Glenn Clark: Fishers of Men

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Hello, Friends,

All of us have people in our life who struggle – with physical or mental health, with finances or perhaps relationships. Some brought it on themselves, others are innocent. Some we know are harmless, others elicit suspicion.

Each person, however, tugs at a deep level in our consciousness for compassion, for them and for our world. And while we can walk away from a person, we can never freely walk away from the tug of compassion.

Should we not take some time to think out a framework for choosing when we will offer help and how we will do so? The 73-page book I am about to introduce does just that, from the perspective of a metaphysical Christian. It is so powerful that I designed a reprint and ordered a thousand copies. This post is to tell you a bit about it and to offer to send you a copy if you promise to read it.

This not a book about changing society; it is about setting free individuals in your life, one at a time. You may not think of helping an addicted co-worker or a lonely teenager as ministry, but Glenn Clark reminds that if ministry is anything, it is exactly that. He refers to it as a “service of emancipation” and declares that “the capacity of acting upon individuals is now almost a lost art.”

The decision to help or not help begins by perceiving if the person is “ripe” for their life change. If so, we engage; if not we encourage the ripening process with as much love as we can muster. Choosing to engage, we use a process well-known in the Fillmore teaching: We see the person whole, we love them deeply by gently bringing them to home to their source, and we get out of the way so that God to heal.

Glenn Clark is a wise man; and nearly every paragraph of this book has a phrase or sentence that provokes in me humility and courage, which he says are the two essential qualities we must have in order to help anyone. I believe he will do the same for you.

If you would like a copy of Glenn Clark's Fishers of Men, CLICK HERE. If you enter the same email address that I am using for this email, then it will help match things up in my records. Most important, please be very careful to give me an accurate US Postal Address. Just reply to this email if you have questions. It may be a few weeks before I get it out to you, but know that the book is on the way.

Sunday, June 12, 2022

Fishers of Men by Glenn Clark

Table of Contents

1. Hope
2. Love
3. Faith
4. Release
5. Recovery
6. Regeneration
7. Qualifications For the Fisher of Men
Bibliography

1. Hope

I must explain how I came to write this book. It is a book, in the first place, which I never believed could be written, and it is a book which for a long time I was not sure needed to be written. The “saving of men,” as I saw it, was not a process which could be defined, analyzed, and handed on by means of a printed page to other men. It was rather a spiritual process which grew out of what a man is when brought into right relationship with what other men are. And because it is so essentially an inner experience, something which passes from the inner consciousness of one man to the inner consciousness of another, it seemed, in my opinion, not something which could be taught, but rather something that must be caught.

As lightning is something that cannot be defined, so is the saving of men. Two objects, oppositely charged and brought close together, may cause lightning suddenly to appear in their midst. Two persons, one with a need and the other with a desire to fill that need, come together and God suddenly appears in their midst.

And how does it come about? This I do not know except that faith brings it — hope brings it — love brings it.

Lightning which flashes from the clouds may often bring death, but lightning which flashes from the human heart always brings life. At least, that is my faith, and I can say it is a very honest and sincere faith. I have faith that the man’s need may be met, I have faith in God’s power to meet it, I have faith that the love I have for the man may furnish a channel for the bringing of the need and the power together. That is my method in a nutshell.

Perhaps the outstanding element in my method is my sincere conviction that every man’s need has its supply already waiting to meet it somewhere in the infinite scheme of God, and all that a helper needs to do is to become for a moment a clear conductor for the bringing of that need and that supply together. In the same way I believe that every problem has the germ of its own solution residing within it, and that every question contains the seed of its own answer.

To me a question is never a question merely. If it is asked in all sincerity of heart and finds an answering response on the part of the one to whom it is addressed, it becomes no longer a question, but a living seed. And if this seed is planted in a willing heart, it has been planted in soil which will bring forth good fruit. But the answer comes not so much from the soil as from the seed. Out of the question itself comes forth the answer, in which, without our knowing it, it was hidden all the time. In other words, the answerer does not deserve the credit for the answer any more than the questioner deserves the credit. When Samson said in his riddle, “Out of the strong came forth sweetness,” he was thinking of the lion from which came the honey; but it was not the lion that deserved credit for furnishing him honey so much as the need which impelled him to seek it. Indeed, I have often known answers fundamentally correct, and even technically correct, to come from one who was totally ignorant of the matter under discussion, when drawn forth by another’s very earnest and importunate need. In short, to me a real need, when voiced in the form of a sincere request, is a command of God, and any instrument at hand, no matter how unadapted or unworthy it may seem, if only it is pliant to God’s will, may serve as a means of bringing the answer down from Heaven.

And this brings me to the way I came to write this book.

One of my college boys, the captain of the track team and the greatest all-round athlete that I ever had the privilege of coaching, came to me one day and said, “The boys with whom I associate, especially the athletes, have been coming to me of late asking me how they could get the freedom that I have had ever since I had that little talk with you last year. But when I come to tell them, I don’t quite know how. Can you tell me what to say?”

That was the question that brought this book into being. For to me it was not a question, but a command — a command in the form of a need, a command that could not be disobeyed.

The way the answer came to me was unique. Part of the answer came in the form of a book which, by the way, was sent to me as an unexpected gift a few days before the question was asked, and which I immediately put into his hands.^[1] Part of it came through answers drawn out from me by the other’s need, answers which brought into the light certain fundamental elements in my method which I was not aware of myself. With permission of my reader I shall try to weave these various strands together into one consecutive garment of thought and give it about as I gave it in direct conversation with my young friend that evening and in the afternoons that followed. Under the drawing power of so sincere a question and so compelling a need, the method, as I tried to expound it, seemed to come forth simply, naturally, organically, like the unfolding of the petals of a rose or as the ripening of grapes in the vineyard beneath the summer sun. Would that I could convey the thoughts to the reader of this book, as simply as they came to me then!

May I ask the reader to try the experiment of relaxing himself to the ideas as herein presented, reserving his judgment, whether it be adverse or favorable, until he has had time to finish reading the book and has had the opportunity of putting the process it describes to the test in his own personal experience. For the only test of any method of helping others is the fruits that it will bear.

First, have hope for the man. Perhaps the most striking thing about my method of saving sinners is my absolute faith that no sinner is there, and there is nothing to save him from; that the work is already done. To me everyone who comes is a perfect being, made after the image and likeness of his Heavenly Father. If he is so made, how could he be otherwise than perfect?

To me sin is not an integral, organic part of a man, like his stomach or lungs, but is something extraneous, added from the outside, like a burden upon his back or dust upon his feet. By no means is this accretion, this extraneous element, anything like ink or other substances which stain a man, saturating and polluting his whole being. True, he may vibrate to his sin and give complete, unrestricted expression to it, but so does a victrola vibrate and give unrestricted expression to a record which is placed upon it.

Just imagine that you have entered a music store where a dozen of the most perfect, expensive victrolas are all going at once. You listen to each one in turn and discover that they are playing the worst kind of cheap jazz music. When the proprietor of the store asks you which victrola you would care to buy, you respond by saying you would not accept a single one of them, even as a gift, because of the imperfect and unsatisfactory music they are playing. Then he replies that each victrola is complete and perfect in itself, made after the best model the factory contains, and that what you are taking exception to are the records — not the victrolas.

Now go out from the music store and enter into a great state penitentiary. Your first impression may be an impression of repugnance or disgust. But listen. May it not be that the men about you, too, are simply victims of the wrong kinds of records? Would it be a very difficult task to learn to look upon all the men in such an institution as you would look upon so many victrolas made after the image and likeness of the most perfect model that was ever known, capable of producing the most beautiful music that was ever created? If you learned to do so, then you would cease to condemn them for their misfortune in having their environment and their associates place upon them records which were so unworthy of them. You would then see that it was the hate thoughts, the covetous thoughts, the worry thoughts, the lust thoughts, that the world should have gotten after and locked up in penitentiaries, and not the pure, perfect beings who were the more or less innocent victims of those thoughts.

What should we think of music dealers who would lock up in musty cells and put behind iron bars all the perfect victrolas which had had the misfortune of having had bad records placed upon them, while they still sold the records to all who would buy? Still more foolish would be the music dealers who would destroy those victrolas by such clever inventions as hanging or electrocution, while they left the records to run riot. So we, in our position of dealers in music, — only in our case it is the music of the spheres, — far too often try to punish and criticize perfect beings because of the records that are placed upon them, while we ourselves are continually helping to place upon others these same bad records, these hate thoughts, covetous thoughts, and worry thoughts, and think nothing of it.

Perhaps a better illustration than the victrola is the radio, for the thoughts that come to us are rarely so definitely solidified as the wax record. Rather, we simply tune in to the wrong station, and there are as many stations as there are human emotions. We talk about man being master of his fate and responsible for his actions, but let me say that until a man understands in just what way he is master of his actions, he will remain a slave of every passing emotion that happens along. Judging himself as a body and a brain composed of clay, he should learn, first of all, that he is merely a receiving station and not a broadcasting station; that he is merely a victrola and not a record. But judging himself not from the standpoint of the clay of which he is made, but from that of the breath or spirit which God breathed into him, he will see that he can select his own records and choose his own broadcasting stations to tune in with. The moment he makes this discovery, that moment he ceases to be a victim of every chance emotion that blows and he begins to bring harmony and efficiency into his life. Thenceforth he is master of his own fate.

How, then, are you going to free yourself of the inharmonious records to which you have been tuning in? The first step in freeing yourself is to free others. We are all, in a sense, one. That means that when you free another one you are really freeing yourself, and as long as you hold a wrong opinion of your brother you are keeping yourself, as well as him, in bondage. If you have any conception of a man short of infinite perfection, you have not given him his freedom. The moment you look upon him as a perfect receiving station, he becomes for you a perfect being in a perfect world, governed by a perfect God.

When Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan, He was not referring to literal, specific thieves. If He had been, the priest and the Levite would have been only too quick to bind up the poor man’s wounds. I prefer to think of the thieves that attacked the man on his way from Jerusalem — the house of worship — to Jericho — the market place of trade — as attacking thoughts. They might have been murder thoughts, licentious thoughts, covetous thoughts, or any other kind of irritating thoughts which tore him and left him a very unwelcome-looking sight. The priest and the Levite, who had been brought up on the doctrine which made them identify the thoughts that attack a man with the man himself, avoided him as a very loathsome, undesirable creature, even as thousands of priests and elders are continually doing to-day. The Good Samaritan was an individual who was able to see the distinction between the thoughts that attacked the man and the man himself. We, if we cannot be Christs, can at least be Good Samaritans. For the spirit underlying both is the same. It is the Christ spirit alone that enables us to see perfection in sinners.

As soon as you are able to see all mankind in this light, you will see that you have commenced to learn how to love. Jesus mingled with thieves and harlots and sinners and loved them, but the strange thing was that as soon as He commenced to love them they ceased to be sinners. In other words, they tuned in to new music, the music of high love. The moment you find that you can love others by seeing them rightly for what they truly are, you will find that they commence to grow better under your unconscious influence. As I said before, when you free others you will find that you are growing free yourself; that from somewhere, from some great broadcasting station, the power to love will commence to vibrate through you. To acquire the power to love, you do not have to learn anything; you do not have to do anything. All that is necessary is to let go your opinions about people and tune in to the infinite broadcasting station of God. God is Love, and the source of power is opened to us as soon as we tune in with God.

