i2ortfjtoestern (Hntbersttp Hibrarp
(Cbanfiton, 3IUinoi£f
THE GIFT OF
®f)t (gospel of Hope
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a iflessage from tfje Unseen
JBp tfje Hanb of tfje SJnfenoton
£t)icago, SUinota, 1914
Jforetoorb
THE GOSPEL OF HOPE is a new message dictated by
God and the Spirit of Christ to a mortal man and taken down
by him just as it was dictated. As the amanuensis of this
new message, 1, the mortal man, wish to say this: It was
written almost entirely at night, between midnight and six
o'clock in the morning, and the work of transcription caused
no mental or physical fatigue whatever, nor did it interrupt or
diminish the amount of other work which I was engaged upon
in the daytime. It was practically finished in fourteen days,
between the 11th and 25th of December, 1911, with two short
additions on December 26th and 27th. Each day's writing oc¬
cupied something less than the space of an hour. I did not
think about it, nor brood over it, nor muse over it in the interim.
Nor did I ever have any desire at any time in my life to do
such a thing.
I was brought up in a family where there was almost daily
religious discussion. There was an old uncle whose father
(my grandfather on my mother's side) was an Episcopal min¬
ister. This uncle read the family bible three times a day, prayed
►for the souls of the rest of us and stood with equanimity our
attacks on his orthodoxy. However, when I brought to him,
sometimes in response to his request for a good book to read,
some atheistic work like Thomas Paine, he read these books
carefully, because, as he said, I want to know the truth. My
mother was a woman of ceaseless self-sacrifice and generosity.
Her religious creed was expressed in a few words; Good deeds
alone can save the soul. Hell begins the minute you do a
wrong. My father, a physician, had a scientific turn of mind.
He was a wide reader of all sorts of books and was altogether
a man of most alert and nimble intelligence. Although he never
could quite grasp the idea of a personal God, because he said
the universe being so vast made such an idea unreasonable,
he helped to found and organize two Unitarian churches. Into
this household of loving deeds and fierce discussion I, as a
young lad, came gradually to take my part, and rapidly acquired
enough skill and logic in argument to hold my own with grown
men. At first I was on the scientific side, God was and could
be only an impersonal force. Little by little, I found, how¬
ever that my uncle's simple faith had in it something superior
to my father's eager and restless desire to argue. Whereas
my mother's practical creed of deeds above words was superior
to both. During my college course by the use of reason I said
to myself, "It is unreasonable not to believe in a personal God.
If, I argued, mortal men have such great longing for immortal
life, and if people strive on earth so zealously to develop per¬
sonality and to praise personality, it is unreasonable to think
that God should be impersonal." Thus, I came to believe that
God is a personality and that he can within the limits of his
own laws do whatsoever he wishes. When miracles sire per¬
formed it is in accordance with a spiritual law which the slow
reasoning power and the small vision of men are unable to
grasp.
Now you, Reader, may ask me: "But, did you never have
any intimation before this Message came to you that you were
to do any religious work?" And my reply to your question
is this: "Yes! Twice I had intimations that sometime, some¬
where, 1 was to do other than worldly work." The first time
was about ten years ago. I was walking along Sheridan Road
about thirty miles north of the city of Chicago and looking
up at the sky I said: "Of what use is my life? I have had
education and have done but little with it. Of what use am I
to my fellow men?" And out of the sky there seemed to come
to me this answer, "You will be a religious teacher."
"How strange! how curious!" I murmured, as I went along
my way. The second time occurred in the city of Chicago
about seven years ago. 1 was walking North on Clark Street
on the East side of the Street between Monroe and Madison
Streets. Both sides of the street were thronged with people
and the roadway was filled with teams. The roar of traffic
arose all around me. I said to myself, "Here am I a stranger
in my own city—perhaps the most unknown person in it. Yet
here I have lived most of my life. I went to the Grammar
School here and to the High School. From here I went to Col¬
lege and returned. Yet among all these many people 1 see
no familiar face." As I said this to myself I kept looking up
to the sky as if talking to someone. Then out of the sky there
seemed to come this answer: "You will be more important
to the cause of civilization and to the advance of humanity
than all of this great city with the two million and more people
in it." Again I said, "How strange! How curious!" as I passed
along on my way. So much for myself.
But, remember, reader, that it is upon this Message and
not upon me that you should bend your mind. My part is to
call your attention to one clear fact: God is around you here
today as he was around men in the days of Moses and Abra¬
ham. He will come to men whenever and wherever they have
faith, even as I, the Unknown, will come to speak to men
whenever they have faith that I have a word for them to hear.
But idle curiosity is not faith. And scientific hair-splitting is
not faith. And psychological, microscopic, intellectual fussing
is not faith. By authority I speak last of all this word, espe¬
cially to all the Christian sects throughout the world. God
knows no destinction between his children. Theology is not
religion. Perfect organization is not religion:—To demand
that men must come to Christ before they can be saved is not
religion. That is not Christ's way nor God's way. It is the
way of narrow or misunderstanding theological vanity. It
must cease. All the great and good leaders of the world were
inspired by God. Men like Mencius and Confucius and Buddha
and Socrates and Mohammed were all God-inspired men.
There have been many other great men in every civilized and
savage race who were likewise inspired by God. In propor¬
tion as the doctrines of these inspired men were afterwards
organized by them or their followers into a theological sys¬
tem in just that proportion did their teachings begin to fail.
It is not true that Christ was the only man sent by God to
teach men. He was perhaps the greatest because the most
humble; the wisest because the meekest; the most truthful
because the most fearless. But even his words have been cor¬
rupted. He is made to claim what he never did claim and he
is made to say what he never did say, in order to help along
the theological system of men who founded a church on the
outpouring of a loving heart. You cannot organize Affection
nor stereotype Love. And whoever thinks to apply business
rules to emotional and religious life shall find himself doomed
to a pitiful failure. All Religion is broad and generous and
merciful and loving. Whoever persecutes another man on ac¬
count of his religious belief is a pagan and the truth and love
of God is not in him. Men who are cruel or unkind or brutal
or tyrannical or narrow minded or egotistical or lovers of a
mere sect are not nor ever can be religious. Religion is as
broad as the heavens and as beautiful and warm and gracious
as the sunlight. And loving kindness is the beginning and
mark of all religious life.
1 say these things by authority and reading in this book
The Gospel of Hope you may know by whose authority I
speak. The conditions under which I am to do my work are
these. It must all be a free gift to humanity. First, sixty-five
copies of this Message sure now being printed at my own ex¬
pense. Fifty copies will be sent to all parts of the world, into
the possession of those who will be most careful to preserve
them. Fifteen copies will be distributed among my personal
friends. Permission is hereby given to any one to print this
Message in full. And I earnestly request that they sell it at
as near absolute cost as possible. Should I be called upon here¬
after to speak in any place and at any time I can receive no
money whatsoever, but only the simplest form of hospitality.
Merely food and shelter. Religion hereafter must be preached
and taught out of pure love and not by salaried ministers. For
the priesthoods of the world have been and are too often men-
aces to the liberty of the people. The greatest things in life
are always done out of and from a loving spirit. For love is
the law. There is, there has been and there shall be no other
law.
THE UNKNOWN.
®t)e (Sospet of ^ope
CHAPTER I
Now it came to pass just nineteen hundred and eleven
years after the birth of Jesus of Nazareth that the world was
again torn by dissension and rent by discord and oppressed
by injustice. For the rich had become richer and the poor
had become poorer, and everywhere the cries of widows and
orphans and of the weak and the distressed arose as they cried
aloud in their agony: How long, O Lord, how long? And
they turned one to the other questioning and there came no
answer. The Leaders looked to the People and the People
looked to the Leaders and they saw not the way.
Now since the people wished again to believe on the Lord
and because they were earnest and sincere albeit sometimes
vague and blind in the utterance of their prayers, the Lord
heard and saw and had pity upon them. Therefore He sent
a messenger unto them, saying: "Ye must be honest. Ye
must render justice one to the other whether ye be rich or
poor. All thy business dealings must be based on fairness and
justice or else this nation or any other nation cannot perma¬
nently endure." Although this man sent by the Lord was a
politician yet he preached in the Temples and was invited into
the Churches and the People heard him gladly and when he
1
had spoken they turned one to the other saying:—There is
a man!
So they elected him to the second office in the state. His
enemies helped to do this because they hoped thus to be rid of
him.
Since for a hundred years no Vice-President, for that was
the name of the office, had ever been subsequently chosen to
be President. Thus there had grown up a superstition among
the People that to be Vice-President of the nation was to be
laid upon the shelf as the saying was and debarred from all
future preferment. So he was elected by his enemies in hopes
that this superstition alone might debar him from all future
honors at the hands of the People. Now since this mighty
Hunter had been selected by the Lord to do His will and to
serve His people, the hand of vengeance descended from on
high and the first ruler was stricken down by the hand of an
assassin soon after his election.
The first ruler was personally a good man but weeds and
not altogether clear of blame in his political record. For he
had compromised and had associated with and been the friend
of dishonest and unworthy and designing men. Therefore
was he stricken down in the fullness of his years and honors
Now straightway the second ruler whom the Lord se¬
lected for his work became the First Ruler or President of
the Land. And he ruled seven years and six months wisely
and well. Because he had ruled so well and because he had
attacked so courageously the power of money intrenched in
high places, the People cried out here and there and said:
Let us make him permanent President, for he is the man.
2
But this mighty Hunter who was their leader, knowing well
whence his strength came answered them and said: Nay! not
so. 1 gave my promise to rule no longer than the stated terms.
Lacking only a few months, I have held the highest office in
the land for two full terms according to the Law. Therefore
ye must select another man. But the People cheered him and
cried out: No other man will do. Then came temptation to
this mighty Hunter, this noble leader and lover of his race.
He said unto his soul: The people say that I alone am wise.
1 will select a ruler for the land who shall fulfill my plans.
And so the people shall be saved. He thus fulfilled the letter
but not the spirit of the Law. Overwhelmed by tumultuous
flattery such as few men ever had, he forgot whence came
his power and he fell.
Selecting a friend whose generous tongue had spoken
pleasant things and whose rotund form denoted the friendly,
easy-going and human kind of man, this mighty Hunter se¬
lected, worked for and elected his friend to office, convinced
that his friend would serve the People well. Now having done
his duty by his people as he thought, he took his son and
many tents and guns and servants and went into the con¬
tinent of Africa to hunt. For so he rested up his body. But
his soul was never weary for he never harbored any doubts.
He was so sure that he was always right.
Now no mortal man is always right, especially the man
who loves the incense of flattery and applause. For Flattery
will blind with dust the strongest eyes.
The need of every man and of every ruler is to think.
Without thought, deep and quiet and persistent thought no
3
man is wise enough to help his fellows in their hour of need.
Yet lo! in the very hour of all his Nation's greatest need this
mighty ruler as men thought went off like some raw boy to
hunt wild beasts instead of seeking a quiet nook where by
deep and earnest thought he might still aid and help his Peo¬
ple's struggles against those giants, Greed, Injustice and Finan¬
cial Power.
He went away to hunt and not to think, when clear think¬
ing was the one need of the hour. Then fell the Lord's grace
from the man and he became merely human, his wisdom all
was gone and his high honors shorn from him. In the hour
of Fate he failed.
4
CHAPTER II
Now thinking is the hardest task that is known to man.
To think is labor twice distilled. More difficult than the row¬
ing of a boat against a strong sea and a rising wind; harder
than the digging of coal or iron or silver or gold or tin or cop¬
per in a stuffy mine down in the earth; requiring greater
strength and skill than wielding broadswords against over¬
matching foes; requiring more grit than facing winter winds
on arctic wastes, so difficult it is to think down to the core
of things and to solve problems as yet unknown and still un¬
ravelled.
That is why the people leave the task of thinking to their
chosen leaders. The task seems all too hard. People shrink
from tasks that take heroic discipline of mind besides the ex¬
pert knowledge of what and how to eat and when. And yet
I say unto you, no nation can be free or can permanently en¬
dure unless its people learn to think.
For freedom rests upon the foundation stones of indi¬
vidual hearts and consciences, not on laws in written books
nor yet on graven tablets nor in the authority and learning of
any leader however wise. All men must learn to think, or
else in time Liberty will languish and then die. So this mighty
hunter and leader and lover of his land went away to Africa
to hunt and not to think. But when a year had passed he
came forth from the jungles laden down with trophies, he and
5
his son and his servants. And messengers met him on his com¬
ing forth. Some had even penetrated the wilds of Africa to
speak with him and seek his wisdom. But he would not speak.
He only said: How is it with my People? And the messen¬
gers answering him replied: It is not well. Doubt and Con¬
fusion and Discord fill the land. Thy people want thee to re¬
turn and aid them with thy wisdom. And the mighty Hunter
marvelled much and questioning the Messengers again said:
What is the matter? And the Messengers answered him and
said: Thy friend whom thou hast chosen to succeed thee is
not so wise as thou didst think. And marvelling more, the
mighty Hunter questioned them again; and again they made
the same answer. Then this mighty hunter quickly and brus¬
quely lifted up his hand, for such his manner was, and tossed
up his head and said: I will return. I will no longer wait,
I will return unto my land and people; and so he wended back
his way and while he was in foreign lands he was feted and
treated like an Emperor of ancient Rome. And all men hark-
ened to him as to an oracle because he was an honest man. O
that his wisdom had been equal to his honesty!
When the ship at last had brought him to his native land
shouts rent the sky and in the giant city where he was born
the populace cried out in joy saying: He has returned. The
man our country needs has come at last.
Unto his home beside the sea leaders of all parties came
to talk to him. For a time he held his tongue in leash and
listened. But by and by not being wise and therefore not
seeing his need of the long and deep silences that precede and
accompany all thinking, he opened up his mouth, unloosened
6
his tongue and talked and talked too much, won over by the
flattery that wooed him and whose incense rose up to his brain.
Then the wiser men spread here and there throughout the na¬
tion, shook their heads and sadly said: Alas! he is not the
man we thought. He talks too much. His heart may be of
gold but his feet are of our common clay and his soul does
not keep in view the visions which it sees. Too bad! Too
bad! He is not the man. Thus spake the wiser men one to
the other, consulting quietly and alone.
7
CHAPTER III
This is the new Revelation written down at the dictation
of the Lord thy God, who loveth thee, by one who knowing
books and libraries and colleges, yea! who has known the pride
of learning and the temptations thereof, still has kept within
him the heart and the soul of a little child. And it is because
of the simplicity of his heart and his soul, and the humbleness
of his desires, they being very few and very meek, all vanity
and pride of ambition having long since been taken away from
him in order that he might be prepared to do this work, although
what the work was he did not then know. I say it is because
of these things that I have selected him to give unto thee, O
my People (and all races everywhere in all the world are my
people) this my message. He did not ask for this task, the
greatest known to man. He stood patiently waiting to re¬
ceive whatever word might come unto him and having re¬
ceived it to do it promptly and without fear and with modesty
of mind and heart and soul. For without meekness of soul
and simplicity of heart, no work of the Lord thy God ever has
been or ever shall be done upon earth. Finding thus at last a
man waiting and willing to do my will; who has no fear be¬
cause he knows that I am with him, and who would smile at
the Crucifixion on the Cross, even as Jesus smiled once before,
I have therefore selected him to write down my Message be¬
cause after waiting for an entire lifetime, that is up to and
8
into the fiftieth year of his age for the chance to carry some
message from me to his fellowmen, and because he complained
not and repined not and cried out not against the length of
time during which I tested him and tried him sorely in order
to see what his strength was, and when at length I found that
his steady answer to all the temptations which I placed be¬
fore him was in saying simply. I am in the hands of God.
I am here on earth to do His will and His will alone. There¬
fore I have selected him to bear my word to men. Because
he has believed. And therefore, when 1 came unto him in the
darkness of the night, and rousing him out of a sound and
restful and healthy sleep, said unto him: Awake and light
thy candle and take thy pen and whatever paper there is con¬
veniently at hand and write what I tell thee to write for thou
hast and shall have only such knowledge as I give unto thee—
I thy Lord and thy God,—dost thou understand?—he an¬
swered and said Yea! Lord, I understand.
Then take thy pen and thy paper and write thereon ex¬
actly the words I send thee and no other words whatsoever.
For whoso tampers with the words of the Lord, he shall be
damned; and all of his power and influence and authority shall
be taken from him, yea! even though he may have been or¬
dained by men as a priest or minister to preach unto them on
the holy Sabbath Day. But I know not ministers who preach.
I recognize only ministers who minister unto me and my peo¬
ple. Whoso speaketh the Word and doeth it not, he is not
and never has been a minister of mine.
9
CHAPTER IV
As I have written in my first gospels, those originally
taken down carefully and afterwards ingeniously corrupted and
added to by mortal men who sought to serve me by founding
a religious institution that was to wield power and to perpetu¬
ate power among men instead of spreading my word and my
spirit, which is the spirit of Jesus Christ,—for he is I, and
I was in Him,—throughout the world. I say they do wrong
who seek to perpetuate or to glorify or to symbolize or to make
plain to the sight of men my spirit, except it be done spiritually.
There is no other way in which to do anything except the
right way, and when I said unto you, Follow me in spirit and
in truth, I meant exactly those words and no other words. A
right spirit, that is the spirit of the Lord thy God needs not
sticks nor stones; neither cut stones nor hewn timbers to help
make itself known to the hearts of men.
I say unto ye now that walls shut out the sunlight of my
Heavens and the blueness of my sky and the beauty of my
world and therefore churches have become an abomination
unto mine eyes, inasmuch as they are and have been for many
years obstructing the words and visions and kind deeds which
I put into the hearts of men to do.
For the so-called followers of Jesus Christ, whom I do not
punish because they are blind and see not, I say the so-called
followers of Christ, and ye may well mark the word, which
10
word I send unto you not entirely in scorn but in pity and in
wonder at thy blindness,—the so-called followers do not do
my bidding nor do they follow nor are they followers of my
Son, Jesus, in so far as they think to shut themselves up in
their costly churches and listen to their costly music and sing
hymns out of their dainty hymn-books and sit in ease on their
costly cushions and swing incense in the costly censers of silver
and plated gold.
For know ye that in shutting themselves in, my so-called
followers have shut me out. And I have taken my refuge
again in the hearts of the poor and lonely and forsaken who
day and night cry unto me. And I, their God, the living God
will render them Justice; and I, their God, the living God, will
give them comfort, and I, their God, will feed them and clothe
them and uplift them whenever they too shall arise with clean
hearts to follow me.
11
CHAPTER V
But I say unto you, there is no heart that is clean that
holds envy. And there is no heart that is clean that holds
Hate. And there is no heart which is clean that holds the
sneaking worldly ambition to possess power. Such are not
and never have been the servants of the Lord. And I say unto
you, there is no honor in poverty, no grace in rags, nor good¬
ness in obscurity or in ignorance. But the only badge of honor
in a man is that he face life cheerfully and that he fight the
battle of life bravely and that he accept what I send unto him
gratefully and with a contrite heart.
And furthermore I say unto you: The poor shall not
become rich nor put off their poverty so long as Envy and Hate
abide with them. For there be people by the million who do
not know how to use riches any better than those who now
possess them. And there be people whose hate for their fel-
lowman because he happens to be a rich man is an abomina¬
tion in my sight. All such are not my followers. Let no man
call upon the Lord until his heart is clean for I will not hear
him. I say I will not listen to any man, rich or poor who hides
Envy or Hate in his heart. Therefore, cleanse ye your hearts.
Love alone can make the world beautiful and human life gra¬
cious. Therefore seek ye love in purity and in truth.
12
CHAPTER VI
Now inasmuch as ye have had the words and teachings
of Jesus Christ and yet have not believed on Him nor done
His work nor followed His teachings, I will confound you and
confuse you and mystify you by forbidding you,—yea! for¬
bidding you,—until you have cleansed your hearts, to even call
upon His name, for ye have taken His name in vain. Ye shall
cease to take the name of Jesus in vain. For either ye have
taken it in vain both in word and deed by being proud and
selfish and hypocritical, or ye have taken it in vain by allowing
the vain and proud and hypocritical worldly folks to sit beside
ye in your churches and to take part in your services without
rebuke, thus giving countenance to hypocrisy and humbug and
lying.
Therefore, I, thy God, the living God who created both
the Heavens and the Earth, forbid ye to speak the name of
Jesus except in thy solitary prayers. If ye would follow Him,
then I command you to go out quietly and alone to aid the
poor and oppressed everywhere in the world. And when ye
have done work for the poor and oppressed, then alone in thy
chamber at evening time or in the early morning you may
say softly to thyself: What I have done I have done, Jesus, in
thy name.
