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THE PSYCHOLOGY
OF CHRIST

BY
EMILY DUDLEY WRIGHT

1909
Coclirane Publishing Company
Tribune Building
New York

Copyright, 1909,
BY
Cochrane Publishing Co.

" The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest
the sound thereof; but can'st not tell whence it cometh or
whither it goeth — so, is every one that is born of the
Spirit."

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

As the world of Literature is full of Physiological
Psychologies — that is, Psychology built upon Physiology
—or conclusions reached from physiological causes; it is
my purpose in this little volume to present a Science of
the Soul, from the light of psychic phenomena.
Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel drank from the
well of truth for themselves and the world.
Aristotle, Leibnitz and Froebel all psychologists — yet
Froebel is the first to throw the search-light of mental
noumena upon the teachings of Christ — the one great
Master Teacher of the soul. " I came that ye might have
life, and that ye might have it more abundantly," the
abundant life — is the life of the soul — the soul in light,
or the knowing, — or science of the soul.
Emily Dudley Wright,
Froebel Institute, Lansdowne, Pa.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Will and Its Development - 7
II. Conscience as Developed by Will - 23
III. Soul; What it is and How Known or
Recognized - - - 36
IV. Spirit as Sele-Energy, or in Opposition
to Soul - - - - 51
V. Mind or Source — The Fountain-head - 65
VI. Wisdom — As a Resultant - - 78
VII. Currents that Enswathe the Globe and
All Worlds - - 93

CHAPTER I.

THE WILL AND ITS DEVELOPMENT.
mNOw thyself. " Behold a sower went forth to
sow; some seeds fell upon good ground and
brought forth fruit ; some an hundred-fold, some sixty-
fold, some thirty-fold. Who hath ears to hear let him
hear." The will of man is the seed of God, the great gift of
God to His children, the Divine inheritance — the gift
that is wholly ours; giving us fullness of separateness
yet, seed of the Father God; the germ of individual
creativity and at the same time personal power. When
the little child for the first time says, " I will," or " I
will not," that seed has germinated in him. I, as will,
stands a separate entity upon the earth. I as will, am
an actor, a creator, a doer. I (as will) am — live — have
my being. I, as will, touch or can touch or act upon
Divinity as well as a physical organism and physical
world. I must (in order to be will) attend, choose and
act; that is, I, as will, must concentrate or focus — must
discriminate and create.
Can the little child do this ? is the question asked again
and again. I answer, " Watch the child who is wisely
let grow;" and the meaning of Christ's words will be
clear to all, " Except ye become as a little child, ye can-
7

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
not enter the kingdom of Heaven." Who hath faith like
that of the little child? Faith is will; directed will —
the attention of will and the concentration as well as the
choice. In the healing of lepers, only one will returned to give
glory, and to that one Christ said, " Thy faith hath made
thee whole." It was his will in its three-fold activity
that made for wholeness, and this perfect action of
will is found more readily in the little unperverted child,
than in the adult. To every one is given a talent. That
talent is his will — to wrap in a napkin, to fold away in
self-inactivity by being dominated by another's will, or
blindly and idly following the lead of another fellow-
being ; or, to be set forth in fullest self-activity ; to be in
vested, flashed out into the world and into Heaven by
the self; thereby increasing the talent or will a hundred
fold. " By their fruits ye shall know them, the fruits grown
by the use of will — and recognized elsewhere by the name
of their quality of being.
Our Psychologists to-day, tell us that self underlies
mental phenomena, in fact, causes them that the self
which creates an idea is subject, but the self that per
ceives itself rejoicing, is object.
The self then is both subject and object. The I, looks
without and gains a knowledge of the outside world —
and the I, looks within, gaining a knowledge of self.
What is the I? What is the self that does thus and so?
And while it is easy to understand the look without —
where do we look within, and by what can we as
readily understand the within or self as subject?
I, as will, am the cause of mental phenomena — " Be
ye therefore a doer of the word, and not a hearer
only." If by mental phenomena is understood acts
8

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
of mind as projected by will, then we know that will
in that sense, is the cause, as will is a doer and not
only a hearer. The will that intends and puts forth
is the subject, and that power which called upon its
servants of the body or its physical allies to do the
act, is object. We can readily see by this process how
will looks out from self as put forth into the world
through and by physical activities. The whole weight
of Christ's teachings rested upon two of the smallest
words in the English language — "do " and " be ;" yet
they are the two words that stand most emphatically
for the definition or explanation of Will. In all full
ness be. To the fullest extent do. The I, or will,
looks within also. Within what? — Body? No. Within
where? — Brain? No. Heart? No. Soul? No — for
man hath not yet found his soul, where it is, or what
it is. Where then does the self-look, when it looks
within, and from whence does it get that from which
it chooses, and acts or puts forth from itself into the
world? Christ tells us — by His every act of intro
spection, by every prayer, by every miracle, by every
lesson taught. Within the kingdom of heaven or only
within the gate of memory; back into the avenues of
past time, or forward into the kingdom of God. If by
looking within the gate or avenues of memory we will
be enabled to create a psychology, it will only be a
psychology that stands for self as object, and not soul
self, or self as subject.
Knowledge of will in its fullest operation is, there
fore, a key to Divine nature, as well as all nature,
human and physical ; but to know will is to develop it,
to increase that talent, to multiply it an hundred fold.
And even then, we will only begin to create psychol
ogy- We are told by many educators that youth is the
9

