By Charles Fillmore
917 Tracy, Kansas City, Mo.
IT IS written: "The prayer of faith shall save him that is sick." The prayer of faith is a prayer based on a firm conviction that there is a healing power in Spirit. This conviction is the foundation of our healing system. God is Mind, or Spirit. He is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, and all-love. We make our appeal to the all-powerful, all-willing God, and the response never fails.
Jesus Christ said: "God is Spirit; and those worshipping him must worship in Spirit and Truth" (Em. Dia.). This means that we must exercise our spiritual faculties in the worship and the prayer that lead to spiritual healing.
Spirit is that inner man which we do not see with the outer sight, but which we know exists. To get into touch with Spirit, we stop the activity of the outer man; then there is a great awakening of power within us. Let us be still and come into the consciousness of this power, which is health to us. "It is the spirit that giveth life." Lay hold of Spirit with the central thought: I am quickened by Spirit.
Jesus Christ came proclaiming: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." Again and again He made the proclamation that He came as the representative of a new life current for the whole human family. "I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." "I am the bread of life ... which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die." He raised people who had let go of the life idea, and brought them into such a consciousness of omnipresent life that they came out of the tomb.
This life consciousness that Jesus Christ quickens is as greatly needed in our day as it was in the time when He first worked in the souls of men. If you go to a medical doctor and ask him the cause of your ills, he will tell you that most of them come from lack of vitality; that means lack of life. We all need vitalizing. The question is: How shall we get life? What is the source of life? Those who teach of material remedies point us to various things as the source — food, air, water, and so forth. Some claim that drugs are the source; but people are fast losing faith in drugs, and are reaching out to electricity and similar means of gaining more abundant life. They are thus getting a little closer to the healing system of Jesus Christ, but they yet lack the all-important truth that God is life and that they who worship Him must worship Him in the life consciousness; that is, in Spirit. When we worship God in His way, we are vitalized all at once; there is no other way to get real, permanent life. We cannot get life from the outer man, nor from anything external; we must touch the inner current.
This was illustrated once in our Silent Unity room. Two electric fans that had been stored away for the winter were brought out and placed ready for use. Some one turned the button on the fans, but no movement followed. All kinds of means were used in an effort to start them, but they would not go, and we said: "The fans are out of order." Then it was suggested that possibly the current was not turned on, and this proved to be the case. One of our number touched the button in the wall that connects the fans with the electric current, and instantly the fans began buzzing merrily. We almost imagined that they were laughing at us for not seeing sooner why they did not move.
Immediately it occurred to us that all who write to us for help need this one thing — connection with the universal life current. This little incident came, not by chance, but as a clear illustration from Spirit of the way in which man attempts to get the life that keeps him going. He tries in external ways, and applies all kinds of remedies to set into activity the organs of the body, but he fails in the one thing needful: he does not make connection with the great life current. All agree that we live by power from God, power from an invisible life source, but there is great ignorance as to how we can connect with the current.
The life source is spiritual energy. It is deeper and finer than electricity or human magnetism. It is composed of ideas, and man can turn on its current by making mental connection with it.
When Jesus came teaching the gospel of Spirit, people did not understand Him. They did not know that universal Spirit is Principle and that we demonstrate it or fail to demonstrate it according to the character of our thinking. It has taken the race 2,000 years to find that we turn the life current on by thoughts and words. We can have fullness of life by realizing that we live in a sea of abundant, omnipresent, eternal life, and by refusing to allow any thought to come in that stops the consciousness of the universal life flow. We live and move and have our being in life — mind life. You can think of your life as mental, and every faculty will begin to buzz with new life. Your life will never wane if you keep in the consciousness of it as Mind, or Spirit, but it will increase and express in fullness in your body. If you go on and on with the life idea in your consciousness, your body will never be run down, but will become more and more alive with spiritual life, until it shows forth the glory of Christ.
We must think life, talk life, and see ourselves filled with the fullness of life. When we are not manifesting life as we desire, it is because our thoughts and our conversation are not in accord with the life idea. Every time that we think life, speak life, rejoice in life, we are setting free, and bringing into expression in ourselves more and more of the life idea. Here is the place of abundant life, and we can fill both mind and body, both our surroundings and our affairs, with glad, free, buoyant life, by exercising faith in it. "According to your faith be it done unto you."
In this way we enter into the same consciousness of abundant, enduring, unfailing, eternal life that Jesus had, and we can readily understand His proclamation that those who believe in the indwelling Christ life will never die. If we are wise, we shall cultivate faith in, and understanding of, omnipresent life.
When we believe in limited life, the belief makes a starved condition of soul and body. This is illustrated in the parable of the prodigal son. Out in a far country, away from the center of life, the consciousness of life grows less and less, and there is "famine" in that country, because there is no conscious connection with the Source of life. Let us make connection with the Source. Let us turn on the current. Let us go in mind to the spiritual place that can be described only as I am, "I am life," "I am Spirit," "I am one with universal life." This prayer of faith saves the sick. When we touch I am, it changes the whole course of our thought and life.
The first step, then, in the realization of life and health, is to know that God is life, abundant, omnipresent, eternal; and the second step is to make connection with God life by declaring our oneness with it. You are the offspring of God — of life. In life you live, move, and have your being. "As the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself." If you would have life from within, you must know yourself as the offspring, the son, of God. Your life source is from within. As a limited, personal man, you have no life of your own. "He that believeth on the Son [is conscious of himself as the son] hath eternal life; but he that obeyeth not the Son [is not conscious of himself as the son of God] shall not see life."
"Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water." "The water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life."
Within man's body we find the center where life is generated. This center is the fountain from which shall spring rivers of living water. In men of a material mind, this fountain does not give forth the pure, life-giving stream, because it is dammed up by material thoughts about life. But when one is quickened by Spirit through faith in the indwelling Lord, the Source of life, the waters of life are set free and purified, and become the river "the streams whereof make glad the city of God." The "city of God" is man's spiritual consciousness.
The prophet Zechariah saw this fountain of cleansing life, and he said: "In that day there shall be a fountain opened ... for sin and for uncleanness." This is the fountain of purifying, healing Christ life, quickened in man for his complete transformation and redemption. The work of this cleansing stream is the real healing. Anything less is temporary.
"He that will, let him take the water of life freely."
HEALING THOUGHTS
There's healing in the thought of Truth—
It wipes out false belief;
There's healing in the thought of light,
From darkened thought, relief.
There's healing evermore in peace—
It's heaven's healing breath;
There's healing in the life of God,
Delivering from death.
There's healing ever found in love—
Its thorough work you'll find;
So take your choice of healing thoughts
God shares with you in mind.
—Unity Daily Word
917 Tracy, Kansas City, Mo.
PRINTED IN U.S.A. V2-I8M-B.38