13
Moreover I say unto you that whereas Jesus was poor ye
have builded Him churches that are rich; and whereas He was
meek, ye have builded Him temples that are proud; and where¬
as He was lowly, ye have reared monuments to Him that are
high, under the pretense of honoring His name. But I say
unto you: Ye have done wrong. These things are not done
to His honor but to thy own pride and to the vanity of thy
own hearts. I say unto you furthermore that He does not need
either costly churches or fine music or velvet pews or swinging
censers or electric lights or loud hosannas or hymns of praise
or the tender and beautiful adorations of choral music,—nay!
not even this, the best part of all the worship that is in thy
churches today, but He needs the loyal devotion of loving
hearts, of loving hearts I say. And what He needs He receives
not in the measure that He needs it. For I say unto you that
whereas you crucified Him once in the flesh, you have since
crucified Him a thousand times in the spirit, as you are still
doing. For your hypocrisy is a crucifixion to Him; and your
timidity is a crucifixion to Him; and your fear of giving offence
to worldly folks is a crucifixion to Him. And your graven im¬
ages of His body nailed upon the cross and showing His body
and His wounds—all these things are a crucifixion to Him.
For I say unto ye who are spiritually blind and therefore see
not; who are spiritually deaf and therefore hear not; who are
spiritually dumb and therefore understand not, that a physical
wound unto a mortal man is nothing compared to a wound or
insult to the spirit of that man.
14
And if a mortal man can and does (as many of them
alas do) suffer far more from spiritual than from physical pain,
then how much the more must the Lord Jesus Christ suffer
whose soul was so much greater than His poor physical body.
And if by representing in graven images the body and wounds
which thy Lord received upon one day and in one mere mortal
hour of His immortal life, are ye not degrading Him when ye
do not understand the nature and meaning of His soul that hav¬
ing infinite capacity for pity and for love hath therefore a like
capacity for pain? For the ability to love carries with it the
capacity to suffer. A little love may be followed by a little
suffering, but a great love is followed by a great suffering,
unless those who are loved know and feel and understand and
consequently appreciate the love given them. For that is the
law.
Therefore I say unto you: Beware how ye degrade un¬
wittingly the Christ whom ye desirest to follow and whose
teachings ye say ye desire to do. For to do honor unto any¬
thing requires first of all understanding. The child cannot
truly honor its parent nor can the parent rightly honor the
child without understanding. For understanding begetteth
sympathy. And the brutality of the world rests upon misun¬
derstanding, that is to say upon a lack of sympathy. So I say
unto you; if ye would honor the Lord Jesus Christ follow Him
and do His will in meekness and lowliness of spirit. For how
can He be at one with you or you be at one with Him, when
ye neither know nor understand nor sympathize with the spirit
of Christ?
15
Be ye patient and ye shall in seeking find. Be ye humble
and ye shall in striving attain. Be ye lowly and ye shall dis¬
cover the way to Life everlasting, which is simply the way
of Love.
16
CHAPTER VII
Again I send this message unto you. Ye must believe—
O ye must believe. There is no other way. And in order that
ye may believe I will close your temples and your places of
worship which ye have allowed to be defiled by the feet and
the hands and the voices of Hypocrites and Pharisees. For
even ye, my Followers, have read my Word and obeyed not;
ye have perceived my law and done it not. For have ye not
feared more to give offence to the rich Pharisee than to give
offence to thy Father who art in Heaven. Therefore I say
unto you my People, I say unto you my servants, that ye
shall put away with reverence and with carefulness the Bible,
yea! even the Bible thou callest holy and which I sent unto
thee for a living word to live by, to act by, to do thy daily
business and to guide thy daily conduct by, and with only
faith within thy heart and with the simplest of simple and mod¬
est clothing upon thy backs, thou shalt go forth beneath the
open sky, thou shalt look into the heavens and say: There
is a living God! There is a living God who is our Father in
Heaven, and He will save us and He will guide us and He will
instruct us and He will uplift us.
Then ye will, yea! ye must believe. And whatsoever He
bids thee do thou shalt do it, and whatsoever He bids thee say,
thou shalt say it. And whatsoever He bids thy heart and thy
soul and thy mind believe, thou shalt believe it. For there is
17
no God but God. And God the Father is still a living God.
He sent unto thee Jesus Christ to teach thee peace and har¬
mony and brotherly love. He sent Jesus, the poor carpenter,
the Christ, to teach thee to be at peace one with another; to
instruct thee in the way of salvation and eternal life. He
sent Christ unto you, 1 say, to banish the idols from thy tem¬
ples, and uncleanness from thy hearts and thy minds and all
injustice from the world. And 1 say unto you in order that
thou mayest say the same thing unto thyself,—unto thy Heart
and thy Soul and thy Mind, unto the deep conscience which I,
the living God, have put into every one of ye,—How is it my
child with thee? Dost thou harken unto thy conscience and so
walk by the light which I have given thee?
Dost thou conduct thy business according to thy con¬
science and treat the servants who serve thee, according to
thy conscience? Dost thou buy and sell in the market place
according to thy conscience? Dost thou eat and drink and
go to bed according to thy conscience? Dost thou love thy
wife according to thy conscience or according to thy pleasure?
I demand of thee an answer, O thou man who dost not
believe there is any living God; 1 demand of thee an answer and
thou shalt make an answer even to thy own self and I, thy
Father shalt know what thy answer is, even unto the end of
the world. For 1 am everywhere, as I have said to thee before.
I am in thee and thou art in me. For I am thy Father who
lovest thee. Remember always these words,—I am thy Fath¬
er who lovest thee, but thou must believe upon me. For 1 am
the Way and the Light and the Life everlasting, but ye must
believe. Ye must believe upon me.
18
CHAPTER VIII
All those who would laugh may laugh! All those who
would jeer, may jeer! All those who would doubt may freely
and plentifully and most gorgeously and with the sharp air
of unripe youth may continue to doubt even so long as it
pleaseth them. Doubters alone suffer from their own unripe
knowledge. And no wise man would be so unwise as to inter¬
fere with their folly. Oil and water do not mix. So wisdom
and folly do not mingle. Yet I say unto you the Truth shall
still prevail. For Truth is straight as sunlight, and Truth is
clear as daylight, and Truth is beautiful as moonlight. There¬
fore, the Truth must and will prevail.
Ye who love the Truth must not and shall not fear. I
forbid ye to contend under the delusion that it is thy duty to
spread it. I forbid thee to do anything in hope of instructing
thy fellows in it except one thing and one thing only,—to
merely state it. For God alone can open the hearts and minds
and souls of men. Therefore shall ye who believe on and try
to live by the Truth, ye shall merely state what the Truth is,
and thou shalt leave the rest to God.
19
CHAPTER IX
Because ye have believed not in the Spirit but only in
the names of things, and moreover because ye have cried,
Lord! Lord! when there was hypocrisy in thy heart and worldly
cunning in thy soul and mere shrewdness in thy mind and
because ye have allowed hypocrits to stand beside thee in my
temples, and to sing hymns in my name and to my so-called
glory without rebuke, thus giving comfort by thy silence to
hypocrisy and to deceit, when the honest curses of blasphe¬
mous sinners would have been sweeter music in mine ears,
therefore I say unto you my people, my children and all ye
who believe in the Lord, I send you herewith another Message
and it shall come unto thee and be revealed unto thee and be
called by thee;—The Message from the Unknown.
Because, I say, of your worshipping of mere names,—
even the name of your Lord Jesus Christ and not the Spirit
and the Life that lies behind the name, I will confound you
and confuse and mystify you by giving you not even a name
to conjure with or to believe in or to call upon in thy need.
Thou shalt henceforth call alone upon me the Lord thy God,
and I will lead thee and save thee and comfort thee. Thou
shalt have no other friend or saviour, but only me the Lord,
thy God. Ye shall repeat day and night; There is no God but
God, and the Power and the Spirit and the Love of God is
everywhere, and only by believing on Him and allowing your
20
hearts to be filled by His love shall ye attain unto any real life
either here or hereafter.
For I say unto you that the worship of the names of
things and not of the spirit of things is idolatry, and ye have
become idolaters and the Truth is not in you. Nor can the
Truth come unto you until you cease from Pride and become
even as little children. By pride 1 mean religious pride and
professional pride and the pride of the good man in his good¬
ness and of the scholar in his scholarship; of the orator in his
orations, and of the philanthropist in his philanthropy, and
of the minister in his holy calling. For I say unto you that
unless ye cleanse your hearts from pride, ye shallt not see nor
hear nor be able to do the bidding of the Lord thy God who is
with thee, who was with thee and who shalt be with thee
unto the end. Amen!
But bear thou well in mind these words. Thou shalt do
deeds, not speak words, for deeds alone count. I never have
and never will listen to the hypocrit who cries, Lord! Lord!
But I demand of each man of you,—What have ye done and
what do ye now? Except through good deeds there is no sal¬
vation for any mortal man. And if any of the words of Christ
as put down by men and called the New Testament seem to
contradict what I say here, 1 say unto you, those words are
not the words of Jesus but interpolations put in by designing
men who thought to aid the Truth by false teachings even as
they think to spread the Spirit of Christ by the mockery of
erecting costly temples to Him who died upon the cross and
who in life wandered poor and lonely by the Sea of Gallilee
and who often had not the where to lay His head. Woe unto
21
men, I say, who tamper with the words or who suppress or
who add to the words of the Lord thy God. For they shall
suffer eternal damnation. Ye must believe, and in order to
know what to believe, ye must take the time and the trouble
to understand. For only by a clear understanding shall the
Word of the Lord be made plain unto you.
I sent Jesus unto you, and first you crucified Him in the
flesh upon the cross, and since then you have crucified Him a
thousand times in the spirit although ye knew it not. And I
say unto you that the crucifixion of the spirit was harder to
bear than the crucifixion upon the cross, and because ye men
of the world and ministers of churches and the followers of
Christ could not see, that ye have crucified Christ, I say, not
only in the flesh and upon the cross, but that ye have never
ceased to crucify His Spirit, I, the Lord thy God, take back
unto myself my Son, the Redeemer of the World, and I forbid
ye even to call upon His name, yea! even upon His name. But
ye must cadi upon me alone, the Lord thy God, until such
times as ye shall see and shall understand—clearly understand
what the words, crucified in mind, mean. When ye understand
and realize I will send Jesus to you again.
And in order that ye may know what to believe, for ye
are now ready to believe, I say unto you: Ye shall believe upon
thyselves and upon thy fellowmen, for they also are the sons
of God.
22
CHAPTER X
I, the Unknown, speak with authority. Not of Law books
nor of Medical books or of Scientific books or of Religious
books, nay! not even with and by the authority of the Bible
which is the greatest of all books, but I speak by the authority
of the Living God, who sends this Message to you. My words
are His words; my thoughts are His thoughts; my expressions
are His expressions.
For this Message is from God. Ye may deride it, ye may
scorn it, ye may laugh at it, ye may at first and ye will at
first disbelieve it, but in the end you will receive it. For ye
shall in good time come to know and to understand this Mes¬
sage, and understanding ye shall at last receive it.
Ye may and ye will at first marvel and wonder and laugh
and ridicule and turn it round and round in thy mind and
peek at it cautiously with thy soul and shut it out from thy
timid but fearing and unbelieving hearts, but ye shall finally
receive it and ye shall understand it. I tell thee! I warn thee!
For thy immortal soul needs it and thou knowest in thy
soul how great that need is. Every man everywhere has
need of this Message. I do not ask or demand of you any
solemn vows or bowing of heads or meek silence when ye shall
hear this Message read. If this Message cannot silence thee
and bring quiet into the very depths of thy souls, ye may revel
until it can.
23
If this Message, plainly and quietly read, cannot bow
your heads in prayer and in gratitude, let your heads remain
erect in all their pride and amidst all their doubts. If this
Message cannot still your laughter and silence your scorn and
quench your doubts, let your laughter and your scorn and
your doubts continue, for ye alone will suffer therefrom. But
in the end ye will and ye shall receive this Message.
24
CHAPTER XI
Not in the churches will this Message be first received.
Indeed most of them will be the last to receive it, because
although they know it not they have become the citadels of
entrenched and established hypocrisy and greed and pride and
theological vanity. Not in high places or in learned places or
in scholarly places will this Message be first received. For was
Christ's first Message to the world received in such places and
by such people?
Rather was it not as ye may read in the New Testament
that Jesus came first unto the poor fishermen beside the Sea of
Gallilee? And He came to them because the powerful and
rich and learned would have none of Him. Who was He,
forsooth, to teach them! Who was this son of a carpenter
that he should dare to dispute with the Rabbis who were
learned in Mosaic Law and the Law of the Prophets? Out
with Him! Was not such the attitude of everybody in the
world who was somebody, toward Jesus, Joseph and Mary's
son, who was nobody. For was He not born in a manger,
and society people do not like mangers except for their cattle
and horses. Moreover, Jesus was poor, and well-to-do people
do not like poverty. Jesus was also no scholar, and therefore
the schools had no welcome for Him. And thus it was that
Jesus wandered among the poor and lowly people along an
obscure sea. It was the only place where He could wander
and be received.
25
Would Jesus fare any better today, think ye, in our busy
and so-called liberal and modern world, where everybody
wants to be somebody? And remember, Christ was nobody.
When Greed and Pride and lust of Power can find no use for a
man, they say, out with him! What use would our modern
world have today, I ask ye, O my Christian Brother and Sister,
1 bid ye ask and answer the question;—What use or welcome
would our world have for Jesus today? I beseech ye to pause
and think before ye try to make answer even to your own
soul. But when ye have thought, I command ye to make an¬
swer truthfully and frankly to the very last letter and then add,
Marvellous are the ways of the Lord.
26
CHAPTER XII
I say unto you, furthermore, to remember most of all that
God is a loving God. But before ye can love Him, ye must
learn to understand the meaning of the word Justice. For
without Justice no real love can live and abide in the world.
For that is the Law. As to taking the name of the Lord in
vain, ye may do as ye please in thy speaking, only see that thy
doing is right and honest, and thou wilt find favor in the sight
of the living God. For God is a loving God. He hath no
time for wrath except against hypocrits and liars and sneaks
and thieves. You may curse God, but if ye do the will of God
ye shall be forgiven.
For I do say again to you, it is not words but deeds that
count. Therefore I care not what ye may say or how ye may
say it, provided thou doest the will of the Father. For it is
good deeds and not good words that find favor in the sight of
the Lord. But for the honest sinner, that is to say for the sin¬
ner who thinks he is honest and hopes he is honest and there¬
fore will some day be honest, when he shall understand and
perceive the Law, for such a man or woman God has respect
and will have tenderest mercy and infinite patience.
Now as to following the Law of God, ye may do as ye
please. There shall be no judgment and no penalty save the
judgment thou renderest and the penalty thou puttest upon
thy own soul. For I say unto you the Conscience of any man
27
is more just and more exact and more severe than ever was
the judgment of God or of his fellowmen. Therefore I say
unto men to beware at their soul's peril of disobeying their
consciences. For the conscience of each man shall hereafter
be the only Bible of any race in any land under any sky. Not
even this Message shall be a substitute for a man's own con¬
science. For if anything in this Message at any time or in any
place or under any circumstance seems to violate or to go
against thy conscience, then I say unto you that ye shall reject
the words of this Message which thou hast not as yet under¬
stood, and thou shalt follow thy conscience, which thou shalt
always be able to understand if thou only wilt. Furthermore,
I say unto you that your conscience is and from God. And
when ye seek to disobey thy conscience thou art then disobey¬
ing the voice of the Living God, who is everywhere.
28
CHAPTER XIII
And I bid ye remember always and to never forget in the
darkest day or in the gloomiest night that thy God is a loving
God. I say further that regarding the writings which ye read
in the olden Gospels in the Old Testament and in the New
Testament about the wrath and the judgment of God, that such
words are not and never were the words of God the Father
who created the world and who loveth every single living
thing thereon or of Christ, the Son.
The writings which tell of God's wrath and of his judg¬
ments were false words which were interpolated by scribes
and priests and so-called ministers of God for their own pride
in hopes thereby the easier to increase their authority and thus
to control and to instruct the people. The priests and scribes
had in the olden times as they have today, many good inten¬
tions but unwise actions. And it is a wise action alone that
does now and did in the olden time and shall in the days to
come find favor in the sight of God. For without wise action,
the liberties and virtues and the abilities of mankind shall be
taken away from them, and they shall stand naked beneath the
heavens.
For it is not enough to cry Lord! Lord! but thou must
do the will of the Lord and thou must do it now. Thou must
not hesitate nor argue nor debate. Thou must do it now. For
it is only thy deeds that can save thee, all the writings in all
29
the books of the world notwithstanding. And therefore since
deeds alone can save thy body and thy soul and thy heart from
destruction, therefore I hereupon say unto thee what things
thou shalt do and how thou shalt do them if thou would be
happy or prosperous or beautiful or successful in any way
whatsoever in this life. Thou must be active. Thou must
work with thy muscles and thou must work with thy mind. In
other words, thou must use all of the faculties and abilities
which I have given thee. To use part of thy ability will not
suffice. Virtue is the balance and perfect adjustment of all
thy faculties, mental and physical and spiritual. Vice is the ill
or disproportionate adjustment of the faculties given to thee
by God. Soon or later all ill adjustments in every man and
every race of men shall be made manifest and shall work to
their detriment by limiting their capacity for happiness. Vice
is simply the self-limitation by a man or of a woman of their
power to live and to enjoy life. Virtue means that the man
or woman who is virtuous has obeyed the Law which is to use
wisely and with moderation all the faculties which have been
bestowed upon them. And to use wisely all the faculties given
to thee is for each man and for each woman the real question
and problem of life. Thus it is not possible for a man or a
woman or a race to say, I will work now as it pleaseth me. I
have plenty. When they think thus and speak thus they are
wrong. Men and women must work if they would be virtuous
and hence happy. A lazy woman shall be the parent of vicious
children. A pampered woman and a woman over-petted and
allowed to coddle her fat body shall be the progenitor of vicious
offspring. And mothers who are themselves virtuous must
30
see that their growing girls and boys are active, especially dur¬
ing the formative period of their lives, or they shall have cause
to regret their lack of wise oversight at the right time. And
the best way for parents to avoid worry over the waywardness
of growing girls and boys is for themselves to obey the Law.
For the Law of Life is labor. Not physical labor alone nor
mental labor alone nor spiritual labor alone, but mental and
physical and spiritual labor taken all together. Ye cannot
omit any one of these. For a man or a woman may be active
and laborious with both mind and body, yet that shall not be
enough. If their heart is not open and active and laboring to
aid some fellow human being, then shall they become unbal¬
anced as human beings and the vice of selfishness shall enter
into their blood. And the entrance into a man's or woman's
soul of one vice is the entering wedge in time for other vices.
That is why in apparently respectable families there will sud¬
denly and to the astonishment of all beholders appear a black
sheep. The reason is that vice was there before in an appar¬
ently innocent and unsuspected form—unsuspected by the
world at large. But people who are vicious know it well but
hope foolishly to conceal it. And sometimes they do conceal
it for a time, only to have it break out in plainer and more un-
concealable form when they least look for it. Secret vice is
the deadliest and most dangerous form of vice, because it is
often only half suspected by its very possessor. But vice that
is open can be fought. A scarlet woman on the street is less
dangerous to society than an overfed and lazy woman, who
practices and follows the practice of vice under cover of the
marriage law, when almost daily she violates the Law of God.
31
She thinks to escape punishment, but she shall not escape. She
shall see her own sins go into and mar the lives of her own
children. And she shall come to see and fear the eyes of her
own children lest they turn and say: Thou didst this to me.
Therefore I say unto thee again: The Law of Life is
labor. Thou must labor with thy body; thou must labor with
thy mind; thou must labor with thy heart. Thou must do use¬
ful toil every day; thou must do right thinking every day;
thou must do kind deeds every day; or if thou canst not do
them all every day, thou must do them as often as thou canst.
But the most wholesome life for both man and woman is the
life that allows them to use muscle and mind and heart every
day. And no matter how far away ye may drift or be forced
away from healthy and wholesome and normal life, ye must
remember what normal life is in order that thou mayst go back
to it at the earliest possible moment. These then are the things,
O my People and my children, which ye must do if ye would
fulfill the Law, and by fulfilling the law seek the goal which thy
soul has set before it and the human joy which thy soul needeth
and thy heart requires. For there is no distinction made nor
was there ever any distinction made by me the Lord, between
human and divine things. All good and wholesome things
everywhere are divine. Joy is divine and good music is divine
and dancing is divine and mirth is divine and thought is divine
and feeling is divine and love is divine, loving being the es¬
sence and moving spirit of all these other things. And when
any or all of these things are clear and pure and when they fol¬
low their own natures and not the nature of some corruption
which has crept into them or is hanging like a poison vine
32
around them they are divine. Therefore when I speak of
things, I speak only of real things and I say unto you that all
things that are real are true and all true things are divine.
Ye must not misuse words nor misunderstand ideas nor
mix one idea with another. But ye must think clearly and
speeds plainly and then ye will be able to act rightly and
promptly and according to the Law. For in order to follow the
Law, thy heart and mind and soul must clearly perceive what
the Law is. And the reason why men so often fail to follow
the Law is not because they were born evil as has been written
and falsely written in holy books by priests who doctored the
Holy Books for selfish purposes, but because they do not see
clearly. And the reason why they do not see clearly is that
they have not done their share of the work of life which is to
take my gifts of Body and Mind and Heart and Soul and learn
to make them work in harmony with one another to one end.
