THE MAIN
THING
W. John Murray
The Astor
Lectures
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1917.
”Be not conformed to this
world; but be ye transformed by the
renewing of your mind.”--Romans
12:12.
[7] The
force which utilizes and dominates all
other forces is the force of mind. Those
who, through study and experimentation,
became acquainted with its laws, were
able to prove these laws by what have
been called miracles, but a miracle is
nothing more than the application of any
law not generally understood. When the
law is explained the miracle disappears,
and this applies to the cures wrought by
Jesus, as well as to the phenomena of
electrical science. The influence of one
mind on the mind of another is a fact
long established.
We are all
more or less affected by the thoughts of
others, even when no audible word is
spoken. The power of thought is the
foundation of that system of mental
therapeutics which Jesus and his
immediate followers understood and
practiced, and which is being revived in
this day. It is a [8] matter of common
experience that when a person of
melancholy mood enters a room where other
people are congregated, he, without
speaking a word, affects those present to
the degree that a current of cold air
would be felt, if a window were suddenly
opened.
How often,
on the other hand, have we seen a person
of cheerful and healthy state of mind
enter a dining-room where a family sat
eating, as if it were the most serious
work in the world, and suddenly transform
the atmosphere into one of gaiety and
laughter. By his very presence he drives
away incipient indigestion and provokes a
jollity which aids in the flow of those
gastric juices so essential to the
enjoyment and digestion of a meal which
would, otherwise, have been the
performance of a mere duty, the duty of
eating at stated intervals. The man of
melancholy mood is a disease germ walking
on two legs, while the man of cheerful
temperament is a health microbe radiating
an atmosphere of happiness, which
includes health within it as surely as
depression includes disease. We owe it to
humanity, especially that portion of it
with which we come in daily contact, to
heed the injunctions of Jesus concerning
our mental attitudes. When he tells us to
“Be of good cheer,” it is not
only for the effect this will have upon
our health, but for the effect it will
have upon others, for by the tie which
links one thing to another, “what
affects one must of necessity affect
all.”
If two
instruments tuned to the same key [9] are
placed sufficiently near each other, and
the key of one is struck, the
corresponding key in the other instrument
vibrates in unison. This is true of the
minds of men, so that it is easy to
understand the effect of one mind on
another, although until within the last
few years, the medical faculty have paid
little, if any, attention to the most
important medical factor in the cause and
cure of disease. The study and
application of the force of mind was left
to the psychologist, and others who cured
where materia medica had failed, thus the
cry went up, “Quack.”
In the year
of 1866 Sir James Paget, the most noted
physician of his day in England, writing
to another doctor regarding a case which
had baffled their combined skill, said,
“What unsatisfactory cases these
are! This clever, charming and widely
known lady will some day disgrace us all
be being juggled out of her maladies by
some bold quack who, by mere force of
assertion will give her the will to heal,
or forget, or suppress all the
turbulence of her nervous system.”
While admitting that the cure may be
effected, this Doctor envies the one who
performs it; that is according to Sir
James, one who is not recognized by the
prevailing systems of medicine would be
far more efficient in the cure of disease
than the regular school. In Sir
James’ day, there was no place in
materia medica for mental therapeutics,
and consequently we find these very
distinguished men of medicine admitting
their inability to cure a malady which
they frankly admit [10] some quack may
accomplish. They admit a fact which they
are unwilling to give a place in their
pharmacopoeia.
Since that
day, however, the so-called quacks have
grown to an innumerable host, so great in
fact, that they make Medical Boards here
and in England somewhat apprehensive. The
charlatan in this case is not necessarily
a fakir or pretender; rather is he one
who studies and applies the laws of Mind
to the cure of bodily ailments. The
“bold quack” who uses in the
case of the “widely known
lady” the “force of
assertion,” is only doing what Sir
James Paget himself might have done, had
he only been willing to admit that there
are some things to be learned which are
not necessarily in medical text
books.
Why should
the medical profession have to look to
the “quack” for the
“boldness of assertion,”
which sets men free from the pangs of the
flesh? Why not study Divine Science,
which is the sovereign power of mind, and
add this to its curriculum? The quack may
have something to learn from the regular,
but may it not be that the regular might
have something to learn from the quack?
The antiquity of a method is not always a
sufficient proof of its infallibility. If
it were not so, there would be no
progress. The new school may exaggerate
the force of mind, as some aver, but it
can well afford to investigate and adopt
it, for the day has gone by when the
mental factor in disease can be sneered
at, since the most advanced thinkers in
the medical world [11] now recognize its
potency on the cause and cure of disease.