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
time to explore the self world. Yet, if we know any
thing about the child, we have been led day by day
into the depths and heights of psychologic problems
by the questions, wonder and investigations of the
little one only two years of age. " Out of the mouths
of babes and sucklings thou hast ordained strength."
Because the precious springtime of life has been
wasted; because darkness has been allowed to cover
the face of the deep; because adult man has refused
to look with the eyes of the little child's soul into the
kingdom, the great majority of us know no will but
the objective will, no self but the intellectual self, no
soul but that created by the objective life and activity
of body.
The third year in high school, second year in the
normal school, and second year in college, are the
years given to the study of elementary psychology.
If all the precious flashlights of soul are lost sight of
up to this period, how great indeed is the darkness
through which their wills must grope to find them
selves. The student looks at his text-book and ex
claims : " I, self, mind, soul are easy terms, and I will
soon absorb this subject." Ah, yes, well for him that
he uses the term "absorb;" he may be able to absorb
the thoughts of another as the written word of his
text-book, but ask him from his whole life experience
from infancy to define the I, self, mind, and soul.
And how many will be ready to lift the veil of the
temple and show the clear vision beyond it? The
child is supposed to study material things while the
youth studies self.
In truth, the cases are generally reversed. The
child is studying objective things that he may under
stand them by his subjectivity. "Suffer the children
to come unto me"^the little children. " Suffer, (that
10

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
is allow) them and forbid them not, for of such is the
kingdom of heaven." We adults with our superior
knowledge do forbid them continually to go to the
within of Christ's kingdom. We forbid them in the
home, in the school, yes, even in the Sunday-school.
When Christ was asked who He was, His' answer
was purely psychologic — " I am that, I am." " I am
the will of my Father. " I and my Father are one —
I in Him and He in me, " was His oft-repeated psy
chologic truth.
Pure psychology states that the will is the de
veloped self, rather let us consider it the developer of
self or soul. It is the one point of departure for all
education, all that is psychic is the true development
of will ; yet, how universal is the belief that the only
development of will is in animal force, or subordi
nation to the brute force of another will.
A short time ago, a father took his little three year
old daughter to a kindergarten. In leaving her to the
care of a wise kindergartner, he said : " If you break
my child's will, that will be all I want you to do."
This is only one instance with the great majority of
parents, whose sole responsibility in parenthood rests
in the training of their children to blind dark obed
ience, to their darker commands of will — will that has
come through blind obedience to the powers of dark
ness. The perversion, misuse, misdirection and positive
disuse of the great God-given talent is the whole
cause of all the evil that is rife in the world to-day.
The innumerable prisons filled with criminals, alms
houses, asylums both for the insane and the destitute.
Talents folded away in darkness.
If such disuse of our great Divine inheritance brings
about such dire results, why not proclaim the truth
11

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
from the very housetops, if need be. Send the flash
light of the gospel of Christ, the psychology of
Christ's teaching, into the homes, schools, institutions
of all kinds, even into the churches. Yet you say,
" The physician, teacher, and minister study medicine,
pedagogy, and theology in the light of and side by
side with psychology." True, but is it the psychology
of the individual, or of the personal will ? The devel
oping will, or the stagnant will?
How shall we bring about this great evolutionary
revolution? Christ said: "Ye are the sons of God,
and if sons, then heirs, joint heir with Christ." But
we have not willed it so; that is, we have accepted it
in a far-off sense of appropriation, as of something
showered upon us. But have we willed it so, have
we by action of will so intended, so chosen, so acted
upon it that our wills can do even greater things than
Christ did? Not greater things than Christ could
do, but greater than He did ; because in the darkness
of the wills of men at that time Christ could only do
what they could understand.
Development, will, evolution must be our means of
procedure if we would bring into the world the men
and women who will make for psychologic truth —
" the truth that shall make us free," free from the
chains of darkness, ignorance, spiritual inactivity, sin.
Wise kindergartners are working in the light of
this truth with the little ones, whose wills are divine
messengers, who come to them in the light and truth
of the Christ Child. But there are those even in the
child-garden world who are, to themselves and to the
child, trainers, teachers, commanders of little physical
armies, that are marched and drilled, by orders and
commands, from the great program regime, until the
wills, the God-ordained priests of the earth, are shriv-
12

