My Philosophy and My Religion

We have a duty moreover not only to ourselves, but to relative, friend and neighbor. Depression, gloom, despondency lead to pessimism, cynicism and weakness. It is then that failure is liable to creep in. We must be brave and carry our part with courage and good cheer straight through to the end.

To subscribe to, or to become victims of any custom or any type of thought, that in its train carries gloom or despondency, is to open the door to the entrance of that degree of failure that many times robs life of its best. There is too much to be done in the world, and life is too short to allow any of our energies to be crippled, or our store of courage and its corresponding good cheer, which in turn becomes courage‑bringing to others, to be depleted. This undoubtedly is what Jesus had in mind when He said: Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead. There are some things that we can leave with the Father. They are beyond our understanding now—sometime we will understand.

The only way to find the truth of anything is to go after it in a careful, methodical and determined way. I welcome the work and the purpose of such men as Sir William Barrett, Conan Doyle, Sir Oliver Lodge, who, with trained minds and splendid equipment, are seeking the facts that pertain to the life beyond. They and others, after many years of experience and investigation, are believing that we now have tangible evidence of the after life, and that it does not differ in its mode and its interests and its activities from the life here, as much as we ordinarily think, and also that as time passes we shall know still more.

In any case it is quite time that we begin to look upon the transition we call death, inasmuch as it is an integral part of life, in a more intelligent and self‑commanding and expectant manner. Such, indeed, was Whitman’s comprehension when he wrote:

To me, Jesus’ expression, The Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven, has a double or rather two‑fold meaning. Primarily it is the identifying of the life with the Divine, the God‑life within, whereby the Divine rule becomes the dominating motive and force in the life.

It is then, and as a concomitant, that one realizes the Divine purpose and plan, in evolving a finer and fairer life in the world, whereby the rule of love, which means sympathy, mutuality, co‑operation, becomes the dominating force in all human relations.

Men and women who realize their kinship with the Divine, realize in a peculiar way their kinship with their fellows; for they realize that it is the One Life that we are all partakers of—with them the law of mutuality becomes supreme. They know that no world condition that will answer to the phrase or the description—the Kingdom of Heaven—can become an actuality until this Divine Law becomes the controlling force in all human, in all world relations.

It was a great modern prophet who had such keen insight into the essentials, who had such almost superhuman discernment in separating the essential from the unessential, the true from the false, and whose spirit vibrated in such harmony with the truth of Jesus’ wonderful pronouncement—the world’s great Spiritual Emancipation Proclamation—Lincoln, who never allied himself with any religious organization, when asked the reason, made the reply: “Because I find difficulty in giving my assent, without mental reservation, to the complicated statements of Christian doctrine which constitute their articles of belief and confessions of faith.

I am pointing out these principles of the truly religious life, not because I think it is the duty of any man or woman to follow them. I think that no man or woman has any duty in connection with religion with anything that doesn’t appeal to him or her.

I am pointing out the fact that here is a life to be lived, that will bring inestimable gain to any man or woman who can accept it, love it, and who will live it. It was formulated primarily by One who knew life and its laws from A to Z, and who demonstrated the livableness of such a life, who realized and demonstrated the unique and helpful power that it brings in its train, and who taught that it is the life that all men can live and should live—and that if they lived it truly the same insights and powers would come to them as came to Him.

He raised life from its low, mean, pitiable and impotent state, and made it one of indescribable beauty and charm. He raised it from the earthly to the heavenly, from the purely human to the divine in the human, which He taught was the kingdom of heaven—God in man and man in God.