I was presenting this idea one day to a group of young people at a national conference of theological students, and someone raised the question whether Christ would have accepted this point of view or not. All I could reply was that men grow like what they love, and that Jesus mingled with publicans and harlots and He loved them. Jesus certainly didn’t love graft and harlotry, but rather He loved the perfect beings that were helpless victims of the wrong records to which they had tuned in. That He dissociated the sinner from the sin is evidenced by the way in which He destroyed the sin and saved the sinner by such a simple formula as “Go and sin no more”; “To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise”; “Thy sins are forgiven.” Like a great marksman in India, described in one of our childhood Readers, who shot the tiger that was carrying off a child, without hitting the child. He always could hit the sin without hitting the sinner. How could He have succeeded in doing this if He had considered sin and men inextricably integrated?^[2]

When temptation came to Jesus, He said, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” When Peter tuned in to the wrong thought, He again said, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” He might just as well have said in both instances, “Take off that old victrola record and make room for another.” And so He went about Israel “casting out devils,” just as to-day we can go about America casting out old blasphemous, vainglorious, materialistic, cynical victrola records, to give room for the new harmonious records of the Lord.

True, He did not use the victrola analogy, because victrolas were not in existence in His day, but He often used the devil analogy, for devils seemed to be as common in Jesus’ day as victrolas and radios are to-day. If victrolas did not play in those days, devils did, and He spent much of His time casting devils out of men. Even of Judas, climax and crux of all sinners, it is said at the last, “Then entered Satan into him.” And this same poor Judas, who was not stained through and through with sin, but had simply tuned in to a wrong record, when he finally succeeded in taking the record off went to the Pharisees when it was too late, and tried to make partial restitution for the wrong he had done, and, failing in that, went out and hanged himself. Not a single sinner, not even a Judas, therefore, is entirely hopeless.

Moreover, the hope you will have, when you get this point of view, is so all-conquering that it in itself means that everyone is already half saved who will go to you and put himself under a vision and a conception that are as free and large as this.

Perhaps never before was the need so great for this service of emancipation to be rendered to men. For as a victrola itself is perfectly helpless to remove a hateful record from itself, so there are many men and women to-day who want escape, but who are perfectly helpless to effect it for themselves. This task is left for the “fishers of men.”

In the second place, your hope in the man must express itself in the willingness to give thought and effort to him without any pining or regret at the time it keeps you from other things. It is so very easy to accept the idea of perfection as an abstract theory; it is much harder to apply it to each individual case. It is so easy to let our desire to help humanity be swallowed up in a conception of humanity in the mass. The first thing you must learn is that there are no such things as “masses” in the sight of God.

Says Drummond, “The past has indeed no masses. Men, not masses, have done all that is great in history, in science, and in religion. The New Testament itself is but a brief biography; and many pages of the Old are marked by the lives of men. Yet it is just this truth which we require to be taught again to-day, to be content with aiming at units. Every atom in the universe can act on every other atom, but only through the atom next it. And if a man would act upon every other man, he can do so best by acting, one at a time, upon those beside him.”

At this time I turned to the track captain — who, by the way, was the state champion in the low and high hurdles — and said, “Remember the secret that has helped you to win many a hard-fought hurdle race in the past. As you left the marks, you didn’t look at the long row of hurdles ahead of you. If you had, you would have become discouraged before you had run ten yards; but you confined your attention to the one hurdle that was directly in front of you. And the only races you won were races where you ran at each hurdle as though it were the last. Now let me recommend to you exactly the same method in saving men. The only men you will ever save are the men you meet as though each one were the last. Don’t think of all the men who need to be saved when a man in need comes to you. See only the man in front of you. Talk to him as though he were the only man in all the universe. In this way only will you unlock the infinitude of God’s love and power for him. The more you work in spiritual life and try to give yourself to the Jesus way of living, the more you will grow to realize that every man is more or less the whole infinite universe conscious at one point. You will come to know that, as you speak to him, you are speaking to all men. For even as you speak, he will, as it were, become the entire universe listening to you. When he speaks he will voice the needs and hungers of all mankind. Through the saving of him you will save the world. When he is saved from his particular sin or trouble, the entire universe will be lifted one step higher toward the Kingdom.”

In his essay on “Spiritual Diagnosis,” which marked the beginning of the modern movement of scientific personal evangelism, if not of the psychology of religion as well, Henry Drummond wrote in 1873: “The true worker’s world is the unit. Recognize the personal glory and dignity of the unit as an agent. Work with units, but, above all, work at units. But the capacity of acting upon individuals is now almost a lost art. It is hard to learn again. We have spoiled ourselves by thinking to draw thousands by public work — by what people call ‘pulpit eloquence,’ by platform speeches, and by convocations and councils, Christian conferences, and by books of many editions. We have been painting Madonnas and Ecce Homo’s and choirs of angels, like Raphael, and it is hard to condescend to the beggar boy of Murillo. Yet we must begin again and begin far down. Christianity began with one. We have forgotten the simple way of the Founder of the greatest influence the world has ever seen — how He ran away from cities, how He shirked mobs, how He lagged behind the rest in Samaria to have a quiet talk with one woman at a well, how He stole away from crowds and entered into the house of one humble Syrophoenician woman, ‘and would have no man know it.’ In small groups of twos and threes, He collected the early church around Him. One by one the disciples were called — and there were only twelve in all.”

Henry Ward Beecher said, “The longer I live, the more confidence I have in the sermons preached when one man is the minister and one man is the congregation; when there’s no question who is meant when the preacher says, ‘Thou art the man.’”

The man who convinced Dr. Mott of the primary importance of personal work was the late Henry Clay Trumbull, whose classic volume, Individual Work for Individuals, sums up the experience of forty years of successful personal evangelism. In that book, after summarizing his varied activities as chaplain, Sunday-school missionary, editor, and author, he gives it as his deliberate judgment: “Looking back on all my work, in all these years, I can see more direct results of good through my individual efforts with individuals than I can know of through all my spoken words to thousands upon thousands of persons in religious assemblies, or all my written words in the pages of periodicals or of books. Dr. Nevius, a missionary leader in China, said he wanted no great preachers in his field. That was not the sort of missionaries who were needed in China. If he could find a man who could talk familiarly, face to face, with another man wherever he met him, he had missionary work for that kind of man in China.”^[3]

We are beginning to realize how true were Dr. Mott’s words, written sixteen years ago: “If the Christians of India would adopt this method, it would be a comparatively easy task to preach the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ throughout the entire country within a generation.”

Suppose you take an entire year to save one man, but because you have saved him so well, so completely, so utterly, so wholly, that he has become, like you, another channel for also saving men. Then suppose that he and you each require another entire year to save another man each, but again you save him so wholly, completely, that he also becomes another channel of light for others. Then suppose the four of you spend another year each, saving a man wholly and completely, bringing the total of your band to eight reborn men. Now just keep a record of your results for thirty-three years or for the length of time Jesus lived upon this earth — and you will find that every man, woman, and child in the entire world will have been saved.

Is that such a long time? After all these centuries of futile efforts at mass evangelism and attempts to turn people into Christians en masse, does it not sound like a miracle to contemplate the bringing the entire world into the light in one generation?

It truly would be a miracle, but a miracle comparatively easy to accomplish. But it can only be done by saving men one at a time, and then bringing them in wholly, completely, utterly. We have too many ninety-eight per cent and ninety-nine per cent Christians in this world and not enough one hundred per cent Christians. We have too many mass-created religionists and not enough individually created believers; we have too many machine-made church men and not enough handmade Christ men.

We need a revival of the spirit that used to impel the shepherd in Christ’s day to leave the ninety and nine sheep that were safe in the fold and go forth to seek, through many weary days and nights of ceaseless searching, for the one that was lost. “I say unto you, that even so there shall be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine righteous persons, who need no repentance.”

1. [1] H. A. Walter, Soul Surgery. Published privately by the author’s parents. New Britain, Connecticut.
2. [2] It has been my experience that seventy-five per cent of the trouble is gone the moment one realizes that the trouble is a thing apart and not inextricably bound up with his being. The other twenty-five per cent goes the moment one replaces his selfish thinking with thoughts of perfect Love and perfect Trust.
3. [3] Quoted in Walter’s Soul Surgery.

2. Love

The next step in the process of saving men was revealed much after the same manner as the first. Again a question was asked and again an answer came.^[4] If the saving of men is essentially an inner experience, as defined in the first chapter, a spiritual process which grows out of what a man is when brought into right relationship with what other men are, the question arises, what is the essential ingredient, necessary to create that magic combination of is-ness in a man that will enable him to lift other men out of sin and trouble?

This is a very sensible question and one which goes straight to the heart of the whole matter. It brings us right up against the foundation fact that it is not a man’s words or his deeds so much as his essential being that creates the miracle of saving men. So the question of helping others resolves itself into this question: What does our being consist of?

To this question there seems to be only one answer: Our being consists of our loving.

Show me what and how you love and I shall tell you what you are. Love is like electricity. It presupposes a positive and a negative pole; it requires two — one to love and the other to be loved. To draw out the best love, one must want to be loved and want to love in return.

When one comes to you wanting to be helped, the first step you should take to help him is to love him. If he comes seeking your friendship even more than your help, you will be able to help him still more. Do not try to convert anybody; do not try to save any soul. Do not try to do things for anyone. Merely give your love to him. That is the biggest thing that you or anyone possibly can give. But you will find that you cannot make your love reach him unless he wants it, unless he is eager for it, is hungry and thirsty for it. If he comes for help and doesn’t want your love, you can’t help him. If he asks to be saved or converted, you cannot help him if he despises you or doesn’t care for your love. But if he wants your love, this is the way to love him: —

Love him for himself, not for what you can get out of him. Do not mix your love for him with any alloy whatever, either the desire for him to admire you, praise you, increase your wealth, or benefit you in any way whatever. If he can be made happier, your wealth will be sufficiently increased. If he can find greater reason to praise God or the power of God’s love, you should feel sufficiently praised. Love him with an unmixed love. Unmixed love is a pure love. Power is in such love. Sir Galahad loved with such love and it was said that he had the strength of ten because his heart was pure.

In your thought, take each one who gives himself and give him to the Father. Give him to the Eternal Plan which God has in store for him. Give him to his destiny — not to your little fancied image of his destiny. Everyone who comes to you and lets you love him in such a way — do not keep for yourself; unbind him and let him go. Give him to a larger mastership than your own personal wishes and needs. You have the power so to give him because he gives himself to you. Loving is a giving. We cannot love another without giving ourselves to that one. Our lives are made up of giving ourselves to others. One who loves you but is afraid to be possessed by you does not truly love you. For perfect love is founded on perfect trust. We sometimes repent of our gift and withdraw ourselves from the receiver and give ourselves to someone else. That is because we find that those we give ourselves to keep us for their own private, personal aggrandizement. It is such keeping of our friends that leads to all the jealousy, tyranny, suffering, and tragedies in our human relationships. But no one cares to withdraw himself from one who never abuses this trust, who never uses one for personal, selfish ends. And so, as quickly as one gives himself to you, or gives his life to you, or seeks your love, — for it is all the same thing, — give him at once to God, to the Larger Self, the Self without limits, without bounds, the Infinite One who is all in all.