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
elled and dwarfed into nothingness by the incessant
drumming of the letter of the law, upon the true self,
until there is nothing left but many stereotyped re
peats of the pattern set before them.
The world is thus filled with chaff, little wonder
that God seems so far off that men must lift up their
voices and shout to Him.
" The veil of the temple was rent in twain from the
top to the bottom." Ah, yes, rent, but how few saw
then its meaning or behind the veil, and how few
there are to-day who see behind the veil which is
the flesh, the material, the physical world.
It is behind and beyond the veil that we find Christ
in His miracles, in His sermons, His prayers, bless
ings, and crucifixion. The whole life of Christ's
will was beyond the veil of the flesh, into the kingdom
of the Father. Because it was so, the Mother Mary
questioned, wondered, and pondered all His acts in
her heart, even when He was a tiny child. At the
age of twelve, His will was in action behind the veil
when in the Temple He astonished the learned doctors
and elders. It was behind the veil that made the mul
titudes marvel at His wonderful miracles, and for
the same reason made the disciples say : " Why speak-
est thou to us in parables and speakest not plainly?"
Christ's will was the developed self. Can we then
truly say, as some of our psychologists of to-day say,
"The youth and man is the developed self?" No,
not until man as will is grown into the image of Christ
into the likeness of the heavenly; then we will have
selfhood, or the developed will.
The inner world of God as known by the terms
mental powers, intellect, feelings, and will are tools,
machinery, doers through which mind works ; or is set
at liberty in matter world, these three cog-wheels are
13

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
so interlocked in connective activity as to be really
one action — making order or means for mind activity.
Mental power, intellect, feeling and will are com
monly separated into groups, as perception, represen
tative thought, sensation and emotions, attention,
choice and action. In reality, all three are one effort
making capability ; will enters into it all, is the motive
of all, and the motor of all. " I can do all things
through and by the same power that strengthened
the will of Christ." The Old Testament adumbrates
the psychology of Christ. All through the books of
the Bible are types of the coming will of Christ.
Attention, choice and action may be objective, may
be put out upon material or physical, and develop in
tellect, feeling and sense-will, while intention, choice
and action will be subjective and develop wisdom,
emotion and psychic will or self. Our psychologic
development, our intellectual growth, depends entirely
upon us (as will, subjected or projected).
" I and my Father are one," " I come to do Thy
will, oh, my God." " Not my will, but Thine be
done." " And I appoint unto you a kingdom as my
Father hath appointed unto me, that ye may eat and
drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones
judging the twelve tribes of Israel." What is judg
ment but intention and wise discrimination? And
this is obtained only in His kingdom, at His table. You
remember where Christ said, " I have meat and drink
that ye know not of." And again, " Settle it, there
fore, in your hearts, not to meditate before what ye
shall answer [that is, do not manufacture in thought],
for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all
your adversaries will not be able to gainsay nor re
sist." For the kingdom of God is in power. " If any
man lack wisdom let him intend his will to God,
14

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
that giveth liberally to all who ask without wavering
— " That is, the whole will concentrated within the
veil of the temple. In every case where Christ healed
the sick, gave sight to the blind, made the lame to
walk and the deaf hear. He said first to them, "What
is thy will ? " What wilt thou have me to do ? And
because the whole self, the whole will, was intent, was
subjective, was centered within the kingdom or power
of Christ.
The answer came, the immediate result was restora
tion, a fulfilling of the will, therefore, a growth and
development of will. " All that the Father giveth me
shall come to me, and him that cometh to me, I will,
in no wise cast out" " And this is the will of the
Father, that every one that believeth on the Son may
have everlasting life and, I will raise him up at the
last day." " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all
else shall be added unto you, for it is your Father's
good pleasure to give you the kingdom."
We, as will, must seek, must direct toward the holy
of holies. This is the first requirement of will — we
must enter into communion, to receive food from the
kingdom; then we accept or choose it and this is the
second place of will. Finally, we co-operate or do His
will. We have individually put this personal will into
action and have then done the will of the Father.
" Except ye do my will, ye have no inheritance of
eternal life." This do, and ye shall live. "' My
mother and my brethren are these which hear the
word of God and do it."
Where do we hear the word or will of God ? From
the teacher, the pulpit, the Bible? Yes, indirectly;
but primarily we hear it within the temple of God,
where God indeed dwells, and that is within every
will-power to enter into — within the immediate reach
15

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
of each co-operative will. Not my will as separated
from Thine, but my will as operated by and co-oper
ative with Thy will, oh, my Father. Henley has most
beautifully said :
" It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll ;
I am the master of my fate.
I am the captain of my soul."
I as will, my will, is the master of my fate. My will
is the captain, the motorman, the creator of my soul.
The machinery or loom of life weaves the fabric of
soul, as Mary Vaughan has so beautifully expressed it :

" In the loom of life we weave each day
On the warp of circumstance
The colors grave, and the colors gay,
However the threads may chance.
" But the web is ours to make or mar,
And the pattern we may choose;
We may make the fabric strong and fair
And blend as we will, the hues.
" The glint of gold from our happy days,
May shine through the sombre shades
And love's warm gleams like the morning rays
Add beauty that never fades.
" When the Master Workman judges at last,
May He find our weaving good,
The texture fine and the colors fast,
And His purpose understood."