For the test of a man or a woman is that they should be able to
work together toward a single goal and for a single purpose.
But before anyone can work in harmony with his brother or
with his sister, he must first learn to work in harmony with
himself, that is with the several separate elements that go to
make up his own nature.
Therefore, I say unto you: If ye would learn how to be
at peace with the world and with thy fellowman, thou shalt
first learn how to be at peace with thy own soul.
33
CHAPTER XIV
Here therefore beginneth the statement of what deeds
my People shall do before they shall dare to call upon my name
or sing hymns in my praise or worship me with lip service
or song service. For I say unto you yet again that the only
true and proper praise or word of gratitude to thy Heavenly
Father from his children are kind deeds and righteous deeds.
And if thou canst not do the deed required with thy right arm
because it is weak, or with the muscles of thy legs because they
are palsied I say unto you:—Be not discouraged nor envy thy
healthier brother or sister or neighbor, for a deep and silent
and brief prayer of good-will for the success of some fellow
man is also a deed. And the spoken word of cheerfulness to
a little child or to an old man or to a tired Hercules, this is also
a deed. Furthermore, a bright and honest and sunny smile is
a deed. A generous and encouraging look is a deed. The
hearty sound of applause to the deserving actor is a deed. And
all things that are clean and clear and vigorous and strong and
kind and generous and merciful, all these are also deeds.
Therefore no man and no woman and no child shall be in¬
capable of the worthy deeds that alone constitute the right kind
of and proper testimonials of gratitude to the Living God,—
thy Father Who art in Heaven. Each man shall do deeds ac¬
cording to his strength and his ability. Therefore the strong
and the able men of the world must do strong deeds and fear
34
not. The strong must sweep away old wrongs and unjust laws
and selfish social customs. And first the strong man must stop
thinking wrongly and unjustly and unfairly concerning his
weaker fellowman. And the strong and virtuous woman must
cease to think wrongly and unfairly about her weaker sister.
For the strong man is often a strong brute and not a real man
at all; and very often it was the merest chance that saved the
so-called virtuous woman from being in the gutter beside her
sister. Therefore I say that the strong must strive to bring
about the reign of justice upon the earth. Selfish greed must
cease. Men must be reverend, and no man can be reverend
except he be generous. Generosity is the first and foremost
testimony of the soul of man that he is grateful to his God.
Courage is the possession of every grateful soul.
Fear is the mental and moral brand that is burning into
the shrivelled souls of men who know they are unjust. The
just man shall fear nothing.
In order to render justice, ye must begin by making thy
laws just and thy social customs just and thy moral customs
just. For the mark of the Christian is that he follows in the
footsteps of Christ by doing kind and just deeds. But before
a man is generous let him first learn to be just. For when
Justice is done upon earth generosity will not be needed. Now
the only way for men to show their belief in God is to do God's
will. So I say unto you again: Ye must believe. Before ye
can act ye must believe in action. Before thou canst create
thou must believe in creation. For they who have not faith are
barren, whether man or woman, artist or poet, or carpenter or
stonemason. For Faith is everything. And the greatest of
35
faiths is the faith that a right deed is its own reward. For the
doing of a good deed is in itself reward enough for anyone, and
whoso sees not and believes not this cannot see or believe any¬
thing.
Therefore waste not time on unbelievers. Let them go in
peace upon their ways, but whenever they desert their unbelief
and wish to learn then thou shalt teach them the Law. For
the Law of Life is faith. Without faith, the world starves and
withers and is of no use. But faith shall cover the deserts
with roses, and faith shall make the waters arise out of the
depths of the earth and soon or later to every man and woman
faith shall bring the high glory of love,—of a love that shall
make the eyes shine and the feet dance and the soul sing.
Therefore I say unto thee yet again: It is by faith alone that
all things live and move and have their being.
Therefore faith itself is a kind of deed that precedes all
other doing. Ye must study in order to believe, and must put
thy heart in an attitude of reverence toward thy kindly fellow-
man, and toward the beautiful earth and toward the gracious
sky and thou must teach thyself the daily habit of silent con¬
templation if only but for five minutes each day. Now once
having faith all things follow, and there is no end and no limit
to thy accomplishment. Yea! the very dreams of thy inmost
heart and soul and mind shall come true. Only ye must be¬
lieve.
36
CHAPTER XV
Having belief, therefore, I say unto you, my People, ye
must abolish usury. And the words of the Old Testament
herein are most true and wise,—all interest on money is usury
and usury is accursed of God. Therefore in this one great ex¬
ample of my neglected teachings, ye may discover how far ye
have wandered from the right path and how far ye have strayed
from the law of Love which is my law. For do not the very
churches loan out money at interest, and thy church deacons
and thy ordained ministers and all of the principal men of thy
congregations? And in loaning out money at interest and thus
breaking the law as laid down in my first gospels to you, do
they not therefore become hypocrits and Pharisees, and is the
number not a myriad and is not the custom universal?
Yet because it is universal, it is not the less an abomina¬
tion to me and an offence in my sight. Therefore 1 say unto
you: No just man shall take interest from his fellows. Who¬
ever makes a loan shall receive his money back and the bor¬
rower shall pay the necessary expense of transmitting or trans¬
porting the money to his friend. But whoever desireth to be
a just man in the sight of God and of his fellowmen shall, when
he loans money receive back only what he loaned. For I say
unto you one-half of all the wrongs and inequalities and dis¬
cordances and injustices of Life today have their seed and
their origin in the loaning of money out at interest. For the
37
drawing of interest as practiced today is putting the chain of
slavery around the neck of the poor and the unfortunate. And
the chain once being around the neck of a human being be¬
comes a dire temptation unto the rogue and the scoundrel to
perpetrate injustice under the pretext of the law.
But I say unto you such a law if it be human comes from
the Devil and shall be a curse and a snare unto all who use it.
Therefore 1 say unto you: Abolish usury. It is from such evil
customs as the charging of interest for the use of money that
mercy has become a mockery; and philanthropy has become a
mockery; and charity has become a mockery, for have ye not
permitted hypocrits and liars and thieves to hide themselves
under the cloak of these fair names in order to maintain their
power and to avoid the just wrath of an angry God and the
well deserved punishment of an outraged and maltreated peo¬
ple.
Therefore I say unto you that having allowed these beau¬
tiful things and noble things and gracious things to become the
tools and accomplices of robbers and of thieves, I forbid you to
name the name of any of these things except thou do it in
silence only and with a contrite heart. And the only name
which I shall henceforth allow thee to speak aloud in church
and school; in the market place and by the road is the word
Justice. And thou shalt know and learn to honor the meaning
of this word and thou shalt make deeds of justice the end and
aim of thy life during the period of thy probation. And when
thou hast learned to practice Justice then will the fair and
gracious and noble things of life come of their own accord.
38
For wheresoever there is mental sunshine there is spiritual life.
And Justice alone can bring to thee the light thou needest.
1 say unto you that a just man does right before he is
asked to do it. If a man wait until the request is made that
he be just and honest, the Devil is already in him and it is only
a question of time when he shall slide down into iniquity. For
the man who desires to be honest demands honesty of himself
and insists that the demand be met. The man who wishes to
render justice does not wait for a magistrate or judge. His
own conscience declares what is the Law and he fulfills the
verdict. Men who wait to ask the opinion of any other law
except the moral law as to what the law is, are not honest men,
but they are robbers waiting their opportunity. For many
men are good because it takes too much energy to be bad. A
considerable part of the so-called goodness of the world comes
from laziness and cowardice. Many a so-called good man
would be bad if he dared. But he does not dare. He is afraid.
And moreover he lacks decision and promptness. Much pov¬
erty and ill-fortune from which apparently good and God¬
fearing men suffer comes from a sloppy and careles mode of ac¬
tion and consequently of thinking. Many people are too lazy to
think. But without thought there can be no justice and no
right action. The most illiterate people will slobber all over
when it comes to the use of words. They are either stupid and
dull and say nothing, or they lose themselves in a mist of words.
Careless words are the undoing of the mind. Thought like
action goes straight to its mark, but a lengthy discourse or a
palaver of words is an abomination. The man who thinks
clearly and vigorously will speak briefly and to the point, but
39
the liar and the falsifier and the trickster, the vain man, the
weak man, the ambitious man, the schemer, the cunning man,
the designing man, the pompous and vain-glorious man, the
shrewd and worldly man and the self-deceiver, all these love to
wallow in sonorous and high-sounding words.
40
CHAPTER XVI
But I, thy God, do not waste words. Few and simple are
the words that express Truth. Therefore I say unto you, Be¬
ware of Words! For words have become a deceitful and de¬
ceptive abomination. Words are used nowadays not to express
but to conceal thought. The law books are groaning under¬
neath the weight of words. The medical books are cunningly
decorated and foolishly festooned with phrases meant to over¬
awe the ignorant. The orators juggle with words and the poli¬
tician still relies upon words to aid him in keeping the people
under control.
Therefore I say unto you—Beware of words. They are
a snare and a delusion unless used reverently and with discre¬
tion, each word being in its place and a clear reason running
through them all and connecting them with some high and
noble purpose. For behind all words lies the purpose for which
and the spirit in which they were written. And the purpose is
the real reason of all expression and the spirit determines
whether the purpose is to be rightly attained. But many are
the purposes and few the fulfillments.
Darwin, the great scientist and naturalist, who in his
career upon the earth did more than many regiments of idle
and insincere ecclesiastics to advance the domain of knowledge,
and therefore of light among men, has well written thus: "Of
all the difficult tasks which man faces in his upward march the
41
most difficult is to increase by ever so little his ability to ex¬
press thought in written language."
Language is and should be the reflection of a man's soul.
When a man's soul contains flaws and cracks and pompous in¬
sincerities, so will his written or spoken speech contain flaws
and cracks and pompous insincerities. For a man must utter
himself, and he will do so after his nature and not otherwise.
Therefore I say unto you, be careful of thy words, for thy
words art thyself. What thou art thy words will be, unless
both of ye be hollow mockeries and mere spider webs floating
in the air. Now the mistake that man makes in trying to use
language is to set himself to study the combinations and intri¬
cate subtleties of which language, and therefore of which
thought is capable before he knows the meaning of the com¬
ponent parts to be combined. Thus in order to know the inner
meaning and to express the meaning of many words, thou must
know the meaning that is the soul of single words. Begin at
the beginning if thou wouldst hope to get ahead in the journey
before thee. Words are deeds. And too many deeds produce
confusion. Man tries to do so many things that he often does
nothing well. He writes so many things that the thought he
desires to express is lost to sight in the jungle of words that
surround the thinking. Great is the power of single words!
The motto, for instance, of Harvard College at Cambridge,
Massachusetts, in the United States of America, is one word,
Veritas—Truth. And the use of that one word is one of the
secrets of the ability of that great school to influence the lives
of its students. One word, Truth! What more is needed to
place before the eyes and hearts of young men facing life?
42
There is no word more gracious, no word more beautiful, no
word stronger, no word more simple, no word more powerful
than the word Truth. Let such words sink into thy soul. Study
them. Act them. Live them. More words than what are
needed for life shall he an encumbrance. Therefore I say unto
you: Burden not thy heart or thy soul or thy mind with words.
A few right words like a few right principles are sufficient for
the life of man; more is merely waste lumber that blocks the
way.
43
CHAPTER XVII
For I say unto you that no man can travel upward whose
baggage is so heavy that it keeps dragging him downward. And
the heaviest baggage which mortal men have ever thought it
necessary to encumber themselves with are the false notions
and silly ideas that should have been left with their baby clothes
beside the cradle of the race. I say unto you that not only the
body but the soul of man must be free before he can travel up
the hill of Life and gain the wisdom that awaiteth him on the
mountain top. Therefore I come to free thy souls, and when
thy souls are free from false notions and poor childish supersti¬
tions, then shalt thou stand erect in God's sunlight and go forth
unto thy soul's victory. And I say unto you, knowing well
the pain and agony of mind and the wonder and astonishment
and dismay of mind which these words will cause you, I say
unto you that the writings called the Old Testament are a his¬
tory of the Jewish race during its growth upward from the dark¬
ness of savage wars into the light of knowledge and of love
and not sacred books nor henceforth to be considered sacred.
The writings en titled the Old Testament are strewn with the
wisdom and truth and beauty of the sayings of God, but the
wisdom and the beauty and the truth have been marred by
bungling and meddling scribes and by worldly and dishonest
priests who have thought to improve upon the words of the
Lord by the additions of their own folly. I say unto you
44
furthermore that the greater part of the Old Testament is not
sacred but secular writing. It is sacred only in the sense that
all men's records and struggles upward out of the darkness
are sacred. But the Old Testament shall hereafter be taken for
what it is,—the history of the most wonderful, the strongest,
the ablest and the most reverend race upon the earth, the Jewish
race. They are and they have been God's chosen people. And
1 say unto you, ye Gentiles, who think ye have supplanted the
Jews in the sight of the Lord, that henceforth whenever thou
shalt meet a Jew thou art to remember that he had no more
to do with the crucifying of Christ than thou hadst. Nay! not
so much. For the crucifixion of Christ on the cross was a thing
not worth one-tenth of the hub-bub which ye make about it.
The only agony endured that day was not endured by Christ
upon the Cross but by His followers who believed in and loved
Him. The nails that entered his flesh hurt Him not, the blood
that flowed from his wounds dismayed Him not. For what is
physical suffering to the suffering of the soul? What was the
weak body of Jesus compared to the largeness and courage of
His soul? And the soul of Jesus did not suffer. For did He
not smile and say unto the multitude, Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do. And would Jesus have smiled
thus if He suffered? Nay! think not so.
So I say unto you that the death of Jesus is misunderstood,
and the meaning thereof is misinterpreted. And I say further¬
more unto you: Ye must read aright the meaning of words and
the meaning of life before wisdom and the light of wisdom
can come unto you. 1 say yet again unto you that whereas
Jesus was crucified once upon the cross with nails through His
45
hands and feet and suffered the indignities of public scorn and
derision which He did not deserve, since then ye have crucified
Him a million times by your unbelief and your ursuries and
your defilng of His temples with your money-making methods
and the insulting of His teachings by your hypocritic grabbings
and your vain and proud boasting concerning His meekness
and His lowliness and His love of the world he came to save.
I say unto you that Jesus was not meek in the sense you mean,
and that Jesus was not lowly according to your ideas, and that
He did not come to earth to do what you imagine.
Jesus came to bring Justice to the world that He might
love the world made beautiful thereby. And Jesus came to
plead for the poor and the lowly who pass the doors of your
churches every Sabbath day and do not enter in because of the
pride and vanity that defiles the pews and litters up the aisles,
—the fine dresses and gay bonnets and the dapper airs of the
ushers and all the falsehoods that must come wherever men
speak words they do not mean and daily do deeds which they
themselves approve not of. Jesus scourged the money changers
from the temples of the Jews. But now are there no money
changers in the churches of the Gentiles today? Answer that
question if ye dare. Answer that question, I say. Then let
thy lying lips be still. Woe! I say unto hypocrisy and to all
who practice it.
46
CHAPTER XVIII
0 ye must believe! There is no other way. So again I
repeat this old admonition with a new emphasis:—Ye must
believe! And I say unto you that belief is no weak tea, gruel
and water, milk and water, delicate diet for invalids. Faith is
the heroic conviction of strong souls that God does live; that
there is something more than what mortal hands can touch and
something higher than what puny hands can reach. Faith is
the fighting and dead-in-earnest conviction of the soul that real
things are worth striving for, battling for and dying for. Faith
declares to the Conscience of every man that a man who will
not fight until he drops in his tracks for what he thinks is right
is no man at all, but only some pretty or fancy or work-basket
imitation of the real thing. And no man wants to be an imi¬
tation of anything. Therefore I say: Ye must believe! And
I say that the test of belief is that ye are willing to fight to
maintain thy point of view and thy mite of wisdom. Now I
do not believe in war or bloodshed or brutality. The great
battles of life are spiritual battles which are won by men acting
and living and speaking exactly what they believe and not oth¬
erwise.
1 say unto you that when the essential and vital principles
of life are at stake, all compromise is wrong and a sin. There
are times when mere outward courtesy and consideration is a
crime and a sin. For to be courteous and considerate toward
47
a base man or toward a thief or a traitor is to act a lie and to
give heart to the bad man to overlook and to have respect for
his own badness, which he is very apt and very swift to do.
Therefore to be honest ye cannot always be the smooth and
polite and gentle spoken neighbor. For thinkest thou that
Jesus was very gentle or polite or courteous when he scourged
the money-changers from the temples? Where, I say, is the
Christian church member of the Gospel who would dare to
walk up to a man who has cornered wheat or oats or rye or
beef or eggs and say: Sir, you are an oppressor of your fellow-
man. You are not even a decent beast, for you do more harm
than a thousand wolves who enter a sheepfold and devour the
unweaned lambs. You are an enemy to the human race,—a
brutal and vicious and dangerous member of the human society
which you have degraded and befouled and defiled. Where is
the Christian who dares repeat in essence the words of Christ
when they are needed? Therefore what shall I say unto you,
who pretend to be Christians and who are too polite to advance
beyond the pretense? The gentle Jesus was not so gentle nor
so meek as thou art taught to believe. Jesus came to establish
Justice and Fair-dealing and Right. Scarcely a year has passed
since He actually was crucified that He would not have been
crucified had He by any chance escaped the first crucifixion.
There is no Christian country today where Christ could live a
year save in concealment or among rustic folks, except by daily
running the risk of death. The world has improved and grown
better and kinder in the last nineteen hundred years, but the
wolves and hypocrites are still many, and the money changers
still talk business in the temples and churches of the Living
God.
48
Therefore I say that the temples and churches must be
cleansed of hypocrites and hypocrisy or given up entirely to
them. For I say that churches and so-called temples of God
are no more holy than other places except they be made and
kept holy. For was not Christ born in a manger and in sight
of the litter of a barnyard? And darest thou say that thy tower¬
ing church is holier in its pride than Christ's manger in its lowli¬
ness? For I say unto you that God needs not great cathedrals
for his worship. God needs merely the clean hearts of rev¬
erend men.
Whatever stands in the way of moral and spiritual clean¬
liness, 1 say down with it and away with it! And no man's
heart and no woman's heart can be clean if it be filled with
pride and vanity.
Therefore I say unto you: Be not eager to rear churches
to the glory of God. Is God's glory so poor that he needs thee
to make it rich? Is God's power so slight that he needs thee
to emphasize and to symbolize and to strengthen it? Is God's
greatness so small that He needs thee to increase it?
Nay, I say unto you, worry not over giving to God great
glory or long prayers or droning psalms or loud hosannas. Take
care to give thyself a bit of true meekness and of real reverence.
Cleanse thy heart and wash clean thy soul from the stains of
theological and religious pride, and thou shalt not need to give
glory to God. He will give glory to thee for thy conversion.
For to save a religious and pious sinner full of pride who would
like to do God's work while he neglects his own,—to save such
a man is a pleasant sight to the eyes of the Lord and a hopeful
sign to the soul of God. For of all the woeful things that God
49
has to endure from the waywardness of his erring children the
most woeful is to watch them trying to run and to manage His
vast universe, when they cannot run or manage their own lit¬
tle houses.
Therefore I say unto ye again, cleanse thy hearts and souls
of pride and learn to be modest in order that some day thou
mayst attain knowledge. For without modesty, no real knowl¬
edge can enter the heart or soul of any man. And a mental
lumber-room filled with heaps and piles of raw and unassorted
facts is not knowledge any more than a store-room is a fit place
in which to sleep. The mind of a man must be put in order
and kept in order before either can rightly fulfill the purpose
for which it exists.
50
CHAPTER XIX
I say unto you that your so-called Christianity as preached
and practiced by the majority of the so-called Christians today
is a mushy and weak Christianity at which the Devil chuckles
under his chin and laughs up his sleeve. And as a result of
his jollity over the condition of things which he ought to fear
but which of late years he doth not take the trouble even to
deride, the Devil is no longer thin and hatchet-faced as thou
dost picture him in thy paintings and represent him in thy
dramatic spectacles, but the Devil has become a fat and unctious
and rosy-faced Devil, with a double chin, thick neck and most
ponderous belly. Laughter can make even Devils fat, and the
Devil says that he could not get thin again if he wanted to,
there are so many comic and clownish sides to the thing which
has filled all the churches of the land and which calls itself
Christianity. Even Christians, says the Devil, have to go out
of doors to air their creeds and many a Christian has to own
up to himself that he was a much better fellow, more honest
and more efficient in every spiritual way before he joined the
church. For the hypocrisy which he is obliged to countenance
every Sunday and continue to countenance by his silence all
through the week is killing his soul by inches. Now the re¬
ligion which kills instead of saves the souls of men is no re¬
ligion at all.