When such an authority as Sir. B. W.
Richardson says, “Diabetes from a
sudden shock is a pure type of a physical
malady of mental origin,” and Dr.
Snow in the London Lancet asserts
that, “the vast majority of cases
of cancer, especially of breast and
uterine cancer, are due to mental
anxiety,” and Dr. Murchison assures
us that, “these cases have been far
too numerous to be accounted for as mere
coincidences,” we do well to think
soberly of this Force of mind.
If morbid
thinking can cause disease, as these men,
who are medical men in good and regular
standing, and not quacks, assure us it
can, then why should it be a thing
incredible that mind can cure it? When
Canon Wilberforce became convinced of the
therapeutic value of thought, he looked
for further evidence of it in his daily
life and practice. He says that his
prayers were attended by positive cases
of bodily healing as the result of what
he calls “wireless spiritual
telegraphy.” He gives us extracts
from two taken from a great number. He
prayed for a young girl who was about to
face an examination for a post, and who
was tormented with nervous headache. The
statement is made that, “It was a
positive miracle. There was not a
headache after that night; and the
examination was passed most
successfully.” Again he prayed two
Sundays in succession for a youth in the
north of England. The letter says,
“He was dying; the [12] doctors had
given him up and he himself had no
thought of recovery. To-day he is well
and a new man; people are expressing the
greatest astonishment, declaring that no
one understands it. They do not know the
explanation.”
Canon
Wilberforce explains these cures by
stating that, “The first thought of
to-day is that the world is ruled by mind
and not by matter”; that,
“there is a Soul in all things and
that Soul is God.” That is the true
philosophy of creation. Every atom, every
germ has within it a principle, a life, a
purpose, a degree of consciousness,
appropriate to its position in the scheme
of things. That consciousness or mind
differs in magnitude in its different
manifestations, being higher in the
insect than in the vegetable, higher in
the animal than in the insect, and that
occasionally there is evidenced in the
animal a shrewdness which implies
observation and close reasoning.
“For
example,” he writes,
“recently I was at Christ Church in
Hampshire and was conducted by Mr. Hart
over [to] his unique museum of birds. Now
in order to deceive the bird amongst
whose eggs the cuckoo intends to place
its own egg, the cuckoo causes the egg it
is about to lay to assume the color and
markings of the eggs of the small bird,
who is to become the foster-mother. Mr.
Hart showed me over forty cuckoos’
eggs, each one colored to imitate the
natural egg of the bird whose nest the
cuckoo had commandeered. This had been
done with extraordinary [13] accuracy,
from the bright blue of the hedge
sparrow’s egg to the dull olive of
the nightingale’s egg, and even the
peculiar markings, like notes of music,
of the yellow-hammer’s eggs had
been imitated.
Consider the
extraordinary mental power implied. The
cuckoo has first to decide which nest she
will lay her contribution in. She has
then to study the coloring of the eggs in
that nest: then with some amazing
exercise of the power of thought, she has
to cause her egg to assume that color,
after which she lays it on the ground,
takes it in her beak and carefully
carries it to the nest on which she has
decided to place it. “What an
intense, ever-present reality is that
Infinite Mind!” It has been
suggested that, if the human parent would
follow the cuckoo’s example and
mark her children after that fashion
spiritually, what a wonderful race we
would have.
In view of
the fact that every child is marked
before birth in one form or another, the
pity is that this marking is not so
intelligently done as in the case
of the cuckoo, and there is no reason why
this should not be accomplished. Most
children are marked by the thoughts of
their parents, but unfortunately all of
these thoughts are of a negative or a
fearful character. Therefore what the
cuckoo knows by instinct, the human
parent should be taught through mental
science, in order to make a happy and
harmonious civilization, which is to be
the race of the future.
The only
limit to the force of mind is that [14]
which is placed upon it by one using this
force or the thinker of thoughts. The
influence of the mind as a producer of
disease has been emphasized so often that
intelligent humanity is fairly well
convinced of it, but like every other
important question, we are beginning to
see that this one has two sides. If
negative thinking can produce disease,
positive thinking can produce health.
This has ceased to be a theory and has
become a matter of practical
demonstration. Not only can we improve
our own health by a scientific
application of the force of mind, but we
can improve the mental and physical
health of those who are near or remote
from us, who are in sympathy with the
spiritual method of healing.
It is now as
well established as any principle of
chemistry, that one mind can impress its
thoughts and feelings upon another mind
without intervention of spoken words. To
think with an intensity is to abolish
time and space, so that what one would
say to another if he were present, he may
say to him by means of the Spirit. When
the thought of an absent friend is one of
health and wholesomeness, it will be
taken up by the receptive soul of him who
needs it, and presently translated into
terms of mental peace and bodily vigor.