One who loves in the way I am describing, who does not want to possess his loved ones for selfish purposes, finds that he does, however, possess them for larger purposes. For he who giveth shall receive, and he who loseth his life shall find it. One who loses his friends in this greater love will always keep his friends. For one who finds that he is possessed by a love which is limitless and boundless does not ever want to cease to be possessed by that love. Such a love he finds sets him free; such a love removes all limitations to his growth and enables him to grow to meet any need. For such love is not our own little loving, but the Holy Spirit loving through us.

And now listen to a great and eternal truth — a truth which will abide as long as the earth shall last, and which will stand throughout eternity as one of the doors through which we may enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Everyone wants down deep in his soul to be possessed by a great, towering, unselfish, unself-seeking, colossal love. That is the chief end and aim of his whole journey through life. To find such a love is to find the very Kingdom itself, for it ushers one into the Kingdom of Heaven right on earth, here and now. To rest in and abide in such a love is to rest in and abide in the Father — for God is love.

For just one moment of such a love one would give all the rest of his life. Can it be that this is why Orpheus looked back at Eurydice? Is not this the theme of Browning’s “Last Ride Together”? To have just one moment of such a love a man would give up his very hope of eternity. Why? Because such love is eternal life. As Jesus said in His last great intercessory prayer, “And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.” To know these two is to know the very quintessence of perfect love — for God is love and Christ is that love made manifest on earth. To know such a love is to know what eternity is. To be possessed by such a love, or to possess another with such a love, is to be in the Kingdom.

And when one is in the Kingdom he is separated from all trouble, all discord, all evil. That is why Christ did not pray when people came to be healed. He simply loved them.

Everyone craves freedom. Everyone craves enlargement. At heart we want to be free from the things that would keep us small, and we want the opportunity to become colossal. We want free lives and large lives. This love gives both of these because it gives you to the Father, to truth, to love, to life, to your destiny, to your perfect life plan. If you want to save a man, do not try to make him good — try to make him happy. And by setting him free and by making him large, you make him happy. In order to do this, all you need to do is to give forth an unselfish, colossal wish for his perfect happiness, regardless of what comes in return to you. Such a wish gives him to the Kingdom.

But the one who comes for help must want your love. That is why Christ said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” He was thinking of the colossal, unselfish love He was ready to give when He cried: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. . . . For I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”

The power lies in the quality of that kind of love.

There is as much difference between the self-seeking love and the self-giving love as there is between a bucketful of water standing stagnant by the sink and one striking against the mill wheel. One is the same old gallon in the same old bucket. The other we see hitting the wheel is every instant renewed, is every second of time a new gallon. One has no power, the other has infinite, unmeasured, endless power — power that will last as long as the stream lasts, as long as the mountain from which it comes lasts, as long as vapor continues to be drawn up and comes down in the form of rain.

Christ looked upon the young man and He loved him.

Christ looked upon the multitude and had compassion upon them.

Christ wept; and those about Him said, “Behold how he loved him.”

“Love suffereth long, and is kind ... is not puffed up . . . seeketh not its own, is not provoked.” This kind of love is God in manifestation, for God is love. This love is the power of the Holy Spirit working in man. Jesus came so that this power of loving would come more fully to men, and the works which He did we shall do and even greater works than these shall we do, because He went unto the Father.

To help a man, then, love him unselfishly.

To save a man, love him unself-seekingly.

To keep a friend forever, give him away to the Father.

4. [4] For fuller explanation of how this answer came, see Twelve Parable Miracles of Answered Prayer, in which booklet this chapter has already appeared in somewhat different form. It is here reprinted with kind permission of The Association Press.

3. Faith

As your hope in man should not be a little, wishy-washy, insipid half-glimmer of optimism, but a complete, tremendous, dynamic trust in the utter perfection of the man; as your love for him should not be a little personal attachment liable to crack, at the first false step of the one you love, but rather a great tidal wave of out-giving that will sweep all that is before it; so in the same big dynamic way your faith in your Heavenly Father should be a faith that will be big and capacious enough literally to move mountains. Look upon God as One whose love is as infinite as the sky is infinite and whose power extends to the farthest ends of the earth, a God of infinite love and infinite power. Such a God will be perfectly capable of sending you the right word at the right time when you are brought face to face with a man in his hour of need.

During the World War the admiral’s battleship often had to broadcast a message somewhat to this effect: “Due to the enemy’s jamming the wireless, we were not able to get a message through to the reserve squadron.” By this they meant that the enemy, knowing that certain messages were intended to do him harm, had filled the air with other, meaningless messages which, vibrating in with the true messages, served to reduce all to a jumble of nonsense. That is what we are continuously doing day and night, when we are broadcasting thoughts that spring from our selfish desires and wishes. By our hate thoughts, covetous thoughts, envy thoughts, unforgiving thoughts, worry thoughts, we are jamming the wonderful messages that are continually trying to penetrate through to our consciousness.

Fortunately, ages ago the little broadcasting stations were stilled long enough one day for a great message to get through. Listen to it. “Be still, and know that I am God.” By “Be still” is meant the quieting of our own selfish wishes and desires long enough to let the great eternal wishes and desires of God reach us and manifest through us. Jesus said to His disciples at one time, “And when they lead you to judgement, and deliver you up, be not anxious beforehand what ye shall speak: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye; for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.” If that is true when we are brought face to face with men who would hurt us, should it not be even more true when we are brought face to face with men whom we want to help? If a person sees only perfection in a man before him and is aware of unself-seeking love within his own heart as the chief motive in showing the other how to express that perfection, he can very safely be still and know that God is speaking through him.

One of the most important things that should be borne in mind by anyone who desires to help others is that he, himself, has no responsibility in the matter whatever, unless it be that he should make himself as clear a channel as it is possible for him to be. There is nothing more inconsistent than for a religious worker to come forward at the close of a piece of work and say, “I do not wish any credit for this myself; it is God entirely who is responsible for it and to whom the credit is due,” and who yet, at the beginning of the task, faced it under a sense of great personal responsibility. The one who takes the responsibility for a thing should get the credit for the thing, and therefore, if you take the responsibility, no matter what you may say with your lips, down in your heart you yourself, if you are logical, honest, and consistent, will and should be clamoring for the credit. But if you undertake a task reposing complete confidence and trust in God, letting all responsibility rest upon His shoulders, then you can with perfect consistency and sincerity, without any make-believe or false humility, when the work is done give all the credit to whom it belongs — in other words, to God. The conclusion is always governed by the beginning; the fruit is always governed by the seed; water can never rise above its source. And the man who initiates a task with his own little will, according to his own little plan, will find the results no bigger than the little plan and the little will which brought them into being.

Take no responsibility upon your own little shoulders, therefore. Simply love — and let go.

But how can one “let go”?

I believe I have been asked that question by more people than any other question in all the world. The difficulty lies not in getting an intellectual comprehension of its meaning, but in getting a spiritual realization of its power. For properly to comprehend the words “let go” we must cease to think of them as words at all, and think of them as spiritual dynamite. To comprehend them in this sense is not an intellectual process so much as a spiritual experience an experience of literally blasting away the old dead debris that is blocking one’s channel toward God. Once this channel is fully opened, there enters an irrigating stream straight from the centre of the very Kingdom of Heaven itself, straight into the outer and inner gardens of our soul, bringing forth harvests that cannot be limited, measured, or kept within the bounds of time and space.

Merely to define the term, “let go,” however, is not sufficient for us here. We must go further and illustrate it with a picture or a parable. The image that brought me my first clear realization of what is implied in the words “let go” was the following: I saw a swimmer struggling in the water. Every muscle was tensed, every nerve keyed up to the very breaking point. He was mortally afraid of the water. Holding his head as high above the waves as he could, he struggled desperately to prevent even so much as his chin from touching the surface for a second. His lips were as tightly closed as if he had the lockjaw, and he was breathing through his nose as desperately as though each breath were the last. Finally, after five minutes of struggle, he was pulled out by some other swimmers near by, utterly exhausted.

In the meantime another man, who had been in the water for an hour swimming easily and steadily, seemed no more tired than when he entered — nay, he seemed actually refreshed and renewed by the experience. I watched him swim until I left. Instead of frantically kicking and pawing at the water, churning it into seething foam around him, as did the other, he moved his arms and legs slowly, rhythmically, as one would stretch himself before taking a siesta in the summer. Instead of holding his head high out of the water, he actually nestled it in the water, letting the very strength of the water support him as a pillow does one’s head when he lies down for pleasant dreams. Instead of keeping his mouth shut and under lock and key, he occasionally turned his head around and upward, half sportively, as a child would toss its head in the summer breeze, laughing and drinking in great draughts of air, enough and to spare for him to play and sport while diving, without any concern whether his head was above or under the water.

The difference between the two swimmers was simply that the first was trying to hold up the whole lake, while the other was letting the lake hold him. The one was trusting to and utilizing the very weight and strength of the water, its tides and times and great inner laws, while the other was fighting against it.

The whole secret of letting go, as illustrated by these swimmers, can be embodied in two sentences. Let God support you — don’t try to support God. Do not fear God’s laws — trust them.

Dr. A. A. Lindsay, the founder of suggestive therapeutics, has an excellent illustration of this letting-go process in his New Psychology Complete: —

In former times grain was cut by men swinging a cradle, a combination of scythe blade with four prongs or fingers. I recall two men working at swinging the cradle, reaching into the standing grain and gathering a full sweep of wheat and laying it nice and straight for others to follow to tie it in bundles. One man was a hard worker — he made work hard; he struck forcibly and spasmodically, straining every muscle and tendon that he could bring into the action.

He drove so hard that he took in air through his mouth and expelled it in the same spasmodic way; he became very warm and had to drink a great deal of water frequently, and was fatigued quickly and had to rest much of the time. He dulled his blade and had to whet it very often; he got his grain tangled and became disgusted and tended toward anger; he had ambition to be a leader, but could not hold out, although he began with great exhibit of speed and driving power; he did not do an average day’s harvesting, and was thoroughly exhausted before night.

The other man seemed to make play of his work; where the “hard worker” took both hands to lift his cradle the second one would catch his little finger under the handle, and his implement would seem to follow him, and when he began to cut with it he appeared to be guiding it while it went its course. He breathed through his nostrils, unconsciously, regularly, and rhythmically; he kept step with the stroke he made with his arms; he felt nothing about which to fret; he perspired with good radiation and at the opportune time, drank freely but not nervously.

