Truth and life

Front matter

Glass Book

FRESENTKD BY

BY ALBERT C. GRIER

Contents

Pies INTRODUCTION by Albert C. Greer v

CHAPTEK

I TRUTH

Chapter I Truth

Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Trtrth, is come, He will guide you into all Truth. — John 16:13.

I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.—John 14:6.

There is nothing hid that shall not be revealed. — Matt. 10 :26.

The Eternal Quest. — Since man first began tq think, he has been organizing expeditions for the discovery of that which will yield him satisfaction. The hunt for the Czolden Fleece, the search for the Holy Grail, the quest for the Fountain of Youth, the expected coming of the Messiah, the eager longing for the Millennium; all these are expressions of an unceasing urge within him to obtain that which will satisfy his physical and spiritual needs, and fulfil his desire to comprehend life in all its mysteries. This is the Spirit in man of which the Almighty is the inspiration ; and it can never rest save in the attainment and expression of "The Truth."

Christianity gave a new impetus to this indefatigable spirit of investigation and discovery by the imperative assertion of its Founder: "Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free." It is therefore not only possible for us to find that for which we have always been seeking, but it is compulsory that we find it. "We are piqued to this end/' said Emerson.

We speak glibly of the knowledge of Truth; but Truth is the ultimate, illimitable, infinite. In that sense, no man can say that he knows the Truth. Yet in another and very real sense we do know the Truth when we have the vision to perceive a principle or demonstrate a law. It is not necessary to know all truths to know The Truth. We are, however, on the road to Truth when we have received the Spirit of Truth.

We are not on the way to The Truth if we seek the aid of material drugs for health ; or employ material facts for solving spiritual problems; or when we feel fear and menace in any thing ; or believe that accident or chance plays any part in our lives. These beliefs hamper us, they lead us astray and defeat demonstration of Truth. We keep in the right Way only when fear of lack, fear of disease, fear of old age and death find no place in our mentality. To stand fast in Truth is to stand with Christ in the resurrection. Since there is no possible way of becoming free save by knowing The Truth, it is essential for us to have a clear and distinct idea of what Truth is, in order to have a working basis for accomplishment.

Truth is the vision we perceive through soul insight, and its persistence is its most perfect assertion of itself. The ever-changing material conditions are but the passing beliefs in the race-thought about creation. Truth enables us to penetrate the mist of matter and find the idea. The truth of anything is the idea of it, and it is spiritual discernment only which enables us to perceive ideas. The work confronting us is the correction of our material misconceptions by this perception. The discovery that "all is Infinite Mind and Its Infinite manifestation/' is the Truth now accepted not only by metaphysical seers but by scientific thinkers also. It enables us to determine clearly that the spiritual world is the God Idea of creation, and the ^'material" but the misconception of immaturity in regard to it.

Accuracy of Truth. — The one truth about which we are all agreed is the truth of mathematics. No educated person would attempt to promote an argument on this science. The acceptance of it is our test for intelligence and education. No one can hope to be proficient in any science, art or craft without a definite understanding of mathematical principles. In physics, chemistry, architecture, music and business mathematics is essential to any progress.

Yet in and of itself mathematics has no existence. Its only basis is the Truth of the universe, the accuracy of the One Mind true and equal to itself everywhere. It is on this Truth that we base the relationship of Mind to Its ideas, and trace the relationship of idea to idea. When this Truth is apprehended in all its implications, religions will cease to be sectarian and local, for religion will then be accepted as the accurate perception, classification and demonstration of Truth established in the consciousness of man. Then will there be no more possibility for an argument about it than there is today about mathematics.

There is no evil in mathematics and there is none in Truth. Everything in mathematics is good and true; everything in Truth is as truly so. From the tiniest atom to the greatest sun mathematics reigns in undisturbable accuracy. In even a far more magnificent range Truth holds her spiritual dominion. Mathematics is not a thing to be merely believed in ; it is a thing that must be known, if we are to become efficient. Truth must be known if we are to become free.

Errors in our belief with regard to it in no way disturb the truth of mathematics; it can wait serenely until we see our mistakes. It existed at the beginning, it will be at the end. Truth has not been perplexed by all the persecutions of the various sects against each other. Truth is the eternal Mind of God; it can well aflford to wait in its infinite calm our acceptance of it. Our acceptance or our rejection of either mathematics or Truth affects only our individual success or freedom.

Mathematics has neither problems, failures, nor errors ; its principle meets every demand made upon it. Truth has stood through its eternity of past and will stand through its eternity of future, secure in its own perfection and its adequacy to meet every human need.