Telepathy is as much a science as
telegraphy, and much older.
Ideas are
the most real things in the universe, and
these are transmissible from one mind to
another;--not by means of the spoken
word, but by what we now popularly call
suggestion. Ideas [15] are mental
pictures which excite similar mental
pictures in the minds of others by means
of thought transference. This is no more
difficult to him who understands the law
than is wireless telegraphy. That there
is no visible means of communication
between transmitter and receiver in
either case, is no argument against the
possibility. When we send a Marconigram
from a ship at sea to a friend on shore
no noise is heard along the line of
travel. Neither the fish in the sea nor
the birds in the air are disturbed by it,
and yet it reaches him for whom it is
intended. Thus, when one minds acts upon
another mind, whether the bodies of these
individuals are in the same room or
separated by miles of space, the effect
is produced in a similar manner. No
audible sound is necessary, only the
transmission of a spiritual force, causes
the action and reaction of one mind upon
another.
This
explains the cures wrought by Jesus for
those who came to him, as well as for
those whom he never saw, as in the case
of the Centurion’s servant. It is
the calling into manifestation of the
force of the Holy Spirit, by the power of
mind, which cleanses from sin and redeems
from sickness. It is the function of the
Holy Spirit to disperse the Life which is
God.
The only
effort of the will which is used in this
method of spiritual healing is the
willingness to cooperate with Divine law,
and to let the force which is Divine flow
through one as through a free and
unobstructed channel. There [16] are
three things which may serve to obstruct
the channel. They are fear, sin and
ignorance. Remove these and the energy of
the Holy Spirit comes down from above as
water from a reservoir, refreshing the
hope and stimulating the courage of the
invalid, restoring him at last to the
health and strength which God intends him
to manifest. All one has to do in order
to heal the sick as Jesus healed them, by
the force of mind, is to know the Truth
as Jesus taught it, and the opportunities
for acquiring this knowledge are greater
to-day than at any time in the
world’s history. Divine Science is
in the world, and it may be understood
and demonstrated. Having eyes we see not,
and having ears, we hear not, lest seeing
and hearing we should become converted
and Christ should heal us, not only of
our diseases, but of the sins which
produce them. In a vague way, humanity
sees the demands of Divine Science for a
truly religious life, which it hesitates
to embrace because it still loves the
ways of the world, the flesh and
evil.
Would we
know the force of mind and demonstrate
it, we must be willing to comply with its
requirements. Would we heal the sick and
reform the sinner and comfort the
sorrowing, then we must lose sight of
self in our curative effort. We must
trust God and understand His law of
unselfed Love. We must believe in the
force of mind and the possibility of
impressing our ideas of Truth on the
receptive minds of those who really
desire to be healed of sin and sickness.
[17] We must know that the idea of
health, or the picture of man’s
perfectness as the son of God, is as
communicable as any other idea, and may
become externalized in man as the seed
sown in the soil is externalized in fruit
or flower. In sickness, the best remedy
is Truth. When all other systems have
failed, we may still have recourse to the
method of Jesus, which was not one of
pills and potions, but of prayer,
scientific prayer, and having recourse to
these we may be healed and made
“every whit whole.”
Christianity
is coming to have a deeper meaning to
those who investigate it through the laws
of Divine Science, for it means not only
salvation from sin, but salvation from
the consequence of sin, which is called
disease. The Christianity of Jesus and
his disciples was the understanding and
demonstration of this force of mind which
resulted in what have since been called
miracles. But the healing of the sick by
Jesus through the application of the
force of mind was no more miraculous to
him than the lighting of a room by the
force of electrical energy is to Edison.
That which took place in the days of
Jesus is miraculous to us in this day and
in our present state of spiritual
ignorance, but may it not be that the
inventions of to-day would have been just
as miraculous to those of that era? A
miracle is only the scientific
application of a force not generally
understood.
The system
of spiritual healing, which is gaining so
rapidly all over the world, is not new,
[18] but is a re-discovery of the oldest
system in the universe, and when the race
comes to a realization of the force of
mind, and the individual becomes
convinced of his right and power to use
this force for constructive and healing
purposes, sin, sickness, disease and
death itself will disappear from the face
of the earth, and men shall be as the
angels which are in heaven.
Next: The
Philosophy of Common Sense
* * * *
*
The Astor Lectures
Table of
Contents
(Formerly at
Northwoods Divine Science Resource
Center)
