The Right Knock

by Helen Van-Anderson

  CHAPTER XV.

  "A lie can not exist--it only appears. Truth is consciousness consistent with itself in every relation; error is consciousness inconsistent with itself in some relation."--_Judge H. P. Biddle._

  "And what an end lies before us! To have a consciousness of our own ideal being flashed through us from the thought of God! Surely, for this may well give way all our paltry self-consciousness, our self-admiration and self-worships! Surely, to know what He thinks about us will pale out of our souls all our thoughts about ourselves!"--_George MacDonald._

  MARLOW, September ----.

  "Dear John: I hope you are as anxiously awaiting this letter as Iawaited the second lecture. It was splendid, so comprehensive, and aboveall, so practical. It throws light on many puzzling points, and I amdelighted so far with what seems so plain and true.

  "Some of the members of the class seemed quite shocked at some of thestatements, but it is not strange that they should seem startling to onewho has never thought on the subject, for indeed, I should think itwould take a good while to get used to reasoning that is directlyopposite the world's first conclusions; still we are looking for resultsthat are quite contrary to what the world looks for, so we can afford tocollide with its opinions. When Mrs. Pearl came into the class room, allturned to look at her and every ear was ready to listen.

  "In yesterday's lesson we made a statement of God as the only Mind ofthe universe, the Great Reality beside whom there is absolutely nothingin existence; but as we look around at the scenes of suffering andpoverty and ignorance, we are mightily tempted to disbelieve such astatement.

  "'Talk of omnipotent Light in the midst of midnight darkness!' youexclaim. Ah, but you are to remember we are talking of the realcreation; the invisible and unapparent instead of the visible andapparent; the changeless and eternal instead of the evanescent anddecaying.

  "If God is the only Reality, His creation is the only real creation. Theword real is applied to that which actually exists, which forever is,not to that which seems or appears; therefore, in speaking of the realwe mean the changeless and invisible.

  "If God is the only Mind, His are the only real thoughts, and thoughtsare invisible to the eye, but discernible to the mind or consciousness.

  "If God is everywhere, there is no possible place or space in theuniverse where God is not; hence He is all there is. One of our modernprophets wisely wrote: 'Has not a deeper meditation taught certain ofevery clime and age that the Where and the When so mysteriouslyinseparable from all our thoughts, are but superficial adhesions tothought; that the Seer may discern them where they mount up out of thecelestial Everywhere and Forever. Have not all nations conceived theirGod as omnipresent and eternal, as existing in a universal Here, aneverlasting Now?

  "'Think well, thou too wilt find that space is but a mode of our humansense, so likewise Time. There is no space and no time. _We_ are--weknow not what; light sparkles floating in the ether of Deity. So this sosolid seeming world, were, after all, but an air-image--our _me_ theonly reality.'

  "This me is the spiritual self, the individual idea of God, His imageand likeness.

  "What then, about this body, which is not spiritual, you ask? What aboutthe material universe?

  "Wait a moment. Think of the premise. As God the invisible is thechangeless, what is the variable, fleeting, visible unreality? The realis everlasting, the unreal is transitory. The real is called Spirit, theunreal matter.

  "What is Spirit? The underlying omnipresent substance that we call God.

  "What is matter? The counterfeit, shadow, emblem, showing that Spiritexists or is.

  "We read in a very ancient Hindoo Scripture: 'Those who haveunderstanding, whose thought is pure, see the entire universe as thepicture of Thy wisdom;' and the thoughtful Carlyle said: 'All visiblethings are emblems.... Matter represents some idea and bodies it forth.'

  "These thoughts are in perfect accord with the principles laid down inour premise, hence we find that as we believe matter, believe the bodyto be the real creation, we are believing a falsity. This is the idol weare worshiping instead of the true and only God. The grand visibleuniverse in which we see so many beauties, so many charms, is but themighty object lesson before us by which we may learn of the infinite,invisible All. As Theodore Parker said: 'The universe itself is a greatautograph of the Almighty.'

