High Mysticism by Emma Curtis Hopkins
Chapter 3 — Forgiveness
When Aristides, wise Archon of Athens, was so ill that his physicians left him, he saw as in a half dream the goddess Minerva with her shield. She was to him in his dream even more beautiful than her Athenian statue by great Phideas. He called out to those about him to hear her words relating to honey from Mount Hythemus and the new diet he must observe. His family could not hear or see the goddess but they prepared the honey and arranged the diet exactly according to his report, and he soon recovered. Aristides declared that Aesculapius was with Minerva at the time, shedding healing breaths over all her balmy words.
From unprejudiced standpoint there does not seem to be any striking difference between the experience of the Archon of Athens attending to his two gods, and the Christians later on attending to their one God.
“When earthly helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, 0 remember me!”
Two gods with benignant smilings: one God with smiling benignance!
T hroughout all time there has been tacit understanding that when half gods go the gods arrive. Some let go of their half gods with tears and lamentings, bemoaning the departure of all earthly helpers and hitherto comfortings; and some take hold of unseen help with groanings and grim determinations, whereby they painfully earn their blessings, heroically forgetting, “Cast all your care . . .” “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
It was easy for Aristides wise Archon of Athens to let go his earthly helpers for they all forsook him and fled, and it was easy for him to receive healings from his gods for he was half asleep when they dropped their sweetly worded balsams on his head. It is the wisdom of Jesus that He enjoins being wide awake and easily letting go, and wide awake and easily catching on, to the sprinkling alkahests, all soundless nepenthe ever falling on all our heads: “Hurt not the oil of letting go; nor the wine of healing inspiration.”
Repent, for remission, receiving the Holy Ghost that maketh whole.
John the Revelator is not choosing haphazard the chalcedony stone as symbol of the third lesson of divine law. The chalcedony signifies awakening strength: “Awake, awake, put on strength, 0 arm of the Lord.” Look up to fields white for harvest; so shall old conditions dissolve; so shall the Holy Ghost arrive — white breath that maketh strengthening wholeness.
Mankind sticks to a triune of some kind. It is their mysterious instinct. Pythagoras called Three the number of Divine Law. The Jews have always regarded Three as a specially complete and mystic number, and we may note that this Study Three with its wide application, holds all the twelve lessons in its norm, or pattern, if we read its purport aright. It is but interpreting the story of three-faced Hecate to our own generation. Whatever way men regarded Hecate, that way or face would she show to them.
So also does God the Father Almighty, miracle-working Jehovah-Triumphant to the great prophets: God the Son Almighty, miracle-working Jehovah-Triumphant to Apostolic Christians: God the Holy Ghost Almighty, miracle-working Jehovah-Triumphant to the Apostles of the Mystical Dispensation just winging its white influence across our awakening planet.
So far, this third dispensation of the Triune God in the Universe has not shown forth the mighty miracles of the first or prophetic Dispensation; nor did the second or Apostolic Dispensation show itself equal in grandeur of performance to the first; but the halt in splendor of achievement has had more universal promise in all that has been done, as if a whole globe were being bathed in softly stealing Brahmic Breath where astonishing whirlwinds had once glued the world’s awe-struck attention.
When Moses, legislator of the Hebrew nation and founder of the Jewish religion, called to God, the Father Almighty, to divide the Red Sea before the two million Israelites fleeing from Egyptian bondage, he heard his God saying, “Wherefore criest thou unto Me? Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward: and lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea.”
When Joshua needed that the light of day should keep on while the Amorites were fighting his people, till his people should win in the battle being waged against them, “Then spake Joshua to the Lord … and he (commanded) in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon,” and the sun stood still till the Israelites had shown supernal fighting genius to the five kings of the Amorites with their combined armies.
When Elisha chose to open the eyes of his servant to see the Army of the Lord of Israel encamping in the mountain to defeat the army of the King of Syria, horses, chariots and solders, a great host, then his servant saw the Army of the Lord with their chariots of fire filling the mountain of Dothan, movelessly and soundlessly fighting for Israel till the Syrian hosts had no more power to hurt the army of Israel.
When Ezekiel, worshipper of the Father Almighty raised the dead, he raised a whole valley full.
When the Apostles, worshippers of Sonship Almighty, preached the Risen Christ Jesus, they raised dead Eutychus and cured many taken with palsy and lameness.
