My Philosophy and My Religion

Before the close of this page I am going to make a statement that contains a confession; but I am not ashamed of it. I have been in a quandary as to how to begin and how to deal with this portion of this little volume—for to me Philosophy and Religion are so closely related that I at times scarcely know where the one ends and the other begins. My own point of view in connection with each sees such a slight difference between them, except in definitions. Philosophy— the tracing of effects from their cause; Religion—that which deals or has to do with man’s relations with a higher Power; the essence of religion—the consciousness of God in the soul of man. The essentials of my own philosophy are essentially the same. Here I stopped and seemed to be able to get no farther.

I waited patiently for several days. Several thoughts came as to direction or method of treatment, but no one seemed to predominate. “Oh, Christ within, direct and lead me,” I said— and dwelling earnestly on it in thought—I prayed. Then as a flash came this strong leading—Take your pencil and paper, leave all else behind, and find another spot for work. Seek the largest tree on the mountain side, and help will be there. I obeyed and immediately started, not knowing which direction to go at first, but believing that I would find the spot.

I finally reached it. Aglow with the quickened and deep‑breathing of the climbing, and a little warm, I lay down under the shade of the great tree with the wonderful valley landscape stretching out below me. In the far distance I could see the rows of a vineyard as they ran up and then disappeared beyond the crest of the hill. No sooner had I lain down than the voice said: “Change your place and look to the East—in the direction of the rising sun.” I obeyed and finding there the fallen trunk of a smaller tree, I half reclined with my back against it, with the thought of resting and remaining quiet for a few moments.

There came to my mind and seemed to keep corning this statement or, rather, quotation: In the beginning was the Word. I then recalled that in a little note or vest‑pocket book in which I sometimes jotted things down that I might want to look at again or keep for some future use, I had a thought or a sentence by that gifted seer, Emanuel Swedenborg, on the Word. Valuing him so highly, for truly he was one of the most remarkable and valuable men who has ever lived in the world—I felt drawn to know his thought.

The first thing in the little book that my eye fell upon was: “Behold, I send an angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee in the place which I have prepared.” This was followed by: “And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand and when ye turn to the left.” Following this on the same page was “I am strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.” The page concluded with “Rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him, and He shall give thee thy heart’s desire.”

I am giving these exactly as they came, because they all seem to have a relationship with what follows. On the opposite page, filling it, was a memorandum I had made but a few days before— to me a wonderful statement, and one evincing an unusual power of discernment and of statement. It was a statement by President Harding, his conception of prayer, as follows: “I believe in prayer. I believe in prayer in the closet, for one there faces God alone. I can understand how these prophets of old, in their anxiety, problems, perturbations and perplexities, found courage and strength when they gave their hearts to the ‘Great Omnipotence’ in prayer. The Great Omnipotence is Spirit, and is the Creative Principle of the universe. Consequently the response to prayer is the reaction of Spirit, and is the operation of a Natural Law.”

Then followed—“All good men are of one religion,” a statement by Emerson. Then the entry: Shakespeare’s statue, Leicester Square, London—“There is no darkness but ignorance.” I was then beginning to think that I had better give attention to the thing I had come for, when my eye could not get away from this couplet by Whitman, although I have used it already:

With still more patience, and still looking for the Swedenborg statement, there next fell within the vision of my eye that heart‑felt statement by Sidney Smith: “God might have made something better than the strawberry, but He never did.” I said: “Why didn’t God make something better than men?” And the voice said: “There are men and there are men. Follow the lead of the Christ’s mind and heart. Perfectly He understood life and perfectly He revealed it. There will no new revelation come to you men of earth until His revelation in its eternal content, freed from the encrustations of time, is fully understood and lived. The matchless beauty and power of the life He lived and revealed, lived from His divine center, and touched with the Divine fire, will reconstruct every life that builds upon the two‑fold foundation that He taught, and when sufficiently in evidence in individual lives it will reconstruct the world. Present it as you are led—and be brief. Much may be said about religion: He demonstrated religion.”

All life is the manifestation of the life of God—the same in all nature, in the animal, in the human, in angel and archangel, each in its own peculiar form—and that Life in each is pushing, evolving each to a continually higher form. And while man at his best is wonderful, it is idle for him to think that he is all there is. Every form that is a manifestation of life is dear and of consequence to the Divine mind and heart. To love all, reverence the life in all, protect and care for all, is the motto of the wise. The best friend of God is he who is not only a friend of man, but a friend of all nature, and of every living thing.

While writing this a little lizard has been my companion close beside me here on the trunk of the fallen tree where we both sit. The moment I sat down he came, and stays close beside me. The way he cocks his little head with those eyes that sparkle so when the sunlight glints them, makes me wonder whether he is curious to know what I am doing, and still more when I talk with him.

I love to have him here, and I love the confidence he seems to have in me, although he moves away a bit whenever I try to rub his head—but always back again. There is a comradeship between us. There is a bond—the bond of life, the One life. And as we sit here alone, amid the silence of the centuries, I beside and he upon the old fallen log, looking over my shoulder, the saying of the old Persian writer comes to mind: “He who sees God within himself, sees Him in everything.”