16

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
This is one of the most perfect pictures of the true
action of will, with its color scheme so perfectly
blended — will drawn upon a canvas, as it were, we
may choose the pattern, we may weave as we please;
in this choice, in this individuality, we see the Father
hood of God; but to make the fabric perfect, lasting,
beautiful and fit for His kingdom through all the
warp and woof of it, His purpose must be understood.
Think, if you can, of the power within you to make
or create mothers, sisters, and brothers of Christ.
He saith, "Whosoever shall do the will of the Father,
the same is my mother, and sister, and brother." In
every act we will find the light of truth; we will then
in deed magnify the Lord, not in words, for that is
lip service; but magnify Him in deeds, in creations,
in souls, that He will gather as jewels for His king
dom. The action of will in its three-fold power giveth us
mastery, possession, power to surmount, to rise or fall.
Concentrate the self upon any point until choice is
made and activity put upon that choice, then you
have mastered; all things are yours in this mastery —
your will has gained the victory. By my will I can
possess heaven or hell. I can be heaven or hell. I
can create heaven or hell. All depends upon my
choice, upon the determination of the self as will.
. Not the self determination of soul, but will ; choice
is an act of will, not soul. This, then, is the one
point of departure for education, for educational psy
chology, and for theology, as applied to the education
of man. So soon as the child finds the I, so soon as
he recognizes himself as an individual entity, then
for him his education or self-evolution begins. We
can prepare the way before him. We can be as St.
John, as a voice crying in the wilderness, " Prepare
17

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
ye the way of the Lord," or we can be workers of
iniquity, creating an easy path for his choice to fall
upon. When the little child first finds himself as will, that
self knows the good from the evil, it does not have
to be explained to him, he is fully a conscious entity;
he has access to two worlds — the world of mind and
of matter, or the realms of the positive and negative.
The positive is the good, the negative its opposite.
After the foundation of the child's life is laid — after
his conception, birth and first three years — yes, after
his first twelve months — no one can be his will. He
may be dominated, coerced into this or that action,
his will remains in the same condition : the only action
that is evolutionary must be voluntary. By volun
tary action of the arm, eye, any member, it becomes
stronger in action. So with will ; only self-activity
alone is of any value.
The office of a teacher is supposed to be that of
leader — to lead the child, and to instruct him. Christ
reverses this thought, and says, " A little child shall
lead them." Much of the leading and instruction is
perversion, coercion, obstruction, and construction of
such architecture as we will never find in God's king
dom. We are told by many of our psychologists of
sense that " the child is led, but man is a leader."
True, but the child that is led will not lead himself.
Can we, dare we, say, " I believe in God the Father
Almighty, and in Jesus Christ His Son, and in the
Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life," and also con
fess and accept -what is printed in many of our text-
, books, that the child is largely a thing of sense until
the teacher makes him a thing of self? Man, then, is
the life-giver of will ? Ah, no, the psychology of Christ
gives an entirely different version. " The little child
18

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
is greatest in the kingdom." The unperverted, un
spoiled child is greatest in the possession of the king
dom of heaven. He draws his life, his food, his inner
or will sight from heaven itself. " Yes," you say, " but
the teacher and preacher can instil into the child high
ideals." Never! to be an ideal for him it must be
created by him; that is, it must be born of his will,
otherwise, it is only an idea.
By education of choice is meant the development of
the power of will discrimination ; to separate this from
that, to fix upon and make its own, what will has
placed itself into or upon as attention, or intention.
This repeated self-discrimination is recognized as self-
control, self-mastery (mastery by self), decision, posi-
tivity. The will, cultured by choice, becomes more
and more active, and this activity builds character, is
the character-growing process. Self as will or will
as self has for its servants the entire mechanism of the
body, which includes brain and the marvelous neuro
logical system, as well as command of that which is
beyond the veil of the flesh and material universe.
" In all thy getting, get wisdom." If the will utilized
only the body, and that which is material for its deter
minations or discriminating choices, it would then get
only knowledge; but to compare, analyze, to weigh
and unify the material with the spiritual will bring
the wisdom which nothing can gainsay.
Self-determination in the light of reason alone will
never bring wisdom. Subject feeling to reason and
the kingdom of heaven is lost. This is what is done
ninety-nine times out of every hundred to the little
child, by arbitrary rule, adult interference, corporal
punishment, discipline (laws enforced by others), and
school regime.
Who then shall determine? Each individual will.
19

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
We confess this necessity every time the will of each
individual utters the psychologic clause of the Lord's
prayer. " Thy kingdom come." We say it, confess it
with the lips, but will it not; and unless we will it,
we do not believe it. So called faith without works
is dead. We must choose that which is the kingdom
of Christ and of God. Choose, and act upon it, other
wise there is death. Our wills are of the earth,
earthy. Wrapped in materialism is our talent, hid
den away from the light of truth, inactive in the true
sense in the abundant life, the life that Christ came
to give, to teach and to live.
Some of our teachers tell us that, before choice is
cultured in the child, he is hesitating, vacillating, un
reliable. What has made the child such a seedling of
criminality? For such he must be, if all these weeds
have grown in the place where truth, beauty, and
goodness should shine forth, perpetuating the lie from
year to year, from generation to generation ; Christians
in word, but not in deed and in truth.
The conclusion is that education of the will makes
for truth and righteousness. Non-education of each
seed of God, each talent given to the world, each ex
pression of the Father, each individual and personal
will not unfolded in true unity — these make for sin.
Is there sin in the world? Is there evidence all
about us that Christ is risen, in each heart of man?
Does the culture of reason — or will by reason — make
Christ in evidence everywhere? The growth of
choice makes character, but what quality of character?
Choice can be , grown on the physical and material
plane alone, and this grows characters, such as we
find the reflex of in prisons, almshouses, insane
asylums, in cheats, thieves, liars, misers, and every
20

