"O thou who after toil and storm
May'st seem to have reached a purer air,
Whose faith has centred everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form.
Leave thou thy sister when she prays
Her early heaven, her happy views,
Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days."
And thus these two great minds have left us a lesson of wisdom which we shall do well to profit by. Let us see how it applies more particularly to our own case.
The true presentment of the Higher Thought contains no "negative propagandism." It is everywhere ranged on the side of the Affirmative, and its great object is to extirpate the canker which gnaws at the root of every life that endeavours to centre itself upon the Negative. Its purpose is constructive and not destructive. But we often find people labouring under a very erroneous impression as to the nature and scope of the movement, and thus not only themselves deterred from investigating it, but also deterring others from doing so. Sometimes this results from the subject having been presented to them unwisely—in a way needlessly repugnant to the particular form of religious ideas to which they are accustomed; but more often it results from their prejudging the whole matter, and making up their minds that the movement is opposed to their ideas of religion, without being at the pains to inquire what its principles really are. In either case a few words on the attitude of the New Thought towards the current forms of religious opinion may not be out of place.
The first consideration in every concern is, What is the object aimed at? The end determines the means to be employed, and if the nature of the end be clearly kept in view, then no objectless complications will be introduced into the means. All this seems too obvious to be stated, but it is just the failure to realise this simple truth that has given rise to the whole body of odium theologicum, with all the persecutions and massacres and martyrdoms which disgrace the pages of history, making so many of them a record of nothing but ferocity and stupidity. Let us hope for a better record in the future; and if we are to get it, it will be by the adoption of the simple principle here stated.
In our own country alone the varieties of churches and sects form a lengthy catalogue, but in every one of them the purpose is the same—to establish the individual in a satisfactory relation to the Divine Power. The very fact of any religious profession at all implies the recognition of God as the Source of life and of all that goes to make life; and therefore the purpose in every case is to draw increasing degrees of life, whether here or hereafter, from the Only Source from which alone it is to be obtained, and therefore to establish such a relation with this Source as may enable the worshipper to draw from It all the life he wants. Hence the necessary preliminary to drawing consciously at all is the confidence that such a relation actually has been established; and such a confidence as this is exactly all that is meant by Faith.
The position of the man who has not this confidence is either that no such Source exists, or else that he is without means of access to It; and in either case he feels himself left to fight for his own hand against the entire universe without the consciousness of any Superior Power to back him up. He is thrown entirely upon his own resources, not knowing of the interior spring from which they may be unceasingly replenished. He is like a plant cut off at the stem and stuck in the ground without any root, and consequently that spiritual blight of which George Eliot speaks creeps over him, producing weakness, perplexity, and fear, with all their baleful consequences, where there should be that strength, order, and confidence which are the very foundation of all building-up for whatever purpose, whether of personal prosperity or of usefulness to others.
From the point of view of those who are acquainted with the laws of spiritual life, such a man is cut off from the root of his own Being. Beyond and far interior to that outer self which each of us knows as the intellectual man working with the physical brain as instrument, we have roots penetrating deep into that Infinite of which, in our ordinary waking state, we are only dimly conscious; and it is through this root of our own individuality, spreading far down into the hidden depths of Being, that we draw out of the unseen that unceasing stream of Life which afterwards, by our thought-power, we differentiate into all those outward forms of which we have need. Hence the unceasing necessity for every one to realise the great truth that his whole individuality has its foundation in such a root, and that the ground in which this root is embedded is that Universal Being for which there is no name save that of the One all-embracing I AM.
The supreme necessity, therefore, for each of us is to realise this fundamental fact of our own nature, for it is only in proportion as we do so that we truly live; and, therefore, whatever helps us to this realisation should be carefully guarded. In so far as any form of religion contributes to this end in the case of any particular individual, for him it is true religion. It may be imperfect, but it is true so far as it goes; and what is wanted is not to destroy the foundation of a man's faith because it is narrow, but to expand it. And this expanding will be done by the man himself, for it is a growth from within and not a construction from without.
Our attitude towards the religious beliefs of others should, therefore, not be that of iconoclasts, breaking down ruthlessly whatever from our point of view we see to be merely traditionary idols (in Bacon's sense of the word), but rather the opposite method of fixing upon that in another's creed which we find to be positive and affirmative, and gradually leading him to perceive in what its affirmativeness consists; and then, when once he has got the clue to the element of strength which exists in his accustomed form of belief, the perception of the contrast between that and the non-essential accretions will grow up in his mind spontaneously, thus gradually bringing him out into a wider and freer atmosphere. In going through such a process as this, he will never have had his thoughts directed into any channel to suggest separation from his spiritual root and ground; but he will learn that the rooting and grounding in the Divine, which he had trusted in at first, were indeed true, but in a sense far fuller, grander, and larger every way than his early infantile conception of them.