun of power, I, so that the speech is 
 resonant with power, the eye glows with 
 light, the finger-tips tingle with healing 
 energy, the whole body vibrates with a re- 
 sistless power for health; and the very 
 shadow, like that of Peter of old, blesses 
 those upon whom it unconsciously falls. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE MAN ON CRUTCHES. 
 
 AT FIRST blush man is a materialist. 
 He sees things as material objects ; he 
 thinks in material forms, he speaks in 
 material terms, and most of his life is lived 
 out in a very material way. These ma- 
 terial things are the crutches upon which 
 his living spirit limps until it finds itself 
 and learns to walk alone. The conscious- 
 ness of material things is evident in all 
 his thoughts and actions. He may assume 
 some lofty philosophy and deny the real- 
 ity of material things, but he still has a 
 very material sort of hunger that must 
 feed on material food, he writes material 
 books on which he secures material copy- 
 right and for which he insists on receiving 
 some very material dollars. And when hg 
 comes into contact with the business end 
 of a bee, he gives material evidence of 
 feeling material pain. So does our mate- 
 rialism ever play havoc with our philoso- 
 phy. It is a part of man's inheritance 
 from the various stages of his evolution. 
 It is needless to debate wiiether his ma- 
 terial form came from a monkey or a clod, 
 
44 The Voice Eternal 
 
 the real question is how far has he gotten 
 away from the monkey or the clod, on 
 his journey up toward the angels and to- 
 ward God. His materialism clings, and 
 he can no more shake it off in a moment, 
 than he can shake his shadow when the 
 sun shines upon him. 
 
 Not one in a thousand can think of God 
 as the universal spiritual substance, with- 
 out body or parts. We think of him as a 
 man. The white man thinks of him as a 
 big white man, the Chinaman as a big 
 chinaman, the Indian as a big indian and 
 the African as a big black man. Nor does 
 it change the force of this observation 
 that there is a seeming exception in the 
 case of the American Negro, who through 
 centuries of environment abandoned his 
 own material notions and adopted that 
 of his superiors, that God is a big white 
 man, and finds delight in singing such 
 songs as that one whose chorus runs, 
 "Whiter than snow, Now wash me and I 
 shall be whiter than snow." We project 
 the material terms and forms of our ideas, 
 and clothe God with them, thus creating 
 God in our own image, and reversing the 
 original order of our being made in his 
 image. 
 
The Man on Crutches 45 
 
 Now this big man of our mental con- 
 ception we have clothed with such Infinite 
 power, that we are awed at the thought 
 of comparing ourselves with him. The an- 
 cient psalmist, answering his own ques- 
 tion, "What is man'?" exclaimed, "Thou 
 hast made him a little less than God," 
 but the translators were afraid to give man 
 his true dignity, so they made it read, "a 
 little lower than the angels. " And that 
 action of the translators is in keeping with 
 most of the acts in man's earthly career, 
 for he was made with all created things 
 under his feet, but he promptly reversed 
 the order and put them all over .his head, 
 and he has been trying to climb out from 
 under them ever since. 
 
 In the record of those glimpses that 
 men have been given of the Infinite Life, 
 God is spoken of as man, speaks as a man, 
 feels as a man, and so strong is this ma- 
 terialistic notion of God that men of all 
 ages have wanted to see God, and in lieu 
 of that vision have worshipped the sun, 
 moon, stars, the bull, the ram, natural 
 forces, man's reproductive powers, in fact 
 every form in which the divine creative 
 energy has been manifest. These were 
 
46 The Voice Eternal 
 
 substitutes for the reality. In the wilder- 
 ness journey when Israel had lost sight of 
 Moses in the mount, they said to Aaron, 
 "Up and make us Gods that shall go be- 
 fore us, for, as for this Moses we know 
 not what is become of him. ' ' They wanted 
 Gods that they could see. A brazen calf 
 in sight was better than a wonder-working 
 man out of sight. This is ever the human 
 heart's cry to see God. The Infinite, try- 
 ing to find itself in material expression, 
 and which has created the demand sets 
 about to answer it, for He has appeared 
 in dreams and visions, by Urim and 
 Thummin, by prophets and seers, by sub- 
 jective voice and by objective providence, 
 coming always a little nearer the answer, 
 until he came in that one perfect manifes- 
 tation of the divine life, Jesus of Naza- 
 reth, who said truly, "He that hath seen 
 me hath seen the Father also." And even 
 his most spiritual disciples exulted in the 
 fact that they had seen and looked upon, 
 touched and handled the word of life. 
 Here ends then the long quest of man, the 
 materialist. His crutches may be laid 
 aside. God is no longer in some far off 
 heaven, but in earth; no longer round 
 
The Man on Crutches 47 
 
 about us, but in us, of us us. And just 
 as truly as in the miracle of the loaves and 
 fishes, none could tell where the natural 
 bread and fish ended and the supernatural 
 bread and fish began for the simple reason 
 that there was no difference, they being 
 of one substance, so no man can tell just 
 where the purely human life in man ends 
 and the Infinite Life begins, for the rea- 
 son that there is no difference, they are 
 one. And this identification is indicated 
 in the saying of Jesus that when we minis- 
 ter unto the least of these we minister unto 
 him, and in that question to Saul of Tar- 
 sus "why persecutest thou me," when he 
 was actually persecuting some of the hum- 
 ble followers of the Christ. Yet after all 
 these object lessons we are only slowly ac- 
 cepting the fact that God does indeed dwell 
 in flesh upon the earth, and when it comes 
 to some of the inevitable results of that 
 truth, our materialism still asserts itself. 
 We are still on crutches. For like Moses 
 who was slow of speech and had to call in 
 Aaron to be a mouthpiece, a crutch to 
 lean upon, we have developed a whole sys- 
 tem of crutches through whose mediation 
 the divine life is ministered, for be it kept 
 
48 The Voice Eternal 
 
 in mind that the Infinite Life accommo- 
 dates itself to our stage of development, 
 as he did with Moses and his people of 
 that day. They said, " speak thou to God 
 for us, and let him speak to thee, and thou 
 to us, but let not God speak to us lest we 
 die." Five-sixths of the race must still 
 have a minister of religion, a priest, to 
 speak to God in their behalf, and speak 
 to them in God's behalf. So mote it be. 
 Let not the other sixth feel called upon to 
 knock away the crutch of the masses and 
 drop them into the mire, simply because 
 the one-sixth can walk alone can walk 
 and talk with God. 
 
 Our stammering tongues cannot express 
 what we think and feel in our worship 
 and praise, so we call in to our aid the rich 
 and beautiful liturgies of the devout of 
 kll the ages, to help us to present, in fitting 
 form, our feelings and thoughts toward 
 this formless spirit which takes form in 
 man. 
 
 Or, we feel the need of some symbol of 
 the Infinite Life incarnate in flesh, an 
 object lesson to teach us not only the fact 
 of the Divine presence in human life in 
 all its manifestations, but also the method 
 
The Man on Crutches 49 
 
 by which the Infinite life is imparted to 
 us. And we turn to that supreme Chris- 
 tian symbol, the Holy Eucharist in which 
 the Infinite is represented as forever 
 being offered for us, and we have in a ma- 
 terial form an interpretation of the con- 
 stant impartation of the Infinite life. And 
 if we shall be led into thinking that we 
 receive the Divine life only in the moment 
 we receive the material elements our mis- 
 take will be as great as when we are lead 
 into thinking that the elements have been 
 actually transformed into the physical 
 reality of the Saviour's body. In the one 
 case we have robbed ourselves of the su- 
 preme joy of living out our lives every 
 moment in the life of God, and in the other 
 we have chosen to mistake the crutch for 
 the living thing it symbolizes. 
 
 Or as we have seen some wild bird in the 
 depths of the forest find a pool in which it 
 fluttered and cleansed the soot from its 
 wings, so we have seen the need of some 
 material aid to assist us in cleansing the 
 soul of its earthliness, the residuum of past 
 actions and passions that have had their 
 place in our lives, and we turn again to 
 that other Christian symbol of baptism, 
 
50 The Voice Eternal 
 
 and we have an illustration of how the soul 
 is purified by the incoming tides of the 
 divine life, and restored to its pristine 
 beauty. 
 
 Or like St. Paul we may have seen the 
 third heaven of emotional rapture and; 
 heard things unlawful to utter, and, been 
 filled with such healing power, as that 
 handkerchiefs and aprons touching our 
 bodies, are carried to the sick and they 
 recover, yet be compelled to confess to a 
 " thorn in the flesh" which no amount of 
 prayer has removed, and to rejoice in 
 Luke, "the beloved physician" as a 
 travelling companion. 
 
 Many of our ills disappear at the word 
 of authority of the life within us, but 
 some may not. Then we turn to the phy- 
 sician for a crutch to lean upon. And why 
 should we blush or apologize for it. Is 
 not the Infinite life constantly ministered 
 to us in food, and drink, and air? Do I 
 dishonor the Infinite life within me, by 
 eating bread when I am hungry, drinking 
 water when I am thirsty, or breathing 
 deeply to oxygenate the blood, and by 
 these and other means renew my flagging 
 energies? And if not, do I deny the 
 
The Man on Crutches 51 
 
 Infinite life when I take quinine to eradi- 
 cate the vandal germ of malaria from my 
 blood instead of giving him large doses of 
 mental suggestion. Or when a savage 
 hook worm gets a strangle hold on the 
 neck of my stomach, do I dishonor my in- 
 dwelling life of power, if instead of argu- 
 ing with him about his being an "error of 
 thought" I pass him a little thymol that 
 will speedily make a "good Indian" of 
 him. Is the energy in a bean or a grain 
 of wheat, any more divine than the energy 
 in the bark of the cinchona tree? Come 
 now brethren, let us reason together. 
 
 When we over-eat and miss-eat, and 
 most of us do this, do we quit eating per- 
 manently, or do we reform our diet and 
 habits'? Then when we have over-doc- 
 tored and mis-doctored shall we abstain 
 or reform. We may conceive of a time 
 when men will learn to live without eat- 
 ing, but the time is not yet. And w r e may 
 conceive a time when men shall live the 
 perfect life of God on earth, and will not 
 need medicine. Some have already learned 
 it. But it is a long process to bring a 
 world of individuals, such as those in our 
 world, to such a state of perfectly mani- 
 
52 The Voice Eternal 
 
 festing the divine life that "none of the 
 inhabitants shall say I am sick." Until 
 that time happily for us there is planted 
 in the city of each man's soul "a tree of 
 life, whose leaves are for the healing of 
 the nations," and corresponding to it in 
 this material world is a inateria medica 
 with proven potencies. 
 
 One may gaze in rapt contemplation on 
 his spiritual tree of Infinite life and 
 energy, and by a sort of auto-suggestion 
 appropriate its healing potency, and live 
 in health. Another may be still on crutches 
 and compelled to turn to the material tree 
 or herb, and take some of its leaves and 
 make a powder to swallow, and by its 
 energy find the way to health. Brother 
 idealist, do not throw stones at him for it. 
 Presumably he is doing the best he knows ; 
 at least it is what most people do and will 
 continue to do for a long time to come. 
 The race can't get off its crutches in a day. 
 Jesus did not heal all the sick people in 
 the world when he was here. But the com- 
 pany is increasing of those who have 
 progressed in the divine life far enough 
 to manifest it in perfect health without the 
 
The Man on Crutches 53 
 
 use of material form, and they are the 
 prophecy of a future time, 
 
 "When the lame leap for joy and the blind re- 
 ceive their sight; 
 
 When ears long closed to sound, will be ravished 
 with delight, 
 
 And tongues that never uttered a sentence here 
 below, 
 
 Burst into song through ages long, thither let us 
 go." 
 
 A MAN CAN BE ANYTHING HE 
 WANTS TO BE ; ANYTHING HE BE- 
 LIEVES HE CAN BE; ANYTHING 
 HE WILLS TO BE. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE 
 
 THE traveler making the ascent of Mt. 
 Hood lias the choice of two routes 
 the shorter and more precipitous one 
 from the north, or the longer and 
 more gradual one from the south. 
 In one case the movement is in an 
 opposite direction from what it would 
 be in the other, but they both reach 
 the same goal. And he who would find 
 the summit of self-mastery where abide 
 peace, health, power, plenty, and the 
 reality of the glorious vision of a perfect 
 or whole life, will find two seemingly oppo- 
 site movements operating, yet each leading 
 to the coveted goal. 
 
 There is the positive aggressive asser- 
 tion of the Ego, which sa.ys, "I am, I can, 
 and / will, be the master of all things in 
 my life." Following this motion the indi- 
 vidual moves steadily forward to condition 
 all the circumstances of his life. He says 
 to Poverty, "Thou hast no place in my 
 life. All the potencies of Infinite plenty 
 dwell here. I am not running in feverish 
 haste after a fleeing prosperity. I am 
 
Path of Least Resistance 55 
 
 swinging wide the door of my life, and 
 opening every avenue of action for 
 plenty to come in. Infinite plenty is 
 seeking me, w r ants to make me its 
 instrument of expression, and its agent for 
 others. I am content to be its incarnation 
 in any degree. I do not fear poverty, nor 
 do I fear that plenty will flee from me. It 
 will come. to me just as fast as I can give 
 it adequate and divine expression. I have 
 conquered poverty for / am plenty and 
 prosperity. I hold before me the vision 
 of myself as surrounded with all the set- 
 tings of plenty and comfort and useful- 
 
 ness.' 
 
 He says to Fear and Worry, "Thou hast 
 no place in my life. There is no room here 
 for your brood, for the Infinite life whose 
 perfect expression is love, fills me to the 
 exclusion of all else. I am made perfect 
 and complete in this love that casts out 
 fear and leaves no room for it. Why should 
 I fear a shadow that is cast by no sub- 
 stance in me, that has no reality in the 
 presence of Infinite love ? Why should I 
 dishonor this Infinite love by fearing that 
 it cannot keep me in all my ways ? Why 
 should I worry over something that seems 
 
56 The Voice Eternal 
 
 to threaten evil to me when I have the 
 assurance of this Infinite love that 'no 
 evil shall befall me'9 And even when evil 
 days come and life is sorely beset, this 
 Infinite love assures me that 'All things 
 work together for good 7 for me. This afflic- 
 tion shall work out for me a greater weight 
 of joy. I shall find it but the advance 
 agent of some greater blessing for which it 
 is preparing the way, and that could not 
 have come but for this steam roller which 
 pulverizes the clods and prepares the way 
 of the Lord. So I will not fear evil, nor 
 worry over its possible coming, and if it 
 comes, I shall say, 'Thank you. What 
 message, what good are you leading my 
 way ?< ? And thus I shall overcome evil 
 with good." 
 
 He says to Pain and Disease, "Thine 
 hour is come. Thou shalt no longer have 
 dominion over me ; no longer usurp a place 
 in this divine life of mine ; no longer obsess 
 me with sensory images of pain and weak- 
 ness and despondency. Thou shalt go out 
 into the deep with thy fathers of old, and 
 give room to the mighty tides of Infinite 
 health now surging within me. Henceforth 
 I shall know thee no more save as the 
 
Path of Least Resistance 57 
 
 shadow of a passing wrong condition. 
 Thou hast no substance, no meaning, save 
 to announce the passing of my life up 
 into larger expression and ease and use- 
 fulness. Thou art at best but a 'growing 
 pain 7 which I shall cast off as a troubled 
 dream of the night. For I am health, 
 ease, and power. My vision of myself is 
 not of pain and disease, but virile 
 strength and health. I behold myself 
 dwelling in the life of God, filled and 
 clothed upon with the expression of per- 
 fect health/' 
 
 And thus in this direct, positive way, 
 he challenges the right of every obstacle 
 that would hinder perfect expression of 
 the divine life, and by the irresistible im- 
 pact of this sheer force of will, sweeps 
 them out of the way. This may seem to 
 picture life as a very strenuous affair. 
 And life that is worth anything is strenu- 
 ous. The Master in calling men to follow 
 him, did not hide from them the difficul- 
 ties they must meet. And his greatest 
 Apostle chose the figures of the foot-race 
 and the battle the two most strenuous 
 exercises of that age to set forth the 
 real nature of living. The principle of 
 
53 The Voice Eternal 
 
 the "survival of the fittest" is still in 
 operation. And there are many who by 
 temperament and character are so 
 equipped as to need only to go forth in 
 this militant, direct way to resist the devil 
 in all the forms in which evil meets them, 
 and find that he flees from them, and his 
 obsessions disappear. 
 
 Even these strong natures find occa- 
 sional Alps too high for them to scale, and 
 while they can dispose of nineteen visita- 
 tions of adversity, fear, or disease, the 
 twentieth one will stick and refuse to 
 budge. It will neither go nor be forgot- 
 ten. Two things are possible to be done. 
 One is the augmenting of our own inade- 
 quate forces inadequate by lack of faith 
 by annexing those of a friend, and so 
 fulfill the conditions of a marvelousi 
 increase of power, viz., "If two of you 
 shall agree as touching anything, it shall 
 be done" not may be, or can be, but shall 
 be done. Here two wills agree and be- 
 cause of that agreement, there is given 
 unlimited power. 
 
