When the Jews of old murmured they either fell dead of plague or were swallowed up by splits in the ground. They had been told of the One Only filling all the universe -Source of strength and sturdy health, but they got tired of being continually on the watchout toward an Invisible Friend, and wailed that their opportunities were wretched. A complainer of situations or people or events is no friend. His aura is bad. It acts as a secret cut-off to gladness. Attention to the One Presence acts on mankind as the magnetic bar acts on a steel needle. Suddenly the needle is a magnet. Taglioni saw invisible dancing. She practiced the motions and gyrations and leaps which she secretly imaged, till she was like a symphony in thistle down. Caleb was as sturdy at eighty-five as he had been at forty, by attending daily upon the Omnipotence that bears up a planet on its bosom as easily as the Pacific bears up a rose leaf. The best gift we can bring to our neighbors is the aura of a noble doctrine from which we never swerve. Cosimo di Medici said that the aura of Archbishop Antonino, with his divine doctrine of God as peace, had stopped famine, plague and earthquake. Antonino was always exercising himself for himself by adoring Irresistible Peace. So he radiated irresistible peace. "This is my aura broken for you," may all such aver. But I must have an aura worth while before its breaking is worth while. "To thine own self be true, And it shall follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." Saturday is Saturn's day, or the day of Cronus, god of harvestings. Saturn is king of the Golden Age. Always the king can be invoked: "Let the king hear us when we call." Invocation appears to be the easiest of all the practices of man with the Unseen King, yet only a few out of all earth's billions have had invoking powers. Cicero was an orator, and the greatest lawyer ever known, but some peasant with invoking energy had more healing of his pains than Cicero could rally. When Pope Pius the Ninth wanted his titled lady friend to be cured of her terrible rheumatism, he had to send for Cancelli of peasant descent, to invoke the healing. Hezekiah, among the kings, was one who could invoke real aid. He had more invocative effectualness than the great Isaiah. He drew to himself life from the King of kings, and warded off death for himself and for his whole army. He tells us exactly how he did it: "I called unto thee, and I stretched up my hands unto thee." This has always been what all men with invoking effectualness have done. They have drawn from beyond the margins of the manifest by stretching up their hands and calling for miraculous help from the Unmanifest. "Until the day breathe, I will get me to the mountains of myrrh," said Solomon. The day that breathes is the time of the ozones of the Unseen that come breathing in. The myrrh mountains are the heights up to which the peasants stretch their hands and call. Myrrh was an anesthetic. It was like poppy anodyne for causing forgetfulness of pain. Myrrh perfume was the symbol of the celestial ethers which by and by breathe of themselves, till time is no more. They offered myrrh to Jesus, but he did not need it, as he was already breathing beyond time's range. Proclus studied into the invocations of all religious peoples, but he never seemed to catch Hezekiah's secret of stretching up his hands and calling upon the unseen Lord of the Happy Harvests, King of the People Yet To Be. Man tends deathward with all his common breath, so he sends it forth more than he inbreathes it. "And he returneth to earth and his thoughts go with him." Saturday is the day to invoke, like Hezekiah and the inspired peasantry. It is the day to get us to the myrrh mountains of Solomon, where immortal elixirs can be inbreathed. Shakespeare knew that spiritual flavors could be indrawn by calling upon whoever holds them in large storage: "Go, my dread lord, to your dead grandsire's grave. Invoke his warlike spirit." Sunday is Sol's day. It is the day to remember the sun worshiped by Abraham and Zoroaster and Jesus. That is, the Sun of the Sun. On was a city where the Sun of Righteousness with healing in his beams, was adored. On, or Heliopolis, was the brightest spot on the globe in the days of Moses. The divine oracles were promulgated by the priests of On. Thus they were the priests of light-Sun Priests. As the image of the butterfly is in the caterpillar, and it is the sun that draws it forth, and the image of the cak tree is in the acorn, and the sun draws it forth, with heart of iron and bark of mail to stand rooted in the centuries, so the Sun of the Sun draws forth the Divine Image in any man who watches high and keeps noble oracles. The Hebrews were mysteriously wonderful while traveling through the wilderness. They sent an ark on before them, shouting an oracle into it with loud voices, two million strong: "Up, Lord, let thine enemies be scattered; let all them that hate thee flee before thee." When the ark stopped, they cried, "Return, O Lord, unto thy ten thousand thousands," and, as they had not a doubt of the ark being the pivotal center of power, the Lord visibly with them-it is no wonder that Dagon fell down and broke his hands, and the men of Goth and Ashdod dropped dead when the Philistines captured the ark. Dr. Worcester told a man to put one worry into one bean, and another into another bean and drop the beans into a cushion. This is a modern application of the old principle of arks and phylacteries, which did not enfold worries, but oracles. One old Hebrew oracle or cabalistic sentence charged with secret helping power, read: "It overflowed-He sent forth darts-Shaddai is all sufficient-His hand is strongHe is the preserver of my life." Shaddai was the ancient name for Omnipotence. Notice the principle of outgoing and incoming in all the talismans. Out go the mystic omnipotent powers to beat back troubles. In come the same powers to preserve and protect and prosper. When the Hebrews sensed the outgoing aromas and the incoming elixirs, they were on the myrrh mountains where Solomon got him to wait for the New Day to breathe. Ezekiel was on the mountains of myrrh when he called, "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain!" And the bones in the valley felt the breathing of the breath that causes forgetfulness of death, and bone to bone they stood up as men. It took thousands of Hebrews joining together to make the ark a repository of oracular radio activity, but in this neo-pagan day each one on his lone myrrh mountain may sense the sunshine and the wind of the New Day's earthconquering breath, and know that something divine in him is greater than any trouble that can happen to him, and something in him is wiser than the common mind that stamps him down as scarabs are stamped under Nile mud. "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on the likeness of God in me." "Shine, up-drawing Sun, on this thy mystic, Immortal Image!" "A commonplace life" we say, and we sigh, The moon and the stars are commonplace things, Out of commonplace lives makes his beautiful whole. -Susan Coolidge. You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.-Froude. BIBLE LESSONS BY CHARLES FILLMORE LESSON 9, DECEMBER 1 THE LUNATIC BOY-Mark 9:14-29. 14. And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great multitude about them, and scribes questioning with them. 15. And straightway all the multitude, when they saw him, were greatly amazed, and running to him saluted him. 16. And he asked them, What question ye with them? 17. And one of the multitude answered him, Teacher, I brought unto thee my son, who hath a dumb spirit; 18. And wheresoever it taketh him, it dasheth him down: and he foameth, and grindeth his teeth, and pineth away: and I spake to thy disciples that they should cast it out; and they were not able. 19. And he answereth them and saith, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I bear with you? bring him unto me. 20. And they brought him unto him: and when he saw him, straightway the spirit tare him grievously; and he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming. 21. And he asked his father, How long time is it since this hath come unto him? And he said, From a child. 22. And oft-times it hath cast him both into the fire and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us. 23. And Jesus said unto him, If thou canst! All things are possible to him that believeth. 24. Straightway the father of the child cried out, and said, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. 25. And when Jesus saw that a multitude came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I command thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him. 26. And having cried out, and torn him much, he came out: and the boy became as one dead; insomuch that the more part said, He is dead. 27. But Jesus took him by the hand, and raised him up; and he arose. 28. And when he was come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, How is it that we could not cast it out? |