Mathematics neither accepts an excuse, nor yields to ignorance, nor pities immaturities, nor admits a failure.' We succeed or fail in proportion to our knowledge of it. Truth never abdicates its throne out of sympathy for our human frailties or weaknesses. Truth knows that its children have power to fulfil all of its requirements and to be free. Its sympathy is always with our strength and never with our infirmities.

Prayer. — The human idea of prayer is akin to that of the little girl who rushed excitedly to her mother with the plea, "Mother, please pray for Boston to be the capital of New Jersey." "Why?" was the puzzled query. "Because that is the way I have written it in my examination papers." Erring sense seeks to bend God to its petition, but "ye ask and receive not because ye ask amiss." True prayer is raising the consciousness into God through the correction of our misconception of God's undeviating Truth. Truth has amply supplied every need; it does not require petitioning. It needs only recognition to supply any demand. Truth is not something upon which to fashion a creed, but a something to be applied to every ill for its correction. It is the shortest line between two points, a definite rule for conduct and work, and the method by which to release spiritual power into the consciousness.

Jesus divided the human family into two great classes, the children of God and the children of the world; those who perceive Truth, and those who are still subject to material misconceptions. Finite sense can know nothing of the spiritual world; its horizon is limited to the material beliefs of the race. Its conclusions are not the result of Mind but of failure to perceive Mind's verities. Only that which reveals intelligent choice with regard to means of attainment can be called Mind. When working in Mind there is constant advancement. When our choice is the selection of a means through which advancement is impossible, we sin and progress is halted. This choice is not of Mind, but outside of its principles.

There being but One Mind, all that is, is in and of this Mind. Its innumerable ideas constitute its eternal activity as they unfold into consciousness. Man is spiritually in Mind in the same sense that he is physically in air. Air is the common commodity of the whole human family. Each member of the race has as much air as he has lung capacity to inhale. Mind is Truth and in the spiritual realm each has as much of the universal Truth as he is conscious of and can demonstrate intelligently and accurately.

Man's Security. — Truth being infinite it is superior to all mortal beliefs and able to destroy all ills. Man is the result of God's self -consciousness, and therefore God sees but the Truth of man. He sees in man His own absolute perfection. There can be no more a fallen man than a fallen God. Man is eternally placed in divine Mind, and has never been, nor can be other than as he is here. Man is God's perfect expression, his "Son," partaker and interpreter of omniscience and omnipotence.

The truth of man and the universe is the way God is thinking them. The only way anything can possibly be, must of necessity be the way it is in Truth. This is now recognized even by modern science, for the dictum of evolution is, "A thing always is what it will finally become,'' All men must ultimate in the perfect consciousness of what they are in God, for this is the only way they ever have been in Reality. This established Truth is the rock upon which man must base every premise, build every structure, demonstrate every problem. "He is the Rock, His work is perfect, for all His ways are judgment ; a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He."

This established creation is the "stone which the builders rejected. The same is become the head of the corner. Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder," said He who knew. So long as mortal sense misbuilds it must meet this fate. Creation is spiritual, and there is nothing that can produce discord or imperfection in the universe of God. Truth is spiritual perfection, and Truth's lovers have already proved that a knowledge of this, even in a small degree, will change the whole tenor* of their lives. Character is elevated and purified, bodies are healed, competency is developed, society IS improved. Progress in Truth will finally bring immortality to the consciousness of the race.

Truth is uncompromising, unyielding, established. Ideas are real and tangible to those who are able to look past the material beliefs which obscure consciousness. Truth demands absolute acceptance on our part and comes on no other terms than the autocratic government of every thought and act. He who does not build from the Rock finds his work spurious, and to sense becomes an impotent failure. Untrue thoughts and erroneous beliefs are counterfeits and hold their miscreator in their meshes. Truth yields neither to you nor me, neither to king nor potentate. Those who have not yielded to Truth's absolute dominion have found their kingdoms swept away and their work come to naught.

Spiritual creation is, nothing can be added to it, nothing can be taken from it. From everlasting to everlasting it holds its integrity, as immaculate as the perfect Mind which conceives it. It must be accepted and revealed in the body and work of man; for to this end is man born, "to bear witness unto the Truth.*' Truth eternally persists in its absolute perfection, the destroyer of all that is unlike itself. The perception of Truth eradicates the error; "forgives the sin" and restores to consciousness the soul in its perfection. Materiality and imperfection have no bases, they are apparent to finite sense alone.