This man’s body followed the cradle around the big field, up hill and down, along the slope or on the level, steadily stepping and swinging; there was no waste of motion and he kept as good order as a soldier marching to music; indeed all of his performance was musical. No truer artist ever presented himself than did this one. Let those who know no better class him as an ordinary laborer. I know he was an artist, for in every movement there was the masterful expression of self, the self that has all the knowledge and controls all the power that the individual in his whole life can have need of. Self-mastery is the highest attainment and if one possesses it he can show it as truly with an implement or instrument as he can with painter’s brush. Correctly speaking, the harvester was as fresh at sundown as at the rising of the sun.

The greatest example of effortless motion is the swinging of the earth through space in its orbit and its turning every twenty-four hours upon its axis. One way to get this effortless motion, this inner stillness, is to contemplate the great things of nature. Think of the sky — the ocean — the forest — the desert — the mountains. Do this, and you will presently find yourself resting back upon the great silent tides of God’s infinite love. You will know that all motion, if it comes from God, is effortless, inevitable, invincible. Put yourself in harmony with this great eternal motion of God’s love and let your thought be God’s thought, your act God’s act, your word God’s word.

I know a man who, being of a highly nervous organism, used to face his audiences with a great sense of personal responsibility coupled with a great sense of personal unworthiness. He spoke with effort from the top of his lungs, working his throat and vocal chords overtime in his effort to make his words carry to the farthest part of the hall. Even though he shouted, people said they had difficulty in hearing him. When he was through speaking, if people came to congratulate him he was overcome with self-consciousness and embarrassment, and if they came to criticize or contradict him he was crushed.

But now he speaks with the freedom and abandon of one who is an instrument of powers greater than his own little self. He no longer strains his throat to speak, but rather “lets go,” and is heard easily in the largest halls. The moment he has finished, he forgets who has been speaking and can greet joyously and unself-consciously all those who come forward to meet him. If one of these should exclaim, “That was such a lovely thought,” he might respond spontaneously, if he does not catch himself in time, “Yes, wasn’t it?” In short, he has reached the place where he realizes that ideas are universal and not personal; that it is not we but God that sends them to us; and in consequence he now experiences the complete freedom and joy of receiving and passing on these ideas in the utter humility and selflessness of an unresisting channel of God.

So when you sit down in a room with a man whom you wish to help, rest back in perfect trust in God’s infinite Will and God’s eternal Plan. Then the results accomplished in your interview will be as infinite and eternal as the will and the plan which bring them forth. I have very frequently found in my own experience that I have made statements or used illustrations, or even demanded sacrifices, which I found afterward uniquely fitted the needs of the person before me, methods which, if I had been governed by my own little conventional, practical, and logical standpoint, I might never have thought of using. Sometimes I have found myself strangely silent, letting the other person do all the talking. At other times I have done all the talking and have not given the other a chance to speak. Sometimes I have been prompted to pray. Occasionally I have asked the other to pray. I feel that it very little matters what is said in such interviews. More important than the words is what goes forth with the words. For, above all, we should realize it is not we that do it, but rather the Father that doeth it in us. If your faith in God be perfect enough, then you will find that a miracle will surely happen — or at least something that will seem like a miracle because it will be just as perfect, just as eternal, just as infinite, as the faith with which it is done.

4. Release

To save a man from sin or lift a sufferer out of trouble is as natural and simple a process as plucking a ripe apple from the tree. When the grain is ripe for the harvest, then is the time to send out reapers unto the harvest. But it is just as unnecessary to resort to hothouse methods in hastening the ripening process of souls as it is to resort to the hothouse method of ripening corn or wheat. For that reason I am not an ardent advocate of the old-fashioned method of mass evangelism.

Indeed, my experience has shown that there is no need of hastening the ripening process, but rather, if anything, a need of slowing it up. For individuals are ripening faster than there are reapers to gather them in. It is only the lazy or undiscriminating cherry pickers who persist in trying to strip each tree as they come to it, instead of picking each cherry as it ripens, returning later to gather those which ripen late.

The mass method of evangelism gathers in the ripe with the rotten and the green, whereas the reapers using the individual method of saving men gather only the ripe, ensuring that there shall be no rotten and no green.

One of the most precious lessons for the reapers in God’s harvest to learn is to respect the integrity with which those who are not ripe hold fast to their own natural, slower process of development. It is only by your respecting their individuality that you can protect the slowly unfolding truth that is in them. It is a part of God’s own economy of the universe that all men are not ripe for the harvest at the same time, and the sooner the reapers learn to respect that fact, the sooner the world will learn to respect the reapers.

But how can we tell when a soul is ripe to be harvested? Jesus Himself gave us the most perfect set of testing instruments for determining this when He gave us the Beatitudes. All of these might be summed up in one great beatitude, “Blessed are ye when ye are ripe for the harvest, for ye shall be harvested.” When a man is sick and tired of the sin he is fastened to or the trouble that has fallen upon him, when he is hungry and thirsty for the love and wholeness and goodness which are the exact opposite of the sin or trouble which has befallen him, then he is ready for the harvest.

But everyone will fall under that description, someone may say. Are you sure of that? As some people make pets of tiger cubs, have not all of us at some time or other made playmates of sins, taking them into our homes when they were little at first, and still remaining attached to them even when they have commenced to destroy us? What is true of sins is also true of troubles. You have all heard of the woman of color who “enjoyed po’ health” and was “po’ly, thank God.” There is nothing that can purchase easy sympathy so quickly as a little assortment of pet troubles which we can take out and display to our friends whenever and wherever the occasion demands. As long as our troubles are used as a means of feeding our personal vanity or our self-pity, or as furnishing an excuse for cherishing a grudge against the one who wittingly or unwittingly brought them upon us, we are not ripe for the Kingdom of Heaven.

What shall we do with those who are not ripe? Merely pass them by? Is that the loving way? Is that the Christ way? Taking the gospel records as our authority, all the evidence seems to indicate that it was. When asked to give help to the Gentiles, Jesus once said, “I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” When criticized because He did not try to “save” the rich and well fed, He replied, “They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick.” When the dyed-in-the-wool orthodox churchgoers could not catch the spirit of His revolutionary teachings, He said, “I thank thee, O Father . . . that thou didst hide these things from the wise . . . and didst reveal them unto babes.”

But if we can’t help these people, who will? To this I would reply, Why all this heat, little man? Is not God in the world? Are you the only channel by means of which God can save men? And is this the only month in which grain will ripen? Cannot we leave some blades of wheat for some other seasons to ripen, and for some other gleaners to gather? Leave them to the sun and the rain, and in God’s good time they shall be gathered unto the harvest.

But there is one way in which we can help this unripe grain to ripen, and one only. It is not by preaching, but by living the gospel of love. “Let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” For just as light ripens the fruit of the orchard and the grain of the field, the light of Love is the only thing which will ripen the souls of men. And when this ripening process reaches its culmination and you find the fruit is ready to pluck, you will find that nine times out of ten the final stage is brought about by the coming in contact with someone who lived the love way and who radiated the spirit of the Kingdom in all his daily life. And there is nothing that leads one to look for help toward such torchbearers more effectively than a great problem or a great sorrow. So don’t be afraid of sorrow, friend. Next to love, it is the greatest force in the universe for bringing men to God.

“Hate sin, forsake sin, confess sin, and make restitution” is the formula of that famous soul surgeon, Frank Buchman. To him sin is anything which separates one from God; there is no sin and there is no trouble excepting that — separation from God. My view is the same here, but there is some difference in the place where I would put the emphasis. Mr. Buchman probes somewhat vigorously, I understand, in order to bring the sin into the light through some form of outward confession, in such a way as to bring the victim to see it in all its heinousness and truly hate and loathe it. I would rather try to arouse the love for Good, for Love, for God. It is my conviction that if the love of Love and of Goodness can be sufficiently aroused, if one can be filled sufficiently with a hunger and thirst for union with God, the sin will take care of itself.

This difference in emphasis is implied by the very title that has been affectionately given to Frank Buchman by his admirers — “soul surgeon.” To those whose conception of sin is that it is an integral part of a man’s nature, staining and permeating him hopelessly unless removed, nothing short of a surgical operation is needed. For those whose conception of sin is that of a victrola record that can be put on or taken off from one’s consciousness and never becomes a part of him, never so much as touching his real self, a much milder process will be sufficient. No surgery or deep probing is needed in the latter case, but rather a cleansing process much like that of a mother bathing her child.

An operation causes something like a shock, and is sometimes followed by a reaction unless done by skillful hands with all conditions favorable. Therefore the spiritual-bath method is much safer, at least in the hands of beginners. I admit that there are times when the cleansing method hardly seems adequate, when only a good surgical operation will seem to suffice. But I have found almost invariably that such cases revealed that the individual was not yet sufficiently ripe for the harvest. If an apple will not come off the branch without taking a knife and cutting it loose, I prefer to let it rest and ripen a little while longer.

Here is a description of what I would call the soap-and-water process of saving men, as contrasted with the surgical process — as briefly as I can state it: —

When a man comes, like Christian starting on his journey to the City of God, with a heavy load on his back, he should be told that the first great experience in his journey must be where he kneels at the Cross and lets the bundle fall from his shoulders. If he still “enjoys po’ health” or loves to play with the tiger cubs of sin more than he loves Love or adores God, this initial task of getting rid of his bundle may be a long one. But if he passionately and earnestly wants to get rid of the bundle, you can tell him that it has no power to stay on his back except the power which he gives it. Just to hold on to it with his consciousness, merely to fear it, helps to keep it from dropping off. The first thing he must do is simply to let go. A dog has an old slipper in its mouth and its master offers it a nice bone. The dog cries out, “But I can’t take the bone because this old slipper fills my mouth.” The master says, “Open your mouth and let go.” The slipper has no dominion of itself except as the dog gives it power by holding on. So your worry about your business, your fear of tuberculosis or of dyspepsia, your trouble with your bad temper — these have no hold on your consciousness except as you give it to them.

Perhaps he may ask you if you want to know what is in the bundle, in short, if you want him to confess his sin or give a complete diagnosis of his trouble. That is not necessary, as you already know what is in the bundle: something which separates him from God. That, at any rate, is confession enough for me. But if he has thought so long and morbidly about what is in the sack on his back that the only way he can let go of it is by “telling it out” to another, then by all means he should be allowed to do so. This is the chief value of a confession. But I have always found that a confession of love is more effective in bringing one freedom than a confession of sin. For there are always two ways by which one may reach the City of God — the Trouble way and the Love way — and I always take the Love way from start to finish if it is possible to do so.

But when the load is dropped it must be really dropped. When the pilgrim lets go he must truly let go. He must not delude himself into thinking he has let go, by merely shoving it upon another corner of his shoulder. Very often a man will come with the assertion that he has used his will power time and time again, that he has made good resolution after good resolution, and all to no effect. As soon as he thinks it is dead and buried, out it comes in some other way and in some other place, and his last state is worse than his first. If anyone should come to you with this tale, you might tell him this parable: —

A woman who was slovenly in her housekeeping heard one day that a brother was coming to pay her a visit. Anxious to make a good appearance of neatness, but being too lazy and selfish to make the effort to do things right, she carefully swept all the dust and dirt under a rug. When her brother arrived all things went well until someone accidentally tripped on the rug. Out came all the dust and dirt in another place, worse than ever before. Then her elder brother, knowing her slovenly habits from of old, said to her kindly, “Know this, sister: not until you throw open wide the door and sweep all the dust of the house out into the garden will you ever know what real cleanliness and neatness are within.”