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
phase of darkness that is glaring at us from society
and the world of business.
What other than this culture of will was practised
by the money changer in the Temple whom Christ
drove out with whip-cords? Such wills cannot even
enter the kingdom. " Not every one that saith unto
me Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven —
but, he that doeth the will of my Father which is in
heaven." Professor Baldwin tells us that purposes
reach into eternity. Christ says, "Acts alone reach
into the eternal, except ye do the will." To purpose
is to attend ; much of will rests in the attention or in
tention, and is never determined upon and put into
action ; and the purposes thus acted upon make for
character up or down,, for the rise or fall of the soul.
Christ's mission upon earth was to show by living,
by action, by example, the education of will in truth
and light; and in leaving the physical presence of
men to send the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, to all
who believed in truth, that is, to all who entered into
action with His life; and them He would draw unto
Himself, " that where he was, there they should be
also." Two thousand years since this psychologic
truth was given to the world ; and to-day the para
mount thought and understanding of education is the
culture of the intellect or development of brain power,
and the accumulation of knowledge.
The cry goes forth to-day as it was wrung from the
lips of Christ so long ago. " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
how oft would I have gathered thy children together
as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but
ye would not !" Let us begin again — be born again.
Christ said, " Ye must be born again, born of the
spirit, becoming in will as a little child who is not per-
21

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
verted." A true child of the kingdom entering into
the holy of holies, with all intention; choosing and
assimilating from that world the things of self and
acting upon such determination. We will then mag
nify the Lord ; we will increase the talent an hundred
fold; we will keep in action the Commandments. We
will pray the Lord's prayer; we will be wise; we
will live and have the abundant life; and we will
begin to know what self as soul will be, because we
know what self as will is — the Divine inheritance, the
gift from and of God the Father. The talent for our
use. The means of communion with heaven. This
is self as will and will as self.

22

CHAPTER II.

CONSCIENCE AS DEVELOPED BY WILL.
"Much more shall not we escape, if we turn away
from Him that speaketh from heaven." The still small
voice that is commonly called conscience — where is it
heard; and what is it? Are the oft repeated ques
tions that come to us from generation to generation.
In the first place, we must acknowledge that con
science is a presence apart from the individual self.
In the early days of infancy, it is recognized as a voice
within the self. If apart from the self, yet within the
self, how then is it communicated if not by wave
sounds through the ear? To what is it communicated
and what of self hears or recognizes it, and what is
conscience? It is the voice of God communicated to
His seed or divine heir to become the will of man,
through and by the emotions. God speaks to the will
of His child as a natural father addresses the ear of
his son. " He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."
Have we all the same spiritual ears? Do we all hear
continually the voice of God? Is conscience ever
active, or does it come and go like flashes of lightning?
To some, it is an ever abiding presence and can ever
be acted upon by will, because the will has never
turned away from Him that speaks; but again we
find many who are tossed about hither and yon, with
23

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
no anchor, no monitor to direct the choice, or guide
the action, because again and again they have turned
away and made choice upon that which was opposed
to the voice within, until the inclination, the attention
is bent as a twig from the true course, growing away
from the power to hear the truth of the inner voice.
Although the will makes other choice and refuses
to act upon God's law, yet it is within his will power
to receive at any time the divine message. " I will
never leave thee nor forsake thee; lo, I am with you
always, even unto the end." God is ever ready to
counsel his children, to communicate Himself to them,
to give them wisdom. Can we doubt that Samuel,
child as he was, heard the voice of God, when all his
will was concentrated upon conscience? " Speak, Lord,
for Thy servant heareth."
If conscience is the voice of God, can we develop it?
No; but we can so direct will as to develop in us the
power to discern conscience; the power to distinguish
God's voice, above the clamor and voice of thought
machinery, above contending emotions, above the voice
of the spirit of evil, for it is the ear of will that Satan
attacks. Then, too, the physical is played upon by
so many thousands of voices, that the brain is com
municating to consciousness such varied messages
that it is easy to accept the blending of outer notes
for the leading voice, and exert no will beyond this
acceptance — to be content with the outward.
In this sense it is impossible to develop the self-
conscience, that is, develop the will to conscience ; that
will may be grown by conscience.
The only way we can develop God's voice is by
expressing conscience — putting it forth in activity
from the self, by the servants and tools of self. Will
must keep the avenues of conscience open, clear, clean
24