  "The characters used in mathematics do not constitute the science butmerely represent to the senses the invisible ideas of the principle ofmathematics. The visible does not constitute the invisible, but maycarry its messages as we learn to read its poetic and mystic pages. Thevisible speaks to the mortal nature, but the invisible beyond and above,speaks to the immortal nature.

  "Since we find matter to be so totally opposite the real, there is noother name for it than as the unreal, and the unreal being a counterfeitof the real, must be a lie, as the nature of a lie is to make falseclaims, pretending they are true.

  "Matter is a counterfeit because it is not genuine or of God, because itis changeable and fleeting, because being limited to a visible form, itmust have finite limitations and can merely give finite conceptions.

  "Taking it as a _sign_ of something infinite, we learn of the infinite.All the students, teachers, learned men and women of the world haveadded to the world's spiritual ideas revealed by their study of thefinite as well as their intuitive knowledge of the infinite. CharlesKingsley gives us a hint of how to learn: 'Do not study matter for itsown sake but as the countenance of God. Try to extract every line ofbeauty, every association, every moral reflection, every inexpressiblefeeling from it.'

  "Our ideas of matter must then be entirely changed, and we must learn tolook beyond the seeming, to the true. We have believed in the realityof matter and material environment because of reasoning from the falsebasis that man is material or that he is a mixture of material andspiritual. To believe that the flesh and blood of our sister or brotheris their real self, is to believe God capable of creating somethingutterly unlike himself (John iii, James i.) which may suffer, sin anddie, and if He is all perfection, He can not know imperfection. If He isall spirit, He can not know or be matter. Keep before your mind theperfection, omnipotence, omnipresence of Spirit, God or Principle, andyou will see more and more clearly the inconsistency of anythingopposite Him emanating from Him.

  "Believing in matter as a reality, we have endowed it with all the powerof the real, have ascribed to it life, substance and intelligence, whenit possesses neither.

  "Where is the life when the body dies? If life were inherent in thephysical body, could it ever cease to be? God the eternal life principlecan not cease to be. The life manifested through the body is the lifewhich is God and can not be affected by the decay or disappearance ofthe body.

  "The invisible essence of life is also the true substance, the reliableand changeless something, upon which we may forever depend. We use theword substance in its etymological sense (from _sub_, under and _stare_,to stand), and since Spirit or Mind is the reality that underlies everymaterial or sensible object, there is no substance to the object itself.

  "Plato taught that '_ideas_, are the only _real_ things.' Ideas areexpressions of thoughts, and thoughts are expressions of mind, and thisreasoning brings us back to God as Mind and Mind as Cause. AdmittingMind or Spirit to be the life and substance back of or expressing itselfthrough the body, we may easily see that intelligence can not existapart from Mind, and hence can not belong to matter.

  "That the mind or intelligence is seated in the gray convolutions of thebrain, is held by the materialists, and yet Dr. Laycock affirms 'thatmatter is fundamentally nothing more than that which is the seat ofmotion to ends, of which mind is the source and cause.' Professor Huxleycrowns the statement by saying, 'That which perceives or knows is mindor spirit, and therefore, that knowledge which the senses give us, is,after all, a knowledge of spiritual phenomena.' Professor Faraday heldto the immateriality of physical objects.

  "
In the language of Jesus the Christ, we are told, 'Spirit is all, theflesh profiteth nothing;' thus from all classes of conscientious butconfessedly diverse thinkers, we find statements of universal truth, andthis is what the hungry, starving world is seeking with more earnestnessthan ever before.

  "Since there is no life, substance or intelligence in matter, it will becomparatively easy to prove that there can be no sensation, for wherethere is no life in the body, there can be no feeling. Even thephysiologists tell us mind must know pain before it can be located inthe body. We state therefore a theorem which is practicallydemonstrated; there is no sensation in matter.