When worshippers of the Holy Ghost, whom the Father Almighty hath sent because of the name of the second dispensation, or the Jesus Christ Dispensation, do works, they do them on a small scale, but being determinedly related to Universal Spirit, or Brahmic Breath, which is Holy Ghost Influence they sweep the globe with inspiration. For now is come that Great Spirit, the wind in the wings of the messengers of Jehovah-Triumphant, and everywhere the sound as of a mighty wind from heaven.
Has it not been declared that a Breath of Brahma wafts through our common atmospheres, breathable by all who choose to inhale it as strengthening spirit?
“0 hither wafting breath of strength
In Brahmic ether’s keeping!
Man may wax stronger day to day
By the mystic way of reaping.”
The Breath of Brahma was what Job was volitionally inhaling till it healed his mind of grieving and his bones of soreness. Inspiration, or inbreathing of the air-encompassed Ghost, or heavenly Breath, is sure healing of the mind of man; sure transforming of his thinkings; sure healing of his body throughout all its flesh and bones; sure healing of his affairs also; but who is found indrawing winds his nostrils take no note of, gazing towards a hither-wafting white breath his outer eyes see not? But truly, such only are those revivingly healthy among us who have learned that the healing breath never faileth, changeth never, abideth forever in miracle- working competence exactly as Job reported: “The breath of the Almighty giveth me life.”
Why, 0 mankind, so decrepit, having power to partake of mystical renewal by quickening inspiration? “Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you” — quickening inspiration that waketh the hidden God-Seed; inspiration that cureth the mind of thinking; inspiration that draweth hitherward that Mind which no man as yet knoweth, the instantaneously working Ain Soph above thinking and above being: forgiving the mind of the world; hurrying along the promised speech that distills new health like morning dews.
With the sounding of the first angel, writes John the Revelator, there followed hail and fire, mingled with blood. The first angel is the first call to LOOK UP.
Obeying the call, the resistless rule of the skies with soft alkahests dissolves opposition. The strenuousness of the laborer and the anarchist lets go. The strain of human existence is hailed upon with blessings from above. A new fervour glows in the speech. The heart of man fires up with knowledge of a right, outshining the law of “Thou shalt not.” The sense of plenitude wakes the shout, “All hail sweet riches!” for the groan “I want!” This is forgiveness. It is the beauty given for ashes that Isaiah saw across the ages.
In everything Hezekiah, King of Judah did, he was prospered, because his heart was in it. But though Amaziah did the thing that was right, there was no enchantment in his deeds because his heart was not enlisted. The fire that John saw mingled with hail is the kindled heart.
And the blood that commingled was the new type of man that is even now among us, healing and protecting when he appears, as the young man in the furnace protected the three friends of the compassionate king and presented them to him unharmed.
And one-third of the trees and all the green grass are burnt up by the fire of the new heart and speech, continues John. All the competitives that constitute the ginger and glow of human encounter, flourishing like trees for strength, give way to the miracle that sets each man into his right place. The hastening periods of childhood, youth, old age, forego. The man standing in the fiery furnace knows nothing of the seasons of life that are like the grass. Obedience to the mandate, “Look unto Me,” introduces a new order.
“I will give power unto My two watchers,” was the promise John heard from above, meant for any two of us who now begin the high watch that wooeth the God power. “These are the two olive trees.” These are those enriched and set in authority from above, not by effort, not by worthiness, but by resistless grace falling over their high watch, as were Moses and Aaron of the upward- visioned Kohathites. “These are the two candlesticks,” priests taught, “from above,” speaking with new tongues, needing not that any man should teach them. These are the two olive branches, whose golden pipes send forth the golden oil of healing all unseen but resistless as the sky stones called healing hail; the golden oil of enwisdoming till kings know that which they have never read, and understand that which they have not been told; the golden oil of prospering till the poor lift up their heads with comfortings, wooed to comrade with those angels who minister cure to poverty. So shall the nations seek and find Ain Soph, the Great Countenance above thinking and above being.
With the sounding of the second angel, writes John, the Revelator, the sense of personal responsibility, of heavy obligation, rolls softly away. Look up whence the high laws hail, unburdening the tongue of talk of hardship. If the tongue is yet speaking of hardship its owner has not sensed the second angel’s message.