 Suppose that this other person, healer, 
 or friend, be not available, there remains 
 then the other general law of procedure 
 
Path of Least Resistance 59 
 
 that of indirection. And many will find 
 this at first to be the most and only suc- 
 cessful way they can proceed. Disease, 
 pain, fear, or worry, or some other idea 
 which may or may not be materialized, gets 
 hold of the mind and so obsesses it that 
 the mind cannot shake it off. Each effort 
 only finds it, like the old man of the sea 
 on Sinbad the Sailor's neck, seated the 
 more firmly in its place. Turn now to the 
 method of indirection. Choose some other 
 idea and place it beside the obsessing one. 
 It may be difficult at first to hold the mind 
 on this new and rival thought, but by a 
 little persistence it will become stronger 
 as the attention to it waxes, and this other 
 will become dim as the attention to it 
 wanes, until often in an incredibly short 
 time the new thought has entirely dis- 
 placed the undesirable one. The process 
 resolves itself into the will power to direct 
 the attention to any idea for the eventual 
 exclusion of the other ideas that assume 
 undue prominence in the mind. 
 
 It is often done half unconsciously, as 
 when one, tired or weak from recent sick- 
 ness, repairs to the seaside and sits and 
 gazes upon the ocean's heaving expanse, 
 
60 The Voice Eternal 
 
 tossing its fathomless depths up toward 
 the sky, and he trembles to think of get- 
 ting within the range of its power. And 
 while he meditates, the ocean becomes 
 vocal through his unconscious self, and 
 begins to sing its song of power "In me 
 are gathered the immensity of mighty 
 forces. The wildest storms of earth have 
 fallen to sleep on my bosom. The raging 
 torrents of earth's rivers have gathered 
 into my depths. The roar of the tempest, 
 the flash of lightning, the roll of thunder, 
 have been but the time beat of an earthly 
 song that I have heard from creation's 
 hour. Yet if thou will know my law, and 
 boldly commit thyself to my bosom, I 
 become a highway of pleasure to bring 
 together the ends of the earth and carry 
 blessings to the farthest habitation of 
 man." And as the days pass, the uncon- 
 scious absorption of strength and power 
 from this embodiment of power goes on 
 until one day the patient rejoices in the 
 return to health and strength. 
 
 Or, such an one goes to the mountains 
 and forests and sees countless tons of vege- 
 tation pushing upward in the face of the 
 laws of gravity, yet not a sigh or groan. 
 
Path of Least Resistance 61 
 
 And soon he feels the living force of that 
 unseen power of which these are the 
 images, raising him up in spite of the 
 drag of weakness and pain. 
 
 Or, he beholds some wild flower bloom- 
 ing in some secluded spot where no eye 
 shall see it, yet it gaily tosses its head to 
 the breeze, nor worries as to whether it 
 shall rain or shine, whether frost shall 
 come in untimely hour and spoil its beauty, 
 or whether any eye shall see its beauty, or 
 any nostrils delight in its fragrance. And 
 as you consider this flower of the forest, 
 how it grows without worry or care, but 
 simply keeping still in the conditions of 
 its life, and finding itself clothed with 
 glory that Solomon could not even have 
 dreamed of, the sense of resignation 
 and rest in the place where we are, takes 
 hold of us, and joy and gladness is ours; 
 and we have by keeping still in the pres- 
 ence of infinite strength, found our 
 strength renewed. 
 
 There remains the secret path of non- 
 resistance. It is sometimes better to. bend 
 than to break, better to walk round the 
 mountain than to scale its heights. A 
 stream starting down the mountain side 
 
62 The Voice Eternal 
 
 and finding a rock in the way, doesn't try 
 to batter its way through the rock, but 
 finds the way of least resistance, and so 
 makes a channel along which it can move, 
 and gradually wear away that very rock. 
 And many a life is trying to batter down 
 temperamental barriers, or hammer its 
 wa}^ through the rock of some hereditary 
 limitations instead of finding the way of 
 least resistance. Here's a man trying to 
 sell goods when all the time there is no 
 inner content. He ought to be hammering 
 iron, or plowing in the field, or teaching- 
 men, or practicing law, or healing the 
 sick, or singing some sweet song of 
 comfort, or preaching some gospel of 
 peace. There is always the intuitive sense 
 that he is doing the wrong thing, an inner 
 longing to do something else. And this 
 unsatisfaction is the voice of his divine 
 life prophesying to him what he may be or 
 ought to be, but he is started in the wrong 
 vocation and he's afraid to experiment by 
 changing, so he batters away at the intan- 
 gible yet ever-present obstacle of discon- 
 tent and drags out life in dissatisfaction. 
 Or on the other hand, one day he chooses 
 the way of least resistance, no matter if 
 
Path of Least Resistance 63 
 
 it seems a step upward or downward, and 
 lo ! there is peace, and the sense that he is 
 moving in the way that furnishes the In- 
 finite life the largest, openest channel to 
 most perfectly express itself. 
 
 These misadjustments of life furnish 
 most of its tragedies. Many a man is a 
 butcher or baker simply because his father 
 was one, or it was the way chosen for 
 him by his friends, and for every other 
 reason than that of adaptability. The city 
 Miss goes to the town or village to teach 
 school, where she dilates on the pleasures 
 of city life, enlarges upon its opportuni- 
 ties, until the country is depopulated by 
 the rush of youth to the city when they 
 are needed in the country, and most of 
 them are best fitted for its life and activi- 
 ties. 
 
 Neither the opinions of our friends, the 
 desire of our parents, nor our own judg- 
 ment is the infallible guide in choosing 
 our life's work ; but that inner voice which 
 clamors for action in its own chosen way, 
 holds before us what we ought to be, plays 
 an anvil chorus on the front door of the 
 soul, lays for us around the corner with a 
 stuffed club, making such a din that we 
 
64 The Voice Eternal 
 
 cannot do our task in comfort. This voice 
 is the prophet of the soul, voicing the will 
 of the Infinite life which would find fullest 
 expression in us, leading us into a state 
 without inner friction, and keeping us in 
 the experience of perfect peace. It seems 
 to stand at the opening of our real place 
 of service and say "This is the way, walk 
 ye in it." 
 
 Human history is full of the records of 
 those who have patiently borne the ills of 
 life, believing that the way would emerge 
 into view, and they have eventually come 
 forth to be the world's leaders, and have 
 looked back on those days in the school 
 of adversity from which they graduated 
 with full honors, as a thing to be proud of, 
 because it lead them to the full realization 
 of the divine life. Either of these ways 
 direct or indirect or the way of least 
 resistance may become highways of life 
 along whose royal path the soul may mount 
 up to its own. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE PARABLE OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE. 
 
 PERSONAL traits of character and 
 variations in temperament have to 
 be reckoned with, for they help or 
 hinder the realization of this divine 
 life within us. Our early training 
 and environment are large factors to 
 be dealt with in solving the prob- 
 lem of perfectly manifesting the divine 
 life. Heredity pours in a stream of influ- 
 ences that sometimes threatens to engulf 
 us and blot out the consciousness of our 
 divine nature, dignity, and destiny. In 
 the face of these and possibly other 
 impediments, stands the Infinite life with- 
 in and about us, ready to work with or in 
 spite of them, as the case may require, 
 waiting only on the action of our own 
 choice just as in a well-wired house every 
 room is reached by a live wire waiting 
 only the pressing of a button to rush in 
 and flood the darkest room with light, 
 warmth, and cheer. That factor of human 
 personality called the will controls the 
 flood-gates of the Infinite life which will 
 pour in, re-creating environments, over- 
 
66 The Voice Eternal 
 
 hauling temperaments, and transforming 
 the evil tendencies of heredity into engines 
 of good. A man can be anything he wants 
 to be and do anything he wants to do if 
 he goes at it intelligently and with deter- 
 mination. Nothing is out of his reach. 
 Believing in this unlimited life that dwells 
 in him, and in his right and power to call 
 upon it, all things are possible. He laughs 
 at impossibilities and cries "It shall be 
 done." Whether one travels by the old 
 beaten paths of evangelical trust, or by the 
 new road of philosophical idealism, the 
 means and the end are alike and the result 
 is assured. The full persuasion of the fact 
 of the atonement with God, and the accept- 
 ance as a verity of the inherent powers of 
 the Soul to partake and manifest the 
 divine nature, are the conditions of 
 realization. 
 
 We are often met by the circumstances 
 that one person comes into this realiza- 
 tion with seemingly little or no effort of 
 faith or will, while another attains to it 
 only after long and painful effort. It 
 may be explained by the influences of 
 heredity as giving us varying physical 
 constitution and mental temperament, but 
 
Parable of the Christmas Tree 67 
 
 a more familiar and satisfactory answer 
 to many will be found in two scriptural 
 quotations and a modern parable. In I. 
 Corinthians, 12th Chapter, there is an 
 enumeration of the gifts of the Spirit, 
 while in Galatians, 5th Chapter, there is 
 a list of the fruits of the Spirit. Now it 
 so happens that faith, the power to be- 
 lieve things seen or unseen, is both a gift 
 and a fruit, the difference between them 
 being like the difference between a Christ- 
 mas tree and a fruit tree. In the one case 
 the products on the tree are the result of 
 action outside of the tree and its processes 
 of growth; in the other, the fruits are 
 produced by an inward process of the 
 forces of the tree-life itself. Faith as a 
 fruit is the result of right thinking, care- 
 ful training, and correct observation of 
 the experience of ourselves and others. 
 Faith is confidence founded on knowledge 
 of its object. Its three great fields of 
 action in our material life are in the 
 operation of the laws of Nature, and of 
 cause and effect, and in our fellow-man. 
 Just as our faith in the laws of Nature, 
 or those of cause and effect, is based upon 
 their known and uniform action, so is our 
 
68 The Voice Eternal 
 
 faith in our fellow determined by 
 our knowledge of his character and re- 
 sources. We may have no confidence in 
 a total stranger, but if he bears a certifi- 
 cate of worth from our intimate friend 
 who knows him, that changes it and we 
 trust it and we trust him because of our 
 friend's knowledge of him. Likewise our 
 faith in God is confidence based on our 
 knowledge of his character and resources 
 as they are manifested to or in us, or our 
 friends. And this fruit of faith, the result 
 of a process going on within us, is an 
 ever increasing quality. The prophecy of 
 the Infinite life is "It shall come to pass." 
 The history of human experience is "It 
 came to pass." Upon these two facts 
 faith moves forward to full fruition. It 
 remains true that in one person the fruits 
 of faith are of easy inception and rapid 
 of growth, while in another the process is 
 painful and slow r . "The Jew requires a 
 sign" to cast a rod on the floor and let 
 it become a serpent was enough for him. 
 "The Greek seeks after wisdom." He 
 had to be "shown," to have it all reasoned 
 out. With this hint as to the nature of 
 faith and its growth, it ought also to be 
 
Parable of the Christmas Tree 69 
 
 said that one may tamper with the facts 
 in evidence and the laws of belief, until 
 he finds himself unable to believe any- 
 thing, and his is henceforth a barren life. 
 Turn we now to faith as a gift and we 
 find men believing in things for which 
 there is no adequate reason, and thus be- 
 lieving, they endure and triumph and 
 attain as seeing the invisible, and sooner 
 or later realize it in visible form. A man 
 stands in the presence of an impossible 
 task and with no earthly knowledge of 
 ways or means, calmly affirms, "It shall 
 be done," and it is. We meet men who 
 are utter strangers and yet by some intui- 
 tive sense we perceive their worth and 
 trust them to the uttermost a faith that 
 has no material or objective warrant. And 
 without conscious preparation or known 
 process, a soul seems to step into absolute 
 confidence in the Infinite God, and appro- 
 priate to itself his unlimited power for its 
 needs. It has no struggle to realize the 
 truth. It believes, and acts upon that 
 belief, and the thing is done. Thus it hap- 
 pens that one person without seeming 
 effort, grasps the peace, the plenty, the 
 health, the power of the Infinite life, while 
 
70 The Voice Eternal 
 
 another halts and hesitates and stumbles 
 over the truth, and even when he sees it, 
 finds it difficult of realization. Let him 
 not falter nor covet a gift which he may 
 not have, for there is a more excellent way 
 the faith that worketh by love ; for while 
 gifts of all sorts may fail, the fruit of 
 patient persistence in well-doing, promp- 
 ted by love, can never fail. Love 
 sends us forth to some kindly ministry 
 to some one more unfortunate than we are, 
 and in the presence of his greater afflic- 
 tion, our own seems as nothing; and cen- 
 tering our attention on helping him, our 
 own troubles are for the time forgotten. 
 And if we could keep busy long enough so 
 that our attention is permanently turned 
 to other things, most of our ills would die 
 of simple neglect. The vast majority of 
 nervous people are so busy thinking and 
 talking about themselves, that the first step 
 in their relief is to set them thinking 
 about, talking of, and working for, some- 
 thing or somebody else. Altruism acts as 
 the witty Frenchman said of medicine: 
 "It entertains the patient while nature 
 cures him." And altruism is born of love 
 whose very language is giving. God loved 
 
Parable of the Christmas Tree 71 
 
 and gave, we love and give, and are doubly 
 blest in doing so, bringing benefit to oth- 
 ers, and health to ourselves. 
 
 All mental and spiritual results, and 
 indirectly all physical benefits, are con- 
 ditioned by the exercise of faith. " Ac- 
 cording to your faith" is the divinely 
 appointed measure of success. We pro- 
 claim and really think that we have little 
 faith, until some one comes to us with the 
 note of attainment and certainty in his 
 voice, the glow of health in his eyes and 
 face, the air of conscious mastery in his 
 whole bearing, and at his word or touch, 
 our latent faith leaps into activity and we 
 shed our ills as a certain tree sheds its dry 
 leaves at the awakening thrill of the rising 
 sap ; and the wonder of the cure and the 
 fame of the healer go forth. Or we are 
 far removed from these masters of the 
 powers of life, and sigh that we may not 
 behold them with our eyes, and we settle 
 down to the humdrum of dead level exis- 
 tence, until one day in our reading or 
 meditations, there speaks within us the 
 voice eternal saying "All things are 
 yours, and ye are Christ's and Christ is 
 God's." "Ye are dead and your life is 
 
72 The Voice Eternal 
 
 hid with Christ in God," and we begin to 
 see how our own ego has been living 
 a life separate and apart in our think- 
 ing of it, from the eternal springs of exis- 
 tence, and it is indeed a limited and mis- 
 erable and dead affair ; and we behold our 
 ego our self, passing up into the divine 
 ego the Infinite self where our lives are 
 merged into his, hid in him. Here we abide 
 in the fulness of life, health, plenty. No 
 plant that he hath not planted shall pros- 
 per. We behold our ills, the untimely fruit 
 of our erring, doubting, fearing mortal 
 thinking, having no place nor part in the 
 full life into which we have entered, drop 
 from us, and we are clothed with those 
 fruits of peace, joy, hope, and Tightness, 
 which issue only into health and whole- 
 ness, the visible proofs that indeed we see 
 God and 1 ive in him. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE LAST THING IN THE WORLD. 
 
 HOPE that springs immortal in the hu- 
 man breast has almost incalculable 
 value as a prophylactic or preventive 
 agency. It is one of the three cardinal 
 Christian virtues that abide, and is set 
 forth as being the last thing in the world, 
 for the reason, doubtless, that when all 
 else is gone there still is hope. As an 
 anchor it holds the drifting soul because 
 it lays hold on the mysteries of God beyond 
 the veil of seen things. And because that 
 in evangelical teachings it is born of our 
 trust in the reality of the visions of the 
 eternal future, it is called "a living hope" 
 into which we are begotten. Equally prom- 
 inent is its place in those schemes of life 
 set forth by philosophy and revealed by 
 scientific research. 
 
 Philosophy, delving into the economies 
 of existence and formulating them into 
 practical terms finds a place for hope as 
 a bright particular star in the van of 
 human progress. What tangled skeins has 
 it not unwound ? What disasters has it not 
 illuminated ? Through what wildernesses 
 
74 The Voice Eternal 
 
 of ignorance, superstition, and failure has 
 it not led? What depths has it not 
 sounded ? What heights has it not scaled ? 
 
 Likewise Science, focussing its inquir- 
 ing gaze upon the processes and problems 
 of world-making and world-destiny, dis- 
 covers grounds upon which to base a 
 rational hope in "a far-off divine event, 
 toward which the whole creation moves" 
 a fruition of the ages-long struggle of 
 material existence, glorious beyond the 
 power of words to describe or the mind of 
 man to conceive. 
 
 With unveiled vision Science beholds a 
 vast evolutionary process stretching up 
 from the first biological cell to the complex 
 organism of man, by an almost infinite 
 series of stages, each of which is the foun- 
 dation of a further and upward movement 
 until out of animalness man has come, an 
 animal, and yet more an intelligent, 
 affectionate being. 
 