That is why strong and virile and clean-headed and stout-
51
hearted men by the million will no longer enter a church even
on Sunday, for they refuse to allow their souls to be utterly
destroyed even in the name of and under the pretense of Re¬
ligion. They permit their wives and children to go but they
stay at home themselves. The reason is that men say unto
their souls: It is bad enough to countenance and practice hy¬
pocrisy and injustice for six days in the week, but we draw the
line at the seventh day. We know that Hell will be hot for us
and the tortures thereof grievous but we do not want to make
it hotter nor the tortures worse by defiling even our religion
with the hypocrisy of the world. We have a little decency and
conscience and sense of right and wrong left, and that is more
than many so-called ministers of the gospel can say,—God help
them! So say strong men and virile men who are sinners but
would be saved if they only knew the way of salvation. For
all men long for righteousness until they have been deceived
and tricked and disgusted by the falsehoods and untruths that
pass current under the name of Religion. And there are many
such falsehoods. The greatest of which, as I have told you,
relates even to the birth and coming of Christ the Redeemer,
even Him and the beauty of His life have men defiled by their
lies which still pass current under the name of holy religion.
But I say unto you, I, the living God, who send and write down
this Message by the hand of a mortal man in the darkness of
the night and in the quiet of the early morn, arousing him
out of a restful sleep to do it, that ye shall cease to defile my
religion and my world with lies and thou shalt cease to defile
the coming of Jesus with wrong stories and with lying fictions
that the soul of every true man and woman knows are false.
52
Ye shall cease, I say, to lie. And when thou hast ceased
to lie and to tolerate liars, then shalt the wonders of my world
and the meaning of my miracles which are done under and in
fulfillment of law be known unto you as they are. Thou shalt
know at length when the last lie and the last falsehood has
been crushed under foot and shall realize and shall understand
the meaning of the divine word Love and thou shalt compre¬
hend the meaning of my ancient creed, Love is the Law! Love
is the Law! There is no other law, there has been no other
law, there shall be no other law. And thou must study and
work and ponder and meditate until thou shalt see and feel in
thy soul and heart and mind these words, Love is the law.
53
CHAPTER XX.
Now one of the most vicious things about so-called Christi¬
anity as well as many other religions like Mohammedanism,
for instance, is their solemnity. While birds sing in the trees
and children laugh in the fields and the brooks go dancing and
smiling over the pebbles beneath the waving and swaying
rhythms of the dancing leaves, healthy men and women
will shut themselves up in dark and gloomy churches and
kneel in pious adoration, thinking thus to worship God.
But 1 say unto thee, thou art wrong. Pious solemnity and
grave and orderly gravity of countenance and lowly bowings
and kneelings and intonings, nay! even the reverent ejacula¬
tions of praise to the Lord from whom all blessings flow, all
of these may be simulated and imitated by the hypocrit. But
joy and leaping Laughter and the ring of real Merriment and
the dancing of merry feet and the bright flashings from inno¬
cent eyes cannot be imitated; and if an imitation is attempted
the attempt is so ludicrous and so bungling that the word coun¬
terfeit! counterfeit is written all over the liar's face and in
every movement of the hypocrit's body. Therefore 1 say unto
you: God loves most of all merriment and joy and innocent
mirth and seemly and modest dancing, and where these things
abound ye shall find reverend hearts and worshipping souls
and clean minds. For the sunlight and the open sky and the
fresh breezes and the singing birds and the innocent human
54
joy that is like unto these things shame the hypocrit and he
would fain leave the assembly and go away on the plea that
he is horrified at such levity or he is pained to observe such
frivolity. Therefore he will depart and ye may breathe pure
air once more. For there can be no goodness without liberty,
even as there can be no sunlight without light. Freedom is the
parent of virtue. And there can be no such thing as a whole¬
sale giving of liberty to any man or to any race. Each man
and each generation of men must fight not only to maintain
but to increase their meed of Freedom. They shall either add
to or subtract from their inheritance. What came from the
fathers cannot remain intact with their sons. The sons must
♦
in turn increase or decrease the amount of liberty bequeathed
to them. Now the American people in their War of the Revo¬
lution had barely won their liberty when they began to lose it.
For they misconceived the nature of liberty. For Liberty can¬
not be given. It must be won. The condition for freedom
may be inherited. All the catch-words and insignia,—the flags
and the banners and the festal days like the Fourth of July may
come down as an inheritance, but the soul and the spirit of
liberty must be fought for physically and morally and spiritually
before it can be appreciated and thus become a real possession.
Now I say unto you that all your latter day love of clubs and
associations and conventions is a great menace to the cause of
Freedom. I warn you in time. For the love of Liberty is God's
gift to the soul of each individual man. He cannot delegate
it or give it over or give his proxy of it to any committee of
safety or Director's meeting. He may act in concert with his
fellows and throw the influence of his vote and his personality
55
toward a common purpose and for a specified end but he must
be there to see that the end for which he votes and works must
be kept steadily in view and that the purpose be attained. For
men cannot elect committees or presidents or chairmen and
then lean back and say,—I have nothing more to do, I have
done my duty to the State! See what a fine president I helped
to elect! O foolish fellow! Thy work is just beginning when
thou thinkest it is at an end. Mark me! Thou must see that
the man elected does what you elected him to do. Every move
of his political life and every action is thy move and thy action
and if he does not well thou dost not well. It is thy business
to see that he does well and to insist on the doing. For it has
well been written: Eternal Vigilance is the price of Liberty!
And I say unto you: There is no short cut to great ends!
56
CHAPTER XXI
To the Negro race I say: Thou must live on the soil.
Thou must live on the soil and become the most expert farmers
and agriculturists which the world has ever seen. Then when
thou hast done what thou canst do and heist done it well, the
Lord will come unto thee and lead thee upward unto higher
things. But ye shall first learn the lesson which all great na¬
tions have learned, before thou in turn become a great nation
and a mighty people. For I say unto you that ye shall have
thy day, even though that day is not yet at hand. First thou
must learn from the soil patience. Thou must learn from the
soil endurance and the benefits of steady toil. For nature is
not wasteful or erratic. She abides. Thou shalt learn from
the soil thoughtfulness and thrift and perseverance and strength.
In brief, thou shalt learn what all great races have had to learn
—the bitter and dull lessons that make men great. And the
greatest and most bitter of all great lessons which Nature has
to teach is patience; to work! to wait! to bide thy time. And
always to wait some more, cheerfully, steadily, uncomplain¬
ingly, relying on thy God to comfort thee and to sustain thee.
And so I say unto you, in time a black skin shall become as
fair in the sight of God and of all men as the fairest lily; a
black skin shall be like a badge of honor when ye have made it
honorable; a black skin shall be the mark of strength when
ye have made it strong; a black skin shall be the sign of loyalty
57
when ye have made it loyal; a black skin shall be the symbol
of nobility and virtue when you have made it noble and vir¬
tuous. And thou shalt do all of these things in good time.
But thou must work and toil and thou must cultivate and live
on the soil if thou wouldst uplift thy race. As it has been writ¬
ten, the first shall be last and the last shall be first. But thou
must be patient and thou must work with thy heart set on the
high goal of race nobility which thou mayst not live to see but
which will come. In order to cultivate the soil I say unto you,
buy land. An acre, two acres, ten acres, twenty acres or fifty
acres as thou canst use it. But burden not thyself down with
much land. Buy only what thou canst use, and do not if pos¬
sible run into debt. Better two acres paid for than two hundred
acres mortgaged. For thou shalt keep and thy children after
thee shall keep the two acres and call it home. But the two
hundred mortgaged acres may be all lost if thou art not careful.
Therefore, I say, buy land. Do not speculate in it. Buy it for
use. Answer every insult from every white man who may
insult thee,—in one way and silently:—buy land. Answer
every sneer at thy color in one way:—buy land. Reply to
every joke about the dullness or backwardness of the Negro
race in one way:—buy land. Resent every insult and wrong
to thy wives and thy daughters in the same fashion:—buy land.
Keep day and night in thy mind two words:—buy land. And
when thou and thy fellows have done this and learned to use
the land which thou hast bought, half of all thy problems will
be solved. Having leaders that do not flatter thee, follow them.
For God has already sent to thee a great apostle and leader.
And although he himself was born in slavery, he shall show
58
thee the path to freedom. For I say unto you, He was sent to
thee by God, the living God, Who art thy Father in Heaven.
Remember! Love the soil, till the soil, live on the soil
and thy day of glory and splendor and power shall come. Only
be patient! For patience is greatness. Without patience no
man or race can be great. And be sure of this: that as certainly
as the day follows the blackness of night, so surely as the sun¬
shine shall dissipate in good time the darkest storm clouds, so
surely shall thy day of deliverance and of glory and of power
come and abide with thee. Only be patient and work. Pa¬
tience and work shall level mountains and fill up seas and scat¬
ter flower gardens over the vilest and deadliest swamps. Pa¬
tience shall bring thee unto thy own. I give thee hope and in
due season the hope shall find fulfillment. Only be patient!
For patience is the father and the mother of all virtues, of all
greatness and of all achievement. Without patience nothing
true or good or noble or fine or high can be accomplished.
Therefore I say unto you, be patient!
59
CHAPTER XXII
Furthermore I say unto you that harmony is the strength
of human as well as of divine life. Therefore true life must
be musical and rhythmical and harmonious. All healthy and
joyous and wholesome things sing both at their play and at
their work. The waters of the mountain brooks go dancing and
singing on their way to the sea. But the stagnant waters of a
swamp or a bayou do nothing but breed malaria. They are
not wholesome. The souls of some men are like the waters of
a swamp, they sing not and move not but in their dullness they
breed the foul and poisonous vapors of envy and jealousy and
strife and contention and hate, which they circulate among their
fellows, spreading contagion everywhere.
The winds of heaven go leaping and laughing over land
and sea, bringing rain for harvests and coolness to fevered
brows and power to the white sails of a thousand waiting ships.
And the girl in love likewise laughs and sings and dances for
sheer joy, wishing she could hug in her arms the whole uni¬
verse, so glad is she that she lives and that everything in all
the world loves everything else. Such it is to be in harmony
with Life. And I say unto you that disease and all the ills that
flesh is heir to comes from mental and spiritual discord. I say
that to stab a man with a sneer is worse than to stab him with
a dagger. You may draw the dagger out, but the sneer like a
pronged barb stays festering in the wound. I say also that to
60
put doubt into the mind of a man or to gently and mildly drop
words of suspicion into his ears is worse than to give poison
unto him. For you may give a man a proper emetic or antidote
and get rid of the poison. But the doubt or the suspicion will
remain to corrupt and weaken his mind and vitiate his blood.
Ye kill the soul when ye poison the mind. Furthermore 1 say
unto you that the man in doubt and therefore out of harmony
with himself and the world is a tired man. For nothing so saps
the life blood of every human being as discord. Cursed be all
who introduce discord into the world! But I say unto you
that the man in harmony with himself and with his soul and
with the world sings and skips and leaps and dances along the
barren ways of Life. For to the soul in harmony with itself
and with the world all things are beautiful and noble and true
and radiant with the joy and splendor of living.
Thou sayest: God has made this a wonderful and a
beautiful world! Then why not live in that world? Are not
the starlit heavens a finer ceiling over thy head than any fresco
painters ever painted? Then if ye love beauty, go and live
where beauty is. Cease to use idle words and to palaver with
pretty phrases. Who is not strong to endure and to toil and
to suffer for the sake of his love is no lover. Therefore do not
pretend to be a lover if thou art not. For a lover like a soldier
must be a strong man and not a weakling. For true love is the
most heroic and stout hearted and high minded thing in all the
world. Therefore beware how ye mix up with other and lesser
things the word,—Love. Defile not nor misuse the word, I
pray thee. But I say unto you that harmony and beauty and
grace of character can never come from lies and compromise
61
and hypocrisy. Ye must first have Truth and Justice before
ye can have Love. Before ye can have rest ye must earn it.
Before thy soul shall have victory, thou must win it. I care not
what olden books or Bibles say, I bring ye the Law. Ye are
to live not in the Yesterday but in the fullness of Today and
in the splendor of Tomorrow. Therefore ye shall leave the
dead past bury its dead. But ye shall face the coming light of
a new day. For I bring ye The Gospel of Hope which shall
speak to the soul of every man wheresoever he may be. And
when any man anywhere has read this word he is permitted to
doubt and disbelief and to laugh and to scorn or otherwise waste
his precious time. But in the end he shall receive. For men
obey the law of necessity. And no man shall escape the influ¬
ence of this Message any more than he can escape from his
own soul. This Message is the voice of his own soul and every
man is interested in himself. Therefore 1 defy you to reject
these, My words. Ye cannot escape receiving them any more
than thy lungs can escape breathing the air which they must
have. Ye may turn this Message upside down and inside out.
Ye may scorn, deride, laugh at it or disdain it. But in the end
ye shall receive it, because ye must. That is why ye shall. All
men do what they must. I do not beseech thee or berate thee
or threaten thee with eternal damnation if ye do not believe.
1 simply say: Do as ye please. But it is thyself and not any¬
body else's self that shall suffer the consequences. A man may
stay in the dark if he wishes, but when he needs the light, he
will come into it. For that is the Law and the Law will be ful¬
filled. I speak to men, not to children; and 1 speak the truth
and men will receive it. I do not flatter; I do not cajole; 1 do
62
not say thou must believe. Rather 1 say, do as thou please,
but also please do not forget the consequences. Like a minister
at a revival I do not say: Brother come ye unto Jesus and be
saved! 1 say Brother, ye are a man. You act as a man and
think as a man. Therefore you are a free agent. But I say unto
you: Thus and so is the Law. Take it or leave it at thy peril.
For the Law will be fulfilled. In the long run nobody can es¬
cape the Law. Nor is there any short cut nor death-bed re¬
pentance which can satisfy the Law. The Law is slow but sure.
Ye must believe, but ye must first act out thy belief. Ye can
say what ye are pleased to say, but ye must do what is right.
For the Law is stern and just. When the Law of Justice and
Love is fulfilled, this earth will be filled with Beauty and Har¬
mony. The Brotherhood of man shall come. Men shall see
that Greed is silly; that Injustice is individual suicide, and that
Tyranny is a ghastly mistake. That the only law known to
all free and beautiful and joyous things like roses and birds
and running brooks is the Law of Love. Therefore seek ye to
live the Law. For from the Law cometh the joy and gladness
and all the happiness of human life.
63
CHAPTER XXIII
Now I speak to you as men. And I say to you as men
who dare fight and as men who dare think and as men who
dare do the things they think, I say I honor you for what you
are and some day I expect to honor you far more for what you
will become. For you and I are alike in this. We both hate
and despise and abominate the hypocrit, the liar, the thief and
the sneak. And we have no use for and no time for weaklings.
For the first of ail virtues is strength. Without strength re¬
ligion is a poor and a puerile thing. And without strength pa¬
triotism is a milk and water gruel, fit for babies. Without
strength no good can come to anyone from anywhere. For not
only is strength the basis of virtue, it is virtue. But strength
to be permanent must be clean and self-contained and patient
and with the fighting sinews of soul as well as of body. And
there can be no real strength without mental and moral and
spiritual strength. Physical strength is merely the foundation
stones. The others are the framework and the adornment of
human character. But as no house is more than just begun
when the foundation stones are all in place, so the character of
a man is just started toward real construction when he has at¬
tained to perfect physical strength. Physical strength is not the
end but is merely the beginning of real strength. For without
the fighting sinews of the Soul, the Body shall wither. It is the
soul alone that lifts up and fills out and invigorates and vitalizes
64
the body into permanent vigor. And good women and good
men are warm blooded and warm hearted and clean souled.
They fear not love even though it be passionate love, but they
fear only to have their love played with and mistreated by
human beasts who know not the meaning of anything, much
less of love. Therefore I say unto you I honor strength even
as you do. And I recognize that strength in any form is good.
When therefore, ye say to me, 1 have only the strength of a
clean brute, I say you have the basis of all wisdom and all
beauty and all grace. You need but to convert your strength
of gross form into strength of fine forms and you will not be
able to recognize your own self in your own mirror. For I say
to you that all strength is good if it be strength and not bluff.
The bluff that passes for strength is a silly and piteous farce
which imposes on none but cowards. Therefore speaking to
thee as men, I say: I know thee down to the core of thy hearts
and to the bottom of thy shoes. And when thou shalt turn in
thy fine manliness and say: Why, 'tis too late, pal, to do any¬
thing for me, I am only the dregs and the remnants of a man.
I might have been decent once. Then I will answer thee and
say, We will save the remnants. And in thy surprise thou shalt
cry out and say: What! Me! Save me! And I will answer
once more, looking thee straight in the eyes as men do who
say that they mean: Yea! we will save the remnants, you and
I. We will save the remnants. Then I will take thee quietly
by the arm and we will go away by ourselves and talk the situa¬
tion over carefully in order to see what is best to be done and
in what manner. For I say unto you that when you despair of
yourselves, you men who dare fight and take your licking and
65
then rise to fight again, I say you know not what you do. For
thy soul and the soul of every man on earth is worth the fighting
for. The soul can never become so corrupted by the flesh or
degraded by the physical senses but that it is worth fighting
for. So hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder, you and I,
Brother, will start to fight this minute for the greatest thing
ever created by the Living God for the glory and the honor of
His world; and the greatest thing in the world is the soul of a
real man. Therefore, my Brother, 1 will put my arms around
you and tell you the plain and literal truth. 1 care not how
often we fight and are whipped; I care not how often we fight
and fall; I care not how long nor how hard the battle is, I say
that in the end we will win. For the man who keeps fighting
must win. There is no other possible end of any battle but that
the man who fights the longest and never gives up must possess
the battlefield. It is only yellow curs, who putting their tails
between their legs dejectly creep away,—only such folks ever
lose. But the man who stands erect and fights and keeps fight¬
ing to the end must win. For God loves a fighter.
Therefore I say unto you, ye strong and vigorous men of
the world: ye mariners, ye coal diggers, ye miners of gold and
silver and copper and tin and coal and of all other metals and
precious things that lie in the earth, ye lumbermen of the north¬
ern woods where the sunlight sifting down through the thick
trees resembles twilight, I say I am with you and I want you
to be with me in mind as thou art with me in soul. Yea! Thou
art with me though thou knowest it not.
For I say unto you I know what you are and I am going to
share what I have to share with you. I am not going to bore
66
you with pious prayers nor meekly beseech you to come unto
the Lord without delay. I say unto thee come or not as it
pleaseth thee; Curse or blaspheme as it suits thee. Thou mayst
take the name of thy Lord in vain. Thou mayst do all manner
of deviltry to prove that thou art boss of thy ranch, and the
king-pin of thy alley and the whole thing in thy section of the
country and when at last thou art through, I will quietly come
and speak one word to thee, and thou wilt listen. Then I again
will speak another word quietly and calmly in thy ear, looking
thee meanwhile squarely in the eye. And again thou shalt
listen. A third time will I speak and a third time wilt thou
listen. And when I am through 1 will softly bless thee and go
away. When I am gone thou shalt look around bewildered
and astonished and raising thy strong right arm thou shalt gaze
up into the face of the blue sky and thou shalt break into a
rough and mighty oath, saying: By God, there is a man who
has something to say and knows how to say it. He is onto his
job. And from that minute, Brother, I say unto thee that the
remnants are saved,—the remnants of the man whom God
first made thee to be. For a man fights when he knows that
one friend in the world believes in him, even unto the end.
And I, brother, am the friend who believes in thee and in thy
manhood and in thy honor, for I know that nothing in this
universe is ever lost, not a star or a blade of grass, or a flower
or any beast in the fields or any fish in the sea, much less the
soul of a man like thee.
67
CHAPTER XXIV
Now I say unto you that every man who would like to
deserve the name of a man must honor women, and in order to
honor them aright he must understand them and their needs.
And the father must teach the boy to reverence little girls and
not to take advantage of them at the critical period of their
lives, when God is preparing them to be the mothers of a race.
And I say that any man who looks at and who flirts with and
who tries to have intercourse with another woman while his
wife is bearing a child or about to bear a child or who has just
borne a child is a devil incarnate and he shall be punished. And
I say to him that he is trying to kill his own child before it is
born. For no child can be well born who receives not the care
of both father and mother. And the first care is to see that the
mother's mind and heart and soul are at peace. But no
woman's mind or heart or soul can be at peace so long as she
has any cause—even the remotest and apparently the most
innocent cause—to suspect or to doubt the fidelity and entire
devotion of her husband, the father of her child. And if a
woman's mind and heart and soul are not at peace her body
cannot be at peace and therefore her child cannot be well born.
And I say unto you that all children have the right to be well
born. Being well born is the first and foremost right of every
person. Therefore society and written law should enforce that
right. Now a man should care for a woman judiciously, not
68
pet her foolishly or smother her with kisses she does not want,
or attentions she does not need. Women are not dolls or play¬
things, but the God given mates of man, without whom men
are merely brutes. Women must be given respect. That is
their first right. And good women must be given honor. That
is their second right. And all mothers—wedded or unwedded
—must be given reverence and the unquestioning assistance
that is due all Motherhood. For when a woman becomes a
mother every living man whosoever he be is bound to honor,
respect and assist her. Therefore if you respect yourself and
would obey your God, honor every woman who is a mother.