The Invisible Kingdom. — "There is a kingdom on this earth though not of it; a kingdom of wider bounds than the earth ; wider than the sea and earth though they be rolled together as finest gold and spread with the beating of hammers. Its existence is a fact as our hearts are facts and we journey through it from birth to death without seeing it. Nor shall any man see it until he has seen his own soul, and in its dominion there is glory such as has not entered imagination, original, incomparable, impossible of increase.'' Thus writes the author of Ben Hur of his vision of Truth.

Imperishable Truth is always "a light shining in the darkness" of human limitation which will not, indeed cannot, comprehend it. The seers and prophets of the race who transcend finite sense, are those who proclaim Truth and who dispel the delusions of sense. The great vision of Christianity is dawning upon humanity two thousand years after its revelation. We are breaking through the imprisoning belief that man is subject to matter, and uncovering the Truth that sets us free.

The Eternal can be spoken of only in the present tense. Past and future refer to facts which change ; Truth is changeless Reality, the same yesterday, today and forever. He who perceives Truth has already died to finite sense, the only death there can possibly be in a realm of immortal Life. It is but the belief in materiality and separation which withholds Truth from the consciousness of the race. As the realm of Spirit becomes real through contemplation and prayer we lose the sense of separation and come into spiritual unity with God and man.

Of this realm of absolute perfection the authors of this book are aware through frequent experiences. They base their healing ministry entirely upon it. Having consciously touched this no joy is equal to the experience except the joy of imparting it to others. The triumph of principle is from this time the only end toward which it is possible to work. On this basis the authors of this book have founded their lives, and always endeavor to be "obedient unto the heavenly vision."

Healing, — All healing from sin and disease is the result of the conscious realization of this realm. From the moment God consciousness enters, sin and disease cease to be. Truth is the perfection of creation; sin and disease are distortions, the result of imperfect vision, the astigmatism of human ignorance. "On earth are the broken arcs, in heaven the perfect round," sings Robert Browning. Heaven is the consciousness of perfection, the insight into lo TRUTH AND LIFE

Truth; earth is the limitation of mortal belief. They who perceive Truth may be on earth but can never be of it, for man is in Heaven to the extent in which he perceives Truth.

"All knowledge is reminiscence," wrote Plato. Jesus is telling us the same essential Truth when he says that the Holy Spirit shall bring all things to our remembrance. When we perceive Truth we remember from the spiritual vision as we dis-member from mortal misconception. As soon as Truth is perceived, at the moment a correction from a material belief to the spiritual consciousness is made, the true result will appear, for there is no delay in Spirit. This has been proven over and over again through instantaneous healings, and answers to prayer in innumerable instances. If the healing is not accomplished, if the prayer is not answered, the change has not yet been made in consciousness, and the misconception is still held.

We can never know anything but Truth. It is impossible to know anything false, for there is nothing to know about it. A falsehood is failure to perceive the Truth, it is a misconception and misinterpretation of Truth. A falsehood therefore is nothing itself, but predicates or intimates something which we must investigate in order to find the truth about it. "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God." Credulity and faith are worlds apart.

The artist paints from a model. The model may be a tangible object or it may be one which he has in vision, but there can be no picture without the model. The race must awaken to the fact that there is a

TRUTH II

model world and its sole work is to reproduce it in consciousness. Man is a spiritual artist working out his salvation through the one medium the Creator employed in the creation of the universe, His Thought. Man is not the creator of anything, he is a being through which, and by which, creation is to be interpreted. Truth cannot be interpreted and represented until it is comprehended. Knowledge of its principles must precede all demonstration of it.

It was long believed that the earth was fiat. While under this misconception the race did not have the freedom of the globe, could not sail its ships about it, nor do that which it is now in a fair way to accomplish with its telephones, telegraphs and wireless, make good Puck's boast to "put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes."

As this knowledge of the earth gave us the freedom of its surface, so the truth about man and creation gives us the freedom of the spiritual realm and the consequent mastery of the so-called material earth. The Truth has broken our belief in the fixedness of the material and enabled us to see that all that is established is the perfection of Truth. It is the belief that materiality is real that constitutes the bondage of the race. To know the Truth that man and creation are spiritual is the privilege of the Christian believer; and through this knowledge he is enabled to rise from the tomb of false beliefs into the vital conviction of mastery inherent in his sonship to God.

To know the truth is to be restored to Mind and bring about the harmonious adjustments of all human affairs. Knowledge of mathematical principles enables us to make accurate computations, correcting all deviations from mathematical bases. Knowledge of the spiritual kingdom corrects the errors of finite sense and restores to us the peace of spiritual discernment.

