Why?

Why?

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The following is a letter written by H. Emilie Cady to Lowell Fillmore. In this letter Doctor Cady says many helpful and inspiring things that we believe will be welcomed by lovers of her book How I Used Truth.

Dear Mr. Fillmore:

When I sent you, a few weeks ago, a copy of the little pamphlet All-Sufficiency in All Things, which you said had been surreptitiously printed by an anonymous publisher, you wondered why I felt so keenly about the fact that the article had been broken up, put under different headings, and so forth. Let me tell you why.

Almost every one of the simply written articles in How I Used Truth was born out of the travail of my soul after I had been weeks, months, sometimes years, trying by affirmations, by claiming the promises of Jesus, and by otherwise faithfully using all of the knowledge of Truth that I then possessed to secure deliverance for myself or others from some distressing bondage that thus far had defied all human help.

One of these cases was that of my own old father, who, though perfectly innocent, had been kept in exile for five years; put there by the wicked machinations of another man. No process of law that I had invoked, no human help, not even the prayers

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that I had offered had seemed to avail for his deliverance. One day while sitting alone in my room, my hands busy with other things, my heart cried out, "O God, stretch forth Thy hand and deliver!" Instantly the answer came "I have no hands but human hands. Your hand is my hand; stretch it forth spiritually and give whatsoever you will to whomsoever you will, and I will establish it."

Unquestioningly I obeyed. From that moment, without any further external help or striving, the way of his release was opened ahead of us more rapidly almost than we could step into it. Within a few days my dear father came home a free man, justified, exonerated, both publicly and privately, beyond anything we could have asked or thought.* Then I wrote God's Hand.

*The case was written up by all the papers in the country in which my father resided as well as in the New York Sun. His innocence was clearly established. Once again he sat happily under the trees in his own dooryard and received congratulations. Delegation after delegation came from miles and miles around; friends who had known him from childhood came to assure him that his long life of uprightness had, in their minds, never been questioned. He was seventy-five years of age and, being an honest man, had felt the disgrace deeply. These stanch friends had been unable to help until God moved. The faith of many was renewed by his exoneration.

Another case was that of a dear young friend who had been placed in my care. He was just entering

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on a life of drinking and dissipation. There were weeks of awful anxiety, as I saw him drinking day by day, before I reached the place where I could "loose him, and let him go." When I did reach that place and stood there steadfastly (in spite of appearances), it required only a few hours to see him so fully healed that although forty years have passed, he has yet to touch a drop of liquor or indulge in any form of dissipation since that time. The lesson Loose Him and Let Him Go was then written.

Then came the question of money supply. I had a good profession with plenty of patients paying their bills monthly. But there were also other people coming to me daily for help, people whose visible means of support were gone. These cases of lack, as they presented themselves to me, were like cases of gnawing cancer or painful rheumatism. Therefore, there must be a way out through Truth, and i must find it. As always, instead of rushing to others for help in these tight places, I stayed at home within my own soul and asked God to show me the way. He did. He gave me the clear vision of Himself as All-Sufffciency in All Things; and then He said: "Now prove it, so that you can be of real help to the hundreds who do not have a profession or business on which to depend." From that day on, no ministry or work of any kind was ever done by

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me for "pay." No monthly bills were sent, no office charges made. I saw plainly that I must be working as God works, without expectation or thought of return. Free gift.

For more than two years I worked at this problem, never letting a human being know what I was trying to prove, for had He not said to me, "Prove me now herewith . . . if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it?"

More than once in the ongoing the body was faint for want of food, and yet, so sure was I of what God had shown me that day after day I taught cheerfully and confidently to those who came to my office the Truth of God as the substance of all supply -- and there were many in those days. At the end of two years of apparent failure I suddenly felt that I could not endure the privation any longer. Again, in near desperation from deferred hope of success, I went direct to God and cried Out: "Why, why this failure! You told me in the vision that if I would give up the old way and trust to You alone, You would prove to me Your sufficiency. Why have You failed to do it?"

His answer came flashing back in these words: "God said, Let there be light: and there was light." It was all the answer He gave. At the moment I did

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not understand. I kept repeating it again and again, the words God said becoming more and more emphasized, until at last they were followed by the words "Without him [the Word] was not anything made that hath been made." That was all I needed. I saw plainly that while I had, for two years, hopefully and happily gone on enduring hardships believing that God would supply, I had not once spoken the word "it is done. God is now manifested as my supply."

Believe me, that day I spoke the word of my deliverance. Suffice it to say that the supply problem was ended that day for all time and has never entered my life or mind since. This is the why of the article The Spoken Word.

I should like to give one more "Why" of How I Used Truth.

After days of excruciating pain from a badly sprained ankle, the ankle became enormously swollen, and it was impossible for me to attend to my professional work as an active medical practitioner. Ordinary affirmations of Truth were entirely ineffectual, and I soon struck out for the very highest statement of Truth that I could formulate. It was this: There is only God; all else is a lie. I vehemently affirmed it and steadfastly stuck to it. In twenty-four hours all pain and swelling -- in fact, the entire

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"lie" -- had disappeared. Out of this experience I wrote Unadulterated Truth.

Can you not see, dear Mr. Fillmore, how it is that these simply written articles in How I Used Truth are as my children, and how all revision or changing of them seems to me like a violation of something sacred between God and me? I am sure you can. In each case I had proved God before I wrote. I thank the Fillmores that they have kept these messages just as they were written.

Yours in His name,
H. Emilie Cady