  "As we visit penitentiaries, reform schools and hospitals, as we readand hear the startling statements of press and pulpit, we growdisconsolate and heavy-hearted over the awful power and reality of evil,forgetting again that He who is perfect goodness can not behold evil orin any way permit its existence, any more than heat can permit cold, orlight can permit darkness.

  "Granting the omnipotence of Good, where is there any room for itsopposite?

  "If there is but one Power, and that omnipotent and perfect, there canbe no evil _in reality_; hence we are dealing with another lie when wejudge according to appearances, which Jesus said we should not do. It isreally disloyalty to God to impute to Him all misery, pain, sickness andsuffering caused by the evil and ignorance of man. We are told: 'Letyour soul be subject to the higher powers, for there is no power but ofGod.' Because we have not done so, but have believed in every claimpower, we suffer from 'evils which our own misdeeds have wrought,' asMilton wrote, or, in the words of Emerson, 'we _mis_create our ownevils.'

  "Jeremiah said: 'It is your sins that have withholden the good thingsfrom you.'

  "According to Webster, 'sin is a transgression of the law of God.' Thereis but one law--the perfect and unchangeable Truth. Any deviation fromTruth is error, and error is sin. In proportion as we deviate from thestrictly true, then, we sin. Because we admit things to be true whichare not true, we _admit_, then _commit_ sin, and hence suffer for sin.'Know ye not that to whomsoever ye yield yourselves servants to obey,his servants ye are, whether of sin unto death or obedience untorighteousness,' wrote Paul. We first think wrong. Sin is of the mind,not of the body.

  "To acknowledge the reality of sin or evil is a transgression of thelaw, because, according to our established premise, it cannot be true.

  "Through a misconception of our relation to God, and a belief in thepower of evil, we are obliged to admit the existence of sin, sickness,and death, neither of which can be true in the presence of God, as theonly Reality, in which or in whom are all things that eternally are, notthat temporarily appear.

  "We have believed in a mind or power of thought opposite and contrary toGod, when in reality there can be nothing opposite or contrary toeternal Mind. We have believed ourselves endowed with a mind separatefrom God, and ourselves subject to temptation from some cause not Good.We have believed in minds, when there is but one Mind.

  "This false force, this false mind, is variously called the evil orcarnal mind, the mind of the flesh, the old man, the serpent, the devil,the adversary. It is simply the opposite or contradictory of the Good,the god of evil.

  "Beside every true or positive statement there is a false or negativeclaim, and in so far as we are ignorant of the true, we are in bondageto the false. To _believe_ the claims of error is to be bound; to _know_the reality of truth is to be free. To believe in a mind or powerseparate or opposite from God, is to be subject to any suppositions orbeliefs formulated by that mind or negative thought.

  "That we are spiritually perfect is true, but it is necessary for us toprove that fact by 'working out our own salvation,' by manifesting thepositive or God quality of thought through our life and actions, and theonly way to be filled with good thought is to recognize and acknowledgethe Good only as the real.

  "This error, tempter or devil, was spoken of by Jesus as having notruth, as being a liar, and the father or cause of lies (John viii: 44).Instead of devil (which is only another name for evil or the slanderer),or 'carnal mind', as Paul called it, we find mortal thought a betterterm for the expression of this power of thinking.

  "'Why have we this power of thinking wrong thoughts when there is butone good and only Mind?' you ask. As God's idea, in the image andlikeness of Mind that thinks, we have the power of recognition, thepower to be or not to be, the possibility to become sons of God. We havethe power to distinguish, to judge, to know; we have the spirit thatever leads us on and on in truth.

  "But here is where we fail. In our ignorance or limited state ofunfoldment, we have mistaken the symbol for that which is symbolizedmatter is the symbol, as also the body, we have judged according toappearances instead of righteous or strictly true judgment; we haveyielded to a belief in sin, hence are servants of sin.

