The Higher Powers of Mind and SpiritTrine, Ralph Waldo
Religion
The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit
Trine, Ralph Waldo
Mind and body; New Thought
These men gave us, however, no knowledge of _the laws_ underlying the
workings of these inner forces and powers; they perhaps had no such
knowledge themselves. They were intuitive perceptions of truth on their
part. The scientific spirit of this, our age, was entirely unknown to
them. The growth of the race in the meantime, the development of the
scientific spirit in the pursuit and the finding of truth, makes us
infinitely beyond them in some things, while in others they were far
ahead of us. But this fact remains, and this is the important fact: If
these things were actual facts in the lives of these early Hebrew
prophets, they are then actual facts in our lives right now, today; or,
if not actual facts, then they are facts that still lie in the realm of
the potential, only waiting to be brought into the realm of the actual.
These were not unusual men in the sense that the Infinite Power, God, if
you please, could or did speak to them alone. They are types, they are
examples of how any man or any woman, through desire and through will,
can open himself or herself to the leadings of Divine Wisdom, and have
actualised in his or her life an ever-growing sense of Divine Power. For
truly "God is the same yesterday, and today, and forever." His laws are
unchanging as well as immutable.
None of these men taught, then, how to recognise the Divine Voice
within, nor how to become continually growing embodiments of the Divine
Power. They gave us perhaps, though, all they were able to give. Then
came Jesus, the successor of this long line of illustrious Hebrew
prophets, with a greater aptitude for the things of the spirit--the
supreme embodiment of Divine realisation and revelation. With a greater
knowledge of truth than they, he did greater things than they.
He not only did these works, but he showed how he did them. He not only
revealed _the Way_, but so earnestly and so diligently he implored his
hearers to follow _the Way_. He makes known the secret of his insight
and his power: "The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself:
but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." Again, "I can
of my own self do nothing." And he then speaks of his purpose, his aim:
"I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more
abundantly." A little later he adds: "The works that I do ye shall do
also." Now again, these things mean something of a very definite nature,
or they mean nothing at all.
The works done, the results achieved by Jesus' own immediate disciples
and followers, and in turn their followers, as well as in the early
church for close to two hundred years after his time, all attest the
truth of his teaching and demonstrate unmistakably the results that
follow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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