With the sounding of the third angel, said John the Revelator, the star called “Wormwood” — ware-mood, the mind-preserving principle — wraps the conscious mind in sane security. The mind is forgiven its suggestibility to foolishness and ignorance. It is gathered to unsuggestible Illumination, Jehovah-tsid-kenu. Hitherto all healing has been directed for the body’s benefit or for the lightening of hardship. Now it is that the mind no longer thinks, “I walk on the earth, or on the floor.” The mind is cured of such thinking. It gives way to the sight of that foundation under our feet that is God Eternal. The mind is cured of thinking, “I put my head on my pillow.” It gives way to seeing underneath the God arms everlasting. The mind no longer thinks “I breathe common atmospheres.” It gives way to glad discovery, “The Spirit of God is in my nostrils,” and “the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.”
We always become like those with whom we associate. Did not the observing Herbert Spencer conclude that man is more like the company he keeps than that from which he is descended? The youth, Evison, who associated with sellers of salves and plasters, never grew any eyeballs in his empty eye-sockets till he began to attend faith-cure meetings, where his attention was steadily urged toward the curing sunshine of the Vast, Vast Countenance ever beaming toward him. Iamblichus noted that certain men had taken on majesty and superhuman accomplishing powers from constant association with the powerful gods.
Associate with the alkahest and its remitting absoluteness is ours. Like Proculus at the king’s court we bring dissolvings to pain. We associate by converse. “He that communicateth with me strengtheneth,” saith the Lord of Strength. He that speaketh unto me wakeneth. He that toucheth me is cured. “To him that holdeth his conversation aright will I show salvation.”
The third star was Wormwood, or the tonic of divine contagion. “Repent, for the remission, and ye shall feel the contagion,” said Peter to the brethren. Repenting himself, he caught the curing contagions. “Now let signs and wonders be wrought!” he shouted. “By stretching forth thine hand, to heal, 0 God!” he said, as the curing flakes fell even upon his shadow.
“Hurt not the oil and the wine,” cried the angel of the third seal. Hurt not the doctrine of denial, the cathartic oil of unburdening recognition and its speech, as, “Facing Thee, there is neither sickness nor death on my pathway.” Hurt not the strengthening wine of affirmation, as, “there is none beside Thee. Thou hast forgiven my mind.”
“My bark is wafted from the strand
By breath divine.
And on the helm there rests a hand
Other than mine.”
“The third, the face of a lion,” writes the entranced Ezekiel. The lion is emblem of strength, sovereignty, and princely achievement. We are as strong, as sovereign, as able, as our backing, our consort, our aid-de- camp. “I can kill a thousand snakes! I can build a house!” shouts the tiny child clinging to his father’s hand. He feels the strength of his father. “By thee have I broken through a troop! And by my God have I leaped over a wall!” proclaims David, clinging to his Father’s hand. He feels the strength of his Father God. It has been prophesied that by associating with angels, man shall know new music, new architecture, new laws of life.
And the third stone in the foundation of character is chalcedony, further continues John the Revelator. The chalcedony is copper-emerald, strength, by associating with Strength; and sky-tinted opal, emblem of circumambient, quenchless life. Now have I bitten off a leaf from the tree of Immortality. Now have I partaken of Eternity’s reviving breath. Now am I wise with high inspiration.
Fortify thy power by the contagion of Power, preached Nahum. He was proclaiming contagion, or for-giveness, beginning at THE SELF, or Jerusalem, seven hundred years before the undestroyable Christ gave orders to declare strength for weakness and life for death; beginning each man with himself.
“Therefore I will look unto the Lord; — Rejoice not against me, 0 mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise.” This is Micah, stronger than himself by reason of association with Sovereignty.
As the needle is nerved with magnetic power by communing with the magnet, so are we nerved with God- power by converse with the I AM THAT I AM, Author of Omnipotence:
“Thy influential vigor doth reinspire this waiting frame.”
Thy lamp of hastening Omniscience shines newly on my liberated brain.
The Hindus drink always the cathartic oil of rejection. The Hebrews quaff deeply of the wines of acceptance. “Deity is best described by negations. Life itself is to be denied till we are independent of life. Substance is to be rejected, till we, like Nanak the guru, are all invisible; sensations are to be disregarded till we can eat live coals, or lie buried in the ground unheeding that we breathe not.” This is the religious exhibit of the Hindu.
“Preach the gospel, heal the sick, cast out demoniac dispositions, raise the dead. Welcome the contagion of All-Efficiency. Behold, God exalteth by his power; who teacheth like Him?” This is the religious exhibit of the Hebrew.
