RACE BELIEF
W. John Murray
The Astor
Lectures
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1917, 8th ed.
“Beloved, believe not every
spirit, but try the spirits
whether they be of God.” --I
John 4:1.
[38] Have
you ever asked yourself how many of your
thoughts or beliefs are original with
you?
If you have,
you have been surprised to discover that
most of them have been handed down to
you, or that they are mere reflections of
popular sentiment which you accept
without so much as a question. We echo
other men’s opinions as mountains
echo voices and delude ourselves into the
belief that they are our own. For
centuries it was the popular conception
that the earth was flat. Individuals
accepted this erroneous belief, because
it is so much easier to accept things
than it is to investigate them. Every
great and commanding movement for the
betterment of the race has been due to a
rejection of some existing superstition,
the practice of which has never been
questioned before. Galileo questioned a
universal opinion, refused to accept it,
and the world was blessed by the advent
of a new science in consequence.
[39] Some
one has said that one can count the
original thinkers of an age on the
fingers of one hand. The remainder are
imitators. The great majority think other
men’s thoughts as unconsciously as
they inhale other men’s breath in
crowded halls and street cars. We think
we are original, when, as a matter of
fact, we are expressing suggestions which
came to us from people, press or pulpit,
as the case may be. We are moved more by
external conditions than by internal
convictions, as when a mob stampedes in a
theater at the first cry of fire, when
there is no fire.
A man
attracts a crowd by looking up into the
heavens at nothing. We imagine he sees
something and look in the same direction.
Others follow our example. When a
sufficient number has gathered to prove
to the joker the possibility of arresting
the progress of a hundred people, in
order to look at nothing, the joker walks
off. When the joke is perceived, we look
at one another and wonder who started it
all. Trying to locate the joker is like
trying to account for the “origin
of evil,” so we walk on ashamed of
the fact that we have been
hoodwinked.
Race Belief
is responsible for the spread of the most
absurd fads, fancies and fashions, as
when a woman wears an up-to-date hat
which looks like a thimble on an
elephant’s back, or a man wears a
vest which resembles a barber’s
sign. When we are hypnotized by that
subtle and indefinable thing called
“Style,” we fling [40] sound
judgment to the winds and act like fools
for fear of being considered too
independent.
Not only
does race belief affect men in matters
pertaining to wearing apparel, but it
influences them in the more important
matters of health and happiness. How easy
it is for us to become hypnotized by the
cry of contagion. One’s memory does
not have to be very long in order to
remember the abuses which grew out of
some epidemic advertised by the various
Health Boards throughout the country. For
instance, that terror known as infantile
paralysis is not a new one. We have
medical authority for the statement that
it has been known to the disciples of
Hippocrates for over 5,000 years; and yet
after all these centuries of
laboratorical investigation, it is a much
mooted question as to whether the disease
is contagious or not. If infantile
paralysis is not contagious, says one,
how is it that there are so many cases of
it?
There are
two answers to this question; one is that
fear is largely responsible and the other
is that the majority of so-called cases
of infantile paralysis are cases of false
diagnosis. “The way to create an
epidemic,” says a noted physician,
Elmer Lee, “is to alarm the people
by threats of contagion from unseen
germs, shutting them in rooms, and
placarding their doors with warning
signs; thus making their lives harder
than they are already.” Epidemics
come to an end when the public gets tired
of epidemic campaigns and publicity, and
people get back [41] their normal
courage. The number of deaths and the
number of cases of disease from all
causes do not vary much, whether an
epidemic exists or not. Most epidemics,
if not all, are due more to foolish
talking than to germs. They are the
natural consequences of suggestion and
auto-suggestion, and when these subside,
as they always do when people get tired
of talking of the same things all the
time, the malady begins to abate, and the
Health Board doctors triumphantly
announce: “We now have the epidemic
well under control.” How little
they realize that it is due largely to
the fact that the people have regained
control of their minds and nerves!
One can
become so accustomed to seeing the same
thing in the newspapers day after day,
that in time it loses its terrifying
aspect, and he can dispel it from the
mind. We say and do what others around us
say and do; we reflect the mental
atmosphere by which we are immediately
surrounded. Most of our opinions,
religious and political, are borrowed
from our ancestors with whose views we
have never taken the trouble to disagree,
if indeed, we have ever thought it
necessary. Why is one man a Catholic and
another a Protestant; or one a Republican
and another a Democrat? Is it always
through mental conviction or moral
absorption? For one man who is converted
to a religion or a political party other
than that to which he has been born,
there are a million who have inherited
their religion and their political
beliefs, just the same [42] as they have
inherited the color of their eyes. How
many can say that they have arrived at
their present opinions as the result of
impartial investigation of other creeds
and systems?
We are like
so many little barometers hanging out in
a mental atmosphere in an ever-changing
world of thought. Every change of
temperature affects us so that now we are
glad and now sad, as the case may
be,--and this all too frequently without
any specific reason for being one or the
other. We feel the effect of general
belief as we feel congenial or
uncongenial influence of those who are in
daily contact with us. It is a telepathic
influence which gathers strength from
numbers. It is like a London fog, which
conceals even the nearest lamp unless one
has an unusually penetrating vision.
Race Belief
is the accumulated ignorance of all the
ages, to which men ignorantly subscribe.
