It was, therefore, out of the range of possibility that under Him there could be opposition or contradiction between one of His agents and another. It would be inconsistent with His being that one man's advantage should be brought about at another man's cost. Where that was apparently the case it was due to both sides taking the authority into their own hands, and neither sufficiently recognising Him. If His trusted subordinates in being given a free hand played Him false, they naturally played each other false, and played false to themselves first of all. Where one was afraid of another and strove to outwit him there was treachery against the supreme command.
Again there was nothing new in this; but to me it was a new point of view with regard to those with whom and for whom I worked. For the first time I saw their true relation to me, as mine to them, and something of the principle of brotherhood. Up to this time brotherhood had been a charming, sentimental word to me, and not much more. Children of one Father, yes; but discordant children, with no restraint that I could see on their natural cut-throat enmities.
But here was a truth which made all other men my necessary helpmates, and me the necessary helpmate of all other men. I couldn't do without them; they couldn't do without me. Hostility between us was as out of place as between men pulling together on the rope which is to save all their lives. If peril could bring about unity God could bring it about even more effectively. God was the great positive, the solvent in which irritation and unfriendliness must necessarily melt away.
VIII
The third point, involving my obvious first step, was to put suspicion out of my own mind. I was to see myself as God's Self-Expression working with others who were also His Self-Expression to the same extent as I. It was in the fact of our uniting together to produce His Self-Expression that I was to look for my security. No one could effectively work against me while I was consciously trying to work with God. Moreover, it was probable that no one was working against me, or had any intention of working against me, but that my own point of view being wrong I had put the harmonious action of my life out of order. Suspicion always being likely to see what it suspects the chances were many that I was creating the very thing I suffered from.
This does not mean that in our effort to reproduce harmonious action we should shut our eyes to what is evidently wrong, or blandly ignore what is plainly being done to our disadvantage. Of course not! One uses all the common-sense methods of getting justice for oneself and protecting one's own interests. But it does mean that when I can no longer protect my own interests, when my affairs depend upon others far more than on myself—a condition in which we all occasionally find ourselves—I am not to fret myself, not to churn my spirit into nameless fears. I am not a free agent. Those with whom I am associated are not free agents. God is the one supreme command. He expresses Himself through me; He expresses Himself through them; we all. I as well as they, they as well as I, are partakers of His Sonship; and the Son—His Expression—is always "in the Father's bosom,"[9] in His love and care.
IX
Having grasped this idea the new orientation was not difficult. There was in it too much solace to allow of its being difficult. If I state the results it is once more not because I consider them important to anyone but myself, but only because they became the starting-point of a new advance in the conquest of fear.
Within forty-eight hours, with no action on my part except the Metanoia, the change in my point of view, all misunderstandings had been cleared away. The other side had taken the entire initiative, I making no advance whatever toward them. A telegram expressing their hearty good will was followed by an interview, after which I was at work again. I have not only worked easily ever since but with such fecundity that one plan is always formed before I have its predecessor off my hands. This says nothing of the quality of my work, which, humble as it may be, is simply the best I know how to do. I refer only to its abundance. I have found that in "working together with God," I am less involved in conflicts of wills than I was before, and that the words of Amos are literally fulfilled to me, "that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed." I say it without knocking on wood, and with no fear lest my "good luck" will be withdrawn, that from that time to this I have had plenty of work which I have accomplished happily, and have never lacked a market for my modest wares.