 In this process Science discovers a 
 dynamic agent working under conditions 
 that involve relative failure, and apparent 
 experiments, groping toward better types 
 of life, as if some being were slowly yet 
 surely perfecting the expression of his 
 
The Last Thing in the World 75 
 
 being through progressive achievement, 
 developing his skill by mastering the dif- 
 ficulties attendant upon such growing 
 material expression, and finding an ever 
 larger self-realization in the progressive 
 development of the life of the material 
 universe. It beholds hardships, suffering, 
 misery, struggle, and death in the world 
 as incidental to the difficulties of his task, 
 bound up with the adverse conditions 
 which universally attend the raising of 
 low, potential forms of energy up to ever 
 higher forms. These evils in the problem 
 of earthly existence may not be unmixed 
 for they are necessary factors in all up- 
 ward progress, and as they are left behind 
 when their purpose is served, science pre- 
 dicts, with the solution of the problem of 
 existence, the elimination of every form of 
 evil. Science beholds man as the crown 
 of this evolutionary process, using this 
 stage of development to project into still 
 higher form the life within him. Prompted 
 by some deep instinct, some deathless im- 
 pulse, he reaches out in constant effort to 
 join hands and co-operate with this 
 dynamic agent in so conditioning and ex- 
 pressing life as to lessen suffering, disease, 
 
76 The Voice Eternal 
 
 and death, and finally to eliminate them, 
 and to produce at last in this world a 
 civilization in which there is no moral nor 
 disease death rate. It beholds man, physi- 
 cal man, having his day a day of brawn 
 and animalism, until the intellect crowds 
 to the front and the mental man has his 
 day, of brilliance and enlargement; which 
 in turn is followed by a day of spiritual 
 activity, of inspiration, and glory, when 
 patience and love and faith and kindness 
 are revealed by the dynamic force finding 
 perfect self-knowledge and expression in 
 human flesh, and thus is God evolved in 
 human form because God was involved in 
 the antecedents of human existence. And 
 man's hope is secure, for if "God only hath 
 immortality," man who partakes of the 
 life of God from which he is inseparable, 
 is also partaker of his immortality. 
 
 Science enters more minutely into this 
 process of evolution by inquiring into the 
 relation between the physical and mental 
 life as indicated by their apparent action 
 one upon the other, rejecting in their order 
 the hypotheses, first, that consciousness 
 and brain, mind and body act one upon the 
 other as two distinct beings or substances ; 
 
The Last Thing in the World 77 
 
 or, second, that the mind is only a product 
 of the body, a variant form of bodily 
 action in which the brain secretes thought 
 as the liver secretes bile ; or, third, that the 
 body is only a form or product of one or 
 several mental beings ; and, fourth, accept- 
 ing the hypothesis that mind and body, 
 consciousness and brain are evolved as dif- 
 ferent forms of expression of one and the 
 same being, who is essentially spiritual 
 and whose activities are always mani- 
 fested in parallel lines, sometimes report- 
 ing first as mental, sometimes as physical, 
 but always eventually in both. Now while 
 Science knows only these two forms of 
 life, the mental and physical, it does not 
 deny that there are others. In fact its 
 findings demand an as yet unf ound inner- 
 most essence of existence to which the 
 mental or subjective life stands nearest, 
 and from which both mental and physical 
 life proceed, thus bringing in sight our 
 double ancestry that of the flesh and its 
 mind and the ancestry of the spirit 
 which makes God our Father, and enables 
 us to affirm "My Father and I are one," 
 and to sweep back past birthdays and say, 
 "before Abraham was, I am." 
 
78 The Voice Eternal 
 
 Now the whole economy of human exis- 
 tence hinges on the conflict between these 
 two ancestries, as to supremacy. For the 
 struggle is as old as the race and as new 
 as the last-born babe. Recognizing that 
 life can never reach the heights of free- 
 dom until the spirit gains the ascendancy, 
 Jesus said, "Except a man be born of the 
 spirit he cannot see the kingdom of God. 
 Except he live in the spirit where the 
 motives and ideals of the spiritual life are 
 in the position of mastery, he cannot know 
 the "righteousness, peace, and joy" that 
 life is intended to have as its daily atmos- 
 phere. We are apt to dwell too much on 
 the fact of the mind influencing the body, 
 and the body in turn influencing the mind, 
 and trying to heal the one by healing the 
 other, and fail to put emphasis upon the 
 spiritual source of life, and fail to carry 
 the governing center of life into the spirit- 
 ual I am, whose infinite peace and health 
 and ease will express itself in a parallel 
 manifestation in mind and body. This 
 does not mean that life henceforth has no 
 conflicts. The battle will not be over till 
 the sunset gun is fired. The hymn of the 
 spirit-crowned man is, 
 
The Last Thing in the World 79 
 
 "Oh watch and fight and pray, 
 The battle ne'er give o'er. 
 Renew it boldly every day, 
 And help divine implore." 
 
 His conflicts are as real as ever, but he can 
 say, * ' Thanks be to God who giveth me the 
 victory." 
 
 Now while science can discover to us 
 grounds for such a hope as this, theology 
 actually beholds God dwelling in the flesh, 
 and manifesting the divine character in 
 such a way that to see such an one is to 
 see the Father, and it calls that combina- 
 tion the "Son of God," and says "Beloved 
 now are we the Sons of God" ; and it bids 
 us to come to that place of Spiritual 
 Supremacy where we can say "I live, and 
 yet not I live, but Christ liveth in me," and 
 its proof is that we go about doing good. 
 It is said of Martin Luther that some one 
 halloed at his gate and asked, "Does Mar- 
 tin Luther live here?" and the answer of 
 the sturdy reformer was: "No, but Jesus 
 Christ lives here. ' ' And he was nearer the 
 truth than many of his followers, for this 
 oneness with God was the truth that Jesus 
 Christ lived, and the boon which he prayed 
 that each of his disciples and all men 
 
80 The Voice Eternal 
 
 might possess. Here then ends our quest. 
 Choose any field of knowledge we may, all 
 paths lead to our divine birthright the 
 privilege of living the life of God in the 
 world; of manifesting all those qualities 
 of the divine character that can be known 
 by men only as they see them incarnate in 
 human life; and eventually to realize the 
 completeness of the divine life in us. For 
 when Faith has fought its last battle, and 
 Love has run its last merciful errand of 
 service, Hope, the ultimate thing in the 
 world will still tower over the wrecks of 
 time, and stretch out expectant hands to 
 receive the perfect fruition of God dwell- 
 ing in the flesh. Something in us answers 
 to our own. 
 
 "Dwelt there no divineness in us, 
 How could God's divineness win us?" 
 
 Follow then this voice eternal along the 
 highways of peace, plenty, health, and 
 power until your kingdom is perfected; 
 until the "fearful," the "unbelieving," 
 and all "liars" are cast out, and you can 
 "surrender it to God who shall be all in 
 all." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE CHRIST WITHIN 
 
 THAT we may get the full sig- 
 nificance of this truth of the in- 
 dwelling God follow me in observa- 
 tions on the most beautiful and far- 
 reaching conception of the spiritual 
 ideal embodied in the gospel message, in 
 such verses as "I live, and yet not I, but 
 Christ liveth in me"; "Ye are dead, and 
 your life is hid with Christ in God" ; "Till 
 Christ be formed in you," etc. This is the 
 heart of the gospel, the key to its store- 
 house of life, health, love, and power. It 
 brings out the mystical phase of the 
 Christian life so prominently that one is 
 apt to ask what place it can have in a scien- 
 tific, and philosophical religious move- 
 ment. The answer lies in the simple fact 
 that the power of a suggestion concerning 
 a person or a supposed truth depends on 
 our conception of the scope of the truth, 
 or the character and power of the person 
 in whose hands we place our welfare. For 
 instance we are much more apt to trust 
 fully a physician of years of experience 
 and a great reputation, than we are to call 
 
82 The Voice Eternal 
 
 in a young man just out of the medical 
 school. So likewise if the one giving us 
 a suggestion of any sort be known as a 
 mere tyro in the knowledge of mental and 
 spiritual things as healing forces, his sug- 
 gestions will have little influence on us, 
 while if we esteem him as a master or an 
 adept in such wisdom then he speaks to us 
 with the voice of authority, and not as the 
 scribes, and sin, and disease, and sickness 
 of all sorts of human ills pass out at his 
 word. Likewise when we are giving our- 
 selves suggestions if the truth is conceived 
 as a partial and limited one, the results 
 will be meager, while if we conceive the 
 truth to take on the character of an uni- 
 versal law the results in health and welfare 
 will be greatly magnified; or if we think 
 of ourselves as "poor weak worms of the 
 dust" suggestions coming from such a 
 source will be greatly weakened, if not 
 countered altogether. 
 
 Now if, instead of a self that can do 
 nothing, we face our ills with the thought 
 that, "I can do all things through Christ 
 that strengthened rne," our suggestions 
 will have in them the authority of the Son 
 of God and they cannot fail. The place 
 
The Christ Within 83 
 
 therefore of the Christ in any scheme for 
 moral, social, or physical betterment is 
 secure for the highest authority that can be 
 given to a movement is to quote him as 
 being its leader. And for an individual 
 to have truly found the Christ within, of 
 whom Moses and the prophets did write, 
 is to have started on the pathway of wis- 
 dom that will at last unfold and exemplify 
 every problem of life. But let us be sure 
 that we have found him in the true sense 
 of the term. Jesus the Saviour said, "Of 
 myself I can do nothing. The Father that 
 dwell eth in me He doeth the works." 
 That is to say the human Jesus could not 
 do those mighty works, but the divine 
 Christ in him could and did. We must 
 recognise the essential humanity of Jesus 
 our Lord because he so often spoke and 
 acted and lived like a man. We have also 
 to recognize his divinity because he so 
 often spoke and acted like a divine person. 
 It was the human Jesus who was weary 
 with long journeys, arduous toils, and 
 ceaseless vigils; it was the human Jesus 
 who fainted on the last journey and died 
 on the cross. It was the divine Christ who 
 opened the eyes of the blind, cast out dev- 
 
84 The Voice Eternal 
 
 ils, raised the dead, healed the lepers, and 
 said to the tired world, "Come unto me 
 and find rest." That same dual nature 
 is consciously in every man. The purely 
 human with its ills and aches, its sorrows 
 and troubles, stumbling through life so 
 self-centered and engrossed that we never 
 catch a glimpse of the divine nature of 
 which we are partakers, a christing an 
 anointing that abideth so that "we 
 need not that any man teach us" as St. 
 John says. We utterly fail to call on a 
 power within us that will banish all our 
 ills, diseases, and troubles, and enable us 
 to live in the fulness of peace, health, love, 
 and power. When he said "Come unto 
 me" it was not to the human Jesus but 
 to the divine Christ the life of God that 
 dwelt within him. His effort was always 
 to get those who came to him to look to the 
 Father who was abiding in him, whose 
 words he spoke and whose works he did, 
 and of whom he could say, "I and the 
 Father are one," that they might realize 
 their oneness with the Father as he had 
 realized it. Finally he said one day that 
 it was expedient for them that he should 
 go away, else the comforter would not 
 
The Christ Within 85 
 
 come they would never enter into the 
 fulness of their inheritance so long as 
 they had him to depend on. He was 
 trying to get them to see that the object 
 of all seeking was the Father, and that 
 the Father was waiting to become the 
 Christ the anointed in them. But they 
 were so busy clinging to his mortal self, 
 for the loaves and the fishes, and the evi- 
 dence of the senses that unless he went 
 away they would keep on looking to his 
 personality and would never know that 
 the same spirit of truth who was so 
 mighty in him was waiting to manifest his 
 power in them as soon as they recognized 
 their oneness with him. The Infinite 
 power which had hitherto had but one 
 power station was henceforth to have a 
 station in every man who accepted his 
 divine heritage, and out from him would 
 go those same marvelous virtues that 
 wrought the blessings of peace and health 
 at the touch and word of the man of 
 Nazareth. "Out of his heart shall flow 
 rivers of living water." 
 
 To teach men and lead them into these 
 privileges he left directions for the 
 organization of his church with certain 
 
86 The Voice Eternal 
 
 symbolic forms setting forth the entering 
 into and manifestation of Christ-like 
 life. St. Paul said that when a man is 
 "baptized into Christ" he "puts on 
 Christ." In other words attending that 
 outward form is a spiritual content an 
 inner substance, which is nothing less than 
 the conscious recognition that the Christ 
 of God is in us as he was in Jesus of Naz- 
 areth. And in the act of Confirmation 
 the believer's attention is directed to the 
 sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit, which 
 he is taught to believe now abides in him 
 waiting to be called on that he may show 
 forth his power, so that it is the final act 
 by which the believer is ceremonially in- 
 ducted into the Christ-life. Then if he has 
 indeed accepted the real content of the 
 gospel message he can say, "I live and yet 
 not I, but Christ liveth in me." And that 
 this life ma} 7 flourish we are invited to a 
 Holy Supper whose consecrated elements 
 feed the body and suggest how the life of 
 God is constantly imparted to the life 
 within us. 
 
 Now if there be any difference between 
 this Christ-life and the Christian life I 
 should say that it was this; a Christian 
 
The Christ Within 87 
 
 life consists in following after the exam- 
 ple of Christ, submitting to his ordinances, 
 imitating his good works and seeking to 
 obey a Christ and a God who are outside, 
 apart from and above us somewhere, who 
 may be persuaded to hear our petitions 
 and forgive our sins and at last get home 
 to heaven. A Christ-life in a word is a 
 looking to the Christ within us, and letting 
 him manifest his divine presence and 
 power as the son of God a state of con- 
 scious oneness with God that enables its 
 possessor to say, "All things are mine, 
 and mine is Christ's and Christ is 
 God's." Now just what that means w r e can 
 gather from the incident of Jesus asleep 
 on the hard seat of the fisherman's boat 
 in the midst of a raging storm. The mere 
 fact of his divine presence did not keep 
 the wind from blowing, the boat from 
 rocking, nor the disciples from feeling 
 terrified. But when he was awakened 
 and called upon, he arose, and at once the 
 divine life was manifest, he rebuked the 
 wind and the sea and there was a great 
 calm. Has not our boat been rocked by 
 disease, sorrow, poverty, worry, and what 
 not, simply because we do not awaken the 
 
88 The Voice Eternal 
 
 Christ within us and call upon him to 
 manifest in us the hope of glory. " Be- 
 loved now are we the sons of God .... and 
 we shall be like him when He shall 
 appear. ' ' In other words, when the Christ 
 in us is manifest he will be like the Christ 
 that was manifest in Jesus of Nazareth, in 
 whom all fulness of love, of life, of power, 
 of joy, of all good dwelt. So that we are 
 complete in this Christ-life, and can boldly 
 say, "In Christ all things are mine," "I 
 can do all things through Christ that 
 strengthened me." So that if you are 
 manifesting sickness it is because your 
 attention is fixed upon the circumference 
 of life and you are to turn away from that 
 to the center of your being where the 
 Infinite dwells and say, "Christ is my life, 
 Christ is my health, Christ is my strength, 
 Christ is perfect, I will now manifest 
 Christ," Say it with the certainty that it 
 is the truth of all truths, and you will feel 
 the fountain of your life bubble over with 
 a strange new power that radiates through 
 sickness, disease and pain, and displaces 
 them by manifesting the health that was 
 in Jesus. 
 
 Suppose that it is money you need, not 
 
The Christ Within 89 
 
 want but actually need. Here is a bank 
 note that unlike all other bank notes can 
 be cashed every day of our lives and be as 
 good as ever the next day. It is "My God 
 shall supply all your need according to his 
 riches in glory by Christ Jesus." Phil. 4, 
 19. Now read it intelligently. ' ' My God" 
 that's the banker's name "shall sup- 
 ply" that is his promise to pay "all 
 your need"- that's the size of the check 
 "according to his riches" that's the 
 bank's capital "in glory" that's the 
 bank's location "by Christ Jesus" that's 
 the cashier's name. Why should you go 
 about thinking poverty, and manifesting 
 poverty, when all the time your father is 
 rich in houses and lands, and holdeth the 
 wealth of the worlds in his hands. Say 
 to yourself, ' ' Christ is my abundant sup- 
 ply; he is here in me now and greatly 
 desires to manifest himself as my supply ; 
 his desires are fulfilled now and I am filled 
 full of all needed things." Don't begin 
 to ask how he is going to do this ; probably 
 it will be the very way that you would 
 never think about, but just hold to the 
 thought that he is your abundant supply, 
 and that he will honor vour faith a hun- 
 
The Voice Eternal 
 
 dred fold. We have only to choose to have 
 him do this for us, and having once put 
 the matter in his hands, let it rest with him 
 who longs to be to us through Christ the 
 abundance of all things that we need, nor 
 try to take it back, but say to ourselves, 
 "It is done; God hath blessed us with all 
 spiritual blessings in heavenly places in 
 Christ." We have now only to wait in 
 perfect faith for the manifestation of that 
 which we have asked. It is not easy to 
 trust the Christ within us for all things 
 when we first begin. Such a habit is not 
 spontaneous, it comes only after repeated 
 effort and repeated proof that it is the 
 royal highway to peace, plenty, and power. 
 We begin by trusting him with small 
 things, but by and by we come to trust him 
 for all things. 
 
 The question of what was Jesus doing 
 before he came working his wonders has 
 never been satisf actor ily answered, but we 
 know that when some man comes working 
 the works of Jesus, healing the sick, loos- 
 ing the bound, etc., then know that he did 
 not come into this faith in a moment, but 
 that with clenched fists and face set as a 
 flint he has held fast to the Christ within, 
 
The Christ Within 91 
 
 trusting where he could not see, until he 
 found himself manifesting "the faith of 
 the Son of God." Begin by thinking and 
 acting these things and you will come to 
 know the Christ the spirit of truth. 
 