For such is the Law. I say unto you that I have lived as a man
and I have sinned as a man and it was by sins that I have grown
strong,—not by keeping them and coddling them but by fight¬
ing against them. For day by day and hour by hour and inch
by inch night and day I have fought. Always I have fought.
I have fought for the integrity of my own soul and to know
the Truth, the exact truth concerning all things in this world.
I have not always won my battles. Sometimes I have fallen,
yet I have risen to my feet and fought. Often 1 have been de¬
feated and have gone down before the wiles or the blows of my
opponents or have been tripped up by the snares with which
my unwary feet were beset. But always I have risen to my feet
to fight—to fight for the purity and honor and integrity of my
own soul and for the souls of my fellowmen. For I say unto
thee except for the love of thy fellowmen, the pure and pas¬
sionate and generous and exalted love of thy fellowmen, there
is no true love in this world._
I say unto you also that the so-called love of husband and
wife is too often mere carnal passion and not love at all. Even
69
mother love may be and often is defiled to the level of the beasts,
for it may be and not infrequently is mingled with the selfish¬
ness that is not love. For love is something more than to give
thyself to thy own family and thy own friends whom thou
hast seen and who smile upon thee and who are kind to thee
and who do many things for thee, and who speak thee pleasant
words that warm the soul and keep the heart alive. Love is
the giving of thyself to the Unseen and the Unknown. Love
is the giving of thyself unselfishly and with faith unto the
service of them that need thee. And their need and not thy
wishes shall determine the extent of thy giving. Furthermore,
I say unto thee that every-day love, or what people call, and
in their shortsightedness think is love, is often not love at all,
but a subtle and refined and rarified form of mere physical at¬
traction and a form of carnal selfishness. Thus it is natural
for a mother to kiss her babe and to feel its warm, chubby arms
about her neck. And she cries out and says, O how I love my
baby! O God, is there any love that is as pure and holy and
good as mother love! And I answer and say unto thee, Woman,
thy tender affection is a beautiful thing to see. Thy joy over
thy child is a gracious and a sweet and a winsome sight for
men or for God to contemplate, and yet 1 say unto thee, such
love is not properly love at all, for does not the lioness, and the
cow and the mare have the main spring and the essential im¬
pulses of such love in their hearts also?
However, supposing that the child whom thou holdest in
thy arms is not thy own child but a foundling. Supposing it
has been given to thee to care for temporarily or while the
mother is out at work, and supposing that knowing thou must
soon give up the child and never seen it again nor know the
70
kiss of its dimpled mouth and the soft caress of its chubby arms,
then if thy heart still goes out in leaping ecstacy and joy fulness
to do for and to serve and to pet such a child—that I say is love.
For love is not giving where we may now or where we may
hereafter receive a gift; love is not the bestowal of thyself upon
thy own and upon the known. For love is always pure and
unselfish. And wherein and insofar as there is selfishness, there
is no love. Call thy emotion whatever it please thee but do not
defile by false claims and by false reasoning or by false imagina¬
tion or by sophistry, the divinity of the word love. For love is
only one thing,—thy unselfish service to thy fellowman. And
before any man can love and serve God, he must love and serve
his fellowman. For 1 tell thee now and warn thee now that
I will accept no service and no praise and no hymns and no
adoration from any man who does not love his fellows. For
if ye do not love thy fellowmen ye shall not and cannot love
me. And if thou triest to love me first and not thy fellows
first, I will scorn and reject and spurn thy so-called love, for
it will not be love but pride. And Love is the Law. There is
and has been and shall be no other Law.
71
CHAPTER XXV
Furthermore, I say unto you that I will convert your
churches into playhouses and your temples into dance halls.
For it is better to amuse innocent and frolicsome and even noisy
pagans than to breed smooth-tongued and lying hypocrits. Ye
have allowed your churches to become the breeding places of
hypocrits, therefore I will not destroy them but I will convert
them into places of usefulness and of joy that therefore in good
time they shall again become the temples of the Living God,
and the meeting places of a worshipping and prayerful people.
For without worship and prayer, ye shall not know the peace
and goodness of your own souls, let alone the peace and good¬
ness of the world. For all things were born to be good. The
corruption of the world came from the corruption of the heart
of man, whose foulest lust is his lust for power, and whose
greatest sin is his greed for gold. Therefore I say unto thee,
unless ye fling away the lust for power and trample it under
thy feet, and unless thou cease thy greedy grabbing and learn
to know the Law of Love, thou shalt be confounded and utterly
destroyed. That is, thy soul shall be destroyed. And what is
a body without a soul? Even as an empty house which the in¬
habitants have deserted, the lights all out, the fire all ashes, the
warmth and welcome gone, such is the human body without the
soul.
Now into the churches shall come modest music and mirth¬
ful but seemly dancing, and thy temples shall resound with the
72
blithesome laughter of innocent children. And I will show thee
that joy is divine and mirth is divine and laughter is divine,
and all wholesome and generous and real human sociability is
divine. Ye shall cease to worship me with long and solemn
faces for such have become the faces of hypocrits and the Phari¬
sees and such are the faces of those who hate and envy or de¬
spise their neighbors. Therefore, I say, leave solemnity and
mourning and weeping and wailing unto the hypocrits who
have earned and deserved such rewards. But I say unto you,
henceforth the mark of the true Christian shall be as it always
has been, the cheerfulness of a smiling face, and the laughter
of a merry eye, and the rosy cheeks that come from a happy
heart and a healthy soul. By these marks shall ye know them!
For these cannot be imitated. But solemnity and seriousness
and a low meekness and a quiet mildness and even a modesty
of demeanor—all these may be imitated and therefore may be
false and hypocritical. For doth not the wine-bibber and the
reveller and the debaucher of woman arise in the morning wear¬
ing a most solemn and serious and pensive air? And if you
miss the look of his bleary and bloodshot eye,—nay! even his
eye may remain clear until he has grown old in the ways of sin
■—you will in gazing upon such a man be very apt to say:—
What a nice and quiet fellow. How serious and sober and sensi¬
ble he looks! Therefore I say unto you that a reveller and the
worst of sinners may assume virtues which they have not, under
the cloak of seriousnes and soberness and quiet modesty. Nay!
there be men suffering from the stomachache or from the tooth¬
ache who will look most pious and prayerful though they be
cursing under their breath. So 1 say that whereas some good
and proper things may be imitated, some other things—the
73
divinest things—no man can imitate. Thus true joy and the
light and airy step of healthy youth and the genial smile of an
innocent soul and the hearty laughter of a pure heart—these
things cannot be imitated. Therefore I say unto you I will make
them the marks of a true Christian. And I say unto you, Be
not afraid of unseemly levity. Joy knoweth its own. For joy
is kind and joy is modest and joy is clean and joy is blithesome
and joy alone knoweth the meaning of the word moderation.
Only the natural impulses that have been suppressed by Ascetic¬
ism and false living—these alone ye need to fear. But the
fierce outburst of long imprisoned flesh and blood shall have
and does have no relation and no resemblance to clean and pure
and innocent joy.
74
CHAPTER XXVI
Therefore, I say unto ye, beware of Aceticism for it is the
parent of all unnatural vices, of all dictatorial and tyrannic
authority, of pride and of all mental and moral brutality and
brutal ambition and of all secret licentiousness and sin; of all
the hypocrisy and humbug and greed that has been in the world
from the beginning. Asceticism is the greatest enemy of man¬
kind. Therefore, I say unto you that all nuns of the Catholic
Church shall leave their nunneries and go forth to become nor¬
mal and healthy and wholesome women. They shall marry and
take husbands and bear children. If they have babies they shall
marry the fathers of their children. And if they have a sweet¬
heart or lover, they shall marry their sweetheart or lover and
shall live decently according to the Law. And the priests of the
Catholic Church shall leave their confessionals which are
against my Law and in defiance of my Word. For the con¬
fessional was established by shrewd men to perpetuate their
power and not to spread my Word, the Word of the Lord, thy
God. Therefore I say unto you that the confessional as part
of the practice of the Catholic Church shall be abolished for it
is against my Law,—the Law of the Living God. And the
priests also shall marry as they did in the early days, before
theology came to corrupt religion and before my Word, which
is of the Spirit, was defiled by the materialism which is of the
flesh. For all the splendor of fine churches and costly orna¬
ments and golden crucifixes and swinging lights—all this is
75
materialism and gross and therefore an abomination to the
eyes of the Lord. Therefore these things shall be abolished.
And the pretended and insolent power of the so-called Pope,
that also shall be abolished. For I say unto you that I, the
Living God, never delegated my power to anyone. But I send
one man there and he goeth. I call another man here and
he cometh. But my power and authority I have never given
or delegated to anyone. And whosoever says that I, the Liv¬
ing God, who created the Heavens and the earth and who
breathed the breath of life into every living thing, have ever
delegated my authority to any mortal man or to any set of
mortal men or that I shall hereafter delegate my authority to
any man or to any set of men is a liar and a falsifier and a
thrower of dust into the eyes of the people. And I say to you
that the higher the sinner, the greater the fall and the greater
the deception, the deeper the damnation. For I say again that
I am the Living God who knoweth and seeth and under-
standeth the hearts of his children and that I will not be gain¬
said. I will not have my laws juggled with or my decrees
tampered with or my commands violated or changed even unto
the smallest essential point thereof. Therefore I say unto you,
all pretenders must go. But let them go in peace. Harm
them not for they were foolish and did not understand.
But the day cometh when all pretense shall be as chaff
before an hurricane. For pretense is one of the foundation
stones for injustice and cowardice and tyranny and wrong.
And pretense can only maintain itself by constantly increasing
injustice and by fouler wrongs, by secret murders, by assas-
What now are pretenses ant
sinations and midnight crimes.
76
A pretense is a claim to do or to be what thou canst not do
and canst not be, or in other words, a pretense is a full and
complete promise which is given to cover a partial perform¬
ance. For instance, a scholar, who cannot arise in a public
assembly and make a clear statement of the gist of what he
thinks and knows about the world in which he lives is no true
scholar but only part of a scholar, the other part being a pre¬
tender. For knowledge to be real and useful must be alive
and capable of explicit statement in clear terms so that men
may comprehend. Now I say that long explanations are abom¬
inations and that most of the big and bulky commentaries are
mere intellectual lumber that ought to be put into the bonfire
and burned up. Men were not created by God to be placid
indexes to dull books, but virile, vigorous and live men, keen
and active to know and to maintain the Truth as they see it.
There is only one proper place to study,—and that is under the
open sky with God's world around and God's eye upon you.
No man gets into crotchets or hobbies or half truths who
touches the good soil with his feet and breathes the good air
with his lungs. For sanity of mind and poise of soul and sym¬
pathy of heart come from knowing and seeing and daily wor¬
shipping the great universe which God made beautiful. With¬
out the interfusing and interpenetrating sense of beauty all
knowledge is and must be incomplete. And no man can get
a sense of beauty unless he goes where beauty is; that is,
under the open sky and beneath the glow of the over-arching
heavens.
Now I say that parents often corrupt the minds of their
own children. To talk of money and worldly ambition and
low shrewdness before growing children is worse than as if
77
the parents sent their boy to a den of robbers to learn morals
and their daughter to a house of ill-fame to study modesty.
In a million richly appointed and beautiful homes today the
demoralization and corruption of the minds of children goeth
on by parents, who having eyes, see not. I say unto you that
the defilement of the minds of children must cease. They are
born with high ideals and clean minds, and all thy worldly
scheming talk is worse than poisoned mud thereon. Now mud
is known as mud and therefore will in time be cleaned away.
But evil and worldly minded and materialistic talk is taken as
parental wisdom by innocent children, who, looking up in rev¬
erence to their parents, naturally suppose that they know.
Therefore I say, Suffer the little children to come unto me that
I may keep their minds pure. Grown up people need one
thing more than all other things, and that is to study idealism
and the beautiful thoughts of little children. While parents
are teaching mere technical details to their children, they
should seek to learn wisdom from their children. But they
need not praise or flatter their darlings nor tell their neighbors
how clever their children are. That also is an evil which will
lead to greater evils. But children being fresh from God have
a wisdom that is fresh from God. The children know it not,
but the parents should know and study it. Children know what
is right and wrong often far better than their parents. For
instance, a boy who takes an apple out into the playground
and begins to eat it without offering his playmates and school¬
mates a bite, and just as big a bite as he takes is called mean
and stingy and his comrades will no longer play with him.
But many a grown man doing practically the same thing, be¬
comes a prominent and rising citizen, whose money saves him
78
from criticism. And herein is shown one of the few evil re¬
sults that come from man's association with women. Many a
man becomes stingy or harsh or ungenerous to his fellows
through the serpent-like suggestion of his wife, who selfishly
thinks she will get less if a man's comrades get more. Her
maternal care for her children often makes her over-cautious
and over-prudent, and even when a woman's children no
longer require her care, a woman often continues to dwarf the
soul of a man, by pretending that she needs luxuries which
only defile her and take away her womanhood. So that in the
end a man makes a doll out of his wife and a nurse maid out of
himself in caring for the doll. All this is done in the name of
and under the pretense of Love. Therefore again I say unto
you: Beware of how ye corrupt the meaning of the word
love. The married woman who under cover of the marriage
bond teases or coaxes her husband into licentiousness and
into vices is no better, nay! not so good as a street walker. For
the street walker is known for what she is. But the married
woman pretends to be virtuous. The little hypocrit! I say
unto you that the man who has intercourse with his wife
when she is about to bear a child or has just borne a child is
a brute, and that he corrupts his unborn child and injures the
mind and body of his offspring. O this earth could be like to
Heaven if no vice were ever practiced under the so-called holy
estate of matrimony! Again ye see how good and true things
may be corrupted by hypocrisy and the pretense of virtue in
thy daily life. To have clean-minded children, the father and
mother must be clean-minded. Ye cannot gather figs from
thistles. Therefore I say, be clean of mind that ye may be vir¬
tuous of body.
79
THE SONG OF PATIENCE
He sealed my lips; he shut my mouth;
My Lord and God, the Living.
I looked to North; I looked to South,—
O for a task of giving.
'Twas thus I cried unto the Night
Upon my heart there lay a blight;
I could not work; I could not write;
Then from the left; then from the right,
A voice replied of Love, not Hate,—
Thy task, Beloved, is to wait,
To wait! wait! wait!
Thy task, Beloved, is to wait!
2.
How long, O Lord, must this endure?
How can I know and thus be sure,
My task may all unbidden lie,
And I sink down unknown and die.
How shall I know the hour and day,
When thou shalt come to me and say,—
With words I long to feel and see:—
Arise, my son, and follow me?
Then unto me all soft and low,
There came this answer: You will know:
I cannot tell, but trust in me,
80
The hour will come and you shall see;
You will know; I will be there,
And arm thy soul to do and dare.
But now behind thy quiet gate
Thy task, Beloved, is to wait!
To wait! wait! want!
Thy task, Beloved, is to wait.
81
CHAPTER XXVII
I say unto you that modern advertising is a moral crime,
and that all advertising men are sinners both in the sight of
God and of their own conscience. For advertising tends to be¬
come a fake and a handmaid of Fakers and hence an associate
of wrong and an upholder of Injustice and Tyranny. That is
why in the business world of the Nineteenth Century adver¬
tising so flourished—because the thieves and robbers and ras¬
cals found they could use it to their advantage. I say to you
that if one good man has been made rich through advertising,
twenty rascals have been made richer. Look at the patent
medicine manufacturers and the dishonest mining promoters!
Advertising stands in the way of merit and good deserving.
Whatever is worthy and meritorious will commend itself with¬
out words, both to the eyes of the Lord and to the eyes of all
men—provided it is given a fair chance. But no man has a
chance to be heard in the market place while the noisy haran¬
gues of the hypocrit and the smooth-tongued wooings of the liar
and the specious pleadings of the gentle and foxy faker arise
on every hand. Because good men think and believe in adver¬
tising and because it seems that every business man is forced
to use that method to keep up with his competitors, still that
does not make the wrong right. I ask every man to ask his
soul whether if he doeth a good deed he desireth to advertise
it? If therefore it is wrong or immodest to advertise the best
things about thee, is it therefore right to advertise lesser and
82
worse things? If a man wishes to hire a carpenter or a stone¬
mason and he go to the public square and at sight of him and
his apparent need of help, a hundred men rush forward clam¬
oring with loud cries: We can do thy work! We are skilled
workmen, then the hundred and first man who may be more
skilled and more fit for the place than any of the others shall
not have a fair chance to secure the work to which he is en¬
titled because of his superior skill if he stand with quiet dignity
in his place, because he will not be seen. But I say that read
ability confers real dignity upon any man who possesses it and
furthermore, the mere possession of ability entitles its posses¬
sor to consideration on the part of all men. For the master
workman has the right to abide in his place with dignity and
serenity of countenance. But when the clamorous crowd of
second rate workmen rushed forth the man who needs a skilled
man shall be forced to choose from among the crowd of boast¬
ers, while all the time the man who is wanted may stand just
out of sight, alone and unheard. And he is unheard because
the noisy crowd have obscured him from view. He has simply
abided in his place at the post of duty to which God has ap¬
pointed him. I say unto you that each man of merit has a
right to stand at his post of duty and of service with dignity,
and in silence abiding his time. For the voices of the noisy and
the clamorous and of the fakers cannot shut him out from the
eyes of God nor from the eyes of any man who is persistent
to have his work done by men who know. For knowledge
seeks knowledge and ignorance herds with ignorance. And
the tragedy of life comes when ignorance shall temporarily
obscure by its clamorous pretenses the merit that abides pa¬
tiently at its post of duty.
83
CHAPTER XXVIII
I say unto you that no teacher and no preacher; no prophet
and no revealer of the truth; no leader who would lead and no
guide who would show the way shall ever be able to do his
work and the work of God, the Father, who requires his service
except that he knows men. For without accurate and definite
and intimate knowledge nothing can be accomplished. There¬
fore I say to all who aspire to be or think they are leaders or
prophets or guides or teachers unto their fellow-men, ye must
know. And your knowledge must be full and accurate. But
the most difficult and the most intricate of all learning is to
learn to know the inner part of man. Yet unless ye possess
such knowledge, ye shall only harm and not help your fellow.
For of all vain pretenses, the most vain is to pretend to
know what thou dost not know. The only way to attain is to
seek and to keep seeking after knowledge which is the mental
and moral and spiritual light of the world. Without light the
world lies in darkness. Now to have knowledge of men ye must
eat with them and drink with them and make merry with
them. You must help bury their dead and help receive their
babies into the society of thy kind. Thou must rejoice in the
marriage of their daughters and give prayers for the right mat¬
ing of their sons. Thou must fight side by side and shoulder to
shoulder with them and thou must, if need be, revel with them,
or if not thou must watch their revellings with sympathy and
84
pity, not with contempt or disdain. For without sympathy
there is and can be no knowledge. Without sympathy the
mother shall not know the heart of her own daughter nor the
daughter know the heart of her mother. Without sympathy
the father shall fail to see and to appreciate the nature of and
the abilities of his own son. Without sympathy the son shall
not be able to perceive or to appreciate the nobleness or fine¬
ness of character that lies beneath the plain and perhaps homely
exterior of his own father. Therefore 1 say ye must have and
must use sympathy in all thy dealings with thy fellow-men.
Else shalt thou be hard and cruel and unjust and scornful and
hypocritical and tyrannical.
For Sympathy holds the key both to Justice and to Mercy.
Without sympathy the virtuous wife shall let her husband
perish of neglect because she did not understand. Without
sympathy even the chaste man may let his beautiful young
wife starve and fade away for the want of company and of
right human companionship. Therefore I say unto you:—Be
sympathetic. Try to see life from another point of view be¬
sides thy habitual point of view. Sympathize but do not be
weepy or tearful or solemn or sad. Sympathy must be fine
and keen and high and clear and swift to perceive and silent in
order to cultivate its perceptions ariglit. For I say to you that
sympathy is the basis of all the Justice and Joy and Happiness
of human life.
85
CHAPTER XXIX
First of all I say unto you, Ye must be honest. Yet no
man can be made honest or kept honest by rules. Only the
conscience within shall ever be able to make or keep any man
honest. Therefore has it come to pass that wherever the con¬
sciences of men are dulled they have become dishonest and
dishonorable—a piteous sight in the eyes of God, and a loath¬
some sight unto their own eyes. For I say unto you that in
order to be honest, ye must render service according to thy
ability and whoso does not render service according to his
ability but only according to some barren rules is a dishonest
man. I say unto thee that in so far as in thee lies thou shalt
work, not with thy muscles alone but with thy heart and thy
soul and thy mind, for thy heart and thy soul and thy mind
are more important than thy muscles. Therefore in thy daily
labor if thou leavest out the most important things needed for
real labor how canst thou call thyself honest? I speak unto thy
Conscience, for thy Conscience knoweth the Law. When I
gave unto thee a Conscience I gave unto thee a knowledge of
the Law. Again I say unto thee, thou must use the faculties
and abilities given to thee, for without use all things are in
danger of rust and decay. Now I say unto thee that thy heart
and mind and soul working in harmony and with enthusiasm
to promote thy work are all necessary for the production of
the good will that is needed in all labor. For without good will,
nothing can be rightly done on the earth or in the heavens.