Which parable can be interpreted as follows: Will Power, in spite of all the good things that have been said about it, is in fact a very lazy and selfish and slovenly individual. To depend upon Will Power alone to get you out of trouble is like a man trying to lift himself over a fence by tugging at his own boot straps. For Will Power lives, moves, and has its being in this little three-dimensional room of Time and Space and knows no better release than through sweeping things into corners and under rugs. Not until you recognize the existence of a larger world than the room you live in, a four-dimensional or undimensional world that is timeless and spaceless, not until you are willing to open your windows and doors that look upon this outer garden and cast your troubles out where the Great Gardener can cart them away and dump them into Gehenna outside the city walls, will you ever know what complete freedom means.

I had been talking to a young man along this line one day when, noting his deep depression and despair, I said to him suddenly, “What you think of as faults are not necessarily such bad things in themselves. They are, rather, good things in the wrong place. Anything that we keep to ourselves, no matter how good it may be, even though it be such a sterling virtue as courage, foresight, thrift, and affection, if used merely to serve our own selfish ends may become the most unwholesome and dangerous thing that a person can have around.^[5]

“Just think of a thrifty housewife who kept all the apple parings and banana peelings and the clippings of onions, beets, and other vegetables, standing in cans in her kitchen instead of carrying them out to feed to her neighbor’s chickens and pigs. That which would render real service to others if given away, if kept to herself and allowed to accumulate for weeks and weeks, would make her kitchen into a place that no one, not even herself, would be comfortable in.

“I have a brother-in-law in the poultry business in California. The sweepings from his chicken runs are carted away by a gardener who once a year gives him a hundred dollars’ worth of green food for this privilege. This is almost exactly what the Great Gardener does with the so-called sins and faults and weaknesses of mankind when we do not try by will power to sweep them under a rug of our subconscious mind, as it were, but open the windows toward the Kingdom and cast them into God’s great out-of-doors. We find then that what seem faults at first are in many instances really virtues that have gone to seed, or talents which were rotting away for lack of proper use in the service of others. And when we do open up the windows and doors and give our talents — and ourselves — away, what does this Great Gardener give to us in exchange for them? Just change the words ‘give for’ to ‘forgive’ and you will find that with His wonderful forgiveness He gives us foresight for fears, love for lust, charity for covetousness, and courage for cruelty. Truly he who loseth his life shall find it, and he who findeth his life — and keepeth it to himself— shall lose it.”

Several weeks afterward this young man returned to me, the most wonderfully changed individual that I have ever had an opportunity to meet in my life. He told me how love had come to him, success had come to him, happiness had come to him, and freedom from all the things that had bound him before. And then, as he started to leave, he paused in the doorway to add in a voice that I shall never forget, “But there was a big barn to clean — a big barn to clean.”

5. [5] All psychologists accept the fact that in every evil is a germ of good. At the centre of the betting habit is the germ of daring; at the centre of the drink habit are good-fellowship and conviviality; at the centre of licentiousness is the germ of chivalry. But how submerged and all but hidden some of these good germs are until the Great Gardener winnows the wheat from the chaff and gives us back our wheat! Indeed, I sometimes think that the parable of the wheat and the tares is a description, not of separating bad men from good men, but of separating bad thoughts from good thoughts in the human heart of each one of us.

5. Recovery

“The waif on the street is homesick; the poor old woman I see on the street corner selling papers is homesick; the restless vagabond tramp is homesick; the men and women who work in the factories and department stores are homesick; so are those who work on farms. On land or sea, mankind is homesick. Neither the idle nor those who labor are free from homesickness. The merchants and bankers and owners of farms and factories are homesick. You and I are homesick. Ah! yes, this is a homesick world, restless with aching heart.”^[6]

All the men and women, boys and girls, who ever found their way to me seeking help, no matter what they may have called their ailment, whether it were some sin or misfortune or sickness, all suffered from exactly the same thing — homesickness. Homesickness is merely a heartsickness that arises in everyone when he becomes conscious of separation from his source of life. All of us sometime or other experience this consciousness — and the moment we do we are in hell.^[7]

From the moment that this realization came to me, I thenceforth felt no need of probing into a man’s soul when he came to me for help. No longer was there any need for confession, for a specific statement of need, for a catalogue of sins, for a diagnosis of trouble.^[8] True, nearly everyone who came to me thought his sin or illness or trouble was different from that of everybody else in all the world, but in the end it always stood forth revealed as exactly the same thing — homesickness.

My father, who fought four years in the Civil War, has told me that over half of the deaths that occurred in the lonely camps of those four years of exile, from such alleged ailments as dysentery, measles, and typhoid fever, were in reality caused by nothing more or less than plain homesickness. Young boys and middle-aged men, torn away from the family environment of home and farm and business associations and thrust into an unfamiliar and unnatural environment where the chief business was the murdering of other human beings, could not stand the strain and simply faded away under the slightest cause or pretext of physical illness.

The greatest of all the ancient epics, the Odyssey, is the story of a man who epitomized in himself the whole spirit of his race seeking to find its home. In his passionate and eager search for his home, he received his title of “long-suffering” Odysseus, because for ten years he was doomed to suffer the pangs of homesickness while wandering up and down the world, buffeted by the seas and opposed by all the forces of nature and man. This book, which was a sort of Bible to the Greeks, is paralleled in our own Bible by the still longer wanderings of a lost nation, borne into a land of strangers, and seeking for the promised land which was to be their home. But the ten years of Odysseus’ journeys and the forty years of Moses’ wanderings dwindle into insignificance before the threescore years and ten which have been allotted to us to wander in the wilderness of separation and loneliness from our Father’s house unless, perchance, we find access to the Kingdom of Love which is within us here and now.

The “Father’s house”! These are the startlingly new words that Jesus added to the phraseology of religious literature. In the Father’s house are many mansions, and Christ has gone to prepare a place for us so that we may find access to that house, not merely after our death, but even here and now. “I am the door,” He said, “by which the sheep may come in and go out.” Thus He implied that we have freedom of access for passing in and out and there is nothing which cures homesickness so quickly as the assurance that such freedom is vouchsafed to us. “I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” He said to Peter; and whoever receives these keys is cured forever of the homesickness which stalks those who choose to remain outside in the wilderness of a materialistic world.

Jesus came as a Good Shepherd to seek and to save the lost. Save them from what, and take them where? Save them from their condition of lost-hood and take them home. And whom shall we find in that home? In answering this question Jesus used another Heaven-blessed word of His great vocabulary: the Father. Jesus took the greatest single step in the history of the world toward curing the universal ailment of homesickness when He revealed God to mankind as the Father. That was perhaps His most unique contribution to the literature of religion. God had been proclaimed as a judge, as a leader in battle, as a king on a throne, but it remained for Jesus to reveal Him to us as the Father.

Jesus converted this entire world, which had hitherto been a vast desert filled with warring tribes, into a great home and all who are in it into a big family, all children of the same parent, the moment He gave assurance to us that over all and ruling all was a loving Father. “I am the door to that home,” He said. “I am the way.”

How can one be lonely if he is always with his father? How can one be homesick if he is always in his father’s home? Don’t think that the so-called pagan nations are without a God. Jesus never claimed that a nation could not find God if its people had not heard of Him. He did not tell His followers: “No one can come to God except by me.” But He did say: “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” No one can come to the “Father” conception of God without first finding Jesus — no one can truly find his way home without Jesus’ gospel of love to guide him.

So when Jesus said to His disciples, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel” and when He charged them to “heal the sick,” the gospel He had in mind for His disciples to preach was the good tidings that God is our Father, and the chief sickness He had in mind — may we not say — was homesickness?

“No man cometh unto the Father, but by me,” said Christ, and by that statement He meant that no one comes to the Father except by the door of love. Wherever you can find selfless love in a human heart, you have found a door opening toward reality — toward God. Every selfless heart is a vestibule to God because in such a heart Christ abides. Silas Marner found that door in the trust and devotion of a little child. Dante found the door to Paradise in the rare, pure love of Beatrice. Many men in the hour of their spiritual regeneration find the door that opens into the Kingdom in the deathless devotion of a mother’s love.

But whenever one turns to a personality to find entrance into the Kingdom, it is not the personality but the ideal for which the personality stands which opens the door. The more transparent a personality, the clearer the ideal shows forth. Christ — the most transparent of all personalities — was truly “the way, the truth, and the life.” Jesus is so transparent that, when one looks at Him steadily and clearly enough, where He stands one can see nothing but Love.

When one is homesick, what he craves is not a building made by hands out of boards that have been hewn from timber of the forest. What he wants is the atmosphere, the spirit, the love that is within that home, something that cannot be made by hands, nor hewn from logs, but must come straight from the human heart that is atune to the love of God. A home is not a house with furniture in it; a home is humanity with God in it.

In The Forest of Arden, Hamilton Wright Mabie writes how he and Rosalind went into the Forest and found peace and joy. Then one day he awoke to the realization that perhaps it had all been a dream; and the book ends with these significant words: “Have I really been in Arden, or have I dreamed these things, looking into Rosalind’s eyes? It matters little whether I have traveled or dreamed; where Rosalind is, there, for me at least, lies the Forest of Arden.”

Among humble creatures of our common life, we find the mother hen the almost perfect symbol of where place and personality are combined to make a home. She is both mother and habitation for her little ones. Christ became for all time the most perfect panacea for the homesickness of the world when He gathered up in the form of a parable the relationship of the mother hen to her little ones and sent ringing down the ages His cry of tender pathos: “Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” To this should be added His invitation to all the world, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” And again He said, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.”

Is it not a wonderful thing that the “homeless one” should thus become the living home of all mankind?

Yes, his Father’s home did have many mansions and He had come to prepare a place for us. The end and aim of this homeless wanderer was to prepare homes for man both here and in the hereafter. And the place where that home is, is deep in the heart of Love. The further we can enter within the inner shrine of Love, the more we shall find ourselves eternally cured of the pangs of homesickness. And as soon as we have found the joy of that Love, we should be filled with the desire to bring others out from their lost condition to the Father’s home, where they also may abide in His Love.

6. [6] Lindsay, The New Psychology Complete
7. [7] Sam Johnson was right when he defined hell as “a place of separate souls.”
8. [8] Sometimes confession — as stated in the preceding chapter — is a very helpful means for bringing relief to a troubled soul, and for that reason no one should be prevented from making a clean breast of all his sins or ailments if he cares to do so. But it is not essential for the healing ministration of a true Fisher of Men.

6. Regeneration

The difference between a good salesman and a poor one is that the former usually ends his sales talk by getting his patron’s name on the dotted line. The old-fashioned evangelical service imitated this salesman’s technique to the extent of trying to make the listeners take some outward or formal stand for Christ. The essential thing that is needed when one is trying to bring a person into true organic union with the Father is some concrete, definite, simple act, to fix the conviction that a surrender has been accomplished or a covenant has been made.