The modern equivalent for "forgiveness of sin** is correction of error. Jesus cast out the falsities of human sense and brought Truth and immortality to light. "If I cast out devils (evils, errors, misconceptions) then the Kingdom of God is come unto you.** So long as we believe the material to be the reality, we cannot receive the Truth that eliminates the cause of all human ills. The one thing that is impossible is to believe a lie and the Truth at the same time.

Unchangeable Reality.— The Alpha and Omega are one in God consciousness. In the beginningless beginning, the eternal pronouncement of God on spiritual creation, "Behold it is very good,** holds within itself the endless end when all men, having risen above the delusion of a material creation, see the perfect kingdom as it always has been, is now and ever will be, in the consciousness of Him who is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent.

The central Truth of Christianity is the incarnation, "Christ in you the hope of glory.** Christ is man the divine ideal of Mind. Thus is bridged what had seemed an impassable gulf, between the finite and the Infinite, between the spiritual and so-called material. Here we find the relationship of God to man, and man to man. God is the Father and divine principle of man; man is the son and expression of God. To speak of God implies man, to speak of man infers God. Man is God's necessity even as God is man's necessity. Without man Gk)d life would be latent or unexpressed, without God man would have no life to express.

We discover the meaning of man only as we come to know God. As number is the basis of mathematics, as notes are the essentials of music, so man is in God and to God. Man, however, differs from notes and number in that he is a consciousness, an intelligent co-worker with God. As the Father hath life in himself (and consciousness of that life) so hath He given to the Son to have life in himself, (and discernment to become conscious of that life). Number, notes and man are eternal inherencies of their principles, their consequence and revealers and have no existence nor meaning apart from this.

The Rhythmic Universe. — Man has not invented number. He has discovered the mathematical accuracy of all creation, and number dawns through his consciousness to express the principle. Notes have been discovered in the principle of music, and named in order to make them comprehensible. Music, the harmonious rhythmic expression of life, is everywhere present, and is released into our consciousness through recurrent notes. Aristotle perceived that "the universe was created and is sustained by a musical law," and Herbert Spencer in his "First Principles'' gives an insight into this in the chapter, "The Rhythm of Motion."

Man has become conscious of himself rhythmically and has through this law of rhythm recorded in consciousness the wonders of the human body. The inhalation and exhalation of breathing, the diastole and systole rhythm of pulse and heart are records of the invasion of the harmonies of the spiritual world into the consciousness of man. We become more sensitized to the "music of the spheres'' as we| progress in Truth.

The work of man universal, like that of Jesus, is the revelation of the Father through the Son. Except as man reveals the Father his life has no meaning. Under mortal misconception man does not^ represent his true nature but persistently exemplifies the Preacher's verdict: "Lo, this have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions." Truth alone enables man to be truly representative of his spiritual nature, for he then has the model in vision. "The Son doeth nothing but what he seeth the Father do.''

God knows no man but his representative, the spiritual man. His communication in him is continuous revelation. He can never know "mortal" or "material" man, for there is nothing of him to know. The mortal is he who has been "conceived in iniquity and born in sin," a misconception of finite sense. He who has a true idea of man can never have a false conception of him. From beginning to end "mortal" man is nothing but a false conception about man. The earth was never flat, regardless of the error long held with regard to its surface. The music of the spheres knows no break in its rhythmic continuity no matter how great the discord apparent to the untrained sense of mortality. Mathematics knows no error. Inharmony and errors exist in sense concepts only, they are corrected when we lift consciousness to Truth.

Omnipresence, — Truth fills the universe as the waters fill the sea — "earth's crammed with heaven." In his essay on God, Calthorpe employs for an illustration an inch of space midway between Sirius and the sun. The scientist, he tells us, passes through his spectroscope heat waves, light waves, color waves of wonderful beauty and delicacy, deepening in brilliancy, each group passing through that inch at the same time, yet each maintaining its absolute independence. The power, the beauty, the love, the economy, the exactness, the fulness of God are registered in that inch. The principle of all that is, is registered in that inch, because the mind of God is indivisible and it is everywhere complete.

To fail to see the All everywhere present is no proof that it is not there. The failure proves merely the spiritual inexperience of the observer. He has failed to perceive the "fulness of him who fiUeth all with all." God is a perfect being, filling the universe with His perfect substance, in which His perfect ideas are held in eternal perfection. The student will find it much easier to locate himself in God, than to locate God in himself. Mind cannot be confined in anything, yet it manifests itself through all things. Man is absolutely subordinate and dependent upon God and this aspect enables us to yield ourselves to Him without reservation.