Not by fear, but by its very grandeur and beauty, it will draw thinking men to it. Vast numbers of men and women the world over, now free from the trammels of an enervating blind faith, and who realize that—“He who wishes to cling to the Old that ages not, must leave behind him the Old that ages,” and as the element of fear no longer holds with real men, they are sitting at His feet and are hearing and receiving His teachings in the simple direct manner in which He gave them, out on the hillside or by the lakeside, under those clear Judean skies so long ago. Jesus is coming into His own again, the same as for over two hundred years after His time, and with it is coming life and light and the joy of life, to great numbers of men and women in all lands and among all religions. Men are glimpsing the glory of the truth of the Christ, that when the mind is lifted up, the higher inner laws are revealed to it, and the body and the whole estate is lifted up.

One can’t be mentally or spiritually impoverished without its registering its effects upon the body, robbing it of its normal functioning and its elasticity, engendering in it many times abnormal and diseased conditions so that it becomes depleted and useless and falls by the wayside many times, long before its time.

Let a man know that the life that is his is the Divine life, that the Divine life cannot admit of inharmonies and disease, that it is true and perfect; let him know that the cells in the body are continually dying and being cast off, forming and reforming, and that the subconscious mind which builds for health or disease, is wonderfully exact in its workings, and that it takes its direction from the active thinking mind; let that mind then be the mind of Christ, the true image and manifestation of the Divine mind, and such a flood of energy and power will be sent through the body, that many now diseased and crippled, will leap in abounding health.

I have known in my own experience many such; you have known some. You may be such, or have the God‑given power of being such. When a man takes his pedigree direct from God, and not from Adam and the Adam errors of belief, he enables the truth to make him free.

Coincident with the knowledge of definite facts that we now have, there has been on the part of all men and women who think and who love truth, “a cleaning out of the mind of its useless store of ancestral inhibitions and inherited fallacies.” Jesus’ own truth is breaking through again and is animating the minds and through them the spirits of vast numbers of men and women all over the world.

There is a great spiritual movement, taking several different forms, that had its small beginnings some fifty years ago, that has already some millions of adherents, and that is growing rapidly, and now all over the world—it is surpassing in its growth any other established movements. It is because its adherents are getting to understand the laws underlying the powers and forces that pertain to the realm of the mind and spirit, which they are now applying to the uses and to the problems of their every‑day lives. They are no longer contented to be among those

They are going directly to the Master, they are catching His message, His spirit, His truth, and they are finding that His revelation is true. They are taking the step in evolution that an acceptance of His revelation and an embodying of it in their daily lives naturally and inevitably leads to.

The Kingdom of the Spirit they are finding, as the Master said, is like a merchant seeking goodly pearls and having found one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he bad and bought it. And again as He said, it is like the tiny mustard seed which though small at first grows into great proportions, so that it affords lodgment even for the fowls of the air. And again as He said, it is like leaven in that it permeates and raises to a higher and more usable level every phase and faculty of their being.

When the period of life is reached, differing somewhat in different people, when the body loses the freshness of youth, and the marks of approaching age make their appearance, there is nothing that will so counter‑balance the freshness that in time goes—and none escape it entirely—as the spirit that gives beauty to feature and to voice, and that gives not only beauty but even fascination to those features from which the bloom and the freshness of youth has gone. This is why many not so attractive in youth become positively beautiful and commanding in later life. The second half of life should be the better half.

To me there is nothing more beautiful in all the world than the face that habitually lights with a kindly smile whenever it meets, passes, or converses with another—the smile that is the natural spontaneous expression of a good mind and a kindly heart. What joy it gives through the years, and what joy it realizes for itself—not the fawning or the simpering kind; but the simple true expression of the kindly heart and mind.

It is the nearest to the realization and the manifestation of the Kingdom of Heaven probably, that there is on this earth. It gives added beauty to form and to feature as the years pass—compensation that infinitely outbalances any apparent losses; while the face that is devoid of it, in losing the form and the color of youth, takes on a barrenness that time but accentuates—and for it there are no compensations.

A sense of kinship with the Divine and living always from this Divine Center, gives to the life an indescribable attractiveness and charm and power—a sense of genuineness—that all people instinctively recognize, love, are drawn to, and are influenced by. It increases all life values for the one who has it many fold.