The more delicately attuned to the Spirit a worker is, the less outward and visible does this act have to be. Christ, the perfect channel of God, caught the others’ faith sometimes without the help of intermediary language.

A Persian writer has said, “Take one step out of yourself and you will arrive at God.” This little step which seems so very simple is one of the biggest things a person can ever take. For it must not be a halfway step, nor a three-quarters-way step; it must be a whole step completely outside of himself. Such a step may be taken without any apparent outward manifestation whatever at the time, but sooner or later it usually takes some outward manifestation if for no other reason than that the outward act is the natural and inevitable culmination of the inner experience. It is only right, therefore, that such an opportunity of outward expression be presented if the Spirit so moves you to present it.

A very simple and natural way is to end the conversation with prayer and a few moments of stillness after the prayer; then, in parting,— if it should come naturally, — to grasp the other’s hand and say, “Let this be a covenant between us two and God, that you will hereafter belong entirely to Him and be a servant of Love.” Such a frank, sincere culmination to your conversation may fix in the other’s consciousness something that will remain there through all eternity.

But where the sin or trouble is very deeply imbedded, a few kind words and a prayer will not always be sufficient. In such cases, the way to conquer a trouble or a sin is not to run from it, but to seize it firmly, as a man might take a nettle which would sting him if he took it gently, and eradicate it by one sweeping stroke. Sometimes merely going to the window and casting it out will suffice.^[9] But sometimes a concrete, definite, specific act of penitence is required. When a young man with a besetting sin of covetousness came to Jesus, He gave him an opportunity for such a concrete, definite, specific act when He said, “Sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor.” After Peter denied Him three times, He required him to make public confession of his love for Him, punctuating each declaration with the admonition, “Feed my sheep.”

If a man beset with pride should have come to Him, seeking to be first, He would probably have let him kneel before His disciples and become the servant of all. When a man who was jealous or unforgiving came to Him, He bade him first go and make reconciliation with his brother and then come and offer his gifts upon the altar. I am not ready to say that the steps that you require should be as drastic as those of Jesus Christ, but I will say that you should tune in to the will of God, and be willing to speak the word which fits the occasion.

The moment that a man brings his spirit to the point where he can say inside his heart that he can give his wealth away, or that he can write a letter forgiving his enemy, or that he can kneel and humble himself before one of the least of these, then in most cases the outward act is not absolutely essential, for the only purpose of the outward act is to reveal the change of heart within. But the majority of people are so constituted that the only way they can make an inner change of heart permanent is to seal it with some concrete, external act. It is simply marvelous how effective a simple outward act symbolical of this inward transformation is in fixing the thought forever indelibly upon the mind of a man who is passionately desirous of liberation. So while there is no need to take artificial steps toward making an occasion for an outward manifestation of this inner initiation, as a mere form, one should never prevent anyone from taking such a step if it comes forth as a natural expression of an inner need.

Sometimes the crux of the problem is not how to discover a way of finding liberation from some specific trouble or sin, but of finding a way to let go and let God — or Love — have full sway.^[10] But if it seems absolutely impossible for him to let go and give his problem to God, and if all your efforts to help him seem to fail, there is always one possible method you can hold in reserve. And that is, you can give the problem to God for him. If he is so weak and spent in the day’s fight that he has no strength even to relax, — paradoxical as it may seem, — you can say, “Well, then, let me take over the job. Oh, not for any great length of time, of course, but, say, for just one week. I am going to ask you to drop the matter for just one week, drop it on my shoulders if you want to, and I will give it straight to God. You can go out and have a good time in the meanwhile. Try to make as many people happy as possible while I am on the job. If you so enjoy worrying about this trouble that you just hate to give it up, you can look forward with all your enthusiasm to the time when the week is up and you can have the luxury of taking it back and worrying about it again. But in the meantime, drop it, deprive yourself of this great privilege, and let me do it for you.”

This, of course, makes you for the time being a sort of mediator between God and man. But it is through such unselfish mediatorship that God grows ever more real to man. For in giving one in need an opportunity to give his problem — and his trust — to you whom he has seen, you are preparing him for the time when he will be able to give his problem and his trust directly to God whom he has not seen.

If he can’t let go for a week, ask him to let go for a day. If he can’t do it for a day, let him do it for one night or even for one hour. Wonderful things have sometimes happened by a person letting go of a thing for just a few minutes. If a man who is holding a lighted match out of the window lets go of it for a second, the effect is the same as if he let go of it for an hour; all danger of his fingers ever being scorched by that particular match are forever ended. In an almost identical way I have seen the most wonderful miracles of liberation and regeneration occur in some of the seemingly most hopeless cases when the power of letting go was obtained for even one moment.

But whether the letting go be for a minute or for a lifetime, whether the trouble be given directly to God or given through you as through a window to God, the thing which is more important than anything else is that the one in need obtains a positive conviction or an absolute knowing that something has happened in his life. Perhaps nowhere was Christ more wonderful than in His power of furnishing His hearers a means of obtaining such positive convictions.

After a salesman has presented his proposition to his hearer and explained it in all its details, after he has shown the effect it has upon others and what effect others think it will have upon him, there comes a moment when time for talk has ended — when the time for action has come. If a salesman has succeeded, this act will naturally follow. In fact, the very best test, the final proof that this preliminary part has succeeded, depends entirely upon the concrete act of faith that follows it. This act must prove whether one is willing to invest — not his money in this case, but his heart, his soul, his very life — in it.

And so it was with Jesus, the greatest salesman of the world. He came to “sell” the Kingdom of Heaven, and to sell it in terms of the experience of each man He dealt with. He came to seek and to save those who were in need. And when those who were in need were brought in contact with Him whose chief desire was to fill their need, only one thing was required to bring their complete redemption about, and that was for them to crystallize their vague yearnings into one definite, final act of faith.

But the word “faith” as I wish to use it here is hardly vital and virile enough for my purpose. Since Jesus’ day this word has been used so carelessly and promiscuously that some of its original force has been worn away by the handling of men. Therefore let me rehabilitate it and reexpress it in the terms I used a few paragraphs above, as a positive conviction or an absolute knowing. For our faith in the Divine Law must be as clear cut as our faith in the law of gravitation — yes, greater. That was what Jesus required of men, and to help them secure such faith He constantly sought for those experiences in each individual’s practical everyday experience which would furnish him analogies for presenting the great truths of the spiritual realm. Consequently He turned to the parable as His chief means of selling the Kingdom of Heaven to men.

We can imagine Him, for instance, talking with a woman who says that His way of Love will not work in her household, as her husband and two grown sons insist that the Sermon on the Mount is not practical and only fools would try to apply it. We can see Him turning His eyes of Love upon her and asking the simple question, “Did you ever bake bread?”

“Yes,” she replies.

“Did you ever put a little pinch of leaven into three measures of meal, and after a while observe how the entire loaf is leavened?”

“Yes,” she answers.

“Do you mean to say,” and here His eyes flash with the illumination of divine truth, “that you believe there is more power in a little pinch of leaven than in a heart filled with love? Go and lay your unselfish love within the hearts of those three members of your family, and you will presently find the entire home is leavened.”

In the same way He conveyed the positive conviction of the power of love to work miracles in the mind of the farmer by relating the parable of the mustard seed; in the mind of the business man by reminding him how gladly he would sell all his lesser pearls for the greatest one of all; in the mind of the carpenter by contrasting the houses which have been built upon sand and the houses which have been built upon rock.

If Jesus were talking to a business man today, I think the first step He would take in building a positive faith in the Kingdom of Heaven would be to ask him what he considered good security for making a loan, the best security in all the world. If the man should answer, “The United States Government,” Jesus would probably reply, “Well, here is something even stronger than the United States Government, a coinage system even greater than that of the United States Mint, for here is security where even robbers cannot break through and steal, nor moth and rust corrupt.”

If He were talking to a wrestler. He would ask him to show Him a hold which he had so perfectly mastered that, if he once could secure it upon his adversary, he could always throw his man. Then Jesus would say, “Well, here is a mental and spiritual hold I want to show you, which, if you can once get it upon any trouble which confronts you, no matter how big and powerful an adversary this trouble may seem, you can always throw it.”

The most striking illustration of this power to build a positive conviction or an absolute knowing upon an analogy drawn from personal experience is not one that was told in a parable, but one that actually occurred as an incident in Jesus’ life.

One day a Roman centurion sent a messenger to ask Jesus to come and heal his sick servant. The instant this request came, the disciples crowded about Jesus and urged Him by all means to grant the request, “for,” they said, “this centurion is a good man, who has built our synagogue for us.” They had not gone far on their way before the centurion, who had already revealed himself as broad-minded and tolerant through his liberality toward the Jews, and as sympathetic and democratic through his compassion for his servant, now revealed himself as a man of humility and faith, by sending another servant to Jesus with a message somewhat as follows: “My master says that he is not worthy to have you enter his house. Moreover, he says that it is not necessary that you should come at all, for, said he, ‘all my life I have been a Roman citizen in a land where law and order are the absolute rule of the day. As a Roman soldier, I am a part of the world’s greatest military system, where a command from one in authority is always obeyed. While I have officers over me, I also have men under me, and when I say to one, “Go,” he goeth, and to another, “Come,” he cometh. I cannot conceive of a Roman soldier disobeying a command of one in authority.

“‘Now on the streets of Capernaum I have recently heard it mentioned that your teaching differs from that of the scribes and Pharisees in that you speak as one having authority. As I speak in terms of authority in this world, you speak in terms of authority in the world of the spirit. Just as surely as I know that my voice is obeyed in the military realm, just as surely I know that your voice must be obeyed in the spiritual realm. Therefore, if you will just give the command, I know that my servant will be healed.’”

Then Jesus turned to those who were about Him and said, “I have not found so great a faith, no, not in Israel.”

It is to a faith like this, a faith greater than Jesus had seen in Israel, that I would call you, if possible. Find those analogies that reach the experience of your hearer, whether he be student, athlete, or business man — experiences which they do not only “believe in,” but which they know with a positive conviction and an absolute knowing. Fortunately for our purposes, modern science has revealed to us some great, big, immense analogies upon which we should be able to build a faith that could reach to the very stars. Let me suggest two or three:—

Just as surely as the tide goes out, it must surely come in. Just as surely as you give of yourself, so surely will you receive in return.

As surely as the drawing power of gravity pulls downward toward destruction, just so surely will the drawing power of Love draw all things upward toward harmony, health, and wholeness.

As surely as God keeps the stars in their courses, just so surely will He be able to keep you in your path without clash or discord of any kind if you but trust in Him.^[11]

With these as your “levers,” whenever you see a man give himself unselfishly, whenever you see a man love without asking a reward, whenever you see a man trust God’s plan for him without asking to see the next step — whenever you see a man do any one or all three of these things, then you can immediately form a positive conviction and an absolute knowing that his problem is already taken care of in God’s infinite plan and that all things will be done to him according to his belief.