“Making the great surrender, Spirit Almighty acts in our behalf,” was the Christian discovery of the Spanish mystic Alvarez de Paz.
We can imbue with peace by recognizing the everpresence of everlasting Peace. We can separate ourselves unto any one force, or energy, or attribute, and by persevering attention to it, can become the embodiment of it. Did not Taglioni become the embodiment of rhythmic motion by practicing it? Did not Margaret of Paris become the embodiment of suffering by separating herself unto suffering? Did not Simon Magus imbue himself with the levitating principle emanating from the earth, by focussing all his attention to it till he was levitated thirty feet in the air?
Now is the time for us to choose the power, or force, or energy, we would embody in ourselves, and make essay at it till all its characteristics are ours, and the efficiency that lies in it is our efficiency. Is it not written, “the works that I do, he shall do also.”
“Sing and rejoice, 0 daughter of Zion! For lo, I come, and will dwell in the midst of thee, saith the Lord.” Let us choose to be identified with the Lord strong and mighty, with Him able to keep us from falling whose is the kingdom, the power, and the glory. For our contagion we will separate unto “the great, the mighty God, great in counsel and mighty to work.”
The Lord Unknowable All-Knowing, originates all knowing. The Intense, All-Power, is the Author of all activity. The Mystical Stillness wakes tongues. Is it not written, “I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay”? Was not Stephen charged with Spirit so that he wrought spiritual miracles? Did not Peter speak with resistless eloquence to the converting of three thousand people in one day? Thus have the real mystics of all time been tongues of fire, uncontrovertible, logicians, magazines of scholarship, and the most virile and masculine energies of the age they have invigorated.
Every objective to which we give our attention has its storage of possibilities ready to spring forth and proceed in extenso through its devotee. Tennyson chose himself as the objective to his inner eye, and made permutations and combinations of the stored vocabulary of “I, Alfred Tennyson,” till he was prince of song, so strong in his tones that all the world’s harsh criticisms could not drown his supremacy.
Mind follows the visional sense. Hannah’s grieved mind was suddenly transformed to joyous proclamations of the glory of living, and to praise of the prayer-answering God. But it had taken years of her obedience to the mandate of the for-giving Presence to have this sudden transubstantiation by contagion of Divinity; not by contagion of the levitating principle emanating from the earth, nor by contagion of the “I, Hannah, elder wife of Elkanah the Levite.”
Jahaziel had elected to identify himself with Miracle-Working Spirit, and at the battle with the Ammonites he proclaimed that the Jews need not try to defend themselves for his Lord would fight for them. Like Hannah, he had come to the day of fulfillment. Schopenhauer chose ascetic morality as the redeemer of the world. By this choice he finally struck the hard note by which his name is known: “God is the gigantic evil.” The poet-scholar Leopardi taught mankind that a pitiless nature has man at its mercy. Through this election his life, mind, and affairs were chased by poverty, despair and illness. These are all demonstrations on the blackboard of existence. They prove the transmuting energy resident in all objectives. They prove that what we now experience we need experience no longer. Our weakness waits transmuting for-giveness. Our ignorance stays with us till our vision toward the Author of Omniscience comes to us with our own right knowledge. Come, gather to Him ever near, who forgiveth us altogether, so that we find ourselves holding our conversation aright: “0 Thou hast for-given myself with Thyself!”
There are unspoken wisdoms awaiting our separation unto the Giver of Wisdom. There is imperturbable health awaiting our separation unto the Imperturbable Author of Health. There is authority over the transactions of daily encounter by separation unto the Unconditioned and Absolute. “No oppressor shall pass through them any more, for now have I seen with mine eyes,” declared Zechariah whose eyesight had been baptized from above. “With right glance and with right speech man superintendeth the animate and inanimate.” Here we have Hebrew Prophet and Parsee Sun-worshipper heading up with dominance by contagion with the Absolute. Is a man poor, he shall be poor no longer if he but separate himself unto the Owner, Chief Presence in the universe. Is he witless, let him lift his vision, and like Elihu the Buzite, he shall fetch great knowledge from afar. He shall breathe that
“Breath of heaven all truth-revealing,
Kindling in him life divine.”
