In the first place, I think we should like to be free from all worry and anxiety; for a life of continual worry is not worth living. And in the second, we should like always to have something to look forward to and feel an interest in; for a life entirely devoid of all interest is also not worth living. But, granted that these two conditions be fulfilled, I think we should all be well pleased to go on living ad infinitum. Now can we conceive any combination of the Law and the Word which would produce such results? That is the question before us.
The first step is to generalise our principle as widely as possible, for the wider the generalisation, the larger becomes the scope for specialisation. The invariable factor we already know. It is the Law, always creating in accordance with the Word that sets it in motion, whether constructive or destructive; so what we really have to consider is the sort of Word (i.e. Thought or Desire) which will set the Law working in the right direction.
It must be a Word of confidence in its own power; otherwise by the hypothesis of the case it would be giving contradictory directions to the Law — or, to borrow a simile from what we have learnt about waves in ether, it would be sending out vibrations that would cancel one another and so produce no effect. Then it must be a Word that does not compromise itself by antagonising the Law of Unity, and so producing disruptive forces instead of constructive ones. And finally, we must be quite sure that it really is the right Word, and that we have been making no mistake about it. If these conditions be fulfilled, the logical result will be entire freedom from anxiety.
Similarly with regard to maintaining a continued interest in life: we must have a continued succession of ideals, whether great or small, that will carry us on with something always just ahead of us; and we must work the ideals out, and not let them evaporate in dreams.
Law cannot be other than eternal and self-demonstrating, just as twice 2 must eternally equal 4; but it remains only an abstract conception until the Creative Word affords it a field of operation, just as twice two is four remains only a mathematical abstraction until there is something for you to count; and accordingly, as we have already seen, all our reasoning concerning the origin of Creation, whether based on metaphysical or scientific grounds, brings us to the conception of a Universal and Eternal Living Spirit localising itself in particular areas of cosmic activity by the power of the Word.
I want to make this sequence clear to the student before proceeding further:
Some of these systems contain a great deal of truth and are therefore helpful as far as they go; but they do not go the whole way and for the most part stop short at the first, or simply Cosmic, Creation; or, if they attempt to pass beyond this, it is on the line of making the unaided power of the individual the sole means by which to do so, and thus in fact always keeping us at the merely generic level.
Such a mode of Thought as this fails to meet the requirements of our conception of a happy life as one entirely exempt from fear and anxiety. In like manner also it fails to meet the first requirements of the whole series, viz. the Word should be certain of itself; and if it be not certain of itself we have no assurance that it may not eventually disappoint our hopes. In short, this mode of thought leaves us to bear the whole burden from which we want to escape. So it is not good enough; we must look for something better.
How is it possible for the Laws of the Universe to make exceptions? How can God act by individual favouritism unless it be either through sheer caprice or by the individual managing to get round Him in some way, either by supplying some need which He cannot supply for Himself (in which case God is of limited power) or else by flattering Him (in which case He is the apotheosis of absurd vanity). The two are really the same question put in different ways — the question of individual exceptions to the general Law.
The answer is that there are no individual exceptions to the general Law; but there are various degrees of realisation of the Principle of the Law, and the more a man works with the Principle, the more the Law will work for him; so that the finer his perception of the Principle becomes, the more he will appear to be an exception to the Law as commonly recognised.
Edison and Marconi were not capriciously favoured by the Laws of Nature, but they knew more about them than most of us.
Now it is just the same with the Bible Promises. They are promises according to Law. They are based upon the widest generalisation and hence lead to the highest specialisation through the combined action of the Law and the Word — Jachin and Boaz, the Two Pillars of the Universe.
These Promises comprise all sorts of desirable things: health of body, peace of mind, earthly prosperity, prolongation of life, and, finally, even the conquest of death itself; but always on one condition: perfect "Confidence in the power of the All-Originating Spirit in response to our reliance on the Word". This is what the Bible calls Faith; and it is perfectly logical when we understand the principle of it, for every Thought of doubt is, in effect, the utterance of a Word which produces negative results by the very same law by which the Word of Faith produces positive ones. This is the only condition which the Bible imposes for the fulfilment of its Promises, and this is because it is inherent in the nature of the Law by which their fulfilment is to be brought about.
A few texts will suffice as examples of the Bible Promises, and no doubt most of my readers are familiar with many others; but it would be worth while to read the Bible through, marking all such texts and classifying them according to the sort of promises they contain.
Read, for instance, Job 22:21, etc. This is a most remarkable passage, containing among other things the promise of earthly wealth; or again Job 5:19, etc., where we find promises of protection in time of danger, power over material nature, and prolonged life. While in Job 33:23, etc., there is promise of return to youth, a promise which is repeated in Psalm 103:5. Again in Isaiah 65:20, etc., there is the promise of immensely extended physical life, death at the age of one hundred being counted so premature as to resemble that of an infant, and the normal standard of age being compared to a a tree which lives for centuries; and the same passage also promises immediate answer to prayers. The Psalms are full of such promises, and they are scattered throughout the Bible.