After the positive conviction has been attained, after you have risen in your conversation up the hillside high enough for you to commence to see the Promised Land on the other side, then it is a fitting time for you to tarry for a little while in the restful silence of prayer. This is not always necessary, as I have said before, but there is, after all, nothing which will quite take the place of prayer. And with the power of this prayer following on long after the interview itself is finished, great and far-reaching may be the miracle that has happened in that golden hour.^[12]

And now I have reached the end of that which I have to write upon this matter, — no other thoughts seem to come, — so I can close this chapter with the soul’s sincere desire that you who happen to be reading this little message may catch the spirit that is written in between the lines, and with the blessing of the Holy Spirit upon you, go forth and become reapers, chosen of God, to glean in the fields which are already white unto the harvest.

9. [9] See Chapter IV for further methods of liberation.
10. [10] See Chapter III for suggestions regarding “letting go.”
11. [11] The author’s booklet. Twelve Parable Miracles of Answered Prayer, furnishes analogies which have proved helpful in meeting many similar problems.
12. [12] The moment a man is saved from sin or released from trouble, the next step is to keep him saved. The surest way to enable him to grow in grace and in stature and in favor with God and men is to give him plenty of fresh air, wholesome food, and healthful exercise. These three elements can be translated in religious parlance into prayer on the mountain, reading of good books, and saving other men. When Jesus had finished his work with the disciples, He dedicated them to their final training in spiritual discipleship by the act of washing their feet. When Peter demurred, He said, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.” Then Peter exclaimed, “Not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.” “He that is bathed,” replied Jesus, “needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit.” Let us assume that the head symbolizes the complete understanding of truth; and the hands the power to grasp truth, while the feet symbolize the power of being set in the path of truth. Jesus’ remark to Peter, then, signified that He was satisfied if the disciples were merely put safely on the path of truth; that if they stayed on it long enough they would in time reach the place of perfect grasp and perfect understanding.
13. The best way to put a person, newly awakened to spiritual values, on the path of truth is to put a soul-building book into his hands. There are so many books written of and about God and religion and theological matters, and so few that immerse you in them! In order to assist those who may be unfamiliar with the literature of this subject to do this intelligently, I have placed a bibliography at the end of this volume. Choose books which may be read, and reread and marked, and passed on to friends, and taken back and read and reread again. This outbreathing and inbreathing process of intensive reading is one of the surest aids toward healthy growth of the spirit, supporting and sustaining the work that has been done through contact with living personalities.

7. Qualifications of the Fisher of Men

As I finish writing this book, the wind is whistling past my window. Trees are swaying, leaves and broken twigs are flying through the air. The smoke from my neighbor’s chimney is falling aslant his roof. But little need it concern me. If it grows too blustery outside I can rise and close the window.

And yet, supposing there is work for me to do outside? Suppose there is a world of need crying for me out there?

I once heard of a Hindu philosopher who was discoursing beautifully to some friends upon the joys of the meditative life and the bliss of Nirvana when he was interrupted by the cries outside his window of a child who was dying of cold and exposure. The philosopher rose quietly, went to the window, and shut out the sound.

How different from our own Henry Drummond, who spent his days and nights ministering to the needs of sinful and suffering men! “Such tales of woe I’ve heard in Moody’s inquiry room,” Drummond once exclaimed, “that I have felt I must go and change my very clothes after the contact!” And again, “Oh, I am sick with the sins of these men ! How can God bear it!” And yet through it all he believed so thoroughly — to use his own words — “in the recoverableness of a man at his worst” that, according to his biographer, he “carried with him wherever he went the air of health and of victory.”

If this book impels you to remain in your room and pull down your window, it might just as well never have been written. If, however, it impels you to go forth into a world of sin and suffering with a renewed faith in “the recoverableness of a man at his worst,” it has not been written in vain. Beautiful as it is to transcend the world, far more beautiful is it to transform the world. Much as we all need to withdraw occasionally to the mountain top, — and never so much as when immersed in the task of saving men! — still more do we need to go down into the valley and save men from suffering and sin.

But how can one continually mingle in such sin and suffering and keep his poise, his serenity, and his faith? How can one come in contact with sins that would impel him to change his very clothes, and with sufferings that would make him sick at heart, and still carry with him wherever he goes “the air of health and of victory?”

You cannot do it unless you carry with you the homely virtues of humility and courage.

The Fisher of Men must, first of all, be a humble man. By humility I do not mean self-depreciation and self-condemnation. Nothing was further from the meaning of the word as Jesus used it in His day than that. Rather, I mean a total forgetting of self; a complete losing of one’s little self in the Great Self; the rendering one’s self transparent, so that the Great Father can shine through him. The first requirement of a Fisher of Men is in fact a humility that manifests itself in transparency.

Only when one is rendered transparent in this way can he help the sinner and the sufferer without letting the sins crush him or the sufferings overwhelm him. When one becomes transparent he becomes invulnerable. Keep yourself out of the picture, and nothing can touch you. You are immune. Though the sins you deal with be as scarlet and the troubles be black as ebony, you shall emerge as white as snow.

The transparent person is filled with wisdom — the wisdom of Socrates, who knew that he knew nothing. The transparent person is filled with goodness — the goodness of Christ, who said, “Why callest thou me good? None is good save one, even God.” The transparent person is filled with power — the power of Paul, who said, “I . . . glory in my weaknesses, that the strength of Christ may rest upon me . . . when I am weak, then am I strong.” And when opposition blocks his path he will need this wisdom, this power, this goodness, for it is at such times that he must be, in the words of Jesus, “wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”

First of all, the materialist will oppose him, not because he does not like him, but because he does not understand him. He will call him a dreamer, a mystic, an idealist; he may sometimes call him a revolutionist, although at heart he knows that a true Fisher of Men never destroys — he only saves. And no one wants the world to be saved more than does the materialist, for he is at heart thrifty, economical, parsimonious — he hates waste. But he wants salvation on his own terms and the transparent man does not always talk in his terms. Most materialists, however, are good fellows — they have high ideals of sportsmanship and are usually willing to give a fair field and no favor and let the best man win. Granted this opportunity, the transparent Fisher of Men will eventually win the materialist. He will save him, because a materialist is in essence nothing but a big splendid, wholesome, unripe, unpicked piece of fruit basking in the summer sun, taking his leisure about ripening as he sees no need of hurrying to get ready for the harvest — but, once ripe, perfectly willing to be picked. That is all he is — just as much a child of God as anybody in the universe and just as deserving of His love and care and the love and care of His ministers.

But unfortunately there is another class who will oppose the transparent men. This class will be found everywhere, among the religious as well as among the irreligious. They are the persons who show one face on the outside and another face on the inside. They are the only people in the world who consistently hate transparency. They do not want it to become the fashion; they do not want it to become popular. So they fight transparency and all who represent transparency or preach transparency. Moreover, they always fight from behind; they never grant a fair field and no favor; they are not good fellows; they are not good sports.

I cannot close this book without making one confession. There is one thing I have not been able to cure — to help — to remedy. And that thing is hypocrisy.

When one comes feigning great and deep interest in prayer while in his heart he scoffs at the whole thing, when one comes asking for inner riches and wanting only outer possessions, when one comes asking with his lips for bread of the spirit and desiring in his heart only bread of the body — that one I have not been able to help.

The hypocrite looks only at the outside of life, at the outside of words, at the outside of motives, at the outside of people, at the outside of God. And God has no outside, man has no outside, motives have no outside, words have no outside — to one who is born of the Spirit.

When one bearing the taint of the Pharisee comes to you, all you can say is, “Go forth and strip off the robes of hypocrisy, and humble yourself before God and man”; and then go on your way, leaving him in the hands of the Divine Father, who can touch the blind as well as those who see, trusting that in the mysterious ways of divinity that which is a wall will become a door, that which is closed will open, and the barrier will become a channel.

However, your very failure to help the hypocrite will render you more humble. You will learn that the more transparency is opposed the more transparent it becomes. Perhaps that is why hypocrisy is in the world: that through its unceasing opposition to transparency it shall make the whole world transparent.

So let me urge you to find that humility in heart that is not self-condemnation nor self-depreciation, but is true transparency. You will then find that, although you may own no property in your own name, you will own the whole world; although you may not have a painting in your house, you will own every art gallery; although you may not own a single field, you will own the sunsets and landscapes of every field; although you may have no father, mother, sisters, or brothers, all who do the will of the Father will be your father and mother and sisters and brothers. Every house that shelters you will be your home. Every nation that receives you will be your nation. Every race that accepts you will be your people. “Blessed are the meek,” said Jesus, “for they shall inherit the earth.”

As cattle can detect water much farther than they can smell it, through some unexplainable hidden instinct unknown to science, so can mankind tell when the humble man, the transparent man, is in their midst. They want him — and why? Because he never covets other persons’ belongings? Because he never detracts from other people’s praise or glory? Because, being transparent, he is never in anybody’s way? These are some of the reasons, but only the lesser ones. The chief reason, the strong, positive, dominating reason why the world wants and craves and needs the transparent person is because through his transparency they catch their first faint glimmer of God. The chief reason they seek his presence is because in his presence they find the very presence of God.

The second requirement of the Fisher of Men is courage. The call to the saving of men is a call to high adventure. Courage and humility, although seemingly in direct opposition, are in reality closely allied, the opposite halves of the same circle. The more transparent one becomes, the more fearless he grows. As one learns to take self out of the picture, the more impervious he finds that he becomes to any attack that can be made upon him. Gradually, as he grows more humble, more transparent, he begins to take upon himself a large impersonal daring, a serene audacity in the face of dangers that men who are absorbed in selfish, ambitious, covetous projects are totally incapable of understanding. The history of the world revolves around the history of such men.

The heroism of America up until now has been the heroism of the frontier. How it thrills our blood, the story of this old heroism! Through the dark forest press the frontiersmen. With trusted musket on the shoulder and powderhorn at the belt, they are making the forest trails safe for the caravans. Out across the prairies ride the rangers. With a brace of revolvers in the holster and a Winchester at the saddlebows, they are ready to front a world of foes. Calmly and coolly they are laying the foundations for a new great nation.

So they came — and so they passed away. But as they passed away, heroism and the need of heroism did not pass away with them. The mountain paths continue to stretch on and on into unknown futures, inviting a new army of frontiersmen to start upon a new journey to capture for the world a new continent. The lure of this new continent should be very great, for it is as yet little explored, charted, or brought under control. Many are the foes to meet and overcome there, but they are not of flesh and blood, but of principalities and powers, as Paul would call them, or of mammon and the devil, as Jesus would call them. For this continent is the continent of man’s soul.

The day of the hunters’ paradise is over, we are told. No more do the prairies invite us to hunt the wild bison, and the mountain trails no longer lead us to the lair of the grizzly bears. Only the helpless little duck and quail can reward our toil in the chase and these only in narrowly restricted places and seasons. But the old grizzly bear of selfishness was never more ferocious and dangerous than he is now, nor ever was there such danger from the wildcat of passion, from the wolf of avarice, and from the lion of pride. Dante, when he started to climb the Mountain of Attainment, found his way hopelessly blocked by such animals as these. Odysseus likewise, in his journey toward his goal, found his way blocked by brutality in the form of Cyclopes, lust in the form of sirens, sloth in the form of lotus eaters, gluttony in the form of Circe, despair in the form of Charybdis, and anger in the form of Scylla.