 And remember that the key word to all 
 this attainment is NOW. With God there 
 is but one time the eternal NOW. Say- 
 ing or believing that salvation for the soul 
 or health for the body are somewhere in 
 the future always puts them somewhere 
 in the future and just beyond our grasp. 
 Behold now is the accepted time for all 
 forward movements for the personal wel- 
 fare. Jesus said nothing about our 
 being saved from our distresses in 
 the future, or after death, but now. 
 God's work is finished in us now, 
 the moment we believe. To be sure 
 Christ manifests himself in different 
 ways, and we must be content to walk in 
 ways that we would not have chosen for 
 the voice of the Christ within will direct 
 us unerringly where he wants us to go. 
 Like Abraham who followed the inner 
 voice not knowing where he went from 
 one act of faith to another until God said 
 
92 The Voice Eternal 
 
 to him, " Because thou hast done this I 
 will both bless thee and make thee'a bless- 
 ing." 
 
 Get out of this chapter then some practi- 
 cal help. Why should we worry about 
 tomorrow? We cannot live it till it 
 arrives, and then only a moment at a time. 
 Fill the present NOW, the day and hour 
 with hope and trust and praise and ser- 
 vice. Why worry ye for tomorrow, suffi- 
 cient for. the day is the evil thereof, and 
 for that matter the good thereof. When 
 the worry fog begins to darken the soul, 
 shine on it with all the optimism of faith 
 in the Christ within you, and level on it 
 all the guns of a sane philosophy. Say 
 to yourself, "I will not worry, for every 
 worry thought weakens me for the conflict 
 when it comes. It may never come, but 
 if so I will not concern myself about it 
 until it arrives, and then I shall have all 
 my powers conserved to meet it in 
 triumph. " 
 
 The second idea to always hold in mind 
 is, that the Christ that was in Jesus must 
 ever be going about doing good, must be 
 going out to others pointing out to them 
 the secret that deliverance from every ill 
 
The Christ Within 93 
 
 of this life lay in the truth of the 
 FATHER IN THEM and patiently wait- 
 ing and working till they were awakened 
 to this understanding of life. 
 
 And the Christ in us will first be con- 
 tent with our recognition of the fact, but 
 ere long we must pass the word out to 
 others, and he will not be content until we 
 have begun at Jerusalem (at home) and 
 finished by telling it to the uttermost 
 parts of the earth. Have you grasped the 
 truth? Pass it on. Does Christ dwelling 
 in you become the dominant, triumphant 
 factor in your life ? Pass it on, and do it 
 with all the tact and patience of Jesus, 
 telling one to go and shew the health 
 authorities, and another to tell no man. 
 Go about doing good. Help to awaken the 
 sleeping passenger on board so many of 
 these storm-tossed lives that he may arise 
 and speak peace to them, and after awhile 
 you will be able to say, " Christ is all and 
 in all to me." 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BASIS OF HEALTH. 
 
 NOT by might nor by power but by 
 my spirit saith the Lord," tells 
 us in so many words that all power in its 
 last analysis is spiritual. In all things 
 earthly there is first that which is natural, 
 and then that which is spiritual. All 
 materials things are the expression of 
 things profoundly spiritual. And it is by 
 the study of material things with essen- 
 tially this conception ever before us that 
 we come to a correct view of spiritual 
 things. St. Paul says, "For the invisible 
 things of God, even his eternal power and 
 Godhead, are clearly seen through the 
 creation of the world, being understood 
 by the things that are made." The uni- 
 verse is built after the human plan, and 
 man is in the image of God, so that we 
 have made the first great step toward the 
 knowledge of God when we have mas- 
 tered the knowledge of ourselves. We 
 have a material body and dwelling in it 
 and co-extensive with it is a spiritual 
 body with organs of similar character 
 and function. This spiritual body is the 
 
The Spiritual B a s i s of Health 95 
 
 Subconscious self. The conscious side of 
 the mind does not seem to have any ex- 
 istence apart from the union of these two. 
 The child begins to develop consciousness 
 when the light falls on the eye, or when 
 after repeated experiences it becomes con- 
 scious of its mother as the source of nu- 
 trition. And so step by step the con- 
 scious mind as a function of this union of a 
 spiritual and material being is developed. 
 With its various methods of reasoning it 
 is fitted to exercise the office of monitor 
 in this world of truth and error, but will 
 be unnecessary in a world where only 
 truth exists. In the day when this union 
 is dissolved this function ceases and its 
 thoughts perish. The subconscious is the 
 real immortal, spiritual part of us. It is 
 this with which the Infinite Spirit is iden- 
 tified and inseparably joined. It is 
 through the Subconscious that the spirit 
 manifests forth himself in the form of 
 flesh and blood. It is here that the ele- 
 ments of the divine character are devel- 
 oped. The part played by the conscious 
 mind in this process is pictured out in the 
 32nd chapter of Exodus where Objective 
 Moses argues with Subjective Moses and 
 
96 The Voice Eternal 
 
 points out to him a better way. All the 
 tides of the Infinite life move into us from 
 the Subjective side, and are guided and 
 used under the direction of the Objective 
 side. 
 
 Every age has had its method of con- 
 tacting this Infinite life and using its 
 power and energies. Any exercise by 
 which the Objective has been held more 
 or less in abeyance has been most effect- 
 ive. There can be no doubt that a life 
 given up to meditation, prayer, and good 
 works will manifest more of that spirit 
 than one which does not so exercise itself. 
 On the same principle of exalting the 
 subjective a person under the stress of a 
 great emotion growing out of personal 
 peril, or that of a loved one, or danger to 
 country, will find himself doing prodigies 
 of valor. Under such conditions the eyes 
 will flash, the face will glow and the body 
 will be filled with a new and strange 
 energy. A weak and fragile body will 
 seem to be indued with tireless strength, 
 and the devout soul will realize that he is 
 helped of God, and w T ill say, "I could not 
 have done it myself, God helped me." 
 That one supreme authority on the spir- 
 
The Spiritual Basis of Health 97 
 
 itual experiences of humanity, the Bible, 
 abounds in illustrations of this fact. Now 
 it is also true that what is accomplished 
 under the pressure of some great crisis, 
 in which we contact God, may be as truly 
 and fully achieved under the conditions 
 of normal life, by knowing and apply- 
 ing the laws of the spiritual life, in ac- 
 cepting and affirming our oneness with the 
 Spirit with all that it means, and so let- 
 ting God augment our strength, by iden- 
 tifying himself with our life. And it is 
 true beyond any reasonable doubt that 
 the measure of our power is found in the 
 sort of instrument we furnish the Spirit 
 to work in and through. 
 
 And it is also true that there is no es- 
 sential difference between the power that 
 is manifest in the normal life when we 
 speak the healing word, or touch with 
 the hand that gives health actions born 
 out of an abiding sense of the Infinite, 
 and the power that manifests in the word 
 or touch when done under the sense of a 
 mighty tide of spiritual emotion or in- 
 spiration. Whatever difference there is 
 consists of quantity or volume and not of 
 quality. It is all of God. But we have 
 
98 The Voice Eternal 
 
 always to refer things to their divine 
 source, as when our Lord attributed his 
 miracle working power to the Father. 
 "The works that I do, I do not of myself, 
 but the Father that dwelleth in me, He 
 doeth the works." So his words of wis- 
 dom were referred to the same source. 
 On the other hand it was, "The words 
 that I speak unto you they are spirit 
 and they are life." "I will, be thou 
 clean." "Take up thy bed and walk." 
 In like manner our absolute de- 
 pendence on the spirit is always be- 
 ing emphasized. "Without me ye can 
 do nothing" is the true statement 
 that all our power to do anything is de- 
 rived from him, whether it be the small- 
 est duty or the acts that are to be epoch- 
 making in our own or others' lives, and 
 therefore the whole question of power 
 must be referred to God." I have read 
 once, yea twice, that power belongeth to 
 God." On the other hand, such words 
 as, "Ye shall ask what ye will"; "Be 
 it unto thee even as thou wilt," seem 
 to place the conditioning of that 
 power within ourselves. In a w r ord, 
 God works power in as we work it out. It 
 
The Spiritual Basis of Health 99 
 
 is merely a question of how to let that 
 divine power find expression in any in- 
 dividual. 
 
 In the transmission of electric power 
 the two main factors are those of insula- 
 tion and carrying capacity, or the size 
 and quality of the wire. No matter with 
 what rapidity the armature may sweep 
 over the magnetic field unless these two 
 conditions be favorable there will be little 
 or no transmission of power. And it is 
 certain that unless these same conditions 
 are present in spiritual activities there 
 will be no reception or transmission of 
 spiritual energy. The fact is clear that 
 the limitless power of the Living God is 
 about us and in us pressing for expres- 
 sion, and it can be found by the insulation 
 of the Subconscious, which is done in 
 greater or less degree in such exercises as 
 prayer, religious meditation, patience 
 under great affliction, heroic fidelity to 
 great ideals and principles, loving service, 
 and other activities in which most church 
 people engage. Some who have been most 
 effective instruments for the Spirit have 
 had no other thought of how they could 
 attain except by ceaseless vigils, fasting, 
 and importunate prayer. Our Lord him- 
 
100 The Voice Eternal 
 
 self found it necessary to go apart into 
 mountain and desert places where he 
 might commune with his Father, and he 
 and his disciples have opportunity to re- 
 cuperate their depleted forces. This prac- 
 tice of being alone with God has never 
 been improved on, although the method of 
 its practice may differ. One may by prac- 
 tice hold his objective faculties in a 
 passive state, inhibit all conscious thought, 
 and so open wide the channel of the sub- 
 conscious through which the limitless 
 power of God may flow to accomplish any 
 purpose toward which it may be directed. 
 So that "he may ask what he will and it 
 shall be done." This brings us inevitably 
 to the fact that it is the w r ill that deter- 
 mines the volume of power that shall be 
 manifested. When one has made the in- 
 sulation complete, it is then with a sense 
 of perfect authority that he can say, "I 
 will, be thou healed," and know that it 
 shall be done. It is well therefore to 
 study the methods of cultivating the 
 will power so that in the emergencies of 
 life without clenching your fists, or set- 
 ting your jaw, or knitting your brow, 
 you may at will draw r all the supplies you 
 
The Spiritual Basis of Health 101 
 
 need, as calmly as you do in the ordinary 
 duties of life. I do not think of anything 
 that so thoroughly impresses this idea as 
 the sight of a trolley car running along 
 with its outstretched arm reaching for 
 power, without which it cannot go. And 
 there is that sense of utter dependence on 
 the spirit's power that keeps the inner 
 eye forever on the source of power, and 
 the subjective arm reaching out to touch 
 the live wire of Omnipotence. And out 
 of this there comes the confidence that 
 can say to a sick friend, "You are going 
 to be better, and you will gradually come 
 back to perfect health," and know that it 
 will be as you have said. Until you are 
 consciously in touch with the Spirit there 
 will be the lack of positive certainty with 
 which you speak the healing word. This 
 established and your will lays hold of all 
 energy so that you may live with a mini- 
 mum of ills and a maximum of comfort 
 in serving yourself and others. 
 
 There can be no doubt that a normal 
 life is intended to pass on its journey 
 without the handicap of all such ills as 
 most people endure. And if it seems that 
 the bulk of human experience contradicts 
 
102 The Voice Eternal 
 
 this statement, we have to remember that 
 probably not one in a hundred of us had 
 the advantage of a good start in the world. 
 Upon our arrival, in addition to the im- 
 pediments of heredity, we found the ig- 
 norance, superstition, and general blun- 
 dering of those in charge of us, responsi- 
 ble for a lot of bad kinks in our stock in 
 trade for the career on which we had en- 
 tered. Thus it happens that most of us 
 have a large assortment of abnormal con- 
 ditions on hand with which to start, and 
 then we have the blunders and follies of 
 youth, and the mistakes that grow out of 
 early bigotry and ignorance all to outlive 
 and undo before we can reach the place 
 of actually living a normal life. And 
 often before we have unloaded this in- 
 cubus we have entered upon some career 
 from which we find it difficult or impos- 
 sible to extricate ourselves if we ever want 
 to. So often I have had some one come 
 to me wanting to enter upon some mis- 
 sion of service to his fellows, and I have 
 had to point out to him that he could not 
 impart to others what he did not himself 
 possess. I have had those who felt called 
 to mission fields, and after starting in and 
 
The Spiritual Basis of Health 103 
 
 getting into possession of health, and the 
 right poise of mind, they discovered that 
 they had no possible business going to 
 mission fields. This does not mean to say 
 that such a divine call does not come to 
 normal people to do such work, but I am 
 rather saying that things often seem ut- 
 terly different to one in sickness and in 
 health, and am emphasizing the fact that 
 our first great problem is the mastery of 
 ourselves. 
 
 The discovery that there is within us a 
 vast unused reservoir of power awaiting 
 our exploitation is the challenge to enter 
 at once on a campaign of self-knowledge 
 and of the use of these forces so that we 
 may undo the ravages of disease, break 
 the power of bad mental and physical 
 habits, and get up to the plane of normal 
 living. 
 
 To do this requires, first, the conviction 
 that the forces within you and contigu- 
 ous to you are sufficient for all your 
 needs. That all possible needs are anti- 
 cipated and provided for in this spiritual 
 endowment, Second, that these forces 
 are under your control if you choose to 
 have them be so, and that they wil 1 do 
 
104 The Voice Eternal 
 
 any thing you set them doing, and that 
 they have no right to do anything else 
 than what you put them at. And if they 
 are manifesting sickness, pain, or ill- 
 fortune they are acting without your 
 authority, and therefore as the master of 
 the house you must demand that they 
 manifest just what you want and nothing- 
 else. The question of who is running the 
 house must not be raised for a moment. 
 Assert this with all the will power you 
 can command "I AM THE MASTER." 
 Then you will have to face two things 
 that are of the utmost importance : First, 
 that there will often be slow progress; 
 you will not be able to reconstruct your- 
 self in a day. It often takes time so that 
 you must settle dow r n to the proposition 
 that any stronghold that cannot be taken 
 by assault may be taken by a siege, so that 
 you must have patience and let your soul 
 abide in the peace of God within you, 
 knowing that you cannot fail. Second, 
 sometimes you will feel actually w r orse 
 than better after the first attempt. This 
 may be due to the chemical changes that 
 take place as a result of the new thought 
 forces you have set in motion. Or, it may 
 
The Spiritual Basis of Health 105 
 
 arise out of the conflicting thoughts you 
 are sending to your subconscious mind. 
 For instance, you give yourself the sugges- 
 tion that your ills or troubles will be at an 
 end, and the proposed results are so great 
 from causes so seemingly inadequate, be- 
 cause you are not acquainted with them, 
 that there arises a doubt in your mind 
 which is stronger than your health sug- 
 gestion, and as a result you are worse than 
 you were at first. These two difficulties 
 you must be prepared to meet. They do 
 not always arise, but often they do, and it 
 is well to provide against a lapse of faith, 
 on account of a temporary failure. 
 
 One thing becomes very apparent as 
 one goes on practicing this divine science. 
 It is that there is always cropping out 
 the human element so that we must be for- 
 ever using terms that apply to human 
 activity, and yet there is always the sense 
 of something outside the range of purely 
 human forces so that we cannot avoid 
 using the terms that belong only to things 
 divine. There is nothing in this life that 
 is purely human, and for that matter 
 nothing that is purely divine. These are 
 terms of accommodation. No man can 
 
106 The Voice Eternal 
 
 tell where one quits and the other begins. 
 They are in fact one. However boundless 
 may seem the resources of the subcon- 
 scious itself, it grows out of the fact that 
 it is merged into the Infinite spirit of 
 which it is an individual expression. 
 Therefore we say that this power is of 
 God the Infinite Spirit, and that it is es- 
 sentially spiritual. True we may use 
 methods that seem very human, such as 
 mixing clay with spittle with which to 
 anoint a blind man's eyes, yet only the 
 method is human. The forces themselves 
 are divine, and the results are equally 
 divine, so that when we are soothing a 
 wounded spirit with words of comfort, or 
 driving out some mental obsession, by 
 sheer force of personality, or quieting an 
 aching member of the human frame by 
 manipulation, or using some material 
 remedy of proven potency, or employing 
 the surgeon's knife to remove some ab- 
 normal tissue, we are doing the works of 
 God, and we are God's men in that par- 
 ticular service. 
 
 After carefully studying the effects- of 
 the various methods of presenting the 
 healing truth to a patient, I have found 
 that even though I did not actually use 
 
The Spiritual Basis of Health 107 
 
 any outward form of prayer or religious 
 exercise, the very assumption on the pa- 
 tient's part that it was of God and in har- 
 mony with the faith in which he had been 
 raised has been of immense help. Re- 
 ligious faith is the one peerless dynamic 
 in this world. It has built every civiliza- 
 tion of history, and when perverted or 
 allowed to become a stationary, instead of 
 an evolutionary force, it has been the de- 
 stroyer. The fact that God wills your un- 
 dertaking makes it irresistible. I have 
 had the greatest sense of authority over 
 disease and pain when I have been the 
 most conscious of in-tune-ness with the 
 Infinite. This grows not only out of the 
 suggestion but out of the fact. Let a man 
 take his stand on the foundation fact of 
 his oneness with God ; then let him become 
 passive and receptive to every intimation 
 of the Spirit; then let him believe that 
 because he has God dwelling in him there 
 is no fixed limit to what he may have or 
 do ; and then let him with unshaken pur- 
 pose of will determine to manifest the 
 power of God, and health and happiness, 
 and peace and power will be multiplied in 
 him through his knowledge of God. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE "WORD" FOR WELL-BEING. 
 