Of course there are spiritual equivalents to these things, and the teaching of the Bible is that they are the outward correspondences of inward spiritual states; but to "spiritualise" them in the way I am speaking of is nothing but unbelief in the power of God to work on the plane of Nature. How such readers square their opinion with the fact that God has created Nature I do not know. Even in the animal world we find wonderful instances of longevity. If an elephant be not overworked before he is twenty, he is in full working power up to eighty and will then be capable of light work for another twenty years, after which he may yet enjoy another twenty years of quiet old age as the reward of his labours; crocodiles and tortoises have been known to live for centuries.
If, then, such things be possible in the ordinary course of Nature in the animal world, why need we doubt the specialising power of the Word to produce far greater results in the case of man? It is because we will not accept the maxim that "Principle is not limited by Precedent" in regard to ourselves, though we see it demonstrated by every new scientific discovery. We rely more on the past experience of the race than on the Creative Power of God. We call Him Almighty, and then say that in His Book He promises things which He is not able to perform. But the fault is with ourselves. We limit "the Holy ONE of Israel", and as a consequence get only so much as by our mental attitude we are able to receive — again the old maxim that "Power can only work in terms of the instrument it works through".
I do not say that it is at all easy for us to completely rid ourselves of negative race-thought ingrained into us from childhood and subtly playing upon that generic impersonal self in us of which I have spoken, and which readily responds to those thought currents to which we are habitually attuned. It is a matter of individual growth. But the promises themselves contain no inherent impossibility and are logical deductions from the principle of the Creative Law.
If the power of the Spirit over things of the material plane be an impossibility, then by what power did Jesus perform his miracles? Either you must deny his miracles or you must admit the power of the Spirit to work on the material plane — there is no way out of the dilemma. Perhaps you may say: "Oh, but He was God in person!" Well, all the promises affirm that it is God Who does these things; so what it is possible for God to do at one time, it is equally possible for Him to do at all times. Or perhaps you hold other theological views and will say that Jesus was an exception to the rest of the race; but, on the contrary, the whole Bible sets him forth as the Example — an exception certainly to men as we now know them, but the Example of what we all have it in us to become — otherwise what use is he to us?
But apart from all argument on the subject, we have his own words telling us that those who believe in him — i.e. believe what he said about himself — shall be able to do works as great as his own, and even greater (John 14:12). For these reasons it appear to me that on the authority of the Bible itself, and also on metaphysical and scientific grounds, we are justified in taking such promises as those I have quoted in a perfectly literal sense.
Then there are promises of the power that will attend our utterance of the Word. "Thou shalt also decree a thing and it shall be established unto thee" (Mark 9:23). "Whosoever ... shall believe that what he sayeth cometh to pass, he shall have whatever he sayeth" (Mark 11:23), and so on.
Other passages again promise peace of mind. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is staid on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee" (Isaiah 26:3). "Let him take hold of My strength that he may make peace with Me" (Isaiah 27:5). St Paul speaks of "The God of Peace" in many passages, e.g. Rom. 15:33; 2 Cor. 13:11; 1 Thess. 5:23; and Heb. 13:20; and Jesus, in his final discourse, recorded in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters of St John's Gospel, lays peculiar stress on the gift of Peace.
And lastly there are many passages which promise the overcoming of death itself; as for instance Job 19:25-27; John 8:51, 10:28, and 11:25-26; Heb. 2:14-15; 1 Cor. 15:50-57; 2 Tim. 1:10; Rom. 6:23 ("The gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ, our Lord").
"God commanded the blessing, even Life for evermore" (Ps. 133:3).
So I hope you will take the trouble to look up the texts; but at the same time you must remember that the reading of single texts is not sufficient. If you take any isolated phrase you choose, without reference to the rest of the Book, there is no nonsense you cannot make out of the Bible. You would not be allowed to do that sort of thing in a Court of Law. When a document is produced in evidence, the meanings of the words used in it are very carefully construed, not only in reference to the particular clause in which they occur, but also with reference to the intention of the document as a whole, and to the circumstances under which they were written. The same word may mean very different things in different connections; for instance, I remember two reported cases in one of which the word Spanish meant a certain sort of leather and in the other a kind of material used in brewing; and in like manner, particular texts are to be interpreted in accordance with the gist of the Bible as a whole.
This is just the mistake the Jews made — of building up theories on particular texts — and which Jesus corrected when he said: "Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and these are they which testify of me" (John 5:39), or, as the Revised Version puts it, "Ye search the Scriptures because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me", which appears to be the better rendering.