86
Therefore I say unto thee that unless a man put good will into
his work he is not an honest man. For no man can be honest
who goes about his daily labor leaving out the best that is in
him. Wherefore, to be called honest, thou must work not only
diligently but with good will and enthusiasm over thy daily
task. For without good will and enthusiasm no true service
can be rendered. 1 say furthermore that thou shalt stick to the
task that is set to thee and do thy level best so long as thou
shalt labor at all. The laborer shall not stop and lean on his
shovel the minute he thinks the boss is not looking. The clerk
shall not drop his pen or shove it jauntily over his ear and turn
to flirt with the pretty typewriter girl the minute his employer
steps out of the office. The typewriter girl shall not stop and
write a note on her machine to some gentleman friend when¬
ever she thinks that no eye is watching her. But 1 say unto
her that the eye of God is upon her always. The maid servant
shall not drop her work to gossip or to flirt with or to kiss on
the sly the butcher boy or the ice man or the messenger boy
who comes to deliver a bundle. For whoso wastes time for
which he is paid is dishonest and he must amend. I speak to
thy conscience for it knows the Law. I say further that this
applies to all other men in all other walks of life who do not
render the service for which they are paid. I say that any
ruler such as the President of the United States of America
who runs about the country campaigning while he is in office,
and who is out doors fixing up his political fences while he
should be indoors doing the work which the people pay him to
do is not an honest man nor a proper ruler. Furthermore I
say unto you that any such President who runs about the coun¬
try talking and speechifying and banqueting when he should
87
be in Washington at work is a dishonest man, whose dishon¬
esty corrupts the entire life of the nation. The vicious exam¬
ple of one such man shall serve to sway from the right path
thousands of young men. Then woe unto the leaders in high
places who are not only dishonest themselves but bad exam¬
ples to all their followers! Again I say unto you that any
Senator or Representative of the people who is not strictly
honest is a curse and menace to his country. The bad example
of dishonest leaders in high places shall be a curse and a blight
unto any nation. The leader who conscientiously swerves one
inch from the path which his conscience points out to him
shall not only be accursed of God but he shall in time lose his
influence and his power and shall fade away from the sight and
remembrance of his fellows, unhonored and unknown. For
the penalty of dishonesty is and shall be mental and moral and
spiritual death. Such is the Law. So it has been from the
beginning and so it shall be to the end. Look into the eye and
the face of a dishonest man and see what ravages the inner
corruption makes upon the outer features. A dishonest man
hateth himself and therefore does his face grow hard and
seamed and gross and flabby. For many are the outward rav¬
ages and markings made by our wronged consciences, but all
the markings made by any vice are ugly. What I have said
of a few types of men applies to all men. It is not necessary
to make the applications. That will be done by the conscience
of each individual man who reads these words. For the con¬
science of each man knows the Law. And since each man
knows the Law he must obey the Law or he will receive his
own condemnation, which is the most severe judgment that
any man can receive. For I say unto you that the condemna-
88
tion of the most severe Judge is never equal in harsh and
merciless severity to the judgment which each man passes
upon himself the minute he doeth wrong. Therefore I say
unto all men, Obey your consciences if ye would be honest or
happy. For thou knowest the Law, and knowing thou must
obey.
89
CHAPTER XXX
The laws of God are few and simple. The words of God
are swift and brief. Words hinder action. Words confuse
thoughts. Words bungle. And most explanations do not
explain. A man wading through a long discourse resembles
a traveler trying to follow a narrow trail through a jungle. He
is more apt to be lost than to be found. And least of all shall
he be able to find himself. Therefore be careful of entering
into any jungle of words lest thou be confused and thy thoughts
be lost. When men are children they must be given childish
directions and explanations. And all directions and explana¬
tions require words. But to the trained mind of the trained
soldier at any post of duty in the domain of human life, the
general in command says go! and he goeth. Come! and he
cometh. Do! and he doeth. Therefore wisdom and action
need few words. The early sacred writings of China and India
and of the Jews were lengthy, because explanations to races
who had not as yet outgrown their childhood, were needed.
But the greatest reason of their length is that men bungled and
added to what God said. Even in the New Testament Christ's
words are not infrequently added to and bungled up in the
adding. Moreover, there are chapters and parts of chapters
that are put in as padding, just as the modern newspaper writer
having a good story spoils the vigor of it by padding it out to
fill up the required space.
90
CHAPTER XXXI
But I say unto you that the time for bungling is past.
Men are now at a period in which they may cast away the
superstitions and the bungled words and the corrupted inven¬
tions of their fairy tale age and receive the truth straight from
the shoulder and clear to the heart. The day has passed when
the leaders shall do the thinking for the people. The people
must think for themselves. And in order to think for them¬
selves men and women must not be bowed down and must not
reel staggering under a load of work that others may be lazy.
Therefore I give you the greatest Commandment of the com¬
ing centuries, viz: No man and no woman and no child shall
labor for more than six hours a day for six days in the week.
Bankers keep their hours from 10 o'clock in the morning until
three o'clock in the afternoon. And are not the bankers the
most prosperous part of every community? As bankers have
learned how to live in ease and comfort by handling the peo¬
ple's money, I say unto you that the People must learn how to
increase their comfort by using the knowledge of and the
shrewdness of the bankers. If five hours of daily labor is
enough for the prosperous banker, why may it not be sufficient
also to insure the prosperity of the People? Better for use than
good money is a good idea, for good ideas make good money.
Why then, throw away the good idea of anyone, even of a
banker? He does not refuse to handle at a profit thy good
money. Why shouldst thou refuse to or omit to profit by his
91
good ideas which are more valuable than money? For one
good idea can make a million dollars, but no million dollars
has ever or shall ever succeed in making one idea. Therefore
I say unto you, do not neglect to observe and watch the ways
of bankers. And be not so foolish as to neglect Wisdom, no
matter whence it cometh.
92
CHAPTER XXXII
Now I say unto you that God hates a lie and a liar. For
lies poison the air and carry contagion and death and disease
and sorrow and shame and humiliation to the ends of the earth.
Thou shalt not lie! Lay down thy book now and reflect for
five minutes on the meaning of those four little words, Thou
shalt not lie. A lie is living poison and foul contagion. Thou
dost not believe what I say now, but thou shalt believe. Wait
and listen. I have said unto you that all the holy books of the
past have been tampered with by designing priests and so-
called ministers of God for their own selfish purposes, in order
that they might maintain their authority over the people. They
have fixed up stories that are not fit for the understanding
of a twelve-year-old child, and yet they boldly and brazenly
ask that such stories be believed because they are in the
Holy Book, and men must believe in the Holy Scriptures.
Thus they have asked and demanded and compelled decent
men and women and truth-seeking children to believe false¬
hoods because such falsehoods would serve, they thought, better
than the truth to bolster up and to foster and to maintain
ecclesiastical authority and the influence of the so-called
ministers of God. But I say unto you that God, the Living
God, hates all liars, but he hates most of all theological liars
who have helped for fifty thousand years to keep in the
slavery of ignorance the souls of men. I say unto you that
men—all men—were born to be free and that they shall
93
be free. For such is the Law. And in order that the
souls of men shall be free, all theological humbug and
lying and falsehood must go. Throw it into the ash heaps
of the world for dogs to sniff at. Ye need not do it even rev-
erendly, for there is no reverence to be given to the lies that
have been bred in high places, and what place is higher than
the Temple of God. When humbug goes even the thieves and
robbers and so-called rascals of the world shall raise their heads
like men and say: There is a chance. We will be good. It
is worth while trying to be good when things are on the square.
Now perhaps the most odious and the most vicious lie ever re¬
corded for the credence of men occurs in the New Testament,
the most beautiful and most truthful and the wisest of all the
books ever written, because it contains the words and teachings
of Jesus; albeit those words and teachings have been bungled
and in some places perverted. Now in all of the holy writings
before the coming of Jesus, in all countries there had been
tampering and fixing-up by priests and so-called ministers. It
was an ancient custom that had grown from earlier and more
savage times. The witch doctor of the wandering tribes shook
his rattle and made up his stories as he pleased, speaking one
true word and then two false ones. Seeing how easily the cre¬
dulity of unthinking people could be imposed on, the custom on
the part of the priests continued when the people began to be less
credulous. The custom of theological humbug is perhaps the
most ancient of all surviving customs. It survived because it
was so carefully protected by both priests and people. When
customs are so long and so firmly established, it is hard to
break them. Any man who tries to break up a long established
religious custom in any nation at any time signs his own death
94
warrant. And no man likes to sign his own death warrant,
it being hard enough to have somebody else sign it. Thus evil
customs survive and flourish. And the longer they survive
and the longer they flourish, the more evil they become. That
is why it was possible for the men coming after and spreading
the teachings of Jesus, the Truth-speaker, to foist upon the
world an odious lie in regard to His birth and parentage. Now
all that is said about the poverty of the childhood of Christ is
true. And all that is said about the boyhood of Christ and of
his disputing with the learned men in the temple is true.
Though his arguments were merely considered as the clever
effort of a precocious boy. The wisdom of what Jesus then
said practically made no impression because he was a boy.
Wisdom must be duly tagged and labeled before men will
receive it.
But the story of the Magi coming to greet the newly born
babe is not true. For if it had been true it would not have
taken thirty years of the life of Christ for him to get started
on His real mission. The mission of Christ lasted four years,
and He did not start until He was thirty years old, because it
took practically a lifetime for him to win over even a handful
of people to believe in Him. For people were just as unbeliev¬
ing then as they are today. People are unbelieving because
they do not understand the meaning of what is true. They do
not think. They bow to the authority of so-called thinkers.
Intellectual men are very apt to be shrewd men who would
like to keep up the fiction that only a few men are fit to think
for and lead their fellows. Now Christ came into the world
obscure, lived a lowly and obscure life, and although He had a
few friends who saw that there was something about Him
95
which was different from other young men, what that some¬
thing was they could not tell. For the poor son of an obscure
carpenter would have had at no time the proper recognition for
the wisdom he possessed. For wisdom coming from a beggar
does not sound the same as the identical wisdom would sound
if uttered in a fine cathedral by a grey-haired and reverend
looking priest clad in flowing robes. Nay! wisdom uttered by
a beggar might land him in the town jail as being a dangerous
citizen, while the same words uttered in the same spirit from
a pulpit might double the priest's salary as a testimonial to
the uplifting and inspiring influence of a pure and pious heart.
So Jesus wandered obscure and lonely for almost a life¬
time, more obscure and more lonely than any Christian today
dreams of.
96
CHAPTER XXXIII
Now the birth of Christ was not a miracle as men con¬
sider such things. Yet it was a greater wonder for the sight
of men and more instructive to the souls of men than any
miracle that had been performed up to that time. But it was
a different kind of event, a more wonderful and more spiritual
fact than the dull brains of the brightest priests of those days
could conceive of, and even if they had tried to imagine it,
they would not have been able to fully understand it. Mary,
the mother of Jesus, was not a virgin when he was born. She
was a virgin when He was conceived and the conception was
as natural as that of any other child. Mary was a sweet and
trusting and confiding and emotional and dreamy girl, and like
other such girls she knew not the meaning of sin. She loved
and was loved by a young priest of the temple where she went
to worship, and who when he found that she would become a
mother said to her in agony and contrition of Spirit, Mary,
we are one in the sight of God. Then come and marry me and
proclaim me as thy wife before all men, said Mary, the in¬
nocent and unworldly minded maiden, who like other innocent
maidens give all to the man they love. But the young priest
shrank back, saying, "It is against the rules of our religious
order to marry; how can I?" But Mary answered him and
said, "What mean such rules to us who love? They were not
made for lovers." Then the young priest sadly bowed his
head and in the agony of his soul, for he loved Mary, answered
97
her,—"Nay, but if I married thee, I would not only lose my
position here in the temple, but they would put me to death."
With a cry of horror Mary flung herself into his arms, cry¬
ing, "To death?" "Yea," answered the young priest, his fine
face writhing in agony, "they will put me to death. Though
I fear not death, they will put me to death just the same, and
we shall be separated." Mary wiped away her tears, and smil¬
ing, said, "I could not live now if thou wert dead." Then the
young priest said, "We have sinned through ignorance. I
never would have taken vows if I had known that human
hearts could hold such love as now and always I feel for thee.
1 must give thee up and thou must marry another man."
"Aye, that is true. We must give each other up. But
thou wilt keep me in thy heart and soul and mind, and thou
wilt pray for me?" cried Mary eagerly. "Aye, night and day
I will pray for our souls." Then falling on his knees he asked
for her forgiveness in the sight of God. Placing her hand
softly on his head that shook with sobs, Mary kissed him on
the brow and went away.
Joseph soon after sought her hand in marriage, for Mary
was fair to look upon, a modest and a seemly girl. After much
hard thinking and much wondering about the cruel laws that
kill and smother up the souls and hearts of living men, Mary
told Joseph all. And Joseph, out of his deep love for Mary,
forgave her, and they were married. When some months had
come and gone, then Jesus came, the Child of Love, for Mary
wondering and from gratitude at Joseph's forgiveness and at
the kindness of God to spare her the unspeakable defilement
of the Jewish laws bore to the world a perfect child, a child
conceived in love and reared in love and trained in love by the
98
grateful soul of one pure Mother. And Jesus so born and so
conceived became the Light and Saviour of the World, because
all those around Him tried to live the Law of Love. If any
Law was broken there in Palestine, and surely the young priest
broke the law,—the Law of Love, which is God's first and
foremost law, that law was all fulfilled at least by Mary and by
Joseph. And out of sin grew greater strength. For that also
is the Law.
99
CHAPTER XXXIV
Now, hark unto me all men, that I may let thee see and
clearly see what may come from a lie; what blight may fall
upon the earth unto the end of time as the result of a single
falsehood. And remember that the great sin of the young
priest was not to have loved a young girl with a pure and
manly love that filled her soul and body and mind and heart,
but his sin was having denied her the fulfillment of that love by
a plighting of faith and a marriage before and in sight of all
men. He should have resigned his position in the temple and
have gone away to some far country where he and Mary could
live in safety. Women know what is the fulfillment of the
Law of Love, and men must heed woman's knowledge. What¬
soever law on earth stands in the way of and is an obstacle to
the fulfillment of the Law of Love must go. For God is love,
and without love, ye shall never know who or what God is.
Therefore I say unto you that all celibacy and all priesthoods
that omit or frown on or avoid the holy sacrament of marriage
either for themselves or others, such a priesthood is fake,
and the members of such a priesthood are sinners and the abet¬
tors of sin. And I say that all sins must be abolished.
I say unto you further that God's law demands sunshine
and air and the open sky. The so-called love that lurks and
hides and lingers and giggles and blushes and simpers in dark
corners and in shady nooks and in dusky lanes, and beneath the
shadows of trees and bushes is not love at all, but the symptoms
100
of mere physical passion such as belongs to all beasts of the
fields. Now whenever ye think that physical passion and love
are identical, ye are as the blind leading the blind, and the Light
and Knowledge of the Law is as yet hidden from you. There¬
fore I say unto you that all true love is open and free and beau¬
tiful and joyous and noble and clean. Whatsoever is not so is
not love. For love is light and love is sunshine and love is joy.
And God is love. Therefore seek ye to know and to honor
love. Lie not about love nor falsify nor dare to dishonor it.
Now it must be remembered that between the birth of Jesus
and his setting out upon his mission thirty years elapsed. In a
small community and among primitive people even gossip will
go to sleep after thirty years, provided that nothing great occurs
meanwhile to keep it awake. Now the country gossip over
Mary and her misfortunes in not being able to marry the man
she loved died down long before Jesus became known. Yet
enough people were alive who knew the truth about Christ's
parentage to let the knowledge go abroad. Thus the truth was
known and talked over. It was finally put aside as being too
dangerous to publish, because it was feared it might lead to
greater laxity of morals among the people if such a human fact
received a divine sanction. Also, it was thought it might pre¬
vent the spread of Christ's noble doctrines in case the people
found out that their Lord and Saviour was not only of humble,
but of what would seem to their ignorance and misunderstand¬
ing, as of dubious origin. Thus the apostles who were recoil¬
ing the sayings of Jesus decided to invent the story of the
miraculous conception and of the Virgin Mary, leaving out all
mention of the young priest's part, because the publishing of
such a fact might put such a clear and definite case of priestly
101
weakness and the dangers of asceticism before the people, that
priests thenceforth would have been obliged to have taken just
as good care of their own morals as they are supposed to take
of the morals of other people. Thus the fiction was started and
a vicious falsehood set in motion. We may say that it was
done with the best of intentions. Well, Hell is paved with
good intentions, as you may have read. Now what happened?
The immediate result was just as shrewd men had foreseen. The
people were at first mystified and then delighted with their
mysticism. They gulped down the story with the eagerness
of a small boy who is in such a hurry to run out to play after
school that he does not take time to masticate his piece of
bread and butter, but swallows it whole, knowing he hath a
sturdy digestion. The people thus took the story at one gulp,
because mysticism rests the minds of lazy or tired or unthink¬
ing or overworked people. Mental twilight is soothing to the
minds of some people even as a dark room is quieting to the
nerves of babes and little children—they sleep better out of
the glare. The blazing light of truth is too strong for eyes and
for minds that need sleep. It is too stimulating. But all men
need sleep who stuff their stomachs with too much food. For
digestion waits on sleep since sleep bringeth good digestion.
Now the beautiful and mystical story that by its beauty and its
wonder seemed to thoughtless and to over-shrewd minds to
justify the falsity of it became the cause of much religious
ecstacy and likewise of much religious hypocrisy and of much
human cruelty and wrong. Had the world been taught the
actual truth, what mercy and gentleness would have sprung up
in the minds of men toward all women who had trusted to
men and been deceived, even as Mary was deceived! What
102
scorn of moral cowardice would have resulted! What adora¬
tion of the might and mystery of love under the most adverse
conditions and what pity for women who love not wisely but
too well would have come into the world! On the other hand
what did that one lie do during the nineteen hundred and
eleven years of its foul and sinful life? That one falsehood
has turned thousands of innocent girls from their father's house
into the cold night and into the colder day. That one false¬
hood has put the red hot brand of shame upon a million
women's brows and let a million rascals walk the highways
and the byways of the world unscathed and unrebuked. That
lie has dragged down and kept ten million women to the level
of the men whom they might have lifted up into the light and
grace of true knowledge. That lie has left thousands of babies
nameless because their fathers were too cowardly and because
society was too immoral to make them do what their souls bid.
Therefore I say unto you if so-called ministers of God could
start and keep alive for nineteen hundred and eleven years a
vicious wrong and sinful lie and take away the greatest human
glory and lesson from the birth and the coming of Christ into
the world, what other wrongs and fierce brutalities are not done
by well intentioned lies. I say again, Beware of lies. For God
demands of you first and foremost that ye shall speak the truth.
For Truth is light, and before love comes to you truth must
come and take you by the hand and lead the way. Honor thou
the truth. That is also the Law.
103
CHAPTER XXXV
Now I say unto all the Jews throughout the world, 1 have
come to thee to lead thee out of bondage. Ye have suffered
and ye shall be made strong. Ye have been persecuted and
ye shall be made free. Ye have been spit upon and outraged
and sneered at and been shunned and scorned, and I say unto
you 1 will restore thy power. Ye shall be the leaders of the
world again. But ye shall no longer hate or be hated. Ye shall
no longer despise or be despised. Ye shall no longer stand
apart from thy fellows, but thou shalt teach unto men what the
world needs to know. Thou shalt leave thy money getting and
show once more to the world of men the meaning of the word
Jew, humbly and modestly, yet with the quiet pride due to a
great race which has had a glorious put. But thou shalt no
longer live upon the memories of thy past. Thou shalt go con¬
fidently into the future, unto greater power and glory and
majestic triumphs than even the days of Solomon and Moses
ever knew. For only suffering and humility can make a man
or a nation great. Thou hut suffered; thou hut drank to its
lees the bitter cup of life, and 1 say unto thee, the hour of thy
deliverance is nigh. Thy women shall be careful to mate only
with the best and cleanest men of other races. Thus shalt thou
insure a vigorous and a virile progeny. Thy mothers shall
bear many and virile children and thou shalt not fear to let thy
daughters marry men of other races. But they shall marry
only picked men of undeniable mental and physical power, who
104
have been approved by the Rabbis in the Synagogue. The
Daughters of Israel shall remember that as women they are.
responsible for the future of a race. They are to be the re¬
vivers and restorers of a great people. Therefore they must
be careful not only to bear as many children as possible, but
they must be careful to see that each child is well born. They
shall teach unto their husbands the meaning of the word love,
which is chastity and moderation and self-control and loyalty.