And hardly may a man step outside his own doorway to-day without encountering all the emotions and passions that flesh is heir to. Whether they come singly or in battalions, whether they appear within his own soul or outside of him in the concrete bodily form of dragons, giants, and minotaurs, what does it matter? The need for heroism is the same. If Emerson was right when he said that heroism is a necessity and men must have an opportunity to become heroes, opportunities galore are open before us. The call for a new knight-errantry to undertake the quest of high adventure was never more urgent than it is right here and now.

And the new knighthood must come not to destroy but to save, not to tear down but to build up. The swashbuckling hero of the films who returns from his fight and gathers his sweetheart into his capacious arms is as nothing compared with the hero who returns to those who are in despair, and takes in his arms all suffering humanity, and sets them free.

Our hero, when he comes riding to the rescue, must be a skilled and powerful rider. But the steeds he controls must be not horses of the flesh, but the emotions and passions that, when controlled, carry one whithersoever he wills. If not controlled, they carry men into labyrinths of confusion or throw their riders to destruction.

And he must be able to direct his fists carefully, to hit, not the victim of the attacking thoughts, but the thoughts themselves. In an earlier chapter I referred to an English officer who overtook a Bengal tiger which had run off with his child, only to find the child lying unhurt between the paws of the tiger, while its dress was held in the animal’s mouth. The officer, with great calmness and courage, with iron nerve and steady hand, took careful aim and killed the tiger. It was certainly not a time to falter, not a time to lose one’s temper or lose one’s nerve. How often, how very often our modern fathers, when a child has been carried away with some wild jungle thought, untamed and uncontrolled, have taken up their weapons and struck — not the cruel attacking thought, but the child itself!

And when Wilhelm Tell, the hero of our childhood days, was called upon to shoot the apple from off the head of his son, he succeeded — but only because his will was firm, his eye was clear, and his nerve was strong. That is the situation you will be called upon to face, not once in a lifetime, but day after day, and often many times in the same day. The heroic adventures that you are starting forth upon demand a clearer eye and a steadier nerve than any heroism of the past ever demanded.

Yes, there is a courage needed to-day, a heroism that makes the courage and heroism of former days shrink into insignificance. For it demands a driving away of enemies who, when once conquered, are conquered forever. Kill a man, and the evil which lived in that man is merely transferred into another man, more often into the conqueror himself, to live on and continue its harvest of damage. After French, English, Italians, and Americans had shot down and conquered Germans in the attempt to wipe out the spirit of imperialism, it soon appeared that the spirit had not been destroyed but had merely transferred its abode to the hearts of those who thought they had destroyed it through the absurd method of killing human beings. But kill a bad idea, a wicked passion, and you have by just that much liberated the entire world forever.

As the frontiersmen of the long distant past were laying foundations for civilizations which rose and fell, like the waxing and waning of the moon, you are laying foundations for a civilization that will never fail, for you, if you are transparent and courageous knights of the new Kingdom of the Spirit, are building for a kingdom whose foundations are already laid in eternity and whose limits can be measured only by the infinitude of the stars.

But before we can ride in and take possession of this new continent we are told we must first break through the great wall that organized hypocrisy, commercialism, worldliness, and greed have erected. This wall has been buttressed by the skepticism of scholars, the materialism of business men, the chicanery of statesmen, the hypocrisy of theologians, until it is well-nigh impossible for anyone to penetrate.

Suppose that this wall is as strong as the cynics and the skeptics and the materialists say that it is — does that mean it is indestructible? Can it be any stronger than the great bridge which the famous engineer constructed and then proclaimed to all the world that nothing could be drawn across it that would shatter it or endanger it? One man met the challenge.

“I know one thing it could not withstand,” he said.

“Name it,” exclaimed the engineer.

“An army of marching men — keeping step with the band up ahead.”

And the great engineer bowed his head and said, “ You are right. That is the one thing it cannot withstand.”

And so it is with the great wall which modern materialism, hypocrisy, and selfishness has erected; there is one thing which it also cannot withstand. Like the walls of Jericho and the bridge of the great engineer, it will have to go down before an army of marching men devoted wholly, completely, supremely, to the God of Love and keeping step to the music up ahead.

And once this wall of Jericho begins to totter and fall, then the commission from the great Captain will be laid upon you to ride into the new kingdom and bring it under control. Ride into the kingdom like the knights of old in quest of the Holy Grail, but know that, like the Kingdom of Heaven, you will find it only in the hearts of men. Ride into this kingdom like the Royal Mounted, to get your man and save your man. Ride into this kingdom like our own frontiersmen of old, remembering that the new continent you are penetrating is the continent of human souls.

And when the caravans begin to follow the trail you have blazed, and all nations shall begin to see before them the Promised Land they have so long been seeking, then shall we begin to see the fulfillment of the most beautiful wish ever given utterance in this old world: —

Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Bibliography

BOOKS FOR THE MAN WHO HAS BEEN HELPED

Brief Booklets

• As a Man Thinketh, James Allen (Barse & Hopkins)
• The Greatest Thing in the World, Henry Drummond
• Practicing the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence (Nicholas Herman) (Revell)
• Twelve Parable Miracles of Answered Prayer, Glenn Clark (Association Press)

These booklets are obtainable at prices ranging from 15 to 35 cents at almost any bookseller’s, and form splendid first aid to place in the hands of men saved from sin or trouble.

Books for General Reading

• In His Steps, C. M. Sheldon (Advance Publishing Co.)
• Quiet Talks on Power, S. D. Gordon (Revell)
• In Tune with the Infinite, R. W. Trine (Dodge)
• The Christ of the Indian Road, E. S. Jones (Abingdon Press)
• The Conquest of Fear, Basil King (Doran)
• The World Within, Rufus M. Jones (Macmillan)
• Spiritual Energies in the Daily Life, Rufus M. Jones (Macmillan)
• The Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today, Evelyn Underhill (Dutton)
• The Christ-Like God, F. J. McConnell (Abingdon Press)
• Letters and Religion, John Jay Chapman (Little, Brown)
• The Jesus of History, T. R. Glover (Association Press)
• The Ideal of Jesus, W. N. Clarke (Scribners)
• Consolation, Mrs. Albion Fellows Bacon (Little, Brown)
• My Idea of God, ed. by Joseph Fort Newton (Little, Brown)
• Power through Repose, Annie Payson Call (Little, Brown)
• Nerves and Common Sense, Annie Payson Call (Little, Brown)
• Religion and Health, James S. Walsh (Little, Brown)

For the Morning Watch

• Helps by the Way, Martha S. Hussey (Lothrop)
• Moments on the Mount, George Matheson (Doran)
• The Optimist’s Good Morning, Florence H. Perin (Little, Brown)
• God’s Minute, L. M. Cross (Vir Publishing Co.)
• Daily Strength for Daily Needs, Mary W. Tileston (Little, Brown)

Books on Prayer

• Creative Prayer, Emma Herman (Doran)
• Soul’s Sincere Desire, Glenn Clark (Little, Brown)
• The Meaning of Prayer, Raymond Fosdick (Association Press)
• The Life of Prayer in a World of Science, J. A. Brown (Doran)
• Science and Prayer, H. B. Smith (Revell)
• Prayers, Ancient and Modern, Mary W. Tileston (Little, Brown)

The first three could also be used in the morning watch, especially The Meaning of Prayer, which is arranged for ten weeks’ daily readings.

BOOKS FOR THE FISHER OF MEN

I. Books on the Saving of Men

• Twice-Born Men, Harold Begbie (Revell)
• More Twice-Born Men, Harold Begbie (Revell)
• Soul Surgery, H. A. Walter (printed privately)
• The New Evangelism and Other Essays, Henry Drummond (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Taking Men Alive, C. G. Trumbull (Association Press)
• Individual Work for Individuals, J. R. Mott (Association Press)
• Personal Work, How Organized, C. K. Ober and J. R. Mott (Association Press)
• Life of Drummond, George Adam Smith (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Life of Henry Wright, George Stewart (Association Press)

II. Books Dealing with Western Science

• Four Dimensional Vistas, C. F. Bragdon (Knopf)
• Consciousness and the Fourth Dimension, R. Ericksen (Knopf)
• The Electron, Robert A. Millikan (University of Chicago Press)
• The A.B.C. of Atoms, Bertrand Russell (Dutton)
• The Meaning of Relativity, A. Einstein (Princeton University Press)
• Science and Religion, J. A. Thompson (Scribners)
• Tertium Organum, P. D. Ouspensky (Knopf)
• The New Reformation, Michael Pupin (Scribners)

III. Books Dealing with Eastern Religion

• Bhagavad Gita (Dutton)
• The Spirit of Islam, Syed Ameer Ali (Doran)
• The Texts of Taoism, 2 volumes (Oxford University Press)
• Wisdom of Confucius (Brentano)
• Wisdom of the Chinese (Brentano)
• Sadhana: the Realization of Life, Rabindranath Tagore (Macmillan)
• Life and Teachings of Masters of the Far East, B. N. Spalding, 2 vols. (Sun Publishing Co., Los Angeles)
• The World’s Living Religions, R. E. Hume (Scribners)
• Out of Their Own Mouths, O. M. Buck (Abingdon Press)

IV. Books Dealing with Mysticism

Protestant Contributions

• Mysticism and Modern Life, J. W. Buckham (Abingdon Press)
• Mysticism, Evelyn Underhill (Dutton)
• Essentials of Mysticism, Evelyn Underhill (Dutton)
• The Meaning and Value of Mysticism, Emma Herman (Doran)
• Plotinus, Dean W. R. Inge (Longmans)
• Studies in Mystical Religion, Rufus M. Jones (Macmillan)
• Varieties of Religious Experience, William James (Longmans)
• Life and Writings, Swedenborg
• Pro Vita Monastica, H. D. Sedgwick (Little, Brown)
• Leaves from a Secret Journal, Jane Steger (Little, Brown)
• Brother John, Vida D. Scudder (Little, Brown)

Catholic Contributions

• Little Flowers of St. Francis, St. Francis of Assisi
• The Way of Perfection, St. Theresa
• Confessions, St. Augustine
• Heliotropium, Jeremias Drexel
• The Cloud of Unknowing, Jeremias Drexel
• The Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross (Juan de Yepez)

V. General Literature

Essays:

• Emerson: Oversoul and Spiritual Laws, etc.
• Carlyle: The Hero as Prophet and Priest, etc. Ruskin: Sesame and Lilies, etc.
• Arnold: Sweetness and Light, etc.

Novels:

• Hugo: Les Miserables
• Dickens: The Tale of Two Cities
• Dostoievsky: Brothers Karamazov
• Burnett: Secret Garden

Drama:

• Kennedy: The Servant in the House
• Jerome: The Passing of the Third Floor
• Back Pollock: The Fool, etc.

Poetry:

• Wordsworth
• Walt Whitman
• Robert Browning
• Burroughs, etc.

See also Oxford Book of Mystical Verse.

Fiction and poetry would often be helpful to put into the hands of the man who has been helped.




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© 1928, Little, Brown and Company