We always become negative, soft, plastic, to that objective unto which we oftenest give our inner eye. “God maketh my heart soft,” said the devotee to God, Job, the patriarch of Uz. The most powerful of the Babylonian kings, living at the time when metaphysics was the chief study among philosophers, softened his brain by the practice of reasonings such as Parmenides was giving in the science of Ent. and Non Ent. “But at the end of the days I lifted up mine eyes unto heaven;” he said, “and mine understanding returned unto me — and at the same time my reason returned unto me; and for the glory of my kingdom mine honor and brightness returned unto me; and my counsellors and my lords sought unto me; and I was established in my kingdom.”
He does not state how long a time he had spent lifting up his eyes to the King of Kings, the Author of Right Judgment, before he was true exponent of high watch to the counsellors and lords of his realm. But he knew that Daniel had been for three and a half years establishing the Healing Name in Babylon for his sake, and that by finally becoming amenable to its baptism he had identified with Daniel’s King. “Now do I extol and honor the King of heaven, all whose ways are judgment; and those that walk in pride He is able to abase.” Thus was his proud mind for-given. And thus “Proclaiming Him King, we are happy in His kingdom,” promised the Sibyl Cumaean.
A sensitive photographic film steadily exposed to the night skies takes imprint of stars the telescope cannot make visible to the eye of man. So he who becomes sensitive through steadfast attention to the Wisdom-Countenance ever shining upon him knows laws which the books have not recorded. He shows forth activities of unhistoried aspect. “My servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high.” This is the result of attention to the High and Lofty One inhabiting Eternity, as revealed to the sensitive Isaiah.
To become sufficiently sensitive, negative, tender to an objective, is to be its servant, doing its will. “I came down from heaven not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me.” This was the secret of the heroism of the Redeemer. “Ye cannot be negative to two opposites at the same time,” was His science.
The triumphing I AM is not vitally promulgated by man, because man has been negative, sensitive, tender to the untriumphing opposite to the I AM. “I said, Behold Me, behold Me, . . . all the day . . . unto a rebellious people . . . that turned their back unto me and not their face.” These are the explanations of Isaiah and Jeremiah concerning all who are attentive toward the destructible unlikeness to that One ever offering joy for mourning and victory for defeat.
“Only Thou mayest heal me, Thou most Glorious Manthra Spenta.”
In the days when the proud opposites to the Great Fact have rule, shall the King of Kings be chosen — was Isaiah’s view of this moment. When “Labor omnia vincit” is the motto of men, “Labor not,” shall be the risen watchward, “Take no thought” shall be the law. In the days when hospitals are most beloved by reason of their agreement with the destructible opposite, the inhabitants shall stop saying, “I am sick,” and the angels shall save all feet from stumbling.
In the days when nations are leaning upon their armies, “Put up the sword” shall be obeyed. While prisons are yawning for criminals, “Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents” shall everywhere be declared true of all men, every eye on the uninjurable Soul Self fathered by Jehovah the Glorious.
While money is the substance most desired, for which kings and scholars are bartering their titles, the sensitive to divine Substance shall “cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed.” While scholarship is at its highest pitch of repute, men shall rise, taught of God the things that the schools discuss not. “The master and the scholar shall perish.” “In vocavi, et venit in me spiritus sapientia” shall be each man’s scholarship.
Neither shall the powers and capacities of mind be science. “The righteousness of the righteous shall not save him, nor the wickedness of the wicked destroy him,” touches a tonic chord of the miracle above thinking and its resultant conduct. God enthroned above the pairs of opposites is the bad man’s deliverer and the good man’s glorious liberty.
“Thou shalt be hid from the scourge of the (silent and audible) tongue,” strikes beyond the range of human effort. “The watchers for iniquity shall be cut off, that make a man an offender for a word,” shows a rule of relationship transcending criticism. “Take no thought.” “Lift up your eyes,” is Christian mysticism. “What I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch,” is Jesus Christ magism. “There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye bath not seen,” saith the Rewarder of the diligently watchful. The “fowl” is the looker for right words and their outcomes. The “vulture” is the searcher for sin and its consequences. This was the patience and the faith of the saints of old, the observers of badness and goodness, the strong believers in rewards and punishments, the unknowing of the law that “that thou seest, man, that too become thou must.”
Until the High Redeemer inhabiting Eternity is made the objective of the all-achieving visional sense, he that taketh the sword must perish by the sword, he that leadeth into captivity must be led captive, and no power can ward off the victim’s exactness of duplication, for all the time the mystic law is printing on life and mind and body the inner eye’s telltale intaglios.