Perhaps the most remarkable thing that distinguished Jesus as a teacher of His time was the fact that He did not cite authority for His teaching, yet spoke always as one having authority. It was this latter characteristic that made Him so powerful both as a personality and as a teacher. The religious teaching of His time was always characterized by “Moses has said.” “The prophet hath said.” “It is written.” It was partly on this account that all vibrating and moving power had gone from religion, and with it had come a low ebb of life. He recognized the truths of the early teachers whom they cited, and through whose authority they claimed to speak; but the truths of His teachings were born of His own innate perceptions.

They were so marked and so startling at times, however, that although He was looked upon by all who knew and heard Him as a regular Jewish Rabbi, they nevertheless perceived a different type and tone In His teaching, and they felt it in His personality. Of humble parentage, whose parents they all knew, as well as His brothers and sisters,1 He nevertheless spoke as of Himself having authority.

They also began to realize in Him unusual powers, which they marveled at but could not understand. Things were done through His understanding of law which seemed to them as miracles. He was one of them, like unto them, yet they perceived He was different from them. When He said to them: “I am from above,” He did not mean that He had descended from above, but that He was cognizant of a higher consciousness, and it was His purpose to reveal this higher consciousness and its resultant higher life to them. He didn’t mean that He had come down from the heavens above, any more than when at the same time He said: “Ye are from below,” He meant that they had come up from out of the earth. He meant that their plane of consciousness and therefore of life was of a different, a lower state or order, but that an acceptance of the truth and the life that He taught would raise them up to that higher state.

He realized that a new step, a new stage in the evolution of life was due, and must be brought into life and action. He had respect both for their beliefs and their customs. He had respect for the Jewish law which was a part of their religious precepts and teaching. I am come not to destroy but to fulfil the law, He said. By fulfilling it He was to add to it something that was lacking, because it was but dimly and vaguely known.

From time to time various ones of the earlier prophets had divined it, but for a long period no prophet had arisen among them, and the living truth of the earlier prophets had become so encrusted with form and ceremony which had multiplied and grown to an almost infinite degree—so encrusted with “it has been said”—that the spirit had gone and but the shell remained.

There was no upspringing life in the thoughts, the lives, or the teachings of those who purported to be teachers and leaders of the people. A new stage however in man’s consciousness, unfoldment, and life was to begin, and Jesus perceiving it, came to bear witness of it to them, and through them to all the world. It was so great and of such consequence to their lives that it amounted literally to a new birth—“Marvel not when I say unto you ye must be born from above.”

The very opening of His ministry was: The kingdom of heaven is at hand. It became at once the central theme of His teachings, the one thing that He continually reiterated, and so thoroughly it filled His thoughts and His life and occupied His time and His efforts that compared to it one might almost say that He taught nothing else—or, rather, that anything else He taught was but an amplification of this one central theme. To establish the reign of God in the minds and hearts of men, that their lives might show forth the life and the things of God, was His great purpose.

He did this by revealing the most startling fact, that God, whom they worshipped as a power outside, was the power that was within them, and when they realized that God and the kingdom of God was within, their lives would then show forth the works of God. God was not to be worshipped as a person or as an image, for “God is spirit.” Exterior worship was to be replaced with prayer and communion, that their spirits might meet and become one with the Spirit within. Prayer was always to be prayer that would facilitate this—never in public or given to vain repetitions, but a withdrawing into the quiet of their own souls.

The Master repeatedly said that He did not come to destroy or do away with, but to fulfil the law. Were a specific statement even on His part necessary, in view of the reiteration of His one central revelation and theme, to point to us His own conception and mission, it is furnished by His memorable reply when He was teaching one day, His reply to the Lawyer, whose question was: “Master, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said unto him, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” How truly fundamental this becomes of Jesus’ purpose, mission, and teachings when coupled with the announcement: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.”

The first is the same as He repeated so many times in presenting His words of truth which were to win His hearers to His Way of Life. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you,” taking care that He made Himself clearly understood by saying: “Say not ‘Lo here’ and ‘Lo there,’ know ye not that the Kingdom of God is within you.”

The second is the same as He reiterated and amplified so often in many varied forms: “A new commandment give I you, that ye love one another, as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” And again: “If any man say, I love God and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen?” These are not secondary teachings on the part of Jesus, they are fundamental.

That it was a great principle of truth that was embodied in His expression “the kingdom of God,” the kingdom within, that the Master had uppermost in His mind and purpose, rather than the establishment of an organization, is shown by the fact that we have in the first three gospels alone an account of His use of this term over thirty times.

For the sinner the Judean Christ had infinite patience and infinite love. For the sinner as such He never had any condemnation, and His numerous parables indicate that His entire teaching was that this was likewise God’s attitude toward the sinner. His passion was to lead them to a knowledge of God who dwells within, and their fountain of life and light would then be opened up and would transform the life and lift it up, and lift it up to that God‑consciousness that He Himself realized and taught that it is the part of all men to realize.

He pleaded with them to leave the dead formulaism of their time, the ecclesiastical system from which all spirit and life had gone, and that stood as a distinct menace and hindrance, for that spirit of truth and righteousness which is the Divine Principle within, and which awaits recognition to bring it into activity, to lead, to mold, and to beautify the life. The mere observance of form and ceremony, ecclesiastical rites, the offering of sacrifices, was a distinct hindrance, He taught, for it placed the emphasis without, while the one thing and the only thing that did matter, because it opened up the springs of the inner life—the Kingdom of God—was within.