It is like Joseph Addison’s
Mount of Fancy, to which has been
added all the negative thoughts of men
from the beginning of time down to the
present moment. Each man pours into the
sea of negative thinking the particular
streams of his own depressions and
discouragements, and these, mingling with
all the other streams of impurity and
unhappiness, create a mental Dead Sea, in
which nothing can live or breathe with
any comfort. It is bad enough for us to
feel discouraged, but it is worse to talk
about it, for it increases the weight of
testimony against us. In a similar way,
it is bad enough for us [43] to say of a
friend, “How ill he looks,”
but to address him directly and remind
him of an appearance which he would feign
forget, is neither kind nor helpful. He
might easily rise above the suggestion if
it were only one in a day’s travel,
but when almost everybody he meets says
something similar, life becomes almost
unbearable.
Race Belief
is like a receptacle for rubbish, into
which all men throw accumulated refuse,
and which no man ever feels called upon
to empty. It pollutes the atmosphere, and
men breathe it unsuspectingly. Race
consciousness is like a photographic
disc, which receives impressions for
future reproduction. If we realized that
every negative thought, whether it is one
of sin, sorrow, or sickness, is
registered on the sensitive plate of the
subconscious mind of the world, and that
others are affected by it as well as
ourselves, we would discontinue the
practice of negative thinking. If a
barrel of distilled water be placed under
a barrel of ink, a drop of which falls
into the water every hour, it is only a
question of time until the water will be
displaced by the ink.
When a man
injects his sickly and sordid mental
atmosphere into the existence of another,
he resembles a cuttlefish, which under
certain provocative colors the water for
yards around by ejecting an inky fluid.
When these thoughts are communicated by
word of mouth, or spread broadcast by
calamity crying newspapers, they create
mental pictures which the uninitiated
accept [44] because they know no better,
and accepting them, they become
translated into terms of personal
experience. A man who does not know the
Truth is like a chameleon, which takes on
the color of its surroundings. He is like
a mirror that reflects all that passes
before it.
One fact,
however, must not be overlooked: --and
this is that good thoughts, as well may
be injected into the race consciousness.
The more that is done, the better it will
be for the individual and for the race.
If it be possible to transform a barrel
of water into a barrel of ink, a drop at
a time, it is equally possible to
transform a barrel of ink into a barrel
of water by a reversal of the process.
Just as there are epidemics of negative
thinking, so may there be epidemics of
positive ones. If negative thinking
results in sickly conditions, there is no
reason why positive thinking should not
externalize itself in terms of sanative
consequences. We must learn to think
thoughts of health and courage in the
Silence, and we must learn to think these
thoughts aloud, so that our conversation
will be of a character to invigorate
rather than to debilitate those to whom
we speak. If a discussion of depressive
subjects lowers the vitality of our
hearers, it is reasonable to suppose that
the communication of thoughts of calmness
and poise will tend to strengthen and
cheer.
Since man is
a thinking entity, he must think
something. Therefore, let him think
thoughts of joy and gladness, and refrain
from expressing [45] anything that is
unlike them. If in the past, we have been
prone to contribute our complaints to the
wails of those who make up the great army
of negative thinkers, let us do so no
more. If we have added to the sum total
of the world’s discouragement and
disease by pouring the stream of our
thoughts into the great sea of
race-belief, let us continue this evil
practice no longer. It is as though we
stood on the banks of a stream of pure
mountain water, from which the people in
the valley draw their thirst-quenching
supply, and deliberately throw into it
germs of typhoid and typhus.
When it
becomes better known that we as
individuals, have contributed our share
to the world’s unhappiness and
disease, if we have a grain of decency we
shall atone for it assuming a holier and
a healthier attitude of mind. If we can
do no better than to keep our minds free
from the invasion of evil suggestions, we
shall at least be protecting ourselves,
and to that extent improving race-belief,
for no man thinketh unto himself any more
than any man liveth unto himself.
Our refuge
from the accumulated ignorance of the
world is in Truth, for it is written,
“God is our refuge and our
strength.” When the majority of
those about us are breathing into the
atmosphere their pestilential fears and
false prophecies, let us not be afraid.
The majority is rarely ever on the side
of Truth, for it is always composed of
those who accept fable for [46] fact.
Suppose race-belief is in favor of the
reality of evil and the consequences of
evil, are we to put our confidence in
this doctrine, or in the Living God?
Shall the ever changing world of
appearance or the never changing goodness
of God be the standard by which we solve
our difficulties?
In a world
of contradictory beliefs and opinions, it
is well for us to remember that man is a
Spiritual Being, and as such, subject
alone to Spiritual Law. We must acquaint
ourselves intelligently with God. We must
know His Truth and think It, for only in
this way can we become free from the
hypnotism of popular thought, and the
mesmerism of spiritual ignorance.
Suggestions of sin and sickness, pain and
poverty, all come from the swamp gas of
false belief, even as malarial fumes
ascend from the lowlands. Get ye up into
the mountains, then! On the wings of
thought soar above these false beliefs,
by knowing that in the universe of
God’s creating, there is nothing
impure, imperfect, nor impermanent.
Only the
creations of God are true. All else is
illusion, and the more we are persuaded
of this demonstrable Truth, the more we
will realize the joy of the Lord in the
land of the living. Let God be true, and
every mortal belief a lie, and we shall
know what it means to feel the presence
of Him in whom there is no sickness and
no sorrow. Beloved, now are we the
children of God. Awake to the Truth of
this, and rejoice and be glad.
Next: Fasting
* * * * *
The Astor Lectures
Table of
Contents
(Formerly at
Northwoods Divine Science Resource
Center)