  "The conception of matter as having power, is based on appearances, andbecause we have delegated to it a power, have acknowledged it as anentity, separate from the eternal mind, it has enslaved us.

  "Reasoning in this way we find everywhere two opposites orcontradictories to be recognized and judged, as the visible and theinvisible, the material and the spiritual, the false and the true, themortal and the immortal, the unreal and the real, the negative and thepositive.

  "Judging of the true by that which is changeless and eternal, we candecide at once on those qualities or attributes belonging to ordescribing what is true, and by knowing what is true, we can readilydistinguish it from the erroneous.

  "We have considered these great errors or negatives which the world hasbelieved and still believes in, and they must be dealt with according toscientific law.

  "Through all the ages of Christianity have been heard the words of theMaster: 'If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take uphis cross and follow me;' but who has understood it? The letter of thelaw has indeed been observed by many earnest followers of Jesus to adegree not considered necessary in this age, but what has itdemonstrated? What has come of all the fasting and renunciation, thecruel asceticism and severe discipline?

  "Do these conscientious disciples give an unmistakable proof of theirdiscipleship by showing the signs that must follow the true believer?How can they when they talk of sin, sickness and death; of thingscontradictory to the nature, power and presence of God?

  "Then they must not have understood the spiritual import of these wordsof Jesus to 'deny himself.' Deny means, according to Webster, 'tocontradict; to declare not to be true; to disclaim connection with; torefuse to acknowledge; to disown.' Jesus meant deny the mortal thought,the false self; refuse to acknowledge it as having any authority; and itis only as the Christ follower proves this to be the true mode ofdenying self, that he can speak with authority as to the scientificmethod of dealing with all the errors to which mortal thought givesbirth.

  "No other way has brought the desired result; hence we confidentlyassert that all these mistakes agreed to and participated in by mankindmust be emphatically, persistently, scientifically denied.

  "Systematically and repeatedly we say:

  "1. There is no life, substance or intelligence in matter.

  "2. There is no sensation or causation in matter.

  "3. There is no reality in matter.

  "4. There is no reality in sin, sickness or death.

  "5. There is no reality in evil.

  "6. There is no reality in mortal thought.

  "This is denying the self recognized by the world. This is the life thatmust be laid down, that must be sacrificed, lost.

  "Humanity has proven its subjection to these errors. Now, by itsfaithful rejection of them, let it prove them lies, for the force of alie is always annulled by rejection. This proves the law referred to byJesus when he made a denial of self the first duty of his disciples.

  "In denying, it is necessary to say the words over and over again; itmay be mechanically at first, but say them over, several hours at atime, if possible.

  "More is accomplished by c
oncentration than anybody is aware, and therepetition of the words helps to concentrate the thought. First repeatthe whole list of denials, then select one on which to spend most of thetime for several days. The denial of matter, for instance, makes us morespiritually minded.

  "When denying, try to realize there is no space, but that anywhere yousend your thought it will go, and as you think or say the words, youwill be denying error for the world as well as for yourself, as everythought is world-wide in its influence, and helps to free or bindhumanity, even as it is truth or error.

  "To deny is to put out of mind, to erase, as it were, the false beliefs.Be earnest, be faithful, and you will have an abundant reward.

  "This, dear John, is the substance of the lecture as nearly as I cangive it. After Mrs. Pearl had finished the lesson, she requested theclass to sit in silence a few moments and together hold the thought,'There is no reality in matter;' after which we were dismissed with thisbenediction: 'May we realize that God _is_, that spirit is the onlyreality.'

  "The lessons are always opened by silent prayer, which I have forgottento mention before.

  "Please, dear husband, observe these rules and study every assertion ascarefully as though you were in the class. You, and Grace, and Kate, canaccomplish a great deal together; but by all means don't pass judgmenttill you have carefully examined all the evidence.

  "Tell me all about the children. Such details will greatly comfort me,for I must confess that to-night I am the least bit homesick.

  "Good night,

  "Your loving MARION."