 NO BOOK is so rich in healing sug- 
 gestion as the Bible. Its Psychology 
 is always correct. Beginning with the 
 childhood of the race, it deals largely with 
 the motive of fear because fear is the 
 most elemental and powerful of emotions 
 in undeveloped mankind. Slowly it 
 moves out to other motives as the rule of 
 action. Like all true history, the Bible 
 deals with the facts in the special realm 
 it undertakes to chronicle. Prom its be- 
 ginning to its close its one theme is Life 
 with all that pertains to it. Generally 
 speaking, the Old Testament is the his- 
 tory of the childhood of the race, while 
 the New Testament is the history of the 
 race coming into its maturity. In the 
 one, Fear holds a large place, while in 
 the other, Love holds the place of the 
 supreme motive. The first question of 
 the Old Testament is, " Where art thou" 
 picturing an offended deity seeking a 
 fearing, sinful soul that he may inflict 
 upon it a merited punishment. The first 
 question of the New Testament is, 
 
The ''Word" for We 11- Be ing 109 
 
 " Where is he?" featuring a needy and 
 devout soul seeking to find the God of love 
 that he may worship him. 
 
 Now while these are the character- 
 istics of the parts of the Bible, it is 
 true that in that far off age an en- 
 raptured spirit caught glimpses of a 
 better day, and a better way of serv- 
 ing the Lord. The sweet singer of 
 Israel comforted his soul with that won- 
 derful thought, that even at the entrance 
 of the shadow of death, "I will fear no 
 evil, for Thou art with me." For the 
 same reason he would not "fear the terror 
 by day, nor the arrow that flieth by night, 
 nor the pestilence that walketh in dark- 
 ness, nor the destruction that wasteth at 
 noonday." Because he had made the 
 most High his habitation no evil should 
 befall him, neither any plague come nigh 
 his dwelling ! As we enter the New Testa- 
 ment teaching, Fear of the anger of God 
 is replaced with confidence in the Love of 
 God. 
 
 We pass out of the negative realm of 
 "Thou shalt not" into the positive realm 
 of "Thou shalt." The first word of the 
 angel to Joseph was, "Fear not, Joseph." 
 
110 The Voice Eternal 
 
 The first word to Mary was, "Fear not, 
 Mary." So often was the word of the 
 Master "Fear not be not afraid peace 
 be with you" that the whole trend of the 
 gospels and after is toward love as the 
 supreme motive of action. He condensed 
 the negative forms of the law of fear into 
 two great positive constructive sentences, 
 so that forever afterward Love should be 
 the fulfilling of the law. True, the Ten 
 Commandments stand for something that 
 will be essential to human welfare as long 
 as the nature of man continues in its pres- 
 ent stage of existence and development, 
 but when will the Moses arise who shall 
 reach such heights of inspiration as to be 
 able to put these laws into constructive 
 and correct psychological form, with Love 
 as their motive? 
 
 To make the thought clearer the follow- 
 ing is suggested as a stepping stone in the 
 right direction: 
 
 I. I am the God of Love. 
 
 II. Worship me in Spirit and in Truth. 
 
 III. Revere the name of God. 
 
 IV. Keep all days holy and rest one 
 day in seven. 
 
 V. Honor thy parents and so add years 
 to thy life. 
 
The " Word " for Weil-Being 111 
 
 VI. Hold sacred the life of God that is 
 in man. 
 
 VII. Let thy love for all things be with 
 a pure heart. 
 
 VIII. Be honest. 
 
 IX. Speak the truth. 
 
 X. Desire earnestly the best things. 
 But we need not wait for such a form to 
 
 become authoritative with the sanction of 
 the church. That will come along in good 
 time. Meantime these words and others 
 rich in devotion and ripe with ages of test- 
 ing form an arsenal of spiritual weapons 
 of offense and defense against every ill 
 that besets us in wrong thought forms. 
 Some of these are here formulated under 
 proper headings for use in meditation and 
 affirmation when we have to meet the evils 
 that may assail us from the mental and 
 spiritual sides of our life. 
 
 For the hour when Fear and worry are 
 our foes open the treasury of God's word 
 as it has been worked out in human expe- 
 rience and read : 
 
 I will fear no evil for Thou art with me. 
 
 Fear not for I am with thee, be not dis- 
 mayed for I am thy God. I will strengthen 
 
112 The Voice Eternal 
 
 thee ; I will help thee ; yea, I will uphold 
 thee with the right hand of my righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 Be strong and of good courage ; be not 
 afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the 
 Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever 
 thou goesL 
 
 That we being delivered from the hand 
 of our enemies might serve him without 
 fear all the days of our life. 
 
 I know whom I have believed and am 
 persuaded that he is able to keep that 
 which I have committed to him against 
 that day. 
 
 Perfect love casteth out fear. 
 
 For the day when we are weak. 
 
 In the Lord God is everlasting strength. 
 
 I can do all things through Christ that 
 strengtheneth me. 
 
 They that wait upon the Lord shall re- 
 new their strength. 
 
 He is able to do exceeding, abundantly 
 above all that we ask or think. 
 
 Be strong and of good courage . . . 
 the Lord thy God goeth with thee; He 
 will not fail nor forsake thee. 
 
The " Word " for Weil-Being 113 
 
 When poverty comes as an armed man. 
 
 My God shall supply all your need ac- 
 cording to his riches in glory by Christ 
 Jesus. 
 
 And hath blessed us with all spiritual 
 blessings in heavenly places in Christ 
 Jesus. 
 
 In my Father's house are many man- 
 sions. I go to prepare a place for thee. 
 
 Thou shalt remember the Lord thy God ; 
 for it is He that giveth thee power to get 
 wealth. 
 
 Thou shalt not borrow, but thou shalt 
 lend to many nations. 
 
 Diligent in business, fervent in spirit, 
 serving the Lord. 
 
 He feedeth the ravens; shall He not 
 much more care for you ? 
 
 When Faith is weak. 
 
 Have the faith of God. (E. V.) 
 
 I had fainted unless I had believed to 
 see the goodness of the Lord in the land 
 of the living. 
 
 All things are possible to him that be- 
 lieveth. 
 
 Ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be 
 done unto you. 
 
114 The Voice Eternal 
 
 Your Father knoweth what things ye 
 have need of before you ask him. 
 
 Great is thy faith, be it unto thee even 
 as thou wilt. 
 
 When your happiness is eclipsed. 
 
 A merry heart doeth good like a medi- 
 cine. 
 
 If ye know these things, happy are ye if 
 ye do them. 
 
 Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob 
 for his help. 
 
 All things work together for good to 
 them that love God. 
 
 Kejoice in the Lord, and again I say, re- 
 joice. 
 
 These things have I spoken unto you 
 that your joy might be full. 
 
 For wakeful hours. 
 
 He giveth his beloved sleep. 
 
 Come unto me all ye that labor and are 
 heavy laden and I will give you rest. 
 
 I will lay me down in peace and sleep, 
 for Thou makest me to dwell in safety. 
 
 There remaineth therefore a rest for the 
 people of God; they that believe do enter 
 into rest. 
 
The" Word " for Weil-Being 115 
 
 His banner over me was love. 
 Thou shalt lie down and thy sleep shall 
 be sweet. 
 
 When your enemies trouble you. 
 
 The Lord shall cause thine enemies that 
 rise up against thee to be smitten before 
 thy face. They shall come out against 
 thee one way, and flee before thee seven 
 ways. 
 
 Love }^our enemies. Pray for them that 
 despitefully use you. 
 
 Father forgive them, they know not 
 what they do. 
 
 And now shall mine head be lifted up 
 above my enemies round about me. 
 
 If thine enemy hunger feed him. 
 
 To find Peace. 
 
 Great peace have they that love thy law 
 and nothing shall offend them. 
 
 Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace 
 whose mind is stayed on thee because he 
 trusteth thee. 
 
 Peace I leave with you ; my peace I give 
 unto you. 
 
 The peace of God that passeth all un- 
 
116 The Voice Eternal 
 
 derstanding shall keep your hearts and 
 minds through Jesus Christ. 
 
 Peace on earth, good will toward men. 
 
 For Healing. 
 
 I am the Lord that healeth thee. 
 
 He healeth all thy diseases. 
 
 The prayer of faith shall save the sick. 
 
 The sun of righteousness shall arise 
 with healing in his wings. 
 
 The leaves of the tree are for the heal- 
 ing of the nations. 
 
 Thy faith hath made thee whole. 
 
 I cried unto thee and thou hast healed 
 me. 
 
 He sent his word and healed them. 
 
 For times of great affliction. 
 
 When thou passest through the waters 
 I will be with thee ; and through the rivers 
 they shall not overflow thee; when thou 
 walkest through the fire thou shalt not be 
 burned, neither shall the flame kindle 
 upon thee. 
 
 Our present afflictions which are for a 
 moment work out for us an exceeding 
 great and eternal weight of joy. 
 
The " Word "forWell-Being 117 
 
 Weeping may endure for the night but 
 joy cometh in the morning. 
 
 These are all rich in comfort for they 
 are the organized experiences of God's 
 people. There can be none better, for a 
 suggestion is measured in its power by the 
 conception the receiver has of the author- 
 ity and power of the person giving it, as 
 well as by the greatness of the truth it 
 holds. Let the mind dwell Upon theso 
 words that the eternal God has spoken to 
 and through his people, and soon there is 
 a mighty uplift of mind and body to him 
 who receives them. To be sure there are 
 many modern forms of suggestion that 
 are short and in the language of the day, 
 but these from the treasury of mankind 
 are rich with ages of trial and proof. And 
 when they are interpreted in the light of 
 the modern conception of the oneness of 
 God with humanity there is an intimacy 
 of contact and an efficacy of action that 
 cannot fail. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE LAW OF SUGGESTION. 
 
 1AM often asked, "Is there any book 
 that gives the form of suggestions to be 
 used in specific cases'?" In the nature of 
 the case one can hardly do more than to 
 give the general principles of suggestion 
 with a few illustrations of their use, for 
 the reason that no two cases are just alike, 
 any more than any two people are just 
 alike. A book of forms of suggestion to 
 cover all the cases that arise in my prac- 
 tice would make a volume something like 
 the old fashioned family doctor books that 
 are used mostly to hold open the front 
 doors of farm houses through the rural 
 regions. But to help those who would 
 know and use the power of suggestion for 
 their own and others' good I will give an 
 outline of first principles with illustra- 
 tions, and if you will intelligently and 
 persistently follow them you will get re- 
 sults in any case amenable to suggestion. 
 The inind is Conscious and Sub-con- 
 scious. The conscious has to do with that 
 realm of sensation and thought of which 
 we take cognizance. The sub-conscious has 
 
The Law of Suggestion 119 
 
 to do with those sensations, thoughts, and 
 activities of which we are unconscious. 
 The conscious side of the mind is the mas- 
 ter of the house of the Lord, usually called 
 the body. It is the architect of life and 
 destiny. It creates the ideals for body, 
 mind and character. It is equipped with 
 every method of reasoning so that it may 
 determine what is good or bad, right or 
 wrong, in a world where these are so en- 
 tangled as to set the wisest by the ears. 
 It can reason by induction, i.e., it can take 
 a large number of separate facts and draw 
 from them a general principle or law. It 
 can reason by deduction, i. e., it can take 
 a given fact and draw from it every logi- 
 cal sequence. It can reason by compari- 
 son, i. e., it can take a proposed fact and 
 compare it with a known fact and deter- 
 mine its probable truth or value. It can 
 reason by analysis, i. e., it can separate a 
 proposition into its elements and deter- 
 mine their relative value. It can reason 
 by synthesis, i. e., it can take a large num- 
 ber of related facts and bind them into 
 a consistent W 7 hole. It is therefore pe- 
 culiarly fitted for such a world as that in 
 which we live, but it would have no place 
 
120 The Voice Eternal 
 
 in a world where only truth and right 
 existed. 
 
 The sub-conscious is the servant in the 
 house. It can reason only by deduction. 
 It cannot compare any suggested fact with 
 a known one for the reason that it can hold 
 but one idea at a time. It cannot therefore 
 tell whether a thing is good or bad, true or 
 false. Its deductions from any suggested 
 fact are perfectly logical but if there is 
 a fa]se premise involved it has no means 
 of detecting the fallacy. It is essentially 
 the builder of the body. It cannot origi- 
 nate anything. It can only carry out 
 hereditary tendencies, traditional ideas, 
 or things suggested by the conscious mind. 
 It is as tenacious in holding to a good idea 
 or habit as it is in holding a bad one. It 
 will work out any idea held over it by the 
 conscious mind. If that idea is repeated 
 often enough it will work it out automatic- 
 ally, without any conscious thought tak- 
 ing place. It is the seat and creature of 
 habit. 
 
 All habits are subconscious. And they 
 are produced by the repetition of a thought 
 in the conscious thinking. And the of tener 
 the thought is repeated the more rapidly 
 
The Law of Suggestion 121 
 
 will the habit be formed. For instance 
 if a man smokes one cigar a month he will 
 not get the habit very quickly. If he takes 
 one per week he will get it four times as 
 fast. If he takes one per day he will get 
 the habit thirty times as fast. Any idea 
 whether good or bad becomes a habit of 
 the subconscious on the same principle. 
 Set times for " going into the silence " to 
 think of the things we want to materialize 
 in our lives is a good practice. The of tener 
 it is done, the quicker are the results ob- 
 tained. We affirm over and over the 
 things we want, or just steadily hold them 
 in thought and the subconscious takes the 
 thought and begins to work it out into ex- 
 perience. To get results quickly we must 
 set the will to holding the conscious mind 
 upon the thing we want to be, and keep 
 it off. the thing we do not want. One must 
 begin by thinking of the thing as some- 
 thing to be desired, then as something he 
 believes he may have, and then as some- 
 thing he is determined to have. Then he 
 must think the thing about himself, and 
 keep it up until the idea has become a fixed 
 habit of the subconscious, and then the 
 thought and himself have become one, for 
 
122 The Voice Eternal 
 
 a man becomes what he persistently 
 thinks about. "As a man thinketh in his 
 heart so is he." Health, strength, happi- 
 ness, success, prosperity, in fact anything 
 can be secured by following this method. 
 In thinking to form health habits, 
 success habits, or any other sort, re- 
 member to use only the positive, 
 constructive thought forms, and re- 
 fuse to allow their opposites any place 
 in the conscious thinking. You can, for 
 instance, say to yourself a score of times, 
 "I will not have the headache," and when 
 you have gotten through with your sug- 
 gesting the strongest idea you have given 
 your mind is that contained in the word 
 headache, and in due time it will arrive 
 as usual. But if you say, "I shall spend 
 the day in perfect comfort ; my head shall 
 be filled with sensations of ease, etc., you 
 will find that these ideas persistently 
 thought will impress on the subconscious 
 the idea of ease and comfort, and it will 
 proceed to work them out. Pain will go 
 only when the subconscious is filled with 
 the idea of ease. Poverty will go only 
 when it is displaced in the thought habits 
 with the idea of prosperity or plenty. Our 
 
The Law of Suggestion 123 
 
 bad luck will end when we begin to think 
 of our good luck. Failure gives way to 
 the persistent thought of success. Fear 
 gives place to love. Despondency is 
 routed by hope. Doubt yields to faith. 
 Weakness must go before the thought of 
 strength. Self loses its sense of isolation 
 by identifying itself with God. Every 
 form of obsession goes out into the deep 
 by the full realization of the idea of self- 
 mastery. 
 
 The designation of the functions of the 
 conscious and subconscious is not an ar- 
 bitrary arrangement but is based upon 
 known facts of Physiology and Psychol- 
 ogy. The body is made up of bones, mus- 
 cles, nerves, and blood vessels, and various 
 fluids. The tissues of the body are com- 
 posed of cells, estimated at 1,700 trillions. 
 
