Chapter 10
Words, Constructive and Destructive
Our words do construct and destroy, and it was of their power that the Jehovah I Am said, “I make alive, and I kill.” All the structures which we attribute to natural growth are the product of thoughts and words. Without the Word was not anything made.”
Study of the power of words reveals that they are constructive or destructive, according to the character of the idea which they convey. All things are first ideas; these ideas take form in mind and afterward become objective. The One Mind is the realm of Absolute Ideas. Substance is an Absolute Idea, but in coming into visibility the idea has its first movement, which is mental or etheric.
Our physicists have long been considering the cause side of materiality. They have held all kinds of theories, only to cast them aside as untenable. They now recognize that there is a Universal Ether, which they have postulated as lying back of matter, and they say it is made up of ions of force. But they cannot describe the all-potential spiritual Substance in terms of matter. God cannot be described in material terms, and we find it true along all lines of spiritual knowing, that the intellect cannot grasp the unlimited. The mind must enter into the Absolute to understand the Absolute. When scientists try to describe the Universal Ether, some of their comparisons are almost absurd. Sir Oliver Lodge calculates that in each one fifteen-thousandth of a cubic inch of ether there must be the energy of a million horse power station working continuously for forty million years.
Physicists have generally ceased trying to picture ether in terms of matter, but rather are inclined to explain matter in terms of ether. They tell us about atoms, yet atoms are so small that they have never been seen by men. They know they exist, because they have evidence of something which must have a cause, and they call it ether. The Universal Ether, which physicists are seeing with their minds and trying to estimate with their five senses, is the thought-stuff of Divine Mind. It is the real Substance which the Word uses to make the universe.
If you want spiritual understanding, you will not find it by studying from the material viewpoint. To know why words are constructive or destructive, you must get an understanding of the living, intelligent all-pervading Substance permeating everything. You may think of every “one fifteen-thousandth of a cubic inch of ether as filled with a million horse power energy working continuously for forty million years,” but nothing in the material universe can give an idea of the force here waiting to be appropriated and put into expression.
In the understanding of omnipresent spiritual Substance, we can see how all the so-called miracles of Jesus took place. He entered into the consciousness of this thought-stuff, and out of it multiplied the loaves and fishes. No material limitations could bind him, because he knew what was back of “matter,” and he went in and out of closed doors as though they were not. He entered into the Universal Substance and spoke words corresponding to its character.
We fall short in speaking our true world into expression, because we speak negative words. In the One Mind all things exist in perfection, and every word we speak should be in acknowledgment of that perfection. Such words are constructive. When we speak of anything less than the perfect, our words fall short of the perfect standard in Divine Mind, and some destructive condition ensues.
Secretary Coburn of Kansas has raised his voice in protest against thoughtless talk about “drouth.” He says that the use of that word has cost Kansas millions of dollars. The secretary does not speak as a metaphysician; he speaks from observation. But we metaphysicians know the causes back of the effects he has observed. We have drouth and heat because we talk about them as real, and we make these conditions with our words. Let us stop talking about the heat and the dry weather, and be still in the one great harmony-giving Mind. We shall then be joined with the Law that makes the perfect world.
It is good for us to consider our words and take with us words and return unto the Lord. Then out of the Universal Substance we shall make a new world and a new body. Don’t wait for a great resurrection day to come in the future. Wake up now. Through meditation and prayer you come in touch with the One Substance, which is here as a great matrix. Out of it everything is formed, and from it, here upon this earth, you shall make the new heavens and the new earth.
The new race must have a new vocabulary, and all negative, untrue words must be eliminated. If God is love, there is no reality in hate. The word “hate” probably sends out the most destructive vibration of all words. It reaches the mind of him against whom it is directed, and comes back, still carrying destruction. Thus you get in yourself the effects of every word of hate you send out. Think of the power of words of love. They construct and sustain, because God, the Great Causing Mind, is Love.