The words ye think is the key to the whole passage. He says in effect: "You fancy that eternal life is to be found in the book. It is not to be found in the book, but in what the book tells you about, and here I am as a living example of it". It is just the same with everything else. No book can do more than tell you about a thing; it cannot produce it. You may study the cookery book from morning till night, but that will not give you your dinner.
What Jesus meant was that we should read the Scriptures in the same way we should read any other book of practical instruction. First think what it is all about; then look at the nature of the general principles involved, and then see what instruction the book gives you for their practical application. Then go and do it.
I remember many years ago, when I was much younger, asking one of our leading water-colour artists [R W Allen — Ed] how he would recommend me to study landscape painting, and he said: "Practise continually from Nature, and you will learn more than any one can teach you; that is how I have learnt myself". On the subject then in question, he said just what Jesus did: "Here I am as a practical example of what I tell you".
And another thing is that the more you think principles out for yourself and try to observe them in practice, the clearer the meaning of your book will become to you. I have a few excellent books on painting, but I had no idea how excellent they were when I first got them; practical experience has taught me to find much more in them than I did at first, for now I understand better what they are talking about.
Well, that is the way to read the Bible, neither despising it as worthless tradition nor treating it with superstitious veneration; both extremes are to be equally avoided. In fact, the Bible tells us so itself: "The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life" (2 Cor. 3:6); this, of course, does not mean that the letter can be tampered with, any more than a judge can alter the wording of a document put in evidence; it must be interpreted in the general sense of the document as a whole; and when the letter is thus vivified by the Spirit, it will be found fully to express it. But we require to enter into the Spirit of it first.
Now it appears to me that, taken in this way, the Bible is an exceedingly practical book, and that is why I want the reader to get at some general principles which he will find, mutatis mutandis [with the respective differences having been considered — Ed.], equally applicable all round, whether to electricity or to life; and whatever may be the subject matter, it will always be found to resolve itself into a question of the relation between Law and Personality. If now we read the Bible Promises in the light of the general principles we have considered in the earlier pages, we shall find that they are all Promises according to Law. They are statements of the results to be obtained by a truer realisation of the principles of Law and Personality than we have hitherto apprehended.
In a previous chapter I have pointed out that the only possible conception of the inauguration of a world-system resolves itself into the recognition of one original and universal Substantive Life out of which proceeds a corresponding Verb, or active energy, reproducing in action what the Substantive is in essence. On the other hand, there must be something for this active principle to work in; and since there can be nothing anterior to the Universal Life or Energy, both these factors must be potentially contained in it.
If, then, we represent this Eternal Substantive Life by a circle with a dot in the centre, we may represent these two principles as emerging from it by placing two circles at equal distance below it, one on either side, and placing the sign + in one and the sign — in the other. This is how students of these subjects usually map out the relation of the prima principia, or first abstract principles. The sign + indicates the Active principle, and the sign — the Passive principle. If the reader will draw a little diagram as described, it will help to make what follows clearer.
Necessarily the initiative must be taken by the Active principle; and the taking of initiative implies selection and volition — that is to say, the essential qualities of Personality; and Passivity implies the converse of this, and therefore is Impersonality. The two principles in no way conflict with one another, but are polar opposites, like the positive and negative plates of a battery or the two ends of a magnet. They are complementary to one another, and neither can work without the other. A little consideration will show that this is not a mere fancy, but a self-obvious generalisation the contrary to which it is impossible to conceive. It is simply the case of the box which cannot come into existence without the activity of the carpenter and the passivity of the wood.
From such considerations as this the deep thinking of old times posited the generating of a world system by the interaction of what they named Animus Dei, the Active principle, and Anima Mundi, or Soul of the Universe, the Passive principle — the one Personal, and the other Impersonal; and by the hypothesis of the case, the only mode of activity possible to Anima Mundi is response to Animus Dei. But the same impersonal passivity must also make Anima Mundi receptive likewise to lesser and more individual modes of Personality, and it becomes, so to say, fecundated by the ideas thus impressed upon it.
In every case, "the word is the seed". We may picture this planting of an idea or "word" in the Cosmic soul as acting very much like the initial impulse that starts a train of waves in the ether, and these thought waves are reproduced in corresponding forms; or, to recur to the simile of seed, the cosmic soul acts like the soil and gives it nourishment.
Looking at it in this way, the old exponents of these things regarded the Active principle as Masculine, and the Passive as Feminine, the one generating and the other nutritive, corresponding to the words rouah and hoshech, the expansion and compression principles of the Hebrew text of the opening verses of Genesis.
If, then, we posit this impersonal Soul of the Universe as the living principle dwelling in the substance of the etheric Universal Medium, it will account for a good many things. If it be asked why we should assume the presence of a living principle in the Universal Substance, the answer is in the maxim Quod ex Vivo Vivum — what proceeds from Life is living. Then, as we see by our diagram, Anima Mundi equally with Animus Dei proceeds from the original Substantive of Life, and therefore, on the principle of the above maxim that like produces like, Anima Mundi must also be a living thing whose vehicle is the Universal Substance.