 The muscles are divided into two classes 
 known as voluntary and involuntary. 
 The nervous organism is divided into the 
 Cerebro-spinal and Sympathetic systems. 
 The voluntary muscles are furnished their 
 nerve equipment from the cerebro-spinal 
 S3^stem, consisting of the brain and spinal 
 cord. Presiding over this is the conscious 
 mind with its seat of authority in the 
 
124 The Voice Eternal 
 
 brain, so that we move the body, arms, 
 limbs, and other voluntary parts of the 
 body by the action of the conscious mind. 
 The involuntary muscles such as the 
 heart, stomach, liver, kidneys, and the or- 
 gans of the pelvic region, are largely 
 equipped with nerves from the sympa- 
 thetic system whose center is the Solar 
 plexus, sometimes called the " Abdominal 
 brain/ 7 which is the seat of authority of 
 the subconscious mind. Under its direc- 
 tion the heart keeps beating, the blood 
 keeps moving, the stomach digests food, 
 the liver and other organs do their work 
 whether we sleep or wake. Incidentally, 
 the subconscious carries on the work of 
 repairing and creating the 1,700 trillion 
 cells of the body, each one equipped with 
 a sensory and a motor nerve, a capillary 
 from the veins and arteries, and a branch 
 of the lymphatic system. Through these 
 various channels the subconscious is busy 
 every moment running supply trains to 
 the cells and running funeral trains away 
 from them. Its place as the builder of 
 the body is therefore undisputed. For 
 while these two nervous systems are inti- 
 mately connected and related, their nor- 
 
The Law of Suggestion 125 
 
 mal functions are practically independent 
 so that all the functions of the internal 
 organs are carried on without our giving 
 them a conscious thought. In fact, a nor- 
 mally healthy man never has occasion to 
 think of his stomach or heart or other 
 organs at all. The less he does so, the 
 better. It is a notorious fact that the 
 most depressing exercise one can take is 
 to listen to the detailed account of the 
 aches and pains and ills of people who 
 delight to dwell upon their troubles. If 
 there is an exception to this it is the case 
 of those who persist in talking about 
 themselves or thinking to themselves of 
 their dreadful experiences, and fears and 
 apprehensions, which are always magni- 
 fied if not wholly imaginary. Usually 
 there is no malice in the process for they 
 are ignorant of the forces whose laws 
 they are unconsciously setting into action, 
 but the result is none the less deadly. 
 Such people ought to be suppressed or 
 otherwise shut up until they are treated 
 and mentally re-educated to avoid play- 
 ing with deadly agencies. This, may 
 sound harsh but it is judicious, for the 
 reason that when the conscious mind 
 
126 The Voice Eternal 
 
 dwells upon such things the thought is 
 at once handed down to the subconscious, 
 which immediately telegraphs the abnor- 
 mal thought form out through the sym- 
 pathetic nervous system to every involun- 
 tary muscle and organ of the body, and 
 begins to work out an imitation of the 
 idea received by, or originated in the con- 
 scious mind. The effect may be only a 
 brief " depression of spirits," but if re- 
 peated it becomes a habit that deranges 
 the action of one or more organs of the 
 body. The integrity of the tissue of the 
 organ may not be affected but its action 
 may be very seriously impaired, in fact 
 so much so that it is sometimes difficult 
 to tell it from an organic disease in which 
 the integrity of the tissues of the organ 
 is affected. 
 
 In this way such thoughts as fear, 
 worry, grief, trouble, traditional notions 
 about hereditary influences, get in their 
 deadly work, derange the functions of the 
 body, and work havoc to our health, hap- 
 piness, and usefulness. The cure is 
 brought about by instructing the patient 
 in the laws of his own mind. Showing 
 him just how he has been unconsciously 
 
The Law of Suggestion 127 
 
 wrecking Ms own health and then carry 
 it over into the realm of ethics, and show- 
 ing him that to know what is good and 
 fail to do it is to be an intentional sinner. 
 For what he knows he may do he must 
 do or be a sinner, if not theologically, at 
 least physiologically. He must fill the 
 conscious mind with the truth in thought- 
 images of health, happiness and useful- 
 ness. A cheerful philosophy such as is 
 set forth in this book will banish doubts, 
 fears, the "blues," and all such like and 
 speedily relieve the body of its ills. 
 
 Let it be further remembered, as set 
 forth in Chapter I, that every good in 
 God's world is attained by obedience to 
 the laws by which that good finds expres- 
 sion. A man may sit cross-legged and 
 look down his nose between his feet and 
 think, "I am prosperity," until Gabriel 
 sounds his traditional trumpet, but unless 
 he obeys the law by which prosperity finds 
 expression, by being "diligent in business, 
 fervent in spirit, serving the Lord," he 
 will probably scratch a poor man's back 
 all his life. 
 
 In like manner a man may say, "I am 
 health," and go on sleeping in an unven- 
 
128 The Voice Eternal 
 
 tilated room, neglect to take proper exer- 
 cise, or feed his body on an unbalanced 
 diet, and in general fail to observe dietetic, 
 hygienic, or other laws of health, and 
 wonder why his "thought" doesn't create 
 a perfectly healthy body. "Faith with- 
 out works is dead," said St. James, a 
 noted healer of the early church. Health 
 without observing its laws is impossible. 
 If one does not know the laws then he 
 needs to consult a physician, or some one 
 trained in such knowledge, and get a start 
 in the truly great and often heroic 
 achievement of knowing himself. For be 
 it remembered that no one man's scheme 
 of diet or living can fit every body. There 
 are physiological reasons for the saying 
 that "what is one man's meat is another's 
 poison." The whole matter of applying 
 the laws of living is a personal affair, a 
 thing to be worked out by the individual 
 for himself. 
 
 So also a man may say, "I am a Chris- 
 tian," and fill his mind with such notions 
 as that there is one holy day and six pro- 
 fane ones in a week ; that some duties are 
 sacred while the rest are secular; that 
 God is pleased with poverty, or sickness, 
 
The Law of Suggestion 129 
 
 or any thing short of " wholeness" a 
 whole man the whole time; that he may 
 depend upon some one else doing what he 
 can do for himself, will never come to the 
 heights of self-mastery, and will get little 
 of the joy and peace and power that is 
 the right of a real Christian. Jesus found 
 in his day that the greatest drawback to 
 spiritual progress was that the people 
 believed and knew so many things that 
 were not true. Therefore he said, "Ye 
 shall know the truth and the truth shall 
 make you free." And this chapter sets 
 forth why the truth in any realm of life 
 cannot fail to produce the desired results. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE MATERIAL ACCESSORIES TO HEALTH. 
 
 NO SCHEME of the spiritual philoso- 
 phy of health can be complete which 
 leaves out a due consideration of the ma- 
 terial means that make for the welfare of 
 the physical body which is the temple for 
 the life of God that for a time dwells 
 here. The body is a fact on hands and no 
 amount of mental jugglery can alter that 
 fact. Its welfare is tremendously in- 
 fluenced by the materials that we take into 
 it. It is the life of God expressed in ma- 
 terial form just as the soul is the life of 
 God expressed in immaterial form. The 
 life of God is governed by certain laws of 
 expression which vary according to the 
 form of life. If the Infinite life is ex- 
 pressed in spiritual form then it flows into 
 that form by direct spiritual contact of 
 the individual life with the spirit of all 
 life. If life is expressed in material form 
 then it is constantly maintained by life 
 imparted through material forms, as the 
 living soil imparts its life to vegetation, 
 and vegetation to the animal, and like- 
 wise both of these to man's bodv. In 
 
Material Accessories to Health 131 
 
 other words the human body receives liv- 
 ing energy from various material forms 
 such as food, water, air, etc., while his 
 spiritual body receives its energy direct 
 from God, and even here the process is 
 greatly helped by certain symbols and ma- 
 terial forms. No sane man expects his 
 body to be fed by purely spiritual means 
 without the agency of material forms. 
 And there are certain laws by which 
 these material agencies are made to min- 
 ister their energy to the body most effi- 
 ciently. To know these laws is the first 
 duty of man. No reference is made here 
 to materia medica because its use is as- 
 sumed, and the physician is regarded as 
 God's man dealing in divine forces which 
 many people need at times to use. The 
 author is not a physician and is writing 
 for the people who do not need material 
 remedies, and whose attention needs to be 
 turned rather to the mental and spiritual 
 forces in and about them. 
 
 The body is made up of bones, muscles, 
 nerves, tissues, and fluids. It seems to be 
 adjusted to the one supreme purpose of 
 furnishing a dwelling place for an unseen 
 being that touches and fills every part of 
 
132 The Voice Eternal 
 
 it and governs its every action from one 
 ultimate center the brain. Just how this 
 connection is maintained between matter 
 on the one hand and spirit on the other 
 so that the vibrations of unconscious mat- 
 ter become mental images in the conscious 
 mind is largely speculative. We can tell 
 all the steps taken by vibrations passing 
 into the ear to the innermost chamber 
 where it reaches the filaments of the audi- 
 tory nerve and thence is carried to the 
 brain where it reports as music, or words, 
 or noise. That is probably as far as the 
 reader cares to go with it. So with the 
 question of extracting from food the en- 
 ergy needed to keep up the body, we may 
 trace all the steps and know the laws of 
 nutrition, and still not be able to tell just 
 how the same kind of food will give one 
 form of energy to the blacksmith's arm, 
 another to the fine texture of the poet's 
 brain, and in still another case a subtle 
 form of energy called personal magnet- 
 ism. But we may know the building pro- 
 cesses of the body, and the values of the 
 various material agents and the methods 
 of their use. 
 
 One important fact is that the body is 
 
Material Accessories to Health 133 
 
 forever changing. In this change two op- 
 posing processes are at work. One is the 
 constructive process whereby the body is 
 built up ; the other is the destructive pro- 
 cess whereby it is torn down. From the 
 cradle to the grave this builder and de- 
 stroyer are contending for the mastery. 
 In childhood and youth the builder has the 
 advantage; in manhood he maintains the 
 supremacy; as we advance in years the 
 destroyer slowly but surely gains the lead 
 until the builder can no longer keep the 
 body in repair as a fit instrument for the 
 spirit of life and we move out to life on 
 other planes of existence. In this process 
 of building the matter of materials in the 
 form of nutrition is the chief problem. 
 
 There is a theory of medicine whose 
 main hypothesis is that inasmuch as the 
 body is composed of some twelve or more 
 chemical salts maintained in proper pro- 
 portion, its ills are caused by a dis- 
 turbance of that proportion, and that 
 by administering the needed salt, health 
 would result with the restored bal- 
 ance. For this purpose certain " tis- 
 sue remedies" were prepared to carry 
 out the theory. It needs only to be 
 
134 The Voice Eternal 
 
 said that people continued to sicken and 
 die at about the same rate as before. So 
 also since that traditionary time when 
 men deemed that they might "eat of the 
 tree of life and live forever" men have 
 dreamed of some sort of ideal food regime 
 by which the body might be kept in per- 
 manent repair. But the dream has not 
 been realized, and the most fearful spec- 
 ter that ever haunted the imagination of 
 mankind was that of being compelled to 
 live on century after century in this fail- 
 ing human body. Whether the bound is 
 set by the thought of humanity or by the 
 will of the Infinite, we know that by some 
 law it is appointed unto man to eventually 
 move out of this temple of the body. Until 
 that time we are concerned with the ques- 
 tion of materials for the building and re- 
 pairing of its ever changing cells. Nutri- 
 tion is the supreme problem, and in this 
 there is involved, First, the question of 
 materials, and Second, the means of trans- 
 porting them to the 1700 trillion cells of 
 the body. For the cell is the unit. Its 
 welfare means the welfare of the whole 
 body. 
 
 In the matter of materials there are five 
 
Material Accessories to Health 135 
 
 great classes of food elements which are 
 as follows : 
 
 I. PROTEIDS. They contain among other 
 constituents, Nitrogen, and are the flesh 
 formers, the tissue builders of the body. 
 The foods richest in proteids are milk, 
 cheese, meat, eggs, all kinds of fish, wheat, 
 beans, and oatmeal. These proteids be- 
 come peptones during the process of diges- 
 tion and are readily absorbed and are car- 
 ried at once to feed the tissues. About 
 twenty-one per cent of the food supply 
 should be proteids. 
 
 II. FATS. They are found in animal 
 fats, vegetable oils, milk, butter, lard, etc. 
 Fatty matters are very abundant in olives, 
 sweet almonds and other nuts, chocolate, 
 castor oil beans, hemp and flax seed. 
 About ten per cent of the food supply 
 should be fats. 
 
 III. CARBO-HYDRATES. These are prin- 
 cipally sugars and starches. All starches 
 are changed into sugars before they are 
 digested, so that mention is made only of 
 the principal starchy food supplies. Starch 
 is found in wheat, corn, oats, and all 
 grains ; in potatoes, peas, beans, the roots 
 and stems of many plants, and in some 
 
136 The Voice Eternal 
 
 fruits. Corn starch furnishes carbo-hy- 
 drates in almost pure state. These are 
 classed with fats as " non-nitrogenous" 
 and they are the fuel furnishers for main- 
 taining animal heat. About sixty-nine per 
 cent of the food supply should be carbo- 
 hydrates. 
 
 IV. WATER. Next to air it is the most 
 important in preserving the life of the 
 body. Seventy per cent of the body weight 
 is water, and in order to maintain that 
 proportion, and to furnish liquids for di- 
 gestive and other purposes it is necessary 
 to give the body from three and a half to 
 four pints of liquids daily. It enters into 
 the chemical composition of the tissues, 
 rendering them pliable. It acts as a solv- 
 ent in various ingredients of food and ren- 
 ders them capable of absorption. It is the 
 chief ingredient in all body fluids such as 
 blood and lymph. Too great emphasis 
 cannot be laid on the purity of the water 
 we drink. 
 
 V. MINERALS. These are various salts 
 of which Sodium-chloride (common table 
 salt) and phosphate of lime are the most 
 important. Common salt is present in all 
 the body fluids, especially the blood. It is 
 
Material Accessories to Health 137 
 
 contained in nearly everything we eat, but 
 not in sufficient quantities to supply all 
 the needs of the body, so it is added as a 
 separate article of diet. Of all the min- 
 eral salts, phosphate of lime is found in 
 the largest quantity in the body. It enters 
 into the composition of the bones, teeth, 
 and cartileges, and gives firmness to the 
 tissues. Milk gives a large amount of 
 phosphate of lime and is especially pro- 
 vided for infants and all growing animal 
 life. For the same reason there would 
 seem to be a limit to its use among those 
 advancing in age. The use of these vari- 
 ous salts is to regulate the specific gravity 
 of blood and other body fluids; to pre- 
 serve the chemical reaction of blood and 
 excretions and secretions ; to preserve tis- 
 sues from disorganization and putrefac- 
 tion ; to control the rate of absorption ; to 
 enter into the composition of bones and 
 teeth ; to aid the blood to hold certain sub- 
 stances in solution. It stimulates the ap- 
 petite when taken in food and benefits gas- 
 tric secretion. 
 
 The quantity and kind of food required 
 depends somewhat on the individual, the 
 nature and amount of his work, and the 
 
138 The Voice Eternal 
 
 climatic conditions under which he lives. 
 Bread, milk, and water, with a certain 
 amount of meat and fat, form the basis of 
 all diets in the temperate zone, for they 
 are the best sustainers of life. But as a 
 mixed diet is manifestly best, other food 
 materials are to be included. In order 
 that all the tissues and fluids of the body 
 may remain in good condition it is neces- 
 sary that they receive in proper propor- 
 tion all the ingredients necessary for their 
 well being, in the form most agreeable to 
 the individual and of the kind requiring a 
 minimum of work in digesting it. 
 
 Any scheme of diet that proposes to 
 make one definite list of food supplies to 
 suit everybody is to say the least falla- 
 cious. Certain general principles, how- 
 ever, may be safely followed. Hard 
 labor calls for increasing amounts of 
 all articles of food to make up for the in- 
 creased wear and tear of such occupation. 
 Fattening diet must increase the Carbo- 
 hydrates. Reducing diet must lessen fats 
 and carbo-hydrates and increase proteids. 
 Brain ivor~k calls for easily digested foods. 
 This simple outline is given in the hope 
 that the reader will ask his physician for 
 
Material Accessories to Health 139 
 
 a good book on dietetics and read and 
 practice it. 
 
 Of almost equal importance with the 
 question what shall we eat is the other one, 
 how shall we eat? A characteristic sign 
 of the times is, Gone to lunch Back in 
 ten minutes. Many a man digs his grave 
 with his teeth, and many another digs it 
 even more rapidly by failing to use his 
 teeth. Digestion is both a chemical and 
 a mechanical process. Mastication, the 
 churning effect of the stomach, the peris- 
 taltic and vermicular actions have to be 
 thorough and vigorous. The first of these 
 is dependent on the voluntary muscles. It 
 will not do itself as the others will. And 
 it must be done thoroughly. Every mouth- 
 ful should be reduced to a semi-liquid 
 Metcherized if you please, before swallow- 
 ing. This not only prepares the food for 
 the later mechanical actions, but also 
 mixes the saliva with it, and thus prepares 
 it for the action of the gastric juice, and 
 the pancreatic juices, the bile and intes- 
 tinal ferments. Not only does the process 
 of digestion depend upon the thorough- 
 ness of the mastication but also the still 
 more important process of assimilation. 
 
140 The Voice Eternal 
 
 What shall it profit a man if lie shall have 
 all needed variety of food if it shall come 
 to the digestive tract in such condition 
 that the assimilative agencies shall be un- 
 able to extract the substance from it? 
 And one has but to study a chart of the 
 intestinal tract to see that the millions of 
 little mouths pumping away for nutrition 
 as the food materials pass by demand that 
 it shall be in as nearly a liquid state as 
 possible. 
 
 We come now to the question of trans- 
 portation of the food materials to every 
 cell of the body, and this is provided for 
 by the circulation of the blood. It also 
 carries Oxygen from the lungs to all the 
 cells, and carries away carbon-dioxide, 
 salts and acids to the various organs of 
 elimination. The breathing has much to 
 do with the effectiveness of this function 
 of the circulation. It is surprising how 
 many people live through life without find- 
 ing out how to breathe properly. So im- 
 portant is proper breathing that whole 
 systems of natural healing make it their 
 chief stock in trade. If you would get an 
 idea of the " divine breath" and how much 
 it contributes to well-being just take and 
 
Material Accessories to Health 141 
 
 practice the following exercise: Place 
 your hand on the abdomen just above the 
 navel and inhale, pushing the hand out- 
 ward, then as you exhale let the hand press 
 inward. Practice this until you can do 
 it well. Now place the hands astride the 
 hips, thumbs behind, and after having in- 
 haled as much as possible in the foregoing 
 manner, bring into play the inter-costal or 
 rib muscles, taking more breath with them 
 and pushing the hands outward. Now 
 with the muscles of the upper chest, which 
 have so far been still, lift the chest while 
 you inhale the last possible particle of air, 
 and then exhale by reversing the process 
 and you will have discovered nature's 
 great blood purifier. Deep breathing in 
 the open air, on sleeping porches, or with 
 open windows is one of the first aids to re- 
 covering vigor for the worn out body. 
 