As the mothers of a great race which is about to renew its
glories, the Jewish women must put off pride and vanity of
dress and put on the dignity that becomes the women of God's
chosen people. Be careful I say to be humble, and remember
the days of thy persecution only to profit by them. Thou shalt
remember that hate is futile and tyranny is foolish and that
persecution is crime. Therefore, in the hour of thy triumph
be humble. Thou shalt not go back to Palestine, for I who am
come to lead thee shalt not be there. I am here where Liberty
and Freedom beckon to every man who loveth Freedom and
Justice and Light. Therefore I say unto thee, Arise, ye Jews!
look up into the sky. Look down into thy hearts. For 1 tell
thee that the hour which thou hast awaited for five thousand
years has come at last. Unto thee, also, I bring this Gospel of
Hope.
105
CHAPTER XXXVI
To the worldly and ecclesiastical organization known as
the Holy Catholic Church, I say: I shall send a David with a
pebble to fight against thee, a Goliath, on the open field of
battle. And the pebble which he shall fling against thee is the
word Freedom. And thou shalt be sorely wounded unto death,
and thou shalt not know it. Nay! thou shalt laugh in thy pride
and say, What! be hurt by a mere pebble? Not I. But the peb¬
ble shall hit thee in thy most vulnerable part,—thy want of the
love of Truth. And having once hit thee, the little wound will
bleed until thy life blood shall all flow from thee and thy power
shall die. It shall take time, because ignorant men shall flock
to thee to succor thee from fear, not knowing or dreaming of
thy weakness. Some from fear and some perchance out of the
traditional love of the days when thou wert pure of heart and
clean of body, shall minister to thee in thy dying hours, seeing
in thee only a splendid spiritual giant and not the mere remnant
of something which has once been. For if thou hadst retained
the strength which God gave thee, the pebble of David would
never have been hurled against thee and therefore would never
have harmed thee. But thou must die and thou wilt die,
mourned by thousands and derided by millions. For everyone
who sheds a tear over thy dead body, there shall be ten who
will curse thee in their hearts. For thy later days were filled
with greed and tyranny and hypocrisy and ill deeds and oppres¬
sions and deceptions. The memories of the virtuous deeds of
106
thy youth shall never be able to wipe away the record of thy
brutal manhood and thy evil old age. Thou hast become a pre¬
tender. Woe unto all pretenders! I say. Of all pretense theo¬
logical pretense is the worst, and God will damn such pretense
with ever law ting damnation. For whoever drags down the holy
things and defiles the high things of God is no common sinner.
He is an arch devil and must be punished accordingly. Not the
dupes whom ye have deceived but even thy own self, thou
brutal and evil Goliath, the so-called Holy Roman Catholic
Church, thou shalt go to Hell with all thy Popes.
107
CHAPTER XXXVII
Now I say unto you that rich men are a menace to the
community, and I say unto you also that poor men are a
menace to the community. For rich men and poor men are
both the product of one thing, Greed. The love of money is
the root of all evil, I say those words again and I command
you to repeat them until you understand them. The rich man
having accumulated money tends to become brutal or tyran¬
nous or selfish. The poor man having failed to accumulate
money tends to become envious or bitter or malignant. There¬
fore it is not good for any man to be too eager to possess much
money. If the world was run aright, and if the hearts of men
were right, there would be small need for money. Brotherly
love and kindly feelings would freely render those services
which now only money can buy. I say unto you that the man
who will not work except he be paid in money, is no man at
all, but only a human form of brute. For money represents
only the animal that is the brute side of man's abilities. For
cunning and shrewdness are both animal instincts, and all the
qualities that go to make up the most successful merchants to¬
day are the refined forms of mere animalism, and because they
are sugar-coated and dressed up, the instincts are not the less
still there in all their primitive power and potency. I say to all
the workers throughout the world, thou shalt render faithful
and honest and loyal service. But no service is faithful and
honest and loyal unless thy heart and thy mind and thy soul
108
are in it. Mechanical service is not properly true service at all,
and if thou art asked or required to do such work thou shalt
refuse, for God never made man to be a machine. Thou hast
a heart and a soul and a mind as well as a body, and it is more
important to care for thy heart and thy soul and mind than it is
to care for thy body. It were better for thy body to die of
starvation than that thy soul should die of starvation. There¬
fore I say unto you, be not a machine nor do thy work in a
mechanical way. For thus shalt thou kill thy soul, and suicide
is against the law and murder is against the law, for the law
says, "Thou shalt not kill even thyself."
109
CHAPTER XXXVIII
I say unto all the rich and powerful and so-called leaders
of the world that the foremost right of every full grown man
and woman in every civilized land today is the right of steady
and uninterrupted employment, provided it can possibly be
furnished. To furnish labor to the workers of the world spas¬
modically is to demoralize them. It is not good, especially for
those who work with their muscles to be rushed to death one
day and to languish in complete idleness the next day. More¬
over, it is not wise or right or just for society to demand the
service of skilled carpenters or stone-masons or brick-layers,
and then give them work only one-half or two-thirds of the year,
thus obliging them to exhaust their savings and preventing
them from laying up the needed nest-egg for their old age.
Therefore I say that particular pains should be taken in north¬
ern climates to teach boys two trades whenever possible, one
trade which would give them work in summer, and another
trade for winter. All muscle workers need a change from one
set of muscles to another. It is absolutely necessary to their
health. More attention must be given by men employed at
heavy labor to their own health and much more attention must
henceforth be given by the employers of such labor. The great¬
est resource of any country lies in the physical health and
mental alertness of its citizens. Furthermore I say unto you
that whenever the labor is especially exhausting or performed
under unhealthy conditions that the hours of labor in such oc-
110
cupations must be proportionately lessened in order to give the
laborer sufficient time for recuperation before he shall be called
upon for another day's work. Now with the thousand and
one inventions of recent years production has been so vastly
increased, that one man can in some fields produce more than
ten men could have produced a century ago. But the workers
of the world are not getting their proportionate share of benefit
from the increase of race efficiency and from the efficient ap¬
plication of racial knowledge. Men may be two or three times
better off than they were a hundred years ago. But they are
not ten times as well off as they should be, for in many and
many a trade they produce ten times as much as was formerly
produced. Where does the difference go? Into the pockets
of the rich. Hence the increase of luxuries of all sorts, which
is threatening the very existence of civilization. For human
life cannot endure where the material conditions which sur¬
round men are so widely different. Economic aristocracy
means eventually and necessarily political and social aristo¬
cracy. A free people cannot exist where a majority are in
practical servitude to a very small minority. Great are the
social and business ills resulting from keeping the worker from
properly sharing in the social and business advancement of the
world.
Now the knowledge which makes inventions possible is
that common stock of knowledge which is the possession of
humanity. Down through the ages men have toiled and
starved and risked death in order to increase this common stock
of knowledge. An invention is only a particular and shrewd
special adaptation to local needs of a general idea or a series
of general ideas and principles which perhaps were first discov-
111
ered centuries ago. It is therefore not just or right or fair for
a man to be allowed to become enormously wealthy by this
special adaptation of general racial knowledge to special and
private ends. For suppose that these general principles had not
been laboriously hammered out by the brains and toil during
a thousand years of a thousand men, there would be no general
principles from which to make particular applications. Sup¬
pose that Aristotle had never lived, where would the scientific
knowledge of these later days be? Thus the first and foremost
fund of knowledge is racial knowledge, and this racial knowl¬
edge is far more important than any special application of it.
Therefore the individual who makes the special application is
entitled to his own honor and to the reward that goes with any
new addition to the common stock. But the individual must
not take more, nor be allowed to take more than what is due
him. Today he takes not only his own share, but that larger
share which belongs to the race. For the race through the
labors of a thousand men for thousands of years has laid the
foundations for the success of each individual man belonging
to that race. Therefore each individual must be made to re¬
member what he owes to the race. Under present laws the
one man in his blind selfishness is allowed to forget what he
owes to many men. As a consequence, the interests of the
race suffer. But it must be plain that any race is vastly more
important than any individual member of that race. Therefore
above all, the interests of the race must be safeguarded, and no
man henceforth shall be allowed to take and appropriate to
his own exclusive use what comes from and belongs to the
storehouse of the race. For from such injustice springs in¬
numerable social ills and wrongs. Inventions, therefore and
112
the benefits thereof, which really belong to and are rightfully
the possessions of the human race must be used to mitigate
and to ultimately remove the present load of human suffering.
But no right deed can be the product of a wrong idea. And the
widespread wrongs today are the result of wide spread ideas
that are false. Now the first and natural benefit to be derived
from all the modern inventions is the shortening of the hours
of labor. The shorter the hours the greater the benefit to men
and the less the mountain of trouble which wrong and injustice
are breeding.
Six hours a day men shall labor at their tasks and no more.
Six hours of work is plenty, provided it be done cheerfully and
it will be done cheerfully when adequate pay is given thereof.
Whenever it is possible, and especially in all seasons except the
winter months, the labor should be arranged to begin at six
o'clock in the morning and to stop at the hour of noon. The
result of this will be to cut out the late hours and unnatural
dissipations that now go on under gas light and electric light.
It will enable people to go to bed with the sun and get up with
the sun as God intended. As people have gradually drifted
away from what is right and normal and healthy, they must
go back to what is natural and healthy. The future of all civ¬
ilized races depends upon one thing—to secure the sound and
healthy sleep upon which all vigor depends. Without sound
sleep any race is doomed to unnatural vices, monstrous dissipa¬
tions and the death that follows such. Men must have time to
develop the brains which God gave them. For without the
brain efficient work is impossible. Therefore I say unto you,
ye merchants and manufacturers, that you are throwing away
the efficiency which you require, when you make the hours of
113
labor so long that the laborer becomes exhausted or over-
fatigued. For efficient labor should be done with the snap and
energy and vigor of play. When you have put into your work¬
shops the joyous spirit of your playground ye will have efficient
labor, and not before. Therefore, be not blind! And all greed
is blind. No man can see in the dark, but every greedy man
lives in the dark.
114
CHAPTER XXXIX
Life changes, and as life changes, men change in customs
and in manners and in the details of their daily living. There¬
fore, newer times demand newer oracles and newer laws. The
old principles abide, but new explanations and applications
thereof are necessary. Therefore, I say unto you, there are
sins today that are not set down as such in any Bible or indexed
in any library. I say the greatest sin of modern times is physi¬
cal laziness and the love of luxury attendant thereon. No man
loves luxury who is strong. Nay! no strong man will tolerate
luxury, for he knows the subtle dangers and degradations
thereof. People may temporarily be mentally active but physi¬
cally inert and lazy. They may for a time live on the stored up
physical energies of hardy ancestors, but in the long run, physi¬
cal and mental animation and ability are one. Therefore the
mental worker who habitually forgoes or thinks he can do
without physical exercise is not only foolish but a sinner. And
his folly and sin shall react upon him. Thus the fat and thick-
necked merchant who sits in an office all day, when for his
soul's sake and his body's sake he needs to saw a half a cord
of wood more or less is a sinner, and his sin shall in due time
find him out and expose him to all the world, including his
own conscience, by leading him into the temptations of a licen¬
tious life. He shall look with lustful eyes on his pretty type¬
writer girl, and shall lead her into the way of temptation which
she is fighting day by day to escape. He shall do this because
he is only half a man, the other half being beast, but not even
115
a clean beast at that. For she too needs the physical labor and
exercise which she has no time to take. But I say she must
take time. The reason why the devil has such easy work to
catch these high toned and respectable looking sinners is be¬
cause they will not do the work which they ought to do. Such
work, forsooth, is menial, they say and only fit for servants. Is
anything menial that will help to save a human soul from sin
and damnation and degradation? As to being fit only for
servants, ye hypocrits, I say unto you that the highest rank
and the noblest medal of honor to be won on earth or in heaven
consists in the words,—"He was a good servant."
Jesus was a good servant, the best servant the world has
ever seen. And it was because he was a good servant that he
was the Saviour. To serve truly and faithfully and loyally thy
fellowmen is the divinest attribute and the highest achieve¬
ment of any man. Thou mayest omit thy prayers and thy ad¬
dresses and thy supplications and thy singings of hymns to
God. But see that thou forget not thy fellowmen. Human
needs are the first and should be the foremost care of every
human being who believes in God. Thou canst trick the
eyes and ears and fancies and imaginations and pride of thy
fellowmen by thy pretended piety. Thy fellowmen may in
their weakness forgive. But God knows and sees and under¬
stands. All the psalm-singing and church going and pious airs
from now until doomsday will not save the soul of any man
or of any woman who neglects to serve to the uttermost their
fellowmen. For without unselfish human service there can be
no religion. Believe what ye please, but if ye do not do kind
and generous and neighborly deeds, thou shalt be damned.
Love is the Law. There is no other Law. For God is love.
116
CHAPTER XL
I say unto you that the soul and body are one. Corrupt
the one and you will corrupt the other. Degrade the one and
you will degrade the other. Weaken the one and you will
weaken the other. Strengthen the one and you will strengthen
the other. That is the Law. I say furthermore unto you that
there is no such thing as permanent damnation. There is no
such thing as being lost in sin forevermore. Such pernicious
doctrines are interpolations and additions to the Bible, not the
teachings of Jesus nor the words of Jesus. They were put into
the sacred writings by shrewd priests who hoped thereby the
more easily to maintain their authority over the people. For
it is supposed now by some men, and it was believed in olden
times almost universally, that men must be ruled by fear. But
I repeat to you again, God's Law is the Law of Love. He has
no other law. A man damns himself. God does not damn
him. A man judges himself, God does not judge him.
Now 1 say unto you that men must learn to be merciful and
just to themselves. Men must learn to be patient with them¬
selves and to be respectful to themselves. For, I say there is
always a chance. No man ever loses his chance to be what he
might have been. He may wander far and roam wide, but the
minute he resolves to return to the right path, that moment
his chance comes back to him, and his chance of reaching the
original goal for which he set out will remain just so long as
his good resolution remains. A man must try to recall how
117
long and how far he has wandered from the path in order to
know how long and how far he must travel in order to reach
the path again. In brief, a good resolution is the restoration
of a chance, not the attainment thereof. Work, oftentimes
long and hard work must back up a good resolution, or the reso¬
lution fades into mere air. 'Tis not to resolve to do a deed, but
the deed itself that counts. Therefore I say that to do thy
good deed and to make thy good resolution afterwards is just
as well, for then thy resolution cannot evaporate. And it is
evaporated good resolutions that darken the sky and fill the
world with sorrow.
118
CHAPTER XLI
The church of the future shall be in the hearts of men.
They need not go to church. They shall carry their church
with them. They shall not worship or pray on one day only,
or call one day the holy Sabbath day. But they shall wor¬
ship and pray every single day, and therefore all days shall
be holy and all places shall be holy and all deeds worthy of
being done at all shall be holy deeds and they shall be done
in reverence and with a worshipful spirit. But upon one
day in each seven men shall rest from their labors as before
and it is best to retain the Sabbath day as the rest day, be¬
cause confusion must be avoided in actions and thinking
whenever and wherever possible. The curse of the world
is mental confusion. Too many small purposes destroy any
great purpose. Too many small ideas shut out and leave
room for no great idea. Unity of purpose and unity of action
always mean strength. And from strength comes in time
efficiency. But until the hours of labor shall be reduced to
six hours each day—and they will be reduced as soon as
men take away the black mask of greed that at present
covers the eyes of their souls, I say that all labor must cease
at noon of each Saturday throughout the year. This is nec¬
essary in order that many people who do not now find time
to go to church at all because they need the amusement of
the theatre or of dancing once a week shall be able to be
rested up by Sunday afternoon in order to see and appre-
119
ciate and feel some of the wonders and blessings and the
miracles of life, and therefore to worship. And without wor¬
ship man can do nothing well. Every act of a real man is an
act of worship. True action is praise to God. Indeed there
is no other form of praise so acceptable to God as a deed
rightly done. For I say unto you that lip service is no real
service at all. Psalm singing and long preaching may be a
bore and an insult and an abomination unto the Lord. For
God never asked any man to advise him or give suggestions
as to how the universe should be managed. And more
than half of all the prayers offered up in modern churches
consist of advice to the Lord. They sound very much
as if men were instructing a small boy as to what he
should do. Until men shall learn to mind their own business
and leave the Universe to God, there is no hope for them.
For conceit and egotism are at the bottom of all falsehoods.
A man must understand where he is at before he can know
what he can do and how he can do it. Reverence for what
is thy superior in real skill or knowledge is the beginning of
all wisdom.
120
CHAPTER XLII
I say unto women, this is the Law:—No matter what it
is thou lovest, thou must love something with all thy heart
and soul and mind. But as for thy body, be careful and rev¬
erential of it, lest it trick thee and drag thee down. For love
is truly a passion. Then keep it pure. Love is an emotion.
Then keep it high. Love is a sensation, then keep it clean,
and fine. For all coarseness degrades love. No love shall
live that cannot rise and keep rising evermore into higher
regions and breathing purer air. While thou art young and
in the period of thy growth 1 say unto women, take proper
exercise and so much fresh air as thou canst stand, and be
as active as possible. For the temptations of life and the
crises of life must be fought. By fighting, life becomes strong
and vigorous. No woman who languishes in luxury and
eats dainty food she does not need, and gives her plump
body the rest it does not want can be virtuous. Such a
woman, though she be a princess and live in a palace is pre¬
paring herself and her daughters and her granddaughters
after her, to travel the straight road to Hell along the scarlet
way of life. For I say that luxury is the handmaiden of vice.
No matter how fair the various forms of luxury may be, and
how innocent and inviting their outward faces may be, 1 say
that the devil lurks behind the dainty forms of every luxury
everywhere in the world. Women need to think. Women
121
need what men call cold facte. A few cold facts would save
many a woman from a life time of misery and shame and
sorrow. I say to women furthermore that they must work
with their muscles and develop them and they must work
with their mind and develop it. As for their emotions, they
have too many already. Only muscle work and brain work
can give relief to an over wrought nervous system. Many
a rich woman is sick for the mere want of healthy work. If
she took off her silk dress and arrayed herself in calico or in
gingham and went into the kitchen and bade her maid serv¬
ant come and sit in the parlor, it would be a thousand times
better both for her and for the maid servant For the maid
servant would have a chance to rest her mind as well as her
body from the routine of daily drudgery and the mistress
would regain her health. For God intended every woman
to be a mother, and motherhood requires much preparation
beforehand, much care and discretion at the period of bear¬
ing children, and much wisdom after the children are born.
A woman's whole life is and must be a preparation and a
fulfillment of her destined service to society and to God.
And in her whole life, woman has really not an hour to spare
over any kind of frivolity whatsoever, a second to waste on
any kind of dissipation whatsoever. During the period of
her growth from girlhood to womanhood, every woman
needs pure joy and all that she can get of it, in order that
her passions may be kept quiet and her emotions may be
kept normal and in equilibrium. But for frivolity women
have no need whatever and no time at all. Wherever and
whenever a woman assumes an air of levity or of frivolity,
122
it is done solely to please some fool man whom she thinks
it advantageous to please. When women cease to try to
please fool men or licentious men, they will bear sons who
will not force the next generation of girls to play the antic
parts which their mothers and grandmothers have had to
play. When the women cease to be good actresses, they will
be better women and nobler mothers. For to fulfill God's
purposes women must be free to act and live the life which
they know is alone fit for them. Whenever woman is obliged
to compromise on what she knows in her soul and body is
right, that minute vice is born into the world. If all the vice
that is introduced into life under cover of a marriage contract
could be swept away, this earth would become a Paradise
tomorrow.
123
CHAPTER XJLIII
Now one of the silliest and also the most vicious things
in the world is man's desire for mental consistency and order.
It prevents thousands of human souls from breaking away
from a dead and rotting past and stepping forth as free
men to the light and warmth of a new day. When the
Past is dead, bury it. And then cease thy crying and blub¬
bering and carrying on with thy selfish grief and hugging
to thy heart old illusions and delusions. Go forward to thy
work. But no one can go forward to his work who is for¬
ever looking backward. Men do not have proper insight
and foresight, and they have entirely too much hindsight.
The reason of so many of man's mental and moral and phy¬
sical blunderings is that men have small faith. They do not
believe even in themselves. Yet without faith nothing is
possible. When a man acquires faith he acquires insight
into and a knowledge of the secrets of the entire Universe.