Such a hypothesis — and I think some such hypothesis is needed to account for any creation at all — throws light on the modus operandi of the Bible Promises. We plant the Word of the Promise in the womb of Anima Mundi, and if we do not uproot it by using the same power adversely, it is bound to come to fruition in due course by the same Law by which world-systems are formed; and if we are to believe that the Word of the Promise is not our own word, but the Word of God, then our Thought of it is imbued with a corresponding power as we hand it over to Anima Mundi. Thus the Promises fulfil themselves automatically, in accordance with the principles of the relations between Law and Personality, and they do so not in our own power, but by the Power of the Word of God.
C means the current of electricity which is to be delivered for any work that is to be done; E stands for the Electromotive Force which generates the current; and R is the Resistance offered to the current by the conductor, such as the wires through which it flows. It there were no resistance, the full amount of the current generated would be delivered. But without any conductor, no current could be delivered, and therefore there must be some resistance, and so the full power of the Electromotive Force can never be delivered by the Current. The amount that will be delivered is the original power of the Electromotive force divided by the Resistance. The Resistance therefore acts as a restricting force, limiting the extent to which the power of the original Electromotive force shall be delivered to the point where the work is to be done; but at the same time no delivery at that point could be effected without it; so the Resistance also has a necessary part to play in the working of the circuit.
Now if we want to translate the formula C = E/R into terms of spiritual force, we may put it thus: E stands for the limitless Potential of the Eternal Spirit; C stands for the current flowing from it; and R stands for the localising quality of our thought. We cannot entirely dispense with this localising quality, for our whole purpose is to transmute the unlimited, undifferentiated power, which subsists in the Eternal Substantive of Spirit, into a particular, differentiated mode of action, which therefore implies a corresponding centralisation [i.e. in our individual selves — Ed.]. This is the proper function of our thought. It is this compressing power which, as I have said above, the Hebrew renders by the word hoshech in the opening verses of Genesis and which is the necessary complementary to the converse expanding power, or rouah. It takes the co-operation of the two to produce any results.
Restricted, then, to its proper function, our R or condensing quality is an essential factor in the work. But if it be allowed to take the form of doubt or unbelief, then it renders the flow of the current from the Spirit ineffective to the extent to which the doubt is entertained; and if doubt be allowed to degenerate into total unbelief and denial of the Power of the Spirit, we thereby cancel the originating force altogether. To put it in terms of the electrical formula, we make R greater than E, in which case no current can flow.
We thus find the words "According to your faith be it unto you" are actually the statement of a Mathematical law, having nothing vague about them. This may be a somewhat original application of Ohm's Law, but the parallel is so exact that I cannot help thinking it will appeal to some of my readers who may be conversant with Electrical Science. For those who are not, a simpler simile may be that you cannot deliver a more powerful stream of water than the bore of the pipe through which it flows will permit; or, to employ a legal truism, delivery on the part of the donor must be met by acceptance on the part of the donee before a deed of gift can become operative; or, in still simpler language, "you may take a horse to water, but you can't make him drink".
Of course, if we suppose that faith is something contrary to the law of the Universe, we at once import into our thought the negative quality which entirely vitiates our action. We rightly perceive that the laws of the Universe can never be altered, and if our notion of Faith be that it is an attempt to work in contradiction to these laws, the best definition we can give it is that given by the little girl in the Sunday school, who said that "Faith is trying to make yourself believe what you know is not true". The reason for such a misconception is that it entirely omits one of the factors in the calculation. It considers only the Law and gives no place to the Word in the scheme of things.
Yet we do not carry this misconception into the sciences of chemistry and electricity. We take the immutability of the Law as the basis of these sciences, but we do not expect the immutable Law to produce a photographic apparatus, or an electric train, without the intervention of a reasoning and selective power which specialises the fundamental general Law into particular uses. We do not look to the Law for those powers of reasoning and selection through which we make it work in all the highly complex ways of our ordinary commercial applications of it. We know better than that. We look to Personality for this. In our everyday pursuits we always act on the maxim that "Nature unaided fails" and that the infinite possibilities stored up in the Law can only be brought to light by a power of reasoning and selection working through the Law.
If the student will look at the Bible Promises in the light of the general principles, he will find that they are perfectly logical, whether from the metaphysical or from the scientific standpoint, and that their working is only from the same Law through which all scientific developments are made. If this be apprehended, it will be clear that the Word of Faith is not "trying to make ourselves believe what we know is not true", but, as St Paul puts it, it is "giving substance to things not yet seen" (Heb. 11:1, RV).