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
and unobstructed, free from the noise of thought
machinery. Open and unobstructed by products of
our own manufactory, clean of the debris of evil sug
gestion. It must separate itself from the press of all
outward activity and go into the silence; empty the
entire self of sense impressions, go apart as it were
from the press, as Christ did, and place self or will in
the presence of God. " Be still then, and know that I
am God."
Only in this stillness, in the silence of the sanctuary,
when will is projected beyond the body, out |into what
is termed the world of necessary realities, that God
speaks to man, we must go forth to meet His will, or
we will not hear His voice. " To-day, if ye will, hear
my voice." Imagination, the gift of prophecy, seeing
visions, interpretations of dreams, the sixth sense, fore
knowledge of future events. All these are synony
mous and the result of a developed and clear will-
path to conscience. A placing of the self in the atti
tude of a listener, this will develop the power to listen
and to hear. " Him that cometh to me I will in no
wise cast out." Christ said : " I can of mine own self
do nothing, as I hear I judge, and my judgment is
just because I seek not mine own will, but the will
of the Father, which hath sent me." This is the
destiny of man, to bear witness of the truth. " I came
not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent
me." This is the psychologic life, the life of the soul
made by the attitude of will to conscience. " The
sheep hear his voice, and the shepherd calleth his own
sheep by name, and leadeth them out" — out from the
sheep-fold, into the world, to lead the abundant life
that the following of the shepherd voice will give.
" My sheep hear my voice and follow me."
Imagination is generally defined as the power to
25

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
create ideals. Ideals are really the reals or truth.
Does man then create truth? All progress comes
indeed from the effort of self to realize truth, but
there is only one way by which we can image truth,
and that is through conscience.
Educate imagination is the mandate of our text
books. How suaii we gain this master power to
image or see the ideal or the truth? Some guides tell
us to exercise the memory, because memory from
stores of experiences supplies the material for imagin
ation. Will contributes purpose to conscience, and
conscience supplies the truth which is the ideal; and
again, will supplies action and images or pictures the
ideal — reproduces by action the real or (more correctly
stated) represents the picture according to the concen
tration of will to conscience.
Disassociated and recombined experiences will never
create anything but a new idea. This is the power
of thought, the manufactured product of brain activity,
that is, will concentration upon accumulated exper
iences. Notions of things and their relations. In
practical life, in art, in literature, the term imagina
tion stands for invention — not creation. Invention is
discovery, as this one and this one combined will pro
duce a third condition or position, to frame or fashion.
All that is practical, material, tangible is invented.
The will of man cannot call into being, into life, that
which is, or has been lifeless ; therefore, the term
imagination is misapplied when it is used to stand for
creation. There is only one thing that the will of
man can create, and that is done entirely by the atti
tude to conscience or from conscience.
The gift of prophesy is the voice of conscience
speaking through the will of man. Interpretation of
dreams, the sixth sense, foreknowledge of future
26

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
events, all these are not practical every-day occur
rences. They have no place in psychology, or applied
psychology; no part in the study of self. These are
developments that belong to members of the psychical
research society, such will be the objections made,
and is the excuse of thousands who have hardened
their hearts, who have willingly turned away from the
voice of God, who have so clogged the ear and closed
the door to all avenues of the ideal, to all real hearing
of the truth, to all self-betterment, that to them indeed
such reals are as a sealed book, an unknown, un
familiar life. Psychic phenomena, sixth sense, what
are they but the close following of conscience by self
— a clear conscience, a conscience void of offense, a
conscience that has not been offended by the will.
These are open to receive commands, instruction,
blessings and power, sight and insight into the pictures
presented by the word of God. There are many
specific laws laid down for training the child's con
science, as systematic plans of instruction by teachers
and parents. It is known as a moral faculty, there
fore, placing before the child moral instruction will
educate the conscience. Telling him that this or that
is right, he must follow this lead, or give blind
obedience to another's command, to coerce him to
this or that action, will eventually give him a high
moral standard, and thereby cultivate his conscience.
As stated before, " A child is considered a thing of
sense until the adult creates in him a self." Con
science acts so feebly with the child that man must
teach him how to educate and cultivate it! Isn't it
darkness indeed? Isn't it sacrilege and heathenish?
Isn't such conception in direct opposition to the truth
of Christ's psychology? Where did Christ, as a little
child, receive the wisdom, the power of prophecy, the
27

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
fore-knowledge of events, the truth of the law that
the learned men of the time knew not of — His duty
and life-work, His onward action in spite of the
Mother Mary's questions (pure and holy as she was)
— where did it all come from but from His conscience,
the inner voice of the Father? Self-control is the
safety valve of self as will ; the controlling of attention
of the still, small voice.
Still, Small Voice. If God is the great Creator of
all, if He is the All-power, the Maker of worlds, why
is His voice so still, so small? It has always been so
recognized by the masses. There are a few excep
tions on record — of children, men and women — to
whom it was not still and small, but a very Mighty
Voice — a Voice that over-balanced every other voice;
one that could not be mistaken or misunderstood: it
was, to them, without question, the Voice of Almighty
God. Were these few especially favored, particularly
blessed, and called upon to hear what was and is with
held from the majority of men? God forbid that we
should find Him an unjust God ! The Parable of the
Laborers in the Vineyard will answer this question
for us. When they were dissatisfied with that which
was given to them in return for their labor, the Lord
of the Vineyard said, " Take that thine is, and go thy
way." They received exactly in proportion to their effort,
to the will or self which was in the labor. Just so is
it with our ability to hear the conscience voice. In
proportion to the attention do we hear.
All material things are symbols of the real or
spiritual. A clock may strike or a bell ring with
tremendous power close to the physical or outer ear
of the body; but if the attention of will is not given to
it, we will hear no sound whatsoever. Therefore, we
28