The One served by inward beholding gives for our former nature Its own nature. Milton wrote that converse with angelic spirits etherealizes the body and turns it, by degrees, into Soul’s divine essence. Xavier of Navarre, the celebrated missionary, often seemed to be on fire during his prayers to the Supernal Presence. Today there are those who by contemplating the Healing God rather than their own pains, have had given for their diseased bodies, vigorously healthy ones; for their depressed minds, buoyancy of heart, thus bodily preaching for-giveness.
The thing we fear is the objective our inward beholding touches with contagion. The lightning, the drought, the miasma; loss, deprivation, sickness — they soon find lodgment, embodiment and expression. “Oh! Why will ye die?” cried the Hebrew prophets. Can ye not read the divine decree, “Look unto Me and be ye saved”?
There is a ground of ready affiliation in our constitution, in which the germs of contagion find strong root — God if we contagion God; misery if we contagion misery. Jesus of Nazareth had no consenting ground of affiliation with Satanic cowardice, feebleness, inefficiency. “Evil findeth nothing to tie to in me,” He said. His ground He had kept sensitive to the Ruler in the heavens and the earth, so that He could speak forth experiential evidence: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” “Where I am,” (0 mankind) , “there ye may be also.”
“Preach for-giveness,” He urged. We now know that “we cannot help preaching for-giveness,” was the secret salient of the urge. Preach to men to stand and feed in the strength of the Almighty. Preach to them to breathe in the Almighty; to wake the God-Seed by vision, by breath; for the inspiration of the Almighty waketh the understanding, stirreth the God. Agree with One who is Adversary to pain, misfortune, defeat. Agree with this Adversary quickly — now!
“Behold I am against thee,” saith the Highest Lord . . . I am against your feasts … even your solemn meetings.” This is Isaiah feeling horror as of a man dreaming, seeing as in a trance the false fodder of low viewing with which his beloved companions are feeding to their destruction. He senses the now well-known law that we feed on what we inwardly behold. He sees the saving Substance that his neighbors might feast upon by lifting up their eyes to the fields white for the harvest, but he cannot make them look and taste; like as in a Sibylline dream, he speaks for the waiting Substance. His neighbors know his vision is Truth, but they obey not. They were uninformed that long before Isaiah’s time, the Parsees had proclaimed that nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine diseases spring from low visioning; but that the most Glorious Highest being sought, the diseases should all fall away.
“The ransomed return with singing.” They reach joy, affiliating with the Author of joy. The taste of joy gives sense of success with a new leverage. The deaf man who spoke with passionate earnestness to the Presence of God in the universe, felt a great cleavage in his head, and blood flowed forth from his ears. The gates of his imprisoned hearing being opened, he shouted for joy. The kingdom of heaven cometh and findeth something to tie to in him who touches the God-estimates Scire meets scire — knowing meets knowing.
Honor and fortune and knowledge are forgiveness by recognition of the Glorious Presence of Victorious Divinity. Health and strength and joy and peace cooperate as with man, by upward visioning. Did not Dionysius the friend of Paul find new knowing by upward viewing toward the Author of knowing? New knowing starts with mystically sighting toward the Original Knower by whom our knowing roots are quickened. Let us know from our own base, and poverty and foolishness and evil have nothing to tie to. Thus do we find our original goods. So are we for-given. For, “Behold, God exalteth by his power; who teacheth like him?”
Paul called the day of joy the day of atonement. “We joy in God through Jesus Christ, by whom (accepting our sonship, as He declared) we have now received the atonement.” Jesus called it the day of for-giveness. To the man let down through the roof, sick with the palsy, He said, “For-given.” To the woman bruised of heart, He said, “For-given.” And thus were these both brought to conviction, not of sin, but of Sonship.
Agreement is harmony. And harmony with the Adversary to pain, ignorance, disorder, means success like the Adversary. “I will contend with them that contend with thee. He that striketh at thee striketh at Me. Thou art My servant, fear thou not. They that war against thee shall be as naught.” “0, I Thou, and Thou, I!”
