Unity Magazine June 1918 — Practical Christianity

A short time ago made a trip to Chicago, and as entered the car said, “I will not take a book nor paper, but will meditate upon whatever subjects present themselves.” I sat down and my first thought was, “Now will have a good, quiet time all alone.” But in a few moments a young lady came in and asked if she might occupy that seat, and of course I said she was perfectly free to do so. She was wearing glasses, and in the course of the conversation that followed I showed her how unnecessary it was that she wear them. She said she had been told by the oculist that she must, and she just believed and did as she was told. That is the old story. Men do things because someone tells them they must. Before she left the car she knew better.

She had no more than left the car before a man came in and asked if he might occupy the seat with me. He told me of some of his experiences, and I was given the opportunity to explain to him the sure workings of the Law.

When he left the car another lady came in, and another chance was improved to make plain the way of the Lord. She told how she and her sister had been visiting their mother, and how her sister always fainted when they parted and, soon there she was on the other side of the car, in her regulation faint. But I took the matter up, and in a very few minutes she revived. The lady said, “Why, how can this be that she is over it so quickly? She never recovered before till she reached home.” Then she asked me if I had been holding thoughts for her, and I admitted that I had, and explained the Truth to her more fully, for she knew some thing about They left, and along came traveling man, and we compared notes as to our ideas of God.

Because held myself readiness to do the work that came, not resenting the interruptions to my programme of meditations, was this short distance of time and space given the chance to bring to the attention of these people the glorious benefits of waiting upon the Lord, or living the Law.

So much depends upon our learning how to concentrate and control our thinking. The old Persians could so concentrate on the point of a needle that would look flat to them. But some people say they can concentrate. Away with the word never did anything in the world. I can and I will are the words that do things. We are masters when we know it.

But we must remember that we are living the Now. If you look to the future, you are robbing the present of its glorious possibilities, and you live in the past you are depriving today of its own glory, its own rights. We must live, move and have our being the Now. Looking to the past or future like the Orientals grinding out their corn with the old ox. They didn’t want to touch him or bother with him, so they took a wisp of hay and fastened to a pole just ahead of him, and out his reach, and as he went ‘round and ‘round, grinding away, that wisp of hay was just beyond his reach, ever beyond his reach, but his eagerness to get something to eat he ever pressed forward hope of reaching it. But was like tomorrow, always one step advance of his present reach.

While in Chicago met a man who had been a performer one of our great circuses. One day he fell from the trapeze, and soon twenty doctors were the ring, and he was pronounced dead. But one insisted that he was not, and followed his body out and was instrumental bringing him to himself. But he was bent double, his chin and his knees together. Some time after, this man one day fell to meditating upon his hand. He for the first time beheld its wonderful beauty, its wonderful structure. He became enraptured over what he saw, and lost himself his thoughts. A few days after, he got to thinking about his spine, all bent up, and as he meditated he beheld its wonderful structure, its flexibility and its strength, and he began to praise for its goodness, and to tell how beautiful and straight was. He lost himself, and talked to his back for an hour. When he was aroused he was conscious that his back was straighter. He then took the matter up earnest, and the course of time he stood erect, strong, and as straight as an arrow, just from the loving words of praise he had poured out upon his back.

My friends, let me say to you, praise yourself, and bless yourself, and honor yourself. You can’t begin to tell how glorious you are. If you were to tell your self about your wonderful possibilities, you would not begin to tell the whole truth, for your possibilities are without number or limit.

Bless those whom you meet. When you call upon a friend or at any house, say, “Let the love and peace of God abide upon this house.” Every day I go through my house and dedicate the rooms to peace and love and health and prosperity, in the glorious name of Jesus Christ.

I wish I could tell you how this house we are in now, these rooms, are keyed up to such a high pitch of health and peace that all who come here are brought into a wonderful presence of healing and power. I feel it and discern it at once. But you can all dedicate your homes and every article in them to this same pres ence. Do it and you will not regret You can key your home up to such a pitch of health that no sickness can possibly enter there. Hundreds have done and you can.

Remember always that you love your work, whatever will so love you that will give you plenty of opportunities to render the service to humanity that you know that humanity stands so much need of.