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
are responsible for our conscience, whether it be great
or small. " To him that hath, shall be given." " I
will arise and go to my Father." Duty emotions must
spring from conscience culture, as love, honor, respect
are developed from the cultivation of friendship; to
cultivate your friend is to learn to know him. Duty
can not grow one to a fuller conception of conscience.
To do this or that act because it is given by parent or
teacher as a law that should be followed will never
make us hear the voice of conscience more clearly, but
to do right, to act truth, to love beauty because you
cannot do anything else, because your will responds
to that which comes by conscience, will cultivate con
science; will grow that will closer and closer to the
Divine Voice, and make it your own — one with His
voice. So soon as voluntary acts are made by the child,
he should be guided by example, repose, and self-
government to be constantly on the watch, constantly
attentive to the law of right within himself — not what
he wills to do, but what is right to do.
Simply to have this question placed by the self is
the attitude of attention to the Lawgiver of right ; and
the tiniest child finds the law more readily because
Christ said, " In heaven their angels do always behold
the face of the Father." This, and this alone, will
formulate the attitude of right doing; this, and this
alone, is the development of will to conscience and the
enlargement or expansion of our hearing of conscience.
Christ says, " Do thus and so for conscience's sake ;"
it would have been the same if He had said, " For
God's sake."
We have a world full of degraded human beings
because children are forced away from obedience to
conscience, and compelled to listen to the confusing
29

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
voices and laws of man. Almost from the hour of a
child's birth, until the years of manhood are reached,
there is forced upon him a perfect babel of confusing
sounds, conflicting voices, injunctions, prescriptions,
commands, and threats; — no periods for repose; inner
collectedness, poise, and self-adjustment — except in
sleep ; no holy communions of the mother and babe
in the presence of God. The nearest approach is in
the form of a prayer, which is usually a request or
dictation as to what God shall do for the child.
Real Communion is by the will of the mother, pre
senting her child as< will — to the loving guidance of
God's voice. The failure to do this is the cause of
so much drifting — " So many called, but few chosen."
Morality and religion are the third and fourth consid
erations in the education of man ; the last phases of a
child's being to be provided for.
When a child is conceived, born into the world and
reared up to the sixth year, the one dominating
thought, provision, and expenditure is for the physical
welfare; every effort is made to keep the child phy
sically alive.
After the sixth year, intellectual growth is fostered
as it is generally expressed, " The mind must be
educated," and he is provided with instructors, text
books — in short, all material objects that will develop
him mentaUy. And he is talked to, read to, preached
at, drilled and led through innumerable subjects until
he approaches the adolescent period, when life begins
to assert new causes for being. Then we say the
time has come for moral law, — moral instruction to
be laid before the youth, that he may imbibe the
examples of moral scribes, and become a moral man.
After this period of golden implanting, he may desire
to become a Christian; he may be religious, or at
30

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
least interested in religion, for he has "come to years
of discretion."
Poor, blind leaders of the blind ! " When will ye
come to appear before the presence of God? " "When
once the Master of the house is risen up, and hath
shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and
to knock at the door, saying, " Lord, Lord, open unto
us ? " and He shall answer and say, " I know you not,
whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of
iniquity." Then shall there be weeping and gnashing of teeth,
when ye see yourselves thrust out, shut out from the
kingdom of God; — all the spring-time of your proba
tion misdirected and misdirecting; opportunity for
conscience-activity, lost, and stray sheep out of the
sheep-fold, the result.
Moral judgments are not products of the intellect —
rather discrimination or choice of will, which has been
attentive to conscience. Ethical infants are those who
have been hindered and forbidden to listen to the inner
voice. We use the term "inner voice," because it is not ap
parent, not observed, by the outward or physical — not
tangible. All that, which relates to, or goes to make
the self as distinctive from body, is supposed to be
inner, not seen by the outer. It would be more nearly
correct to say, "upper voice." Edwin Arnold so ex
presses it in " The Mystery of Death" :
" I listen as deep as to horrible hell,
As high as to heaven : but you do not tell."
There is no such thing as bad conscience. We often
hear the expression, "good conscience or bad con
science." What is meant by bad conscience is the
attitude of will away from conscience, in the opposite
direction of good; following the self-will, or will of
31