 The circulation of the blood and deep 
 breathing are also related to exercise. 
 Hardly one of the common ills from the 
 discomfort of cold extremities to the more 
 serious complaints of a torpid liver, indi- 
 gestion, constipation, and what not, arise 
 from poor circulation due largely to the 
 lack of proper exercise. When Nebuchad- 
 
142 The Voice Eternal 
 
 nezzar a man given to having bad dreams 
 developed a clear case of liver trouble 
 so that none of his court or friends could 
 live with him, Daniel sent him out to walk 
 on all fours and live on a vegetable diet 
 until he came back to his right mind. The 
 " Nebuchadnezzar walk" once or twice 
 around the room on arising and retiring 
 will work wonders in many forms of vis- 
 ceral inaction. Aside from many systems 
 of physical culture most all of which are 
 beneficial, a thorough manipulation by a 
 good mechano-therapist will work wonders 
 in a worn out and nervously depleted or- 
 ganism, and if repeated will keep the arte- 
 ries young and the body in vigorous health. 
 The care of the skin is an individual 
 study. I remember to have read of an 
 early saint of the church of whom it was 
 said that, "he never trimmed his hair or 
 beard, never ate meat, never drank wine, 
 and never took a bath. ' ' He probably died 
 of some kidney or lung trouble. Today 
 one authority advocates the cold bath for 
 every sort of ill. Another calls for hot 
 baths, mineral baths, electric light baths, 
 or some other variety. There are people 
 who can violate all the rules of sanity as 
 
Material Accessories to Health 143 
 
 well as sanitation and seem to suffer little 
 immediate bad results. But the number is 
 not large enough to be encouraging. Let 
 every man be fully persuaded in his own 
 mind just what is best for himself in the 
 matter of caring for his skin. 
 
 Doubtless there are many other points 
 worthy of mention in the proper care of 
 the body that if dw r elt upon here would 
 swell this chapter into the dimensions of a 
 volume. Even this brief resume of the 
 essentials might be taken to indicate that 
 it is a lot of trouble to one's self to keep 
 the body in health. But most of the care 
 of the physical health is done automatic- 
 ally as a matter of habit, so that if we learn 
 the right way it is at least as easy as the 
 wrong way, and we shall keep the temple 
 clean and in perfect health, and be spared 
 the distress of having to call in the doctor 
 to cleanse it with a scourge of cords. v 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A NEW GENERATION 
 
 THE primal impulse of the In- 
 finite life is creation. And this 
 creative impulse finds expression in 
 living things to whom is also im- 
 parted the creative impulse. The theo- 
 logians have told us that the Infinite life 
 is so perfect and so complete that it does 
 not need anything to add to that complete- 
 ness. Still they have felt the incongruity 
 of perfect love that has no object but 
 itself, or a perfect wisdom with no one to 
 whom it could be exhibited. A hermit's 
 existence does not appeal to a normal man, 
 nor to God as an ideal existence. Hence 
 for purposes at least of companionship in 
 the Infinite life, the theologians have given 
 us the conception of a trinity in which the 
 one God lives in three expressions of 
 being. Whatever may be said pro or con, 
 this arrangement is a large provision for 
 the social life of God. It is also the open- 
 ing wedge for innumerable expressions of 
 the Infinite life in carrying out the crea- 
 tive impulse. For it is not just clear why 
 the number of divine expressions should 
 
A New Generation 145 
 
 be limited to three, when we find the 
 Infinite life providing for further expres- 
 sion by setting in motion innumerable 
 agencies endowed with creative impulse 
 and procreative power, all steadily moving 
 upward into more perfect forms of expres- 
 sion until at last, beings are evolved who 
 are "the brightness of his glory and the 
 express image of his person"- beings 
 whom he calls his sons, is not ashamed to 
 call them Brethren, and who shall be like 
 him for the}^ are one with him. 
 
 The mighty volume of Nature reveals 
 this process of moving up from uncon- 
 cious cell-life to conscious God-life. 
 Critically as we try we fail to find a satis- 
 factory explanation of just how all these 
 varying impulses seen in Nature arise, 
 apart from the idea of the Infinite life 
 pushing forward its creative impulse into 
 expression. It is true that there are con- 
 flicts in these movements, as when the 
 moth's body obeys the universal impulse 
 to follow the head, and when that head 
 is contracted to one side by the light shin- 
 ing upon it, Mr. Moth plumps into the 
 flame before the impulse of self-preserva- 
 tion can become operative. But out of 
 
U6 The Voice Eternal 
 
 such conflicting conditions by some pro- 
 cess as "survival of the fittest/ 7 the 
 higher forms of creation are reached. 
 Now from the lowest forms of life to the 
 highest the creative impulse is inherent 
 in each form. Second only to the impulse 
 to live, is the impulse to generate more 
 of its kind. By some unerring instinct 
 it finds the conditions that are favorable 
 to that end, just as the blue bottle fly does 
 not need to be instructed as to the com- 
 parative values of fat and lean meat in 
 the life of his progeny. He may alight 
 anywhere but it is only when his feet 
 touch the lean meat that the generative 
 machinery is set going. Call it instinct 
 resulting from countless experiences of 
 his ancestors, or some automatic stimulus 
 from the contact of his feet with the lean 
 meat, the result is attained under proper 
 conditions. 
 
 Probably the bird in the forest cannot 
 explain why, but knows only that the 
 voice of one charmer alone sets the thrill 
 of creative impulse going and hastens to 
 its mating. Nor does animal life under- 
 stand the mystery of mating. It merely 
 obeys the creative impulse set in motion 
 
A New Generation 117 
 
 by unerring agencies expressed in sound 
 and color, and moves forward to its con- 
 summation; and it is written that "not 
 one of them shall lack her mate. 7 ' 
 
 And comparatively few human being 
 analyze the creative impulse. It is called 
 love by poetic people, the grand passion, 
 and other names equally appropriate ; and 
 its divine quality arises out of this crea- 
 tive impulse by which one man and one 
 woman are drawn towards each other 
 across continents and over seas unto the 
 consummation of this divinely-given im- 
 pulse to produce a new creation. The 
 creative impulse within us finds its nor- 
 mal office in the reproduction of its kind, 
 and its abnormal expression is seen in 
 large sections of our cities where reigns 
 an Inferno of wasting, disease, and death 
 that out-Dante's Dante. 
 
 The secondary normal expressions of 
 the creative impulse are seen in the marks 
 of man's creative skill in providing the 
 modern comforts of life, conveniences of 
 travel, communication, learning, and 
 labor. The world owes a vast debt of 
 gratitude to such men as George Ban- 
 croft and such women as Frances E. 
 
148 The Voice Eternal 
 
 Willard who have laid aside the sex 
 expression of this creative impulse, and 
 turned all their energies to the creation of 
 great works and noble ideals of life. Let 
 it be said, that for reasons known to 
 themselves they have chosen the second- 
 ary forms of creative expression, for the 
 sex reference is the primal and distinc- 
 tive characteristic of this creative im- 
 pulse. Any of us can recall cases of 
 young men or maidens becoming religious 
 enthusiasts, with a burning desire to save 
 mankind, or to enter the convent, or 
 become a devotee of art or literature or 
 the drama, etc., and in a large percentage 
 of such cases, a happy marriage with the 
 crown of fatherhood and motherhood has 
 put an end to these enthusiasms for the 
 time, because life has settled into its 
 chosen and normal channel of expression. 
 Now these early enthusiasms are not 
 extinct, let us hope, for after the repro- 
 ductive period of life with its cares and 
 vicissitudes has passed, out of the ripe- 
 ness of experience, and enrichment in 
 knowledge, and deepened understanding, 
 the creative impulse emerges upward into 
 all those noble forms of expression in ser- 
 
A New Generation 149 
 
 vice that makes the later half of life the 
 crown and glory of manhood and woman- 
 hood. 
 
 Because of this creative impulse, su- 
 perb, virile manhood and womanhood are 
 always marked by a strong sexual organi- 
 zation, and those who have wrought most 
 and best and longest in the world of 
 achievement have found that the conser- 
 vation of these creative sexual energies 
 in the body have tended to re-create the 
 body itself, giving luster to the eye, reso- 
 nance to the voice, vigor to the step, and 
 abounding energy and health for the most 
 arduous undertakings. It is claimed by 
 deep students of the hidden forces within 
 us, that by exercising the intention, the 
 energies that might be dissipated in sexual 
 excitements, may be transmuted into a! 
 vital fluid force and carried throughout 
 the body, building it up, and regenerating 
 it. Whatever truth the theory holds, one 
 has but to know the unlimited command 
 that the subconscious mind has over the 
 bodily functions to realize what a tre- 
 mendous suggestion lies in holding such a 
 constructive idea in the mind ; and that it 
 will do the work even if the vital-fluid 
 
150 The Voice Eternal 
 
 theory be incorrect. One has only to set 
 the mind to the task, taking special times 
 to instruct the subconscious mind just 
 what we want it to do, and setting it to the 
 task by the firm, unyielding pressure of 
 the will, that it may know we intend to 
 accomplish the task, and the regeneration 
 of the body has begun and will be carried 
 out to its completion a fit temple for the 
 living spirit to dwell in. 
 
 Now it is also the opinion of great 
 authorities in the medical world that the 
 vast majority if not all cases of nervous 
 and functional derangements of whatever 
 form, arise out of and have a distinct sex 
 reference. And these learned men are 
 borne out in their contention by any one 
 who has had any extended experience in 
 dealing with the steadily increasing vol- 
 ume of nervous cases coming up for treat- 
 ment. Moreover, they are in substantial 
 accord with the most authoritative book 
 dealing with the history of the human life 
 the Bible. It would seem wise then for 
 some voice to sound a note of warning in 
 the language of to-day, against the prodi- 
 gal waste of energy by which past and 
 present generations are filling the world 
 
A New Generation 151 
 
 with a race of nervous wrecks; and to 
 point out the rewards that accrue here and 
 now to a wise husbanding of vital ener- 
 gies, as the rational way by which a nor- 
 mal manhood and womanhood may be real- 
 ized and retained, and a new generation 
 may be produced. 
 
 If we would have even an approach to 
 the ideal manhood and w r omanhood in the 
 new generation, w y e cannot continue to 
 practically ignore the volume of influence 
 that heredity pours into our lives. In the 
 last analysis of life God is the Author of 
 it all. Not only is He the " Father of the 
 spirits of all flesh," but of the bodies as 
 we]]. The body and soul are parallel mani- 
 festations of the spirit of life, and all 
 living things take on this dual character. 
 Following the biologist back to the first 
 living cell, we have a body and a soul. 
 When this divided there were two bodies 
 and two souls, the first body and soul 
 being parents of the second body and soul. 
 As this process multiplied, these cells 
 became organized into various forms of 
 organic life. Likewise the souls of these 
 cells were co-ordinated by a sort of syn- 
 thesis into one soul for the organic body. 
 
152 The Voice Eternal 
 
 Inasmuch as each human body is an 
 organization of many thousand trillions 
 of cells taking form in the various organs 
 of the body, and co-ordinating through 
 various nerve centers into one supreme 
 nerve center the brain and so making 
 one body, it also follows that there are a 
 similar number of cell-souls organized into 
 departments corresponding to the organs 
 of the body, and all synthesized into one 
 supreme soul. Here let me remark that 
 the value of "laying on of hands" in the 
 healing of the sick has been recognized in 
 all ages, not only for the stimulation of 
 the nerve centers in the part affected, but 
 by calling the attention of the mind to that 
 part, and so centering its activities there. 
 May it not also be true that when in treat- 
 ment we place the hand on, say the stom- 
 ach, or its controlling nerve center, the 
 solar plexus, and direct that organ 
 to properly perform its function, we are 
 in reality directing that section of the soul 
 which provides specifically over that or- 
 gan, to do its duty in restoring normal 
 functioning? 
 
 Now when the first dual cell divided into 
 two, it follows that the child took on the 
 
A New Generation 153 
 
 characteristics of the parent cell, and 
 through every variation and improvement 
 this law of double hereditary influence 
 held. It is seen in the human body in the 
 vestigial remains of certain outgrown 
 organs, as the little tip at the top of th 
 ear, the atrophied muscle that once moved 
 the ear, which some people are still able to 
 bring into action, the vermiform appen- 
 dix, and some forty other insignia of our 
 animal ancestry. As we have admittedly 
 carried over these influences of our animal 
 ancestry in our bodies, we shall also expect 
 to find that we have carried over similar 
 insignia of the character of our ancestry 
 in our souls. Indeed these soul qualities 
 are so marked that man is likened in the 
 Bible to more than thirty different ani- 
 mals the bear, the fox, the ass, the hog, 
 the peacock, and a good many more we 
 have all known going about in human 
 form. Add to this the further fact that if 
 one traces his line of descent backward to 
 the year A. D. 1000, he is the direct chan- 
 nel for the mental and physical influence 
 of sixteen million ancestors. Naturally the 
 influence decreases as the square of the 
 distance of the ancestors increases, our 
 
154 The Voice Eternal 
 
 immediate parents influencing us more 
 strongly as a rule than our grandparents. 
 The children of the same parents often 
 differ radically, for the reason that the 
 conditions of mind, body, and environment 
 were totally unlike at the time of genera- 
 tion and gestation. In view of this line 
 of hereditary influence, it is not difficult 
 to answer the question why we are what 
 w r e are. Now heredity with the environ- 
 ment it produces may furnish settings for 
 the problem of life in which we work out 
 individual expressions of personal char- 
 acter ; but the power that worketh in us is 
 apart from these. The divine spirit living 
 out its life in us is handicapped by these 
 hereditary influences as it struggles to- 
 ward perfect expression. The spirit- 
 crowned man is the ideal that sets the pace 
 for every man. We may not choose our 
 ancestry but we may choose our destiny, 
 and in doing so, we may so order the. 
 ancestry of our posterity as to give it rad- 
 ically different conditions under which to 
 manifest the divine life. 
 
 The creative impulse whose processes 
 have produced these hereditary conditions, 
 is more or less blind, moving in the gen- 
 
A New Generation 155 
 
 era! direction of the reproduction of spe- 
 cies. Animal creation which is conceded 
 to be vastly superior to man in its develop- 
 ment of instinct, has shown itself sus- 
 ceptible of a marvelous improvement by 
 the use of human reason in selecting males 
 and females for the propagation of a given 
 species. The vegetable world is eloquent 
 with triumphs of intelligent selection over 
 heredity by such men as Burbank. What 
 stockman would in this day expose him- 
 self to the ridicule of his fellows by allow- 
 ing his flocks and herds and fowls to prop- 
 agate without first eliminating the unfit 
 of both sexes I What horticulturist would 
 trust his reputation or his fortune to the 
 chance of " seedlings" when grafting of 
 scions from better stock offers the cer- 
 tainty of better variety and quality ? That 
 the same results may be expected from 
 rational selection in the mating of man- 
 kind is seen in the proverb that " blood 
 will tell." What then must be said of a 
 civilization that wisely guides the creative 
 impulse in the lower orders by eliminating 
 the unfit, but reverses the order when it 
 comes to the human species, allowing the 
 physically, mentally, and morally defec- 
 
156 The Voice Eternal 
 
 tive, the unsuited and the unsuitable, to 
 multiply their kind ad infinitum, placing 
 no sort of restraint on the process, but 
 rather encouraging it by trying to make it 
 legally and ecclesiastically impossible for 
 such unfit and unsuitable pairs to end their 
 relations. If one-half the legal enactment 
 and energy now put forth to keep such 
 misinated couples from getting apart, 
 were used to keep them from getting to- 
 gether in the first place, humanity would 
 be better served. This stricture is not 
 intended to condone the ever-increasing 
 mental and moral epidemic of divorce, but 
 rather to insist that the portals of entry 
 to matrimony and the parenthood should 
 be at least as strenuously guarded as are 
 its exits. It is beyond the purpose of this 
 chapter to even suggest methods, but 
 rather to arouse conviction; for let the 
 seriousness of the need become apparent, 
 humanity will find the best way, and a 
 tremendous stride will be taken toward the 
 new generation of a superior race of God- 
 like men and women. 
 