For faith is the beginning of all mental and moral and phy¬
sical health and power. Henceforth I say unto you that
Motherhood shall be honored and when Motherhood is
rightly honored, women and womanhood shall be honored
aright. The bearing of a healthy child, I say, is in itself
a proof of virtue, and when any woman has born a healthy
and winsome babe, that proof shall be enough. Law and
custom shall honor her. Whoever else is wrong, the woman
124
who bears a normal child must be right, and her rights must
be maintained against the customs and despite the ancient
and damnable laws of any land. I say no child is illegiti¬
mate. As the word is and has been used, it is a foul and
vicious and unmanly and inhuman lie. The father and
mother who shall henceforth turn a daughter from the door
who bears a child whose father is a liar, a rascal, and a
coward, shall be damned by God and shunned by all good
men and women. 1 say that Love is the Law. And when
a girl trusting to that law shall be deceived by a man who
is but half a man, the other half being a coward and a brute,
she shall not lose either honor or respect. The women who
shall be scorned by both good men and good women shall
be those married women who refuse to bear children when
they can, or who take secret means to rid themselves of
children. Compared to these evil and degraded married
females, the girl who carries in her arms a babe whose
father deserted her shall be as an angel throned and crowned
with laurel. Make no mistake in the meaning of these
words. 1 say that marriage is the only honorable and normal
state for men and women, and the man and woman who
have once been parents shall cleave unto each other. If
incompatible, they may abide in different parts of the same
house, if necessary, but for the children's sake they must
work and toil and save and do whatever lies in their power
to give their children every fair chance in life. By working
for and toiling for and loving their children, they may in
time learn to adjust their differences and be at one. But
these hasty divorces of modern times and hasty re-marriages
125
of parents are an abomination that makes even honest beasts
to blush with shame. 1 say that virtue must be a deed and
not merely a name; that respectability must be actual and
vital and real, not fanciful and artificial and technical. Vir¬
tues are won by toil, not inherited. Honor is the guerdon
of hard fought battles, not an empty name on a family es¬
cutcheon. And whoso thinks that he can inherit either a
good name or a good position in society is mistaken. In
the eyes of God the position and name of every man and
woman is due to individual effort, not to ancestral effort.
Therefore there is no such thing as honor or a good name
except when won by the individual who achieves it by toil
and self-sacrifice. Artificial laws and artificial judgments
are the abominations and damnations of human society.
Men must be natural and sensible and honest and fair deed¬
ing and straight spoken before they can be virtuous. There
is no such thing as passive virtue. Virtue is the virile
strength and right action of the soul, acquired by the doing
of just deeds.
126
CHAPTER XLIV
I say unto you that unnatural life shall breed unnat¬
ural crimes and that a false life shall breed a thousand un-
guessed ills. Life must be wholesome if it be healthy. And
to be healthy life must be what it was first intended to be,
a joyous, vigorous, free and active battle of the soul against
its enemies. And the enemies of the soul are many. The
subtle allurement of the senses is an enemy to the soul. All
forms of pride and vanity are enemies to the soul. The de¬
sire of a pretty woman to wear a pretty bonnet down the
center aisle of a church may be an enemy to the soul. Or
the same action may be as innocent as a child's laughter,
provided the soul lays no stress on nor pays especial heed
to the bonnet. Many a pretty woman would be brave enough
to wear a faded and out-of-date bonnet to church upon Easter
morning if she really thought that it was the Lord's will
that she should do so. But most women could not be con¬
vinced that it was the Lord's will until Easter Day was passed
and a pretty bonnet had been worn. The majority, even
after they were convinced would declare that they were
no heroes,—that heroism was a coarse and masculine virtue
unsuited to women. The power and usefulness of conven¬
tionality is great. Most virtue is conventional virtue. It
must be while people are still unthinking creatures. Espe¬
cially as in the case of women who live upon emotion, they
127
have no time to think. For they must decide at once what
is right and wrong and act upon the decision. Therefore
the fear of violating convention and propriety is a great
force in keeping people up to the moral law. Yet the time
does come and must come when each individual thinks, and
when each man and woman decides they must go to a higher
guide than convention, and that guide is conscience. Now
in groping their way upward from the conventional life to
the higher life, people must keep their minds on wholesome
things if they would keep healthy. All things are good if
they are used properly and in moderation.
Inventions were intended to aid man. But when in¬
stead of men using an invention, the invention begins to use
men, beware of it! Nature is still the mother and guide to
all men and women. When, therefore, men and women
become so fond of the things they make instead of the things
God has made for them, let them beware. Beware, I say,
of becoming so fond of clothes that thou art afraid of thy
naked body or of the naked body of anybody else. Beware
of having an unclean mind. When the sight of thy own
beautiful body or of the beautiful body of a member of the
opposite sex, suggests to thee improper or vicious thoughts,
then know that thy mind is not clean. And the dirtiest and
foulest and most contagious thing in the universe is an un¬
clean mind. It will breed more malaria than a swamp. It
will foster more disease than tons of rotting vegetables. It
is more poisonous than arsenic. The evil that can be bred
up in one unclean mind is beyond calculation. Therefore,
I say, keep the mind clean if thou wouldst live clean and
128
wholesome and healthy lives. For the first need of every
man and woman is not that their body be clean, but that
their mind be clean. Without a clean mind, there can be
neither morality nor religion. For the mind is the temple
of the soul.
129
CHAPTER XLV
Discord is death. Where discords reign nothing can
be well. Mental discord is the parent of all diseases and
of all weaknesses and of all sorrows and of all ills. Har¬
mony is the first great law of life. For what is love but
harmony in action? Love is the music of the soul that goes
forth to bless and to gather into the fold of God the wan¬
dering sheep that hear the tinkle of the bell. And when¬
ever men really hear aright, all discord flees abashed. For
naught can harm the soul that understands. Now I say
unto you that the time is coming when diseases shall again
be treated as they were among the Greeks. For smart as
people think themselves in these latter days, they have not
yet learned to treat disease with music. Most ailments that
come from misused emotions and which discord has intro¬
duced into the body of man by lack of understanding and
because the man was out of harmony with his surroundings
shall be banished or nullified by music. Many diseases of
women could be cured by music. Most cases of incipient
insanity and some cases of apparently incurable insanity
can be cured by music. The music must be carefully se¬
lected, however, with a view to each individual need. To
people suffering from bodily starvation or insufficient nutri¬
tion, music that is too strong or too loud may be detrimental,
because a body run down or ill nurtured or tired out assimi-
130
lates its food best when absolutely quiescent. Common
sense and shrewd observation and the finest skill must be
brought to bear on these questions. To prevent disease,
takes a higher order of skill than to cure disease. The posi¬
tive is always higher than the negative. The cure of disease
by means of music shall be one of the marvellous moral
and spiritual and intellectual triumphs of man. The prin¬
ciple has been long known, but the limit of its developed
possibilities have never been reached. In the coming years
that limit shall at least be approached. And what would
now seem miracles shall be wrought by men who study the
mind as men now study the body. They shall then find
that all physical perfection and strength is absolutely de¬
pendent on and correlated to mental perfection.
A Christian is one who does as Christ teaches; who
follows where Christ leads; who heeds the words that Christ
spoke. And Christ's words are two words, Justice and Love.
Now I say unto you that Pride is a Pagan quality, and Van¬
ity and Greed and Envy and even worldly ambitions—all
these are pagan characteristics and utterly opposed to and
in defiance of thy Lord Jesus. So then look down into thy
soul and say unto thyself, Am I really a Christian? Judge
thyself. I will not judge thee. Yet thy judgment shall be
my judgment, only try to make it a little merciful, for no
man is quite so bad as he seems to be to his own conscience.
The consciences of men—especially the consciences of men
who have sinned—aire apt to be very severe and sweeping
in their condemnations. Therefore try to be a little bit
merciful for thou still hast a chance to be saved if thou wilt
131
see clearly and act promptly upon what thou knowest to be
right. Every right action is a rung on the ladder that leads
to Heaven.
132
CHAPTER XLVI
1 say unto you that this world must be a world of Jus¬
tice before it can be a world of Love and Kindness and
Mercy. For Justice is the foundation stone of all things.
And without the right foundation, ye can build no house
where love may abide amid the light and flowers and music
of real life and where Mercy, Love's beautiful handmaiden,
may spread her gracious gifts around and waft her precious
influence over the hearts and souls and minds of men. There
is and can be no substitute for Justice. Even Love and
Mercy cannot do the deeds that belong to Justice. There¬
fore I say to ye, Be just and render justice to all men and
all women and all children. Think not that thy generous
deed or thy loving deed which thou doest can take the place
of the just deed which thou leavest undone. It has well
been written, Be just before you are generous. Why, say-
est thou, must I be just, when generosity is so much more
beautiful a thing? Because if thou doest thy so called deed
of generosity first, it may prove to be no deed of generosity
at all but only hypocritic injustice masking as such. For
instance, throughout our so called and fondly named Chris¬
tian world today many great merchants who are at the head
of these business institutions called Department Stores, will
often pay a thousand dollars per week less to their employees
than the workers are justly entitled to, considering the serv-
133
ices rendered. Thus they will pay cash girls and boys three
or three dollars and a half per week instead of four or four
dollars and a half; they will pay clerks five dollars a week
who should receive six dollars; and they will pay many
other clerks seven dollars who shall receive eight or nine
dollars per week; they will pay experienced and loyal and
devoted clerks fifteen dollars per week who are justly entitled
to twenty dollars per week. To a few others they pay twenty
dollars per week who really earn and sure entitled to receive
forty, fifty or even a hundred dollars per week, and would
receive such amounts if they were paid according to the
rules of Justice, instead of according to the laws of Greed.
Now at Christmas time many an employer who by scaling
down wages saves one thousand dollars per week or fifty-
two thousand dollars per year from wages justly and rightly
due his employees, will give them generous gifts of turkeys
or baskets of choice fruits, or five, ten or twenty dollar gold
pieces, thus with apparent generosity spending five or ten
thousand dollars while he is still saving for himself forty
thousand dollars out of money justly due for services ren¬
dered, but which his employees dare not demand, lest they
lose their employment altogether. Such is a sample of one
kind of generosity to be seen in almost every city in every
Christian country in the entire world today. Is it any won¬
der that hypocrisy and injustice are rife in the land when
men return in generosity one out of every five dollars of which
they have deprived their fellows through the robber rules of
Greed? Therefore I say unto you, Be just first. If after
being just thou canst also find time and hast the good will
134
to be generous, well and good. But think not to cover up
thy foul deeds of Injustice and wrong and oppression by thy
petty and pretty and fair seeming deeds of mercy and gen¬
erosity. It cannot be done. Thy conscience knows what
thou art, thou Hypocrit. And God sees and judges thee
for the dust which thou shalt remain until thy soul shall be
cleansed and thou doest what thou knowest to be right. Take
not the easy road, for it will prove to be the hard road. Seek
not the fairest and sunniest path when thou settest out on
thy journey in the morning, for it may lead thee into bram¬
bles and thickets and foul swamps before night. But go
straight along the way where Duty callest thee, and trust
in God.
135
CHAPTER XLVII
The greatest injustice and oppressions of the world are
today the direct outcome of War. Except when fought to
establish or maintain freedom, not only is war wrong but
it is silly and foolish. War is fit for green boys, not for
grown men. As a matter of fact, it is green boys who com¬
pose a large part of the armies of the world. Thus the fate
of a nation is often decided by the unthinking portions of
it. The real battles of the world are moral and mental and
spiritual battles. Physical contention never settles any
question permanently. For the battle of Life is the battle
of ideas. No Idea dies until it has been clearly proved to
be false. Now the world is filled with antiquated and thread¬
bare and outworn notions. Many of these old and silly and
childish ideas are part of the history of the race. Conse¬
quently they are dear, as all reminiscences of childhood are
dear, even when foolish. They go down from age to age
as intellectual lumber which ought to be discarded, but
which, like the toys of childhood, are kept by men and
women as reminders of their youthful days. But war must
go. It is advocated in great part by designing or unthink¬
ing or foolish or ignorant or brutal men. No matter who
or what the man is, whoever advocates war is either a fool
or a villain. If the man who advocates war objects to being
called a fool in consequence thereof, he may take the second
136
adjective wherewith to decorate himself. But there is no
third one. Too long have foolish men and women with the
instincts of villains continued to impose this monstrous bur¬
den of the equipment and preparation for war upon the
human race. Any race had better die at once or be put into
the position of being swept off the face of the earth rather
than to die by inches. And war taxes are killing practi¬
cally every nation in the world today, by inches. War is
the greatest foe Democracy has to fear. War is the great¬
est friend that tyrants and robbers know. For it is war
which gives tyrants and robbers the opportunities of their
lives. War puts a premium upon all the base and brutal and
cruel and inhuman and foolish passions of men. While base
things go to the front, good things go to the rear. With
every so-called victory that an army wins, its home land
suffers a thousand defeats. Every victorious huzza smothers a
thousand unheard humiliations. No war has any justifica¬
tion except a war for freedom.
137
CHAPTER XLVIII
Think straight, see clear, and then go forward to thy
object without deviation or turning. Compromise is the
curse of the world. God knows not the word. Sunshine is
sunshine, light is light; darkness is darkness; right is right,
and wrong is wrong. Polite and tactful compromise is the
bane of society. To make a world in which compromise is
not necessary; to create a society in which white lying and
black lying is not needed, this should be the object of each
man and woman. The beauty and the glory and the rhythm
and the music of the world comes from truth. For truth
is the handmaiden of Love. And what canst thou find in
any worthy art or literature or poetry or sculpture except
an attempt to express the meaning of love? Love gives the
poet music. Love gives the artist imagination. Love flings
the sense of beauty broadcast over the world and from the
farthest corners of earth, love brings all good fairies to wait
upon and serve the man or woman who dares to live the
truth. The laughter in the voices of little children, the red
blood in their cheeks, the flashing light written in their eyes,
the light and airy motions of their dancing—all these come
from love. True love is gentle and self-controlled and
modest and forbearing and strong. I say unto you there
is no physical or moral or mental or spiritual strength with¬
out love. The senses of man are given to use, not to abuse.
138
Rightly used all physical sense is part of the divine order
of the world and therefore innocent 'Tis the misuse of
anything that is sin. Men have used and developed their
bodies at the expense of their minds. Hence cometh sick¬
ness and sorrow. For the minds and souls of men are their
most precious possessions, and therefore should be their
chief care. Life is filled with beauty and music and joy
when men learn to perceive and to understand the right
relation of all things. Therefore I say unto you, think
straight and see clear and then go forth to thy object with¬
out deviation or turning.
139
CHAPTER XLIX
Thou shalt still be followers and disciples of Christ, but
thou shalt worship Him and admire Him and love Him near
by as a man, not far off as a God. Therefore thou shalt
do His works and put into practice His teachings and thou
shalt in many ways live His life. Thou shalt not fear pov¬
erty or obscurity or lack of social position nor scantiness of
opportunity. Thou shalt cultivate the riches of thy heart
and soul, and then thou shalt understand. When thou hast
understood, wealth will be seen for what it is,—a two-edged
sword that must be handled very carefully. When the soul
is developed, the body shall be filled with courage and thou
shalt laugh at the fear of death, even from starvation. I
say thou shalt laugh at Death. For with the grace of God
within thee and the love of God around thee, mortal terrors
shall be unknown, and physical fear shall be unfelt. With¬
out fear thy weaknesses and ills and sorrows shall fall away
from thee, and thou shalt arise strong and eager, virile and
alert as a runner trained for a great race. For Life is a
great race, and he wins who doth not fear, and who con¬
sequently meets the woes of life with Laughter,—not un¬
seemly guffaws, but with a quiet enjoyment that feels the
mental sunshine and sees the spiritual light that envelopes
the world. Thus, I say, I send unto you this Gospel of Hope.
Despise it or love it, but do not dispute about it. For of
140
all folly in the world, religious arguments are the most
foolish. No religion ever came from or was seriously af¬
fected by argument. For religion consists of the reverential
perception by the entire nature of a man of the deep things
of life, and to attain to this perception requires quiet contem¬
plation; long observations and much study alone and in peace.
Noisy clamor as of a modern revival stabs religion to death.
And dragging people or attempting to drag people to salva¬
tion by the nape of their neck is folly. Any self-respecting
person has a right to refuse to allow the deepest and holiest
things in his nature to be made a public spectacle. Such
in reality is the revival method of saving souls. 1 say unto
you that a man need not say one word about what he be¬
lieves, provided that he does right and just deeds. They
will speak for him. Lip service and psalm singing have
become an offense and an abomination in the eyes of the
Lord, because they are being used as a sort of spiritual oint¬
ment wherewith hypocrits are salving their consciences, thus
hoping to save their souls. But I say unto you there is no
salvation for the hypocrit until he throws off the wolf clothing
of hypocrisy.
Again I say unto you, believe or not believe in words,
but if thy deeds are right and just and holy that is all the
belief that God asks of thee. And no other kind will do.
Thou shalt go to church or not as thy feelings dictate. But
one thing and one thing alone thou must do,—be just! Be
truthful! Be loving. For the law of life is Love. There
is no other law.
*
141
CHAPTER L
Again, and for the last time I repeat, Love is the Law.
Thou shalt have and thou shalt obey no other law. All
men are thy brothers. All lands are thy lands. All homes
shall be thy home. For unto the ends of the earth discord
and suspicion and envy and hate and enmity shall disappear
when this law is fully understood, not as theology or as re¬
ligion but as the practical everyday business rule of life.
Religion has no place so sacred as in the homes and counting
houses and factories and iron mills and fields of laboring
men. Sunday is truly a day of rest and meditation. But
the time for worship is every hour of every working day
and every minute of thy waking hours. Every stroke of
daily toil shall be an act of worship. Everything honestly
done by every honest workman in the world is a prayer.
Each blow of useful and humble service is a prayer. Ever*
moment's honest labor is the sweetest song of praise that
earth can send to heaven for the ears of angels to hear. The
day is approaching when such a religion as I tell thee of and
such a law as I have prophesied will be the law of all men
in all lands under the sun.
State but do not debate the law. Truth needs no ad¬
vocate. A simple statement is enough. Therefore if anyone
wishes to cling to his own creeds and to his old beliefs and
to his ancient manner of worship, do not disturb him. Let
him sleep or dream in peace. But when he awakes he will
142
come to thee and say: What is this new Gospel of Hope
that I hear about? And thou shalt give him or help him to
procure a copy of the Book, and then shalt send him away
with thy blessing. For love being the law, how canst thou
do less, and Love being the law, why need thou do more?
Now God be with thee and farewell! In the sunshine
of this Holy Christmas morning these last words of the new
Message are written down for the sake of men everywhere
throughout the world. I send you love and fair greeting
and this, my new Message which shall be called,—The Gospel
of Hope.
Dec. 25th, 1911.
143
postscript
The acceptance of this message need not and will not
involve any upheaval or disorder, civic or religious. Each
man who reads will first be puzzled, but even amid his be¬
wilderment, he will begin to understand and long before he
has finished he will perceive clearly what his mind never
quite grasped before, that is, the deadly foes which hypocrisy
and humbug and lying and injustice and hate and discord
are and have been to the progress of the human race. Every¬
where and among all races underneath the sun where these
words are translated from the English language into other
tongues, men and women will lift their heads, and with a
newer and greater faith than ever felt before, they will raise
their eyes to the full light of day and quietly and firmly they
will say, I understand at last! Now I too will work and labor
and toil for the coming of the New Day, for I see a hope
that my efforts shall not be in vain. Thus shall men say
everywhere, gaining in their souls new understanding of
the words, The Brotherhood of Man. Thus is this Message
called The Gospel of Hope. No other name was appro¬
priate. For this Message shall bring new hope to all men
everywhere. Only the tyrants and the rulers who are unjust
shall cry out against it. And by the loudness of their cries
can the people learn how true the Message is. By the loud¬
ness and bitterness and vehemence of clerical denunciation
144
shall the people be able to clearly see how vital and true
this Message is. For the trained minds of worldly and am¬
bitious ecclesiastics are doing more to keep alive and uphold
established tyranny than all other causes put together, in¬
cluding the armies and navies of the world. I say unto you
that there is no hope for churches or for church going
Christianity until the spirit of I-Am-Holier-Than-Thou is ex¬
pelled therefrom. And it never will be expelled until every
follower of Christ shall feel and understand that the rum
seller and the scarlet woman and the blasphemer are also
God's children, and insomuch as their need is greater, the
greater shall thy service to them be to meet that need. I
say further: Thou art thy brother's keeper, and woe unto
thee if thou neglect thy charge. It were good to dump all
the psalm books and prayer books and hymn books out by
the roadside and then to dump the misguided Christians
with them. Then beneath God's blue sky and beneath the
might and marvels and wonders of His holy world, thou
mayst learn humility for thyself and charity for other people.
For without breadth of view there can be no real sympathy.
Without clearness of insight, there can be no efficient action.
Without purity of heart, there can be no religion. God does
not and will not countenance Vanity or Pride or Uncharity,
or Envy or any form of Hate or Disdain in those who pre¬
tend to serve Him and to do His work. Therefore, first of
all, cleanse thy heart and mind of impurity with the same
zeal with which thou puttest soap upon thy body. For only
a clean mind and a pure heart shall be worthy of serving God.
— The End —
145
This Book
"®fje (gospel of Hope"
(not including Foreword and Postscript)
contains 50 chapters and 35,383 words.
Printed this 12th of January, 1914.
This 2nd edition consists of 135 copies, printed
from same type, February 12, 1914.
170 G67
3 5556 001 316 488
85174
170
G67