The great goal towards which the whole creation moves is perfection. When we perceive Truth, the task is imposed of making every thought conform to it by bringing "every thought into captivity to

Christ." As art is the elimination of non-essentials, so in Truth the first thing which we must do is to get rid of the vast accumulation of beliefs which have no bases in Truth. Then follows the rigid discipline of thought and act until brought into perfect conformity to the model of spiritual Reality. Only in this stronghold are we secure, and if we build our bodies, our houses, and our work upon this established Rock, the storms of mortality will beat upon them in vain; they cannot be destroyed for they are composed of the essence of the Eternal.

Spiritual Receptivity, — Education is the preparation we make in order to eradicate human misconceptions and make way for God's Truth. Beauty and harmony are the handmaidens of Truth, and he who would hold Truth must perceive that perfection alone is ultimate; he must train the eye to see, attune the ear to hear and open the soul to receive it. As we do this we cease to try by human effort to comprehend anything and we find the short way to all knowledge and accomplishment. The Spirit of Truth leads into all Truth as we yield to its guidance, and through it we find the real things of life which were hidden by sense illusions.

He who desires Truth must arise each morning into a clearer perception of it. He must win a fresh victory each day. Truth abides with no one who does not love and honor it by the use of all that he sees. The streams of Truth broaden and deepen as the way of consciousness is kept open, and it floods the one who keeps himself under the vision, and carries him out into the illimitable ocean of power.

Humility, patience, absolute integrity in all the transactions of life, conscientious effort to hold fast to the vision of Truth and translate it into thought, body and work must be the steadfast purpose of those who would progress. "He that endureth to the end shall be saved;*' and to the One who thus spake there was no end, save demonstration of "all Truth/' The secret of all great lives and accomplishment is to "live as seeing the invisible" Truth ; to perceive the ideas of Infinity and to wait, watch and work continuously in its light. This eventually results in the conviction of spiritual Reality and thus we become free citizens of an unlimited universe.

Every truth perceived sets us free to the extent that we accept it ; and progress demands that we use all the Truth we perceive. This does not mean that we should live continuously in a state of abstract mystic exaltation; but it does mean that we should, with balanced saneness, go through our daily duties perceiving a truer way of doing our work and gaining new inspiration for a larger and better expression of life. To know Truth begin to use it just where you are, on the problem that confronts you today. When we know Truth all time is concentrated in the now, all opportunity is here, for "Beloved, now are we sons of God."

Behind every mortal thought stands Truth, and he who sees is "a repairer of the breach." We leave a trail of benediction in our path as we live in the light of Truth, and over that trail the whole human race may pass from under serfdom to material beliefs into the large free life of the "grace and Truth" of the Spirit.

CHAPTER II GOD. We have felt the heart of the Silence

Throb with a soundless word;

And by the inward ear alone

The Spirit's voice we heard.

And the spoken word is written

On air, and wave and sod;

And the bending walls of sapphire

Blaze with the thought of God.

—Whittier, (Altered.)

Beauty through my senses stole,

I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

— Emerson,

This is life eternal, to know Thee the only true God. — Jesus.

The New Vision, — Many books have been written about God ; the subject can never be exhausted. The purpose of this book, however, is not to offer a philosophic dissertation about Him, but to clarify some misunderstood principles, and to afford the earnest student the aid by which he may be led into that unity with God which is his realization of the "life abundant.'' To know God, to comprehend life, to interpret spiritual realities is the destination of the race as a whole, and is the reason for the existence of each individual being.

In passing from the anthropomorphic or "unlimited monarch" misconception of Grod, to the insight

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GOD 19

of Him as Infinite Being holding the vast universe in His Consciousness, we have each felt as did Mary at the tomb : "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him/' Even as she spoke her risen and glorified Lord was standing beside her, and thus stands overshadowing us a Father who is infinitely nearer, "Closer than breathing, nearer than hands or feet,*' as infinitely higher than our former belief of Him as God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

Who is this Being? What is His nature? What is His relation to us ? Can we know Him as He is, in the same sense in which we know each other ?

The present writers answer this last question with a positive and unqualified affirmative. They know Him, and this not merely from what they have read in books, or from what preachers have taught them. The knowledge of God claimed by them has come from revelation, and the experience covering years of public ministry. God has been experienced. He has been tested by the acid test of life itself, and never has He been found wanting.