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
another, as opposed to the higher voice that calls. It
is easy to understand that conscience is not the self-
feeling of this or that duty-emotion ; but that duty-
emotion is the result of the attention of self or attitude
of self to conscience.
It is impossible for the individual to build or create
a conscience, yet some of our pedagogues have so in
structed us. Joseph Cook has wisely said, " Whoso
ever attempts to tutor conscience, tutors a personal
God. This is Christ's psychology.
Like memory and reason, conscience becomes ap
parent, and known by use; every time we act in accord
with the dictates of conscience, we increase ethical
emotion ; and the joy of work well done inspires us to
again obey the same Commander: so by contact we
increase the vigor and zeal of our ethical emotions and
live on a higher moral plane. Obeying these impulses
shortens the distance between self and God, and makes
the voice of conscience clearer, stronger, nearer, so
that we are educated to conscience, but we do not or
can not educate conscience. I am in touch with
the Infinite Will. How? By contact of my will
with conscience, because Christ said, " And they shall
all be taught of God." " Every man, therefore, that
hath heard, and hath learned of the Father cometh
unto me." Yet he also said, " No man hath seen the
Father, but the Son," which distinctly tells us that,
while we are not developed so as to see the Father,
we may hear Him if we will. We may, if we will,
so hear His voice, so receive His commands and do
them, as to magnify and glorify God. When Paul
persecuted the Christians to death, he said he did it
in good conscience, for he felt that he ought to do it.
He made a mistake, or the interpretation of Paul's
reason is a mistake: he did it consciously, because he
32

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
was conscious of his will — determining to do it; but
when God spoke to him, he ceased his persecutions
and changed his whole course of action, working in
harmony with the Will of God. Then, and only then,
did he act conscientiously — by the direction of con
science. Conscience, rightly apprehended and acted
upon, grows more and more the master man, the
moral man — the man that overcometh the lower spir
its, grows more and more the man of God.
A man is educated morally when conscience domin
ates his life; when conscience is his lawgiver and his
law. Christian ethics is the only safe ethical law;
Christian Science the only psychology that builds for
eternity: that is, to have a knowledge of Christ by
being directed by the same law or voice which gave
to Christ His law of life, and with which His will co
operated. To know the voice of the Father, to follow
His commands, to do His will, is to know Christ; to
have the science of Christ; to follow His steps, to be
one with the Father's will, is to be the brother of
Christ. And there is no other door, no other way, by
which we may enter into the life of Christ, by which
we may know Christ, but by the same way that shows
us ourselves, or self-study, is by presenting our
selves as will to conscience, and as we present, that is,
as much as we present we hear; as we hear, so we
measure ourselves in proportion to that which we
receive through that door or gateway of communica
tion. To study ourselves, then, is to measure our acts of
will and not restudy again and again, physiology, or
the outward acts cf body and the connection and re
lation of that tangible material self with all other
tangible material, physical bodies; and then believe
that at the last, we may cry to God with the voice
33

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
physical, and we shall be transformed from physical
to spiritual beings, and led into the Celestial City,
there to abide in truth, beauty, and goodness — as this
little poem expresses :
"And when adown the Western sky
The firey sunset lingers,
Heaven's gate swings open noiselessly,
Unlocked by unseen fingers.
"And as they stand a moment half-a-jar,
Gleams from the inner glory,
From the Azure Vault afar
And half reveal their story.
"O land unknown, O land of light divine,
Father, All-wise, Eternal !
Guide, guide, these wandering way-worn
Feet of mine into those pastures vernal."
Ah, how easy it is to ask and expect God to do it
all ! He will guide, but we must act. He will lead,
but we must follow the lead, and then along the way it
will not be a land "unknown" to which we go and
are going. Ours, will not be wandering feet, for con
science has been our search-light, keeping our feet in
the true path. They will not be "unseen fingers"
that unlock the gate to those pastures vernal ; they
will be unlocked by our own self-effort. Conscience
dominates our actions, because we attend to con
science, and choose to make that the law by which we
act. If we will to accept conscience as our leader and
guide, we so act through things temporal that we lose
not the things eternal ; we so draw near to God that
He draws near to us, and we hear that which others
who have not cultured will can not hear. We hear
34

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
so clearly that we image what we hear, therefore, see
beyond the physical, and know that God has been,
and is, with us. This is termed "sixth sense," or psy
chic power. It is the result of what Christ called
"Good will doing service." When we have so cultured
self that God's voice is our only law, we shall be able
to say, with Christ, " I must be about my Father's
business" and then shall we be able to do even greater
things than He did : as He hath told us, God working
in us. " I can do all things through the power of
Christ, which strengtheneth me."
" I must be about my Father's business," will be
our life-work when the voice of the Father confides
to our ready wills His business.

35

CHAPTER III.

SOUL— WHAT IT IS, AND HOW KNOWN
OR RECOGNIZED.
Know Self: Psychology is the science of self (psy
chology — soul science). This knowledge underlies
and makes possible the science of education, the science
of soul development; yet what the soul really is, is
classed with the unknown, or defined as spirit without
any definite idea of what spirit is, apart from the
word self, which is so vague, so generally mixed with