High success denotes entire harmony, entire forgiveness. He that is entirely for-given speaks with resistless inspiration. He has the hestia vestia, the heavenly hearthfire. He is a world kindler. No opposition daunts him. Like the deformed French child who knew that the doctors in the hospital would cure her, in spite of their “knowing they could not,” till the unbelieving doctors did indeed cure her, so we, for-given, know that life, health and joy are eternally native to us all, and our positive fervours warm past all doubts. The third angel’s burning Lamp is the speech of the Imperturbable Knower. It is mind tonic, wormwood to the vitals, ware- mood, mind-preserving acquaintance with the presence of the Healing Christ.
“He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” He that letteth himself go to the Finished Fact, as the inconsequent needle yields to the magnet’s empowering, is a new character on the earth. By his utter meekness he is liberated from himself, and works the works of the Worker unto whom he has yielded himself.
The Sacred books, uttering the inspirations of the God-taught, the Theophoroi, lay great stress on voluntary surrender to the Divine Trend. “Put on humbleness .. meekness.” “Because thine heart was tender, and thou didst humble thyself before God . . . I will for-give .. . and heal all their land.” “Thou shalt walk prosperously because of meekness.” It was while Daniel was voluntarily casting himself down, to be taken possession of by the Saving Sovereignty in the Universe, that the angel touched him with heavenly inspiration and said, “0, Daniel! I am come to give thee skill and understanding. Stand thou upright on thy feet.”
We gladly offer the sum total of our unlikeness to the Almighty Giver. We gladly offer the initiation fee of our contrary tempers at the courts of the Healing God.
The third angel’s voice wakes the will to let go the last vestige of opposition to the Mighty Trend. What matter how unlike to our way is The Way our life seems to be moving? We take with us words and return, looking steadfastly unto the Great Mover. Is it not assured that when the Lord returns our returning, our mouth is filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing? How else than by being free inspiration can we warm the world into health? How else than by being God-glowing can we go into all the world preaching the gospel and raising the dead? How else than by High Association can we contagion free inspiration, the Holy Ghost influence that sweeps down all aftermaths of low visioning?
The Hindu sometimes touches the law hymned by the third angel:
“Bow down to Me, and thou shalt come even to Me . . . Take sanctuary with Me alone . . . I shall liberate thee from all sins by the resplendent Lamp of Wisdom.”
Milton immortalized his acquaintance with the third star’s supernal import:
“What is dark in me
Illumine. What is low raise and support,
That to the height of the great argument
I may assert Eternal providence,
And justify the ways of God to man.”
The all-conquering Jesus passed through the gates of voluntary lowliness, and taught us all that identifying worship, when it touches the conquering truth, has come up out of the baptismal font of humility. “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit, (of humility) and in (the bold words of) truth.” Now we are ready to cast ourselves and all our wills and demandings in lowly yielding up to Unseen High Sovereignty and His own Providence. Who is not glad to surrender his proud mind’s muddy wadies of foolishness, its dark pools of ignorance? — Here is my mind, I spread it out before Thee. Forgive Thou its foolishness and ignorance with Thy bright wisdom.
Here is my life impulsion, I offer it to Thee. Forgive Thou all its contrariness to Thee.
Here is my heart; it is Thine only. For-give Thou its dissatisfactions; for-give its restlessness. For-give its discouragements; for-give its elations. For-give its hopes and its fears; its loves and its hates.
Here is my body, I cast it down before Thee. For-give Thou its imperfections with Thy perfection.
For-give me altogether with Thyself. So only can I be the life and inspiration of the five bold words of Truth: Hymns to the Eternal — glowing Virgins with oil of healing and oil of illuminating in their everlasting lamps
- Thou art and there is none beside Thee, in Thine own Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Omniscience.
- I am Thine only and in Thee I live, move and have being.
- I am Thine own Substance, Power and Light, and I shed abroad wisdom, strength, holiness from Thee.
- Thou art now working through me to will and to do that which ought to be done by me.
- I am for-given and governed by Thee alone, and I cannot sin, I cannot suffer for sin, nor fear sin, sickness or death.
My soul, doing obeisance unto the Wonder of Thee, wakes again these hymns of the Morning Stars in praise of Thee.
High praise of Him: all For-giveness draws hither- ward the promised New Language; and brings into view “The New Race to be sent down from heaven” foreseen by enrapt Sibyls, keepers of the five hymns that should some time “sing-in” The Golden Age.
This Fourth Study has treatment quality for all who read it, even though they may not have heard its subject matter discussed orally. Practicing its lordly formulas wakes victorious energies.