CHAPTER 12

Conclusion

When I look back and see the worthlessness of my life and aims before I studied Mental Science, I am filled with a burning desire that all persons leave their present narrow, hampering walks, and come with me into the broad meadows and by the still waters of ever present blessedness, where happiness is the breath of life, and where all cares and anxieties are forgotten; where all belief of evil and forebodings of fear are left behind; where only faith and hope remain to project the new cellular tissue of our ever deepening and broadening personalities. For hope and faith do project the life cells into which flows the Vitalizing Principle—the god within; thus rendering us diseaseless incarnations of the great I Am.

By resolutely and sternly denying the doubt that would cloud my belief in man, by turning away from a view of him in his present embodiment, and holding trustingly and faithfully to my ideal picture of his glorious possibilities, and of the more than human power vested in him, I have come to that point where faith and hope are easy to me. I now see him a creature of infinite unfoldment, lacking nothing in all the world but the ability to appreciate himself.

Not knowing the law of his being, not knowing his oneness with the One Life, he depreciates himself. He takes the consequences of this depreciation in the bitter mistakes which he calls “sins,” and in those ignorant denials or negations of his high privileges called “sickness” and poverty.

The truths I have offered to the public through my statements of the philosophy of mind, or Mental Science, are meant to teach man what a great creature he is. They are meant to remove at once and forever the crushing weight of a belief in his own helplessness and unworthiness—a belief that has been his bane and curse and defrauded him of his just dues in a universe that holds all for him; a belief that has shut off that infinite fountain of ever-flowing good which comes from an understanding of the fact that the supply is equal to the demand, and that a man may have what he wants if he will only learn how to take it; a belief that in limiting his own power he has limited the power of the Law in his thought; a belief that has damned, and is to-day damning, more souls than all the other infidelities ever foisted on an unreasoning and unresisting race. They are meant to teach man his own power by proving to him his own greatness; by showing him how divine are the faculties of his being; by proving to him that the best opinion he ever had of himself is not half so good as the truth will warrant. While it has been impossible in the treatise of this question of poverty, to any more than touch upon certain phases of Mental Science proper. I know that the right road is pointed out in this little book and my hope is that through it, many may find the way to liberty.

Personal vanity is that inflated belief one entertains concerning himself before a knowledge of his real worth comes to him, and of course we repudiate it. But self-esteem which rests on a basis of the knowledge of one’s natural faculties, is another thing entirely. When a just appreciation of our own undying and ever unfolding faculties is presented for our consideration—yes, and for our love and veneration—it ceases to be a personal matter, and embraces every soul of the race in its broad and enthusiastic welcome of the potency which we see to be vested in all other men equally with ourselves. It is this broad and comprehensive understanding of the great natures we possess that shows us our power over error, poverty and sickness, and points out the way by which we can conquer all undesirable conditions.

Though I am even but a child in this wonderful knowledge of self, yet for some time past I have controlled circumstances to my liking, forbidden poverty admission to my doors, and refused to listen to the cry of disease; thereby banishing it far from my presence as a thing too weak and negative to keep step with my rapidly advancing pace in an understanding of the power of mind. The more I learn of man’s inborn strength, of his own great power, the stronger and more irresistible I become, and the farther I am removed from the influences called “fate,” “condition,” “circumstances,” “poverty” and “disease”—influences that were once my masters, but which will never be my masters again.

I have felt my way along the broadening process of life—from the not knowing my own worth and power, to the knowing it—by close and critical steps of thought, by challenging all ideas, and refusing to accept any that would not stand the test of practical experiment. I have forged my way through a hundred mistakes, and met many a bowlder that took all my strength to roll aside. And now it seems to me that no position is more thoroughly demonstrated by the works that result from it than mine. I do not intend to convey the idea that I have no more to learn, but only that I have at last found the principle that underlies all intelligent growth.

I thank myself—the power embodied in me—that I have been enabled to stand champion for the race through a recognition of the power embodied in every man and woman living. It is a position that has already lifted many souls from under the influence of self-depreciation to that high plane of thought where fear has fallen from them; where sin, sickness and poverty has ceased to be numbered among their belongings.

Do you know what this Mental Science movement means? It means the closing of the old dispensation, with its wretched beliefs in man’s degeneracy and his inability to save himself, and the opening of the strong new era, wherein we see ourselves as our own saviors, through the power of that mighty influx of truth now pouring in upon us, the truth that comes from the inner, the unseen side of life, and that is verily and truly being materialized in our external selves this very hour; the truth that enables us to put the highest, noblest and grandest interpretation upon the writings of the spiritual leaders who have taught that “as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee,” they also may be one in us; the truth which teaches the unity of all and that each is indeed one with God, or good, the eternal principle of life.

Intelligent understanding of this great process, and how to co-operate with it so as to hasten its coming, is the work we are trying to do. The work was begun in a small way, modestly and quietly, and yet it carries the conviction of self-conscious worth, and could not consistently do otherwise. It teaches the student how to conquer disease in himself and others, and how to conquer all the hampering environments that cripple his life and make it so narrow and sordid and mean in his eyes. It gives him such an understanding of his own latent strength—intellectual and moral—that he feels the very foundations of his existence strengthen beneath him, while endless vistas of happy usefulness and noble prosperity open out before him.

Self-crushing has been the method of every previous system of training, and the result shows in a dwarfed, debased and diseased humanity. But now, at the beginning of the new era, there comes a change. Indeed the very words “new era,” or “new order,” mean nothing else and refer to nothing else but the reversal of public opinion on this very subject of self-esteem.

“Know thyself,” is one of the great commandments. No matter by whom it was written, or whether it is found in the Bible or out of it, it is one of the greatest commandments. The more truly a man knows himself, the more he respects and reveres himself. The more he knows himself the more he knows the Law; the more he reveres himself the more he reveres the Law; for Law and man are one; they are the internal and external of the one omnipresent life. And to understand this fully is to make the atonement—the at-one-ment—between the life principle and man, by which man’s life becomes identical with it, and he loses the very remembrance of sin, disease and poverty, and begins to step forth into a wonderful comprehension and fellowship with the divine life—that of unbroken progression in constantly increasing phases of happiness and power.

And this is what Mental Science is doing for the world. It is teaching man to know himself. In learning what he truly is, he cannot fail to learn that he has no fellowship with what we call “sin, sickness and poverty,” and these negative conditions—which are but ignorant denials of absolute truth—fall from him like old and worn-out garments.

Everyone needs to learn all he possibly can on so great a subject. Never before has the truth risen in such a mighty tidal wave of power as it is now doing through the practical rendition of Christ’s life and works in the magnificent system of new thought that is now not only proclaiming man’s superiority to his environment, but demonstrating it to the easy comprehension of all. The numbers who are coming to a knowledge of Mental Science and its power to save are already great. The distant rumble of a mighty host advancing is already heard. Prejudice, fear, and false beliefs are being crushed under the feet of the advancing thousands. The darkness of ignorance is being dispelled by the light of reason, and the time will come when all mankind will rejoice in the knowledge of self, when each individual can step forth in his glorious self-hood and proclaim his own independence forever.