 The ideal generation awaits not only a 
 procession of rational selection under the 
 supervision of calm judgment rather than 
 
A New Generation 157 
 
 blind passion, but it is still further 
 deferred by the culpable ignorance of 
 prospective parents concerning the influ- 
 ence of nervous, mental, and moral states 
 upon the unconceived and the unborn. Out 
 of three sections of moral monstrosity 
 murder, adultery, and theft which have 
 shown an alarmingly increasing volume, 
 let us study the first for a moment and no 
 doubt can remain as to the influence of 
 prenatal states. Take a case from the 
 criminal docket where a boy of nineteen 
 killed his mother and father. Society pro- 
 ceeded to murder him legally for illegally 
 murdering his parents, forgetting that he 
 was an unwelcome child whom his mother 
 had wanted to murder and perhaps tried 
 to do so before he was born. In the vast 
 majority of such cases the facts are not 
 available, but when they do become known 
 they leave no possible room for doubt as 
 to the truth and pertinency of a proverb 
 from a very old book, viz., "The parents 
 have eaten sour grapes and the children's 
 teeth are set on edge." In addition to these 
 prenatal influences, and those of legal kill- 
 ing by the state, recall also the age-long 
 effects of war which has killed a billion 
 
158 The Voice Eternal 
 
 and a half of people since the song " Peace 
 on earth" was first sung, and which has 
 created a spirit of wholesale murder that 
 is still fostered by the cultivation of the 
 spirit of militarism. Grant that the dis- 
 tracted mother had extenuating circum- 
 stances for her thought and act ; and that 
 the state is justified in taking the life of 
 the killer; and that the nation may cele- 
 brate the slaughter of the enemy that 
 threatened its integrity, we nevertheless 
 face the fact that all these have fostered 
 a disregard for the sanctity of human life, 
 and have created a world- wide atmosphere 
 of thought through the agency of the press 
 that daily spreads out the harrowing de- 
 tails of murder, leaving in the minds of 
 the susceptible a residuum out of which 
 further murders are born. Happily a cru- 
 sade for a cleaner press, a better inform- 
 ing education, offers hope. Students of 
 criminology are setting the motive of pen- 
 ology away from vengeance on the crim- 
 inal in the direction of rational restraint 
 and treatment of the mentally, morally, 
 and nervously deformed sections of society 
 who have heretofore been given short 
 shrift, while arbitration is proving that 
 
A New Generation 159 
 
 right makes might among men rather than 
 that might makes right. 
 
 Now while the influence of heredity and 
 the thought atmosphere in which we live 
 must be put to rights in the interest of a 
 new generation, we must not lose sight of 
 our divine birthright in whose infinite 
 power we are able to overcome all these 
 adverse influences. It is no unusual phe- 
 nomenon for a man who for half of his 
 life has lent himself to dissipation, to such 
 a degree that it seemed a disease or obses- 
 sion, who had 110 higher ideals, and the lack 
 of will power or disposition to attain them 
 if he had them, yet into such a life came 
 the great love of a noble woman, the mem- 
 ory of a mother 's prayer and life, brought 
 back by song or story or providence, 
 or the revelation of the moral per- 
 fections of the Eternal God through 
 the lips of a prophet or the life of 
 a saint, and lo, there has come a revulsion 
 of feeling, and the birth of new mental and 
 spiritual ideals and motives that have car- 
 ried with them a corresponding reaction in 
 his physical nature, restoring his nervous 
 organism to its normal condition, making 
 his after-life as healthy as it was formerly 
 
160 The Voice Eternal 
 
 diseased. Now men explain such a phe- 
 nomenon in various ways, but it is the way 
 of the Infinite Life righting a wrong condi- 
 tion and restoring a man to his standing as 
 a conscious son of God a new generation 
 with possession of all the powers and priv- 
 ileges that consciousness of oneness with 
 God imparts to a man. 
 
 Such a miracle of grace is cause for 
 endless gratitude to God, but the stubborn 
 fact remains that such a case is the excep- 
 tion and not the rule, and that the good 
 God puts the responsibility of a new gen- 
 eration on us. We must create heredities, 
 and environments, and a worthy ancestry 
 for our posterity. Then only will the king- 
 dom of heaven be fully established on the 
 earth. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 EMOTIONAL CHEMISTRY. 
 
 THOUGHT forces are creative. Es- 
 pecially when they are born in the 
 emotional nature. "As a man thinketh 
 in his heart so is he." So he looks, so he 
 acts, so he feels, so he is. We have all 
 quoted the Master's words, "Keep thy 
 heart with all diligence, for out of it are 
 the issues of life," but we have perhaps 
 never thought how profound an influence 
 the affectional and emotional nature has 
 upon the health as well as the character 
 of men. Desires born in our affections 
 and emotions do color our thinking, give 
 wings to our imaginations, bias our judg- 
 ments, and influence our wills. We accept 
 the facts but do not suspect the subtle 
 chemistry by which sure and certain path- 
 ological changes are wrought in the chem- 
 ical secretions of the body, as a result of 
 our emotions. 
 
 Such emotions as Anger, Fear, Jeal- 
 ousy, Hatred, Worry, the Blues, and all 
 the dark passions change the alkaline se- 
 cretions to acid, and the acid to alkaline, 
 and fill the body with subtle poisons which 
 
162 The Voice Eternal 
 
 affect unfavorably all the tissues, for the 
 nourishing elements for the cells are in- 
 complete, the nerves are starved, and the 
 whole system becomes depleted, and this 
 lowered vitality invites all sorts of germs 
 to come in and take up their abode and 
 multiply. Our knowledge of emotional 
 chemistry is yet in its infancy, but we do 
 know that sudden bad news takes away 
 the appetite, causes fainting, and other 
 physical ills. We know that anger is fol- 
 lowed by headache, lassitude, and weak- 
 ness. We know that fear temporarily 
 paralyzes the nerve centers of the stomach 
 and heart; while hurry and worry and 
 others burn up the nervous energies, leav- 
 ing only clinkers and slag to irritate the 
 nerves. Cases are on record showing that 
 a violent fit of anger in a nursing mother 
 caused poisonous secretions in her milk 
 which threw the baby into spasms. The 
 perspiration and saliva show chemical re- 
 action so that it is possible to detect the 
 particular emotion that held sway at the 
 time the secretion was made. 
 
 Every mental healer is familiar with the 
 occasional cases arising in his healing 
 ministry in which the patient was per- 
 
Emotional Chemistry 163 
 
 ceptibly worse after the first treatment, 
 owing to the conflict between the old 
 chemical forces caused by the wrong 
 methods of thinking and the new chemis- 
 try, caused by the new and healing truth. 
 
 The ancient Stigmatists, in their long- 
 ing to reproduce in their own bodies the 
 physical marks of the crucifixion believed 
 that they could, and persisted in their as- 
 cetic and rigorous exercises until they 
 actually succeeded in causing the stigmata 
 to appear in hands, feet and side. And 
 this emotional chemistry is the secret of 
 their success. And this sort of morbid 
 emotional thinking is able to cause such 
 alterations of tissue as to defy the elect 
 physician to tell whether a disease is or- 
 ganic or functional. Keep it up and you 
 will secrete enough poison to keep the 
 body filled with disease, and " enjoy poor 
 health" all your days. 
 
 The old metaphysicians conceived the 
 idea that disease had its origin in unwhole- 
 some emotions, for they prepared a long 
 list of ills with their emotional causes. 
 For instance, covetousness or impatience 
 would cause bad breath ; doubt, fear, etc., 
 would produce asthma; hot temper and 
 
164 The Voice Eternal 
 
 jealousy produced boils, and so on through 
 a long list of the various ills that found 
 their correspondence in some mental state. 
 Now one would not care to subscribe to 
 that whole list, but they were grasping at 
 the truth that ill thoughts do cause a 
 change in the chemical secretions of the 
 body and so open it to the attacks of all 
 sorts of disease. An evil mentality with 
 its wrong thought habits will throw the 
 whole body into the wrong kind of chem- 
 istry and make it a shining mark for all 
 sorts of ills. 
 
 Now if a momentary spasm of anger or 
 other evil passion can produce such effects 
 as are apparent in the lives of multitudes, 
 what must be the effect on the bodies of 
 those who live in one perpetual spasm of 
 anger, fear, worry, jealousy and the like? 
 They are filled with deadly poisons and 
 ought to carry a red light in front of them 
 as the old drug stores used to do. It really 
 isn't necessary, for as a man thinketh in 
 his heart so he looks. You can tell him as 
 far as you can see him. 
 
 Think of the effects on the life of one 
 who has lost friends, to clothe himself 
 in black and keep the insignia of sorrow 
 
Emotional Chemistry 165 
 
 ever before them and others and be com- 
 pelled to live up to it, and constantly whet 
 the keen edge of grief, by these heathen 
 signs of sorrow. When I pass out, if my 
 friends respect my feelings and faith they 
 will all wear white, for the Christian hope 
 is the whitest light this world has ever 
 seen. 
 
 Comparatively little has been done to 
 determine the chemistry of right thinking, 
 although the praises of cheerfulness have 
 been sung to every sort of time and tune. 
 Few people know or really care just how 
 one material substance will start or stop 
 the chemical action of another material 
 substance. All they care to know is that 
 every poison has its antidote. But they 
 need to know this very minute that there is 
 a law of mental and spiritual chemistry 
 by which every passion that disturbs the 
 poise of the soul, upsets the mind, and fills 
 the body with disease has its antidote, and 
 that the great trinity of spiritual poten- 
 cies abide under the label of FAITH, 
 HOPE and LOVE. Over against your 
 anger and all its horrid brood put LOVE. 
 Replace hurry, worry and anxiety with 
 HOPE. Instead of fear put calm confi- 
 
166 The Voice Eternal 
 
 dence in the unfailing goodness of your 
 Heavenly Father, and in your own ability 
 to achieve what you undertake, and these 
 will set the chemical secretions right and 
 fill the body with ease, health, and power 
 and make living a perpetual joy. For you 
 will become in body, mind, and spirit a 
 tangible expression of the emotional state 
 in which your soul lives. Therefore, if 
 you will have your body filled with sensa- 
 tions of health, sweetness, and power, fill 
 your emotional life with faith-emotions, 
 hope-emotions, love-emotions, for these 
 stimulate the right chemistry, and the 
 greatest of these is love, for it is the most 
 far-reaching, contagious thing in the 
 world. For it blesses the giver until "out 
 of his heart shall flow rivers of living wa- 
 ter," and it blesses the receiver, for he 
 becomes eventually an artesian well to re- 
 fresh the weary passer-by with his testi- 
 mony. 
 
 It must be said here that we have not yet 
 solved the secret of how Jesus of Nazareth 
 set up such chemical changes in the bodies 
 of men as to heal all sorts of diseases, but 
 it probably lies in the fact that we do not 
 
Emotional Chemistry 167 
 
 do it because we do not believe we can do 
 it. But we shall know the meaning of this 
 divine chemistry, and the time ought to 
 come when we shall know how to call upon 
 these divine agencies with such a sense of 
 mastery, that we shall produce a civiliza- 
 tion that shall have no moral and no dis- 
 ease-death rate, and " whose inhabitants 
 shall never say *I am sick.' 
 
 (Reprinted from The Emmanuel Press.) 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 FORMULAS AND AFFIRMATIONS FOR SELF- 
 HELP. 
 
 THE way to self-mastery is so plain 
 that the wayfaring man, though a 
 fool need not err therein. The following 
 formula is a workable statement of the 
 forces that bring things to pass. Its par- 
 allel with the spiritual philosophy of life 
 is perfect. You need not spend years of 
 time and dollars in money for lessons. 
 Just take hold of the handles of this men- 
 tal battery and hold on until its full power 
 gets into operation. Something will hap- 
 pen. You will learn how to help yourself. 
 There are four factors in the formula : 
 
 1. The IDEAL. It matters not 
 whether it be perfect health, or personal 
 influence and power among men, or pros- 
 perity in your material affairs. Just fill 
 out the picture mentally. Imagine your- 
 self as in the possession of this ideal. Pic- 
 ture yourself as being surrounded by 
 every feature of your ideal. Don't affirm 
 that you are when as yet you are not, but 
 build an air castle as complete as your 
 imagination can finish it, and then go in 
 
Formulas for Self -Help 169 
 
 and take mental possession of it. Do this 
 seven times a day. 
 
 II. The DESIRE. Earnestly desire 
 the reality of your ideal. Wishing a thing 
 to be true is the first step to believing that 
 it can be true, and that is next to willing 
 that it shall be true. Earnestly desire it 
 for your own comfort and success. Wish 
 it to be real for the good you may be able 
 to do unto others. Long for it that you 
 may more fully express the divine life in 
 you, and so honor the God " whose you are 
 and whom you serve." And in another 
 word this is prayer, for " Prayer is the 
 soul's sincere desire, uttered or un- 
 expressed. 7 ' 
 
 III. The BELIEF. Earnestly believe 
 in the " power that is within both to will 
 and to do." Take that power into your 
 confidence. You trust it to keep your heart 
 beating, your blood circulating, the diges- 
 tive and assimilative processes going, and 
 in fact you leave to it in perfect confidence 
 all the metabolism or changes to be made 
 in the body without a doubt as to the out- 
 come. You lie down to sleep at night with- 
 out a question that it will keep your heart 
 beating. If you had an idea that it would 
 
170 The Voice Eternal 
 
 stop during the night you wouldn't sleep a 
 wink that night. Now if you can put so 
 much confidence in this hidden intelligent 
 force inside you, just pull out one more 
 stop, and believe that it will do these things 
 just as you want them done. Intelligently 
 direct it to do things just as you want them 
 done, instead of some haphazard way, and 
 you will find that it will keep the confi- 
 dence inviolable. "According to your 
 faith it shall be done unto you." 
 
 IV. The WILL. This is the directing 
 agent. It comes next in order, for, ' ' Faith 
 laughs at impossibilities, and cries, 'it 
 shall be done. ' Every force in your life 
 and outside of it pivots finally on your 
 will. "Be it unto thee even as thou wilt" 
 makes "all power in heaven and in earth," 
 subject to that will. You can be anything 
 you believe you can be and that you will 
 to be. Will is the creative power. It takes 
 the unseen things and makes them appear 
 to the eyes or other senses. It takes your 
 ideals and erects them into realities. 
 
 Follow then this formula, and it will 
 bring strength out of weakness, ease out of 
 disease, plenty out of penury, and personal 
 power out of impotence. 
 
 (Reprinted from The Emmanuel Press.) 
 
Formulas for Self-Help 171 
 
 AFFIRMATIONS. 
 
 For CHAPTER I. 
 
 All Life is One. 
 
 I am an expression of that one life. 
 I am one with infinite life. 
 Infinite life dwells in me and fills ine with 
 health, peace, and plenty. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 I live out my life in the life of God. 
 God lives out his life in me. 
 I will now manifest the life of God in perfect 
 health, peace, and plenty. 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 I will now move up into a higher expression 
 
 of the divine life. 
 I accept pain as a growing pain calling me up 
 
 to higher manifestation of life. 
 I am one with love that casteth out fear. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 I identify my life now with the life of God. 
 I am One with God. 
 I can do all things through Christ. 
 I will now manifest divine peace, health, and 
 plenty. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 I believe in one God, the infinite spirit. 
 
172 The Eternal Voice 
 
 The life of the spirit is imparted to me every 
 
 moment. 
 I accept every material thing as an expression 
 
 of the spirit in material form. 
 My body receives life from the spirit's life in 
 
 material forms. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 I am health, peace, power, plenty. 
 
 I will dispel fear with love. 
 
 Weakness shall flee before the idea of power, 
 
 I will forget my troubles by helping others. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The limitless life of God is in me. 
 
 I will trust and not be afraid. 
 
 I will to be well, happy, and prosperous. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 "I believe in love almighty, maker of heaven 
 
 on earth." 
 
 My hope is in God who dwelleth in me. 
 I will steadfastly trust to the end. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Christ is all in all to me. 
 
 Christ is health, strength, peace, plenty. 
 
 Christ dwelleth in me. 
 
 I will now manifest Christ. 
 
Formulas for Self -Help 173 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 All power is given me by the spirit. 
 He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. 
 The spirit manifests the things of Christ in 
 me. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 I am the master of the house. I am the 
 
 architect. 
 
 My subconscious is the servant, the builder. 
 He shall build my plans, and report only 
 
 normal sensation. 
 My body is the temple of God. It shall be 
 
 clean and well. 
 I will honor God by living in perfect health. 
 
 Foster & Short, 342 Howard St., S. F. 
 
The How and Why of 
 The Emmanuel Movement 
 
 By 
 THOMAS PARKER BOYD 
 
 An analysis of the mental forces that make for 
 health. It tells just how to use them and what may 
 be expected to result from their right use. It is a 
 great book on a great subject, and in the language of 
 the common people. 
 
 It has been praised by hundreds of enthusiastic 
 readers. 
 
 It will be sent postpaid for $1.00. 
 
 Address all orders to THE EMMANUEL PRESS, 
 Berkeley, Cal. 
 
 The Emmanuel Press 
 
 Edited by 
 THOMAS PARKER BOYD 
 
 Devoted to the fine Art of being well. 
 
 A live wire among New Thought magazines. 
 
 The purpose of the magazine is to create a literature 
 devoted to health from the standpoint of the church as 
 well as that of modern science. 
 
 It aims to conserve the things that are good, and to 
 teach a rational and spiritual philosophy of human well 
 being, to harmonize the old and new and to lay em- 
 phasis on the whole truth instead of a single phase 
 of it. 
 
 It teaches the harmonious use of spiritual, mental, 
 and material means, and advocates the clergyman, the 
 psychologist, and the doctor as being God's men and 
 agents for health. 
 
 Price 10 cents per copy, or $1.00 per year. 
 
 Address all orders to THE EMMANUEL PRESS, 
 Berkeley, Cal. 
 

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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY