High Mysticism by Emma Curtis Hopkins
Chapter 4 — Faith
Every number held profound significance to the ancients. Number four held the fire of convincing energy. It was the Uriel Angel of divine telepathy. Beresford, the English writer, declared, that he caught belief in survival after death from the mass faith at a meeting of Spiritualists. He did not report that the sparkling up of the faith center in man is the waking of his hidden miracle-working genius; the great outfiguring of number four to Pythagoras, sign of the fertile square according to the Cabala, the touch of fourth dimensional strength, the change from Moses meek to Osarsiph bold according to Egyptian Hermetics.
The fourth stone symbolic of character according to St. John of the Revelation is emerald. It was once called smaragdos and held radiations for sharpening the memory, even to the recalling of our heavenly beginnings, making us mindful of “that country whence we came out,” as Paul wrote to the Hebrews, assuring them of it as a country to which we all may return.
“Not in entire forgetfulness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our Home.”
Everything about four was fourth dimensional to the wise men of old. Notice them telling how man is cornraded by angels from the city of God when he finds himself touching the fourth side of the city that lieth foursquare. Things have never satisfied his seat of sacred starvation; nor yet noble thoughts, high statements, even the highest; nor practice of ectoplasm and its astral shadows of departed friends. Only by laying hold of the High Adequate has man laid hold of that which satisfies his heart’s desire. Notice the wise men telling of Jacob by the Jabbok brook sensing the angel of God who called himself God, changing him from Jacob the frightened to Israel the fearless, and causing him to found a dynasty of kings ending in earth’s final King — The Nazarene Jesus!
The phoenix bird which fell into helpless ashes and rose into winged majesty was once the symbol of man’s helplessness in the face of death, rising into daring renewal above death by the sacred touch of heaven’s Uric! fire on his yearning heart’s despair. Not only did the phoenix signify survival after death but revival out of death, even as the King of Judah rose while yet Isaiah the mighty was laying the ban of death upon him.
As the mariner on the sea steers his ship’s course by a needle which points to a magnetic north, not to the north of polar bears and icebergs, so man is truly steering his hopes by an inner needle pointing to a country unseen from whence in time of danger or despair miraculous succor may swing toward him.
Something within us innately hopes great things from the self-existent kingdom to which King David turned crying, “Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he shall pluck my feet out of the net;” to which the sage of India gazes and is touched with long life because the kingdom is ageless.
David was rewarded for his bold insistence, his persistent high watch — “We went through fire and through water; but thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place,” he cried.
It was the business of the Levitical singers in David’s time and in Solomon’s to sing the ways of the kingdom unseen in its miraculous workings with this visible world and its people. “Thou shalt ride prosperously because of meekness,” they chanted to the high-pitched, rich-toned sackbut of many strings.
David had been meek even to sorrowing daily in his heart before the Lord of his hope who seemed sometimes to hide His face from him. Therefore was the promise fulfilled upon him, “Thou shalt ride prosperously because of meekness.” “I will sing unto the Lord because he hath dealt bountifully with me,” he triumphantly proclaimed.
There is a mystery about meekness, gentle receptivity, which even the merchants of Rome and Athens knew, as before the Christian era they bowed their heads before unseen Mercury the god of magistral to poverty. And as Hesiod the Greek taught, bowing his head to angels that they might sprinkle him with wisdom-glory or with gold, not according to his human will but according to their own heavenly decretals.
Sometimes we read that those astral pictures which Homer called shades, may meekly be yielded unto, but truly if there is presence of King of Kings and Lord of Lords with givings and workings supernal ready to let fall upon our human lot, why choose shades of the dead? “Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God,” had better be our starry choice on this our plain of Esdraelon.
So shall He give His angels mysterious ministerings in our behalf!
The Levitical singers of David’s time and of Solomon’s time sang that the daughter of Zion should be Uriel-fired with kingship. “Daughter” was the Levitical singers’ figurative word for the Most Meek among the people. Was not the daughter of the old Hebrew house the most meek member of the family? Was she not handed over to her husband as docile and adoring, as seeing in him “her lord, her governor, her friend?” Was it not recorded that her confidence in his greatness caused him to be known in the gates, when he did sit among the elders of the land? As lighted candle lights candle, so conviction fires conviction. Elisha was lowly in his conviction of Elijah’s Godlike greatness as head of the schools of the prophets of Jehovah in Gilgal and Jericho. So Elijah, showing forth that Godly majesty, touched Elisha’s meekly receptive being with conviction of competence, and he rose up head of the schools of the prophets of Jehovah in Gilgal and Jericho.
Long before the time of Elijah and Elisha it had been taught in mystic language that we rise up with that authority before which we have been meek. Was not Isaiah meek before the Lord of hosts till the Lord of hosts told him to command the Lord of hosts as an Obedient Servitor? Was not Jeremiah meek before the Ruler in the heavens and the earth till the Ruler in the heavens and the earth told him to show himself ruler over the nations and over the kingdoms?
Did not Jesus mean, “Have the Rulership of God Himself” when He told His disciples to have the faith of God? For is not faith rulership? Is not faith kingship, or confidence to command? Is not kingship always associated with confidence to command? “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”
Peter found by his own obedience to the bright angel who smote him on the side, saying, “Arise up quickly, gird thyself and bind on thy sandals . . . cast thy garments about thee and follow me,” that the bright angel was obedient to him, opening the barred gates and loosing the chains of the four quaternions of soldiers to whom he was bound. It is no wonder that Peter wrote it down for an eternal verity that angels, authorities and powers are subject to the hidden man of the heart; the waiting authority principle lingering in the being of every man, woman, child, on earth.
The mystery of obedience to authority as surely rising as authority is every instant manifest. Do we not have to obey the authority of the door knob before it works for us? Or have to obey the rigid law of our feet before they do what we wish of them? So the Mighty King we call God gives orders to which we must yield obedience before His sublime service in our behalf is sublimely manifest: “The Lord lifteth up the meek” — the gently receptive to burning God conviction, which is confidence to command, which is kingship ever waiting to find its meek sparkling tinder within us.
Was it not wonderful of the gentle Japanese to discover that if one had faith, which is confidence to command, no larger than the point of a needle, he could say to a dead sardine’s head, “Walk me over the water,” and it would obey? Was it not astonishing that Count Puysegur of Buzancy could rouse up confidence to command a strong tree to heal all who touched it, and it meekly did his bidding? Was it not mystic inspiration in Maxwell the Scotch metaphysician to find that he could rouse confidence to compel the secret Spirit of the universe to do blessed healing ministries for him?
Maxwell did not know that he was practicing inborn, native kingship by such bold commandings; neither did the Japanese, nor yet the hundreds of daring new missioners, who go about the world saying to the lame, “Walk!” and they walk. Or saying to the deaf, “Hear!” and they hear. But none of them can tell us like the Hebrew prophets and the masterful Nazarene the practice that rouses the living dominance called by Peter the hidden man of the heart, our secret Jehovah Nissi (Jehova my banner) .
The prophets and Jesus teach us that being insistent and firm with the Waiting Adequate we shall find the Waiting Adequate most willing and competent. “Is anything too hard for me?” He saith. “Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God.” “Lo, I am with you alway.” “For the Lord shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.” “Concerning the work of my hands command ye me.”
Note how universal God majesty awaits the rise of man majesty universal!
Joseph in the prison house of Pharaoh of Egypt was meek to the fulfillment of the prophecy that he should save the Jews from starvation. He stopped his own thinking for the Unseen Knower to strike the hour for divine wisdom to touch his brain with words not known on all the earth. So great Pharaoh set him over all the provinces of the realm and gave him the handling of all the gold and silver of the realm, and today every Jew on earth owes his life to meek Joseph rising to kingly authority by reason of being touched with sprinklings of gray matter from above till his speech did distill as the dew.
Napoleon was also an example of letting his own thoughts stop for the thoughts of those higher in authority to sift on his brain. Catching their dominance he proudly said, “The only difference between me and other men is that I have confidence to command.” It was not till he began to study the science of battles that he lost victorious confidence caught from Victorious Confidence. We find on looking over the people on this earth who have been baptized with originality that they have let the world’s thinkings alone, and even for no telling how long have stopped, perhaps unwittingly, their own thinking also, and so creative new knowledges have been free to touch them. Here we come upon the magic wisdom of Jesus of Nazareth: “Take no thought” — “In such an hour as ye think not.”
We even read how some clergymen admit catching their thoughts from the thoughts of their congregations. So they are not original in their instructions. The world now needs fresh news from Universal Wisdom. Who can stop studying Latin enclitics and ages-old vivisections long enough to bare his meekness to new distillations from Divine Beneficence, sparkling gray matter-drops charged with healings from on high? Has any heavenly distilling reached mankind from the Sultan Amurath’s striking off one hundred Persian heads that his physician Vesalius might watch the spasms in the muscles of the human neck? But note what the voice of inspiration declares to Amurath and Vesalius: He that taketh the sword must perish by the sword. He that leadeth into captivity must be led captive.
High faith is confidence to command the Working Executive, standing up in the universe to the point of hearing as good response as Jacob, forebear of royal Jesus, heard: “As a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.”
Or as John of the Christian Apocalypse heard, “And there shall be no more curse.” — Karma, consequence of past actions or thoughts.
Jesus discussed the mystery of forgiveness. He proved the mystery of bold use of the Working Executive facing us through all things, ever saying, as Iamblichus discovered, “Boldly tell Me what to do and when to act.”
When shall the fig tree, symbol of all flourishings, fruit for the one who discovers his own bold authority? Never! When shall the fever desist for such an one? Now!
To what was Joshua speaking when he stopped the sun and the moon in the midst of the heavens? To the Lord facing him, as we read in the book of Joshua, tenth chapter. To what are the little children of India speaking when the sticks and the stones with which they are playing do actually move here and there at their orders? To the same Lord facing them that faced Joshua the daring “I am captain!”
Why did not Bjerregaard go on with his discovery that “the earth is creating and destroying because it knows no better,” and boldly tell it better, as the Jewish Bible with its vigorous miracles offered him precedents?
“Prosper thou me!” commanded King David. “Prosperity is of thee.” “The silver and gold are thine.” “Riches and honor come of thee.”
Such truthful recognitions caused plenteousness of gold and silver to come to him exactly as such truthful recognitions would now cause plenteousness to come to any one of earth’s multitudinous sons of the Highest.
By this fourth lesson with its grand offerings, we see that Deity is no disciplinarian giving us hardships and refinements of deprivings, but a Beneficent Presence awaiting our use of everywhere-facing-Beneficence by bold insistence, like the “Glorify thou me” of Jesus; the “Prosper thou me” of David; the “Answer thou me” of Job; the “Stand thou still” of Joshua.
“Come boldly up,” said Paul. Why not come boldly up if “boldness hath genius, power, and magic in it?”
This One everywhere and through everything facing us is no “hound of heaven” hounding us to starvation, cold and death. Neither are we His hound dogs beaten into submission to His ceaseless disciplines. Let us take right view of Him: “Ask what ye will,” He saith. “What wilt thou?” He asketh. “Concerning the work of my hands, command ye me,” He urges. “Is anything too hard for me?” “I will work, and none shall hinder.”
When the Belgian writer tells us to be frank with the God Presence and tell Him we are dissatisfied with our lot, the Belgian writer does not seem to know such assurances multiply our dissatisfactions because they pick up the formulating substance charging the ethers and embody according to their recognitions. Tell him to speak boldly, looking into the face of the answering Substance, “Deliver Thou me from evil!” “Give me this day my super-substantial bread!” “Give me courage, confidence to insist! Bless me with life, wisdom, divine efficiency!”
Tell him this recognition picks up the formulating substance and translates it into the mystic’s fulfilled assurance, “So shall thy life renew; so shall inspiration teach thee; so shall thy affairs go newly right with thee.” We light our inner vision by exalting it. Lightened vision wakes all our faculties to sense the Supernal Good-Willing surrounding us, forever wooing our positive, “Give me for my weakness, strength to command Thee!”
Some things will never square right with man till he takes Deity at His word, “Command ye me.”
Stop talking about God and His idea man, and speak unto majestic Deity face to face! So shall majestic man arise, victoriously daring!
— b —
As Adam and Eve were not only individuals but perceptions, so are the angels of the Apocalypse not only winged messengers but high perceptions and their activities.
The Egyptian Magi changed the name of the neophyte at the fourth perception, because at this his nature changed. From being a meek listener he became a bold speaker; from being a timid follower he became a daring leader.
The fourth angel smites one side of the sun and on that side it is dark. So did the same angel smite Jacob and one side of him was withered, not for use but for super use. So did this mighty angel smite Peter in the prison, and the smitten side of him being now supernal perception and not common intelligence, even as angels of the Free Adequate, opened the bolted prison doors and undid the chains and manacles that human animosity had welded. The Roman soldiers guarding him, four quaternions strong were smitten, and the miracle proceeded onward uninterrupted.
The fourth perception, setting aside the common law, exposes the unmanageable fourth dimension in space, which makes locks and bars and lions’ teeth and adverse criticisms of no account.
Job the stricken was searching for help with his watch toward heaven, when suddenly he sensed the fourth dimension, and life for him became a track of victorious light to lighten all generations after him, Jacob sensed the presence of the angel of the miracle, the angel of the helping, and wrestled with the angel, enduring as seeing the invisible, and his name was changed to Israel. He was no longer Jacob the cringeling, but Israel the Prince whom God Himself served. To any daring wrestler with the ever present angel of the miracle any man may hear that Angel Servant responding, “Concerning the work of my hands, command ye me.” “As a prince thou hast power with God.”
At the fourth perception David found the same Servant: “Bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily,” he cried. “Thy gentleness hath made me great,” was his astonished acknowledgment.
At his fourth perception Isaiah implores all mankind to practice the formula of the fourth dimension, whether they themselves have been entranced by the fourth angel’s smiting or not. “Thus saith the Lord, Ask me of things to come, and concerning the work of my hands, command ye me.”
Jesus the Redeemer gave the formula of the fourth verbatim. It is the speech of the fundamental knower risen up out of the waters of humility. It is the speech of the hidden man of the heart, without age and of no nationality. It is the genius of Massini at seventy singing Gounod’s “Sanctus” to an enthralled congregation. It is the genius of Elman at seventeen drawing a magic bow across a magic instrument to enraptured throngs. How thirstily the people put their lips to the troughs where living waters flow! What hearts of love they lean close to fires celestial!
All the world travails for the fourth angel’s birthmark — the parting of its common mind for its uncircumscribed genius to act. “Who is this that cometh from Edom with dyed garments from Bozrah? . . . I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save.” I that have dyed my language in the word of the High Supernal. I that have dipped my will in the Heavenly Trend. I, smitten by the angel of the miracle and his delivering might. “Arise up, quickly!” the angel says. Now am I as Jacob, not for visible but mystical usefulness. Now am. I as Peter, free
Spirit.
A principle is a comprehensive law or doctrine from which others are derived. That is, obedience is vested in the Supreme I AM or there could be no obedience in the dog or horse. Authority is resident in the King of Kings or the General-in-Chief of an army could not command with success.
When Iamblichus of Chalcis found that the weather obeyed him, and eagles flew hither and yon at his insistence, he supposed there must be an order of obedient invisible powers in the universe, altogether at the bidding of man.
By reason of triumphs which certain men of old achieved after speaking with commanding determination
to their invisible gods, they sang:
“Cease your fretful prayers,
Your whinings, and your tame petitions;
The gods love courage armed with confidence,
And prayers fit to pull them down. Weak tears
They sit and smile at.”
Something concerning the mystery of man’s inborn authority has ever been the fourth theme of such as have consciously or unwittingly obeyed the Supreme Edict, “Look unto Me.” By snatches of what Luke the Apostle called “sunrisings from on high,” the illuminati of the ages have known that the will to command the Obedient Supreme Presence rises up after obedience to the will of the Supreme Presence.
“If man avoids regarding himself as king of the universe it is because he lacks courage to recover his titles thereto,” wrote one of the illuminati after having been by meekness dissolved into recognition of the Majesty of the Commanding Supreme, and felt its quickening stir as likeness triumphant in his own breast.
The law is plain enough. If that nature before which we have been negative, soft, meek, plastic, draws forth and stirs alive in us its own kind, it is not surprising that the meekest and lowliest of all men rose up with the bold proclamation: “All power is given unto me” — “I have overcome the world.” It is not surprising that His disciples, catching His assurance, found that satanic tempers fled at the sound of their bold commands, and the willing angel of the miracle stood by them to save them from prisons and swords.
“Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, kingship corneth in meekness.” This is Zechariah agreeing with Jesus across the gulf of centuries. The mystic law is one and its way is one as mathematics is one. Does the relation of the hypothenuse to its base and perpendicular ever alter? Pythagoras sacrificed an hundred oxen of rejoicing when he discovered that eternal relationship of the hypothenuse. Jesus gladly sacrificed Himself to call attention of mankind to the root of Divinity, the spark of identical substance with the Unconditioned Absolute inherent in them each and all.
Job’s saying that the root of the matter was in him had not sufficed to call the attention of men to their own Absoluteness. The prophet’s assurance that “He hath made of one blood (or root and stalk) all the nations,” had not given the serf and bond woman inkling enough of their right to dominion over that mysterious Servant- hood standing up in the universe.
As in mathematics the time came in with Pythagoras for knowing that the root of the sum of the squares of base and perpendicular was forever the diagonal, so in with Jesus came the time for showing the root of divine authority bone of bone in men forever, in their relation to the Supreme Good Will occupying Omnipresence:
“Thus saith the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker .. . concerning the work of my hands, command ye me.” (Isaiah 45)
Therefore, after this manner pray ye: Give me this day my super-substantial bread — bread for my eternally innate authority with the God that standeth in the congregation of the universe!
When Saint-Martin tells us that it is lack of courage that keeps us from acting with kingship, he does not tell us how to rouse that courage. When Jeremiah was shown that it was a sign of arrested development to tarry as a cringeling in the face of the waiting Good Will, he did not understand that he was to instruct all the Jews in rousing their courage to speak as lords of the Obedient God. He heard it as for himself only, “Say not, I am a child — See, I have set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms — to throw down, to build, and to plant.”
But Jesus, the Bloom in the Garden of Man, rising up out of authority-breeding lowliness, said, Speak like masters to the responsive stately God of Lazarus; to the stately responsive God of the man with the impotent arm; to the stately responsive God of the mountain; to the obedient responsive of the sycamine tree. After this manner speak ye: “Thy kingdom come! Thine is the Kingdom forever! Stretch forth thine hand! Make straight the path!” His God did not over-discipline man. His God awaited man’s bold insistence, “Make straight my path!”
This is the rise of the Hidden Man of Job, of Joshua, of Jacob — the great triumvirate of J’s on the commanding heights of courage to command the Willing Omnipotence ever whispering to all mankind, “Concerning the work of my hands, command ye me!”
Did not Job hear the Supreme Authority in heaven and earth speaking with sternness, “I will demand of thee and answer thou Me” — over and over, till the intone of it smote his root of divinity, and he turned with the same address, “I will demand of Thee, and answer Thou me!” And is it not recorded that the Lord was pleased with Job?
Was it not to the Lord fronting him through the sun and moon that Joshua spoke with bold commanding, “Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou Moon, in the valley of Ajalon! … So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. And there was no day like that before it or after it . . .” when Joshua spake unto the Lord. With the rise of his inborn root of authority spake he to the Willing Obedience facing him as the Omnipotent One!
And did not Jacob wrestle to give his hidden boldness dominion? “I will not let thee go except thou bless me!” And the yielding Angel of Victory did vouchsafe the blessing. “I have seen God face to face,” said the transmuted Jacob. I was afraid, but fear had no annulling strength against my vision of God.
Napoleon Bonaparte was docile and promptly obedient to his superior officers; watchful of their genius at commanding, till his latent generalship stirred and he turned on them all, head of the army of France.
Hannibal was from infancy meek and plastic before Hamilcar, General-in-Chief of the Carthagenian army. Every hate and every love of Hamilcar stood forth in Hannibal at its proper moment. Is it surprising that at twenty-eight he is head of the Carthagenian army like his father?
How docile was Joan of Arc to the wills of the angels with whom she had converse all her life, dauntlessly repeating their directions to the awe-struck generals, soldiers and statesmen of France, till she at the age of sixteen was tete d’armee.
We must choose well the objective before which our inner eye oftenest pauses, for if the objective has not commanding boldness, resistless authority as its savor, when the moment of identification transpires neither will there then be any commanding boldness, resistless authority rising up out of its sleeping place in us.
Gather a hint from the slow rising Moses, docile, teachable, tractable, before the tutors of princes in Heliopolis at a time when the tutors and priests of Heliopolis were famed for their learning and manners. Is it not written in secular history that Moses also was famed for his learning and manners? But at forty years of age he fled like a cringing Jacob at the threats of two Israelites. No confidence to command and be obeyed had leaped like a fountain of fire from its slumbering pit in him. How could it, if the tutors to whom he had been religiously attentive had never waked their own fearless dominion? Can a stream rise higher than its source?
Now, as an exile among the mountains of Midian, he has spent forty years humbling himself before the High Deliverer, the Noble Counsellor, the Almighty Champion, and though he is eighty years of age two million Israelites obey his lightest word of command. Notice the mathematical increase, afraid of two, dominant over two million! The Lord of Lords and Ruler in the Heavens and on the earth sends him forth Lawgiver, Governor, Mighty Champion, High Deliverer like Himself. He sends him forth with youth in his genius, the stamp of Fadelessness on his body.
“Here eyes do regard you
In Eternity’s stillness:
Choose well, your choice is
Brief and yet endless.”
“Let the Lord be thy confidence, he will not suffer- thy feet to be taken.” This is the principle of attention to the Highest Lord to the point of rising above prisons and lions’ jaws. This is the principle of making them of no effect. The lordship that causes the iron gates to open of their own accord, that rolls away the stones from the pathway, must hail from above the three dimensions.
Joan of Arc was left to be burnt at the stake at twenty years of age, because her vision had not sought higher than the faces of the flying messengers. Napoleon is in common exile at forty-seven, because he has never sent his vision higher than Emperors’ faces and heads of armies for its snatches of quickening dominion. Hannibal is in durance at sixty for the same reason. But Jacob and Elisha and Paul finish their course with the words of light still on their lips, and the crown of the conqueror still shining on their heads.
And the kings that shall arise after them shall be lords even over the Sabbath, or the stopping place of death. “There is no Sabbath keeping in the temple,” whispered the rabbis. The Lord of the temple is Lord. He says to the obedient Executive standing still and tall in the flourishing fig tree of fever or dying, “It is finished!” and nothing can resist the Lord’s command to the eternally present Obedient God.
The rise of boldness, authority, is the rise of inborn superiority to surrounding conditions. It is wresting the tongue from outward descriptions to conform to heavenly fact. Authoritative speech brushes aside the cobwebs of outward appearance. It is backed by the mystery of the conquering kingdom of the Inmost Actual.
When Solomon said, “The opening of my lips shall be right things,” he meant that he would speak forth from the hidden man, as free Spirit that knows nothing of defeat or poverty or sickness. By this speech he would lift his head above conditions. At a certain moment the hidden man of the heart, gifted with dominion, leaps like lightning to expose its magical independence of the length, breadth and thickness of matter, mind, sensations and their world maneuvers.
Does Habakkuk say that he yields to grief when the fig trees blossom no longer in Judah? “Although the fig trees shall not give blossom — the labor of the olive shall fail — yet will I speak rejoicings — my feet shall walk on high places — let the chief singers chant with me!”
It is the failure to stand by the things of Almighty Spirit, to the leap of authority, that accounts for the seemingly unmanageable misfortunes of aspiring men in all ages. They have supposed, in unguarded moments, that the yielding they must make was to the overbearing three dimensionals of misfortune, old age and dying.
Let us heed the voice of inspiration. That yielding which the sons of earth are dimly tending to make, is not to the three dimensions but to the God law that works above them. Although now, apparently, by my past downward viewing I have walled myself into feebleness, sickness, defeat, yet, speaking boldly from my bright secret Self, I am Strength itself — I am flawless Confidence, I am Master of the willing God of my universe. This is the “opening of the lips with right things,” and all the divine forces stand ready to minister to my leaping Word.
As the young eagle presses his leathery joints against the cracking she, all nature waiting in mute sympathy, expecting to be governed by his new born demands, so the Still God of the universe waits to move through all visible and invisible items to minister in willing docility to my undiverted high confidence.
Although “the flocks shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls; yet will I joy in the God of my salvation,” still forever we hear the voice of the poverty-surrounded Habakkuk singing through the night watches, our steadfast example through the ages.
The meekness of the mind, the will, the heart, opening to the Healing Good, is moving aside for a lordship not of the flesh to act. “Watch therefore; for ye know not what hour” your lordship rises.
“As when by drastic lift
Of pent volcanic fires,
The dripping form of a new
Island springs to meet the airs,
So from our deeps we rise.”
“Now will I rise, saith the Lord; . . . now will I lift up myself.” “At the lifting up of thyself the nations were scattered.”
It is the rise of the Divine Will to see, when the blind beggar throws aside his ragged garments and runs to the waiting Jesus. It is the rise of its pent up fragrance when the tightly closed petals of the rose fall back and the hidden splendors of color and perfume face the sun, uncramped forever.
“Dost thou ask what Christianity is?” says the Mohammedan Sufi, forgetful of creed and country: “I shall tell it thee: It digs up thine own ego, and carries it up to God.”
It is the rise of the divine ego that makes a man victoriously bold. “Come boldly unto the throne,” said Paul. “Boldness bath genius, power, and magic in it; what you can do or dream you can, begin it. Therefore be bold!” Persist like Jacob.
Though my low views have sent me loss of friends, pain, humiliation, yet truly am I strong son of God, with dominion in all my vital sap. I am at my roots greater than my environments and the shadows of hardship with which by turning from the Highest I have darkened my path! And Omnipotence stands before me and behind me, at my right and at my left, above me and below me, to serve my rising commandings, as He Himself bath voiced by priests and prophets, and the young eagle’s springing.
So we are to look upon the Man who threw aside the wrappings of the grave, the stone-sealed tomb and the soldiers’ swords, bursting their three dimensional bindings with risen divinity, as law for the whole of us, world without end.
After this commanding manner speak ye: Let me not turn aside from facing Thee! Deliver Thou me from evil. Thou art empowering Obedience. I owe Thee bold command, 0 Thou Owner of all the kingdoms!
There is a noble triumvirate of Us on the self-authorizing rock of conquering confidence: David, Daniel, Darius — “Show me a token for good, that they which hate me may see it” — “Let my Lord speak; for thou hast strengthened me.” “Thy God whom thou servest, continually, he will deliver thee.” They show how at the first upspringing of this confidence, this bold certainty, the God in the universe serves promptly. The symbol of this upspring is the emerald stone; stone significant of walking free from common law, unified with the miraculous, where he that would hinder thee cannot discover thee.
This is the science of high visioning — of looking unto the Vast Vast Countenance with healing of our tardy recognition of our own inborn kingship as its fourth gift.
Is not faith the gift of God, according to Scriptural instruction? Is not faith the confidence of things chosen according to the same high information? And does not masterfulness rise with confidence? And are we not told to have the faith which is the masterfulness of God himself? “Have the faith of God,” said Jesus.
“Thou hast a strength of empire fixed.”
The exaltation of lifting up of the vision is “Fear of the Lord.” “Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear,” preached Peter. It is written that the fear of the Lord is the instruction in wisdom. It is written that it is the beginning of wisdom, or light. If thine eye seek the Lord only, thy whole body shall be full of wisdom. If thine eye seek the Lord only, He will fulfill thy desire. If thine eye seek the Lord only, He will be thy strong confidence. If thine eye choose the High Deliverer, thy dominion shall rise up.
Thus have the inspired among men written in their own risen moments, always showing by their instructions that their risen kingship stirred forth from the bed of lowly-heartedness. And always lowly-heartedness before Supreme Majesty, else how should kingship rise with its sceptre? “To this man will I look, even to him that .. . trembleth at my word,” saith the Supreme Lord.
Jeremiah trembled at sight of the danger streak in the Jews’ sum total of character. The wicked and foolish trait deplored by all the Jewish wise men had glued Jeremiah’s unmitigated attention. Out of the molten depths of his anguish he forged the prophecy of doom in which that trait would lawfully ultimate. It has taken centuries on centuries for the Jews to labour out from under the black bar of Jeremiah’s decree:
“Your inheritance shall be turned to strangers,
God is wroth against you, 0 people of Zion!”
Jeremiah sometimes forgot the sin streak of the Jews, and looking above them saw them above themselves, for seconds of time, as the High God saw them:
“In those days shall Judah be saved. . . for thus saith the Lord; David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne. . .”
Note that Jeremiah prophesied coming greatness and glory while his vision was toward the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity, who cannot Himself look upon evil. Seeing sometimes as God sees he sensed the liberation of the Jews from the stream of their forefathers’ sins, but never long enough to sense their right to their present Victorious Sonship to their Heavenly Father.
Jesus the star out of Jacob, bright with the morning of the liberation, told them that no man upon the earth was their father; one Only was forever the Father of all, even God. He dipped his speech in the truth of high birth and victorious life. “Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents” — “The flesh profiteth nothing” — “And they shall see His face — And there shall be no night” — “Go ye, and make disciples of all nations.”
He taught that he that is steadfast unto the day of believing, commanding confidence, faith, shall be saved from the law of cause and effect, the karma of past vision and thought. For though foxes have holes of resting, and birds of the air have places for their pause, the risen soul belongeth not to their order. There is no set outcome to the vision toward the Infinite. Though “envy is rottenness of the bones,” the loss of envy has no stopping place of freedom. Before the Son of Buoyancy the doors are all open. Though “the hypocrite’s hope shall perish,” forever, in some particular disappointment, the loss of hypocrisy has no limit to its good and perfect gifts from above.
The great aphorisms of men wrought out from looking away from the Highest, cease from being true, but the high truths that belong to the Vision above the aphorisms of downward visioning cannot cease. All the aphorisms of men are like unto “no royal road to learning,” but according to the lore and law of divine mysticism, the road to the learning that falls on the face of the upward watcher is royal. The upward watcher knows things which before he knew not, and which neither teachers nor books have mentioned.
The downward watcher wades through seas of trouble and is chided for not having faith. How can he have faith, the substance of things hoped for, when it is the fourth smite from above, reaching down over his own isolated vision to the roots of his own being, and rousing his own untaught spark of authority over an undescribable Almighty Executive?
When the spark of faith like lightning for splendor spoke from the masterful lips of the Unkillable Redeemer, the quickening Mystery back of the tomb and the soldiers’ swords flung them all aside for His free feet to go into Galilee, where the eyes of five hundred might see Him alive and not dead.
Let us write it with a pen of light dipped in the fountain of everlasting truth, that we have found a new Servant — The Able-to-do all things. “Is there anything too hard for me?” He saith. “Before the day was I am he, and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. Concerning the work of my hands, command ye me.” “Kings exercise lordship,” said Jesus. How shall one be king except his kingship be roused? And true kingship, one ray of which is as strong as the decree of Darius concerning the lions, comes from above: “By me kings reign,” saith the Great Voice that John turned to see. If lions do not stand back, and warrings do not cease, and diseases do not retire, the true kingship is not among us. Only its crude symbol, working through the heavy machinery of army and navy, and jailer and hospital faces us.
Then the disciples asked Him to increase their faith. But He answered them nothing. For faith, which is kingship exercising to call the God of Lazarus to come forth, and the God of the withered arm to appear, is the deepest secret of all the deep secrets of the Magia Jesu Christi.
Seeing then that after speaking with commanding earnestness to Unseeable Majesty He made insanity and poverty drop their grip, they said, “Lord, teach us also to pray.” So He taught them to speak firmly and sternly to the Great Servant.
He that is greatest among you, let Him be your servant. He that is greatest among us through all eternity is the Lord Strong and Mighty. None other is greatest. Your brains do not make your inborn Self greater than Self of your serf; your money cannot make you greater than the pauper; for God is no respecter of persons, and He surely hath made of one blood all the nations. Only One among us is greatest. Our Father is He — with name unspeakable on the lips of the downward watcher. His is the kingdom ready to show its finished presence, His is the will to command and the will to obey, identical with the inborn root of obedience and authority inherent in man, the highest God and inmost God being one God.
He feeds with super-substantial bread all who rise up like Marcella to demand it. He rouses the payment of the debt of confidence to command owing unto Him since ever the world caught us in its wheel. He delivers us at our bold command. He prevents our speech when it chooses the path of disease in description of evil. And this is His way and His glory, though you believe it not and take not hold of this key to His kingdom. “He shall feed thee on the Heights of Confidence,” prophesied the exiled Ezekiel, writing by the banks of the Chebar.
The speech of the Lord’s Formula being understood as the word of command, acts like nutriment to the hidden Jehovah nature. It is that feeding on strength which Micah was exalted to foreknow: “Man shall feed in the strength of the Lord.” It is the end of that feeding on descriptions of goodness and badness, poverty and riches, the pairs of opposites, which Solomon noted as the foolishness that only fools feed upon.
As the savage can be taught mathematics and become proficient therein, centuries before he could evolve mathematics by himself, so are we taught the obedience of the Good Will fronting us by the gold formula of the Prayer of our Lordship long before we could have formulated it. “I know that his commandment (or the commandment of Him) , is life everlasting,” said the Messiah. “Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies,” cried the glad psalmist. For when I demanded that Thou “bow down thine ear to me (to) deliver me speedily, and be my strong rock,” then “thy gentleness made me great.”
“This is the whole duty of man,” said Solomon in one of his moments of speaking above his mind, “Fear God, and keep his commandments.”
“God manifests his word according to the commandment of God,” wrote John the lover. “The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes,” wrote one who had touched kingship by watching toward the high I AM who makes kings.
At the Waters of Lourdes, some patients are taught to repeat the great formula of the hidden Lord in man, called the Lord’s Prayer, fifteen times while the curing waters are being tasted. Has anybody explained to them that the waters of tribulation begin to subside for him who touches the fifteenth cubit above them? Has anybody explained that Paracelsus the miraculous healer of Zurich, caught all his flashes of genius from much repetition of the seven stately commands of Matthew’s Lord’s Prayer, or prayer of our own lordship?
- Hallowed be Thy name.
- Thy kingdom come.
- Thy will be done.
- Give me this day my super-substantial bread.
- Forgive my debt of confidence to command Thee.
- Let me not into temptation.
- Deliver me from evil.
Who is not glad to utter these words of insistence, that he also may be healed of his cringing to old age, and death, disease, and poverty?
The fourth angel being caused to fly swiftly, smiteth all of them of the mystic formula. They are those that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, as John on Patmos foresaw. The fourth angel is the bright angel smiting Jacob, smiting Peter, smiting Job “on the left hand where he doth work.”
Look unto Him of power to stablish according to the mystery which was kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for the obedience unto faith, as did Paul, writing to the Romans with the pen of that same Victorious Confidence, even to the quickening of dead Eutychus.
Faith is man’s El Shaddai, his risen recognition of himself as Jehovah Soul, seeing the mystery of Divine Obedience everywhere awaiting the kingly rise of his heaven-planted boldness to command, “I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me!” “Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.”
“A Shape looked up from eating herb and grain
It chanced to see the stars, and with that look
Came Wonderment, and Longing in its train.
The food untasted lay. A beating pain
Smote at its forehead, but it looked again
And yet again. And then it thought.
Lo! Man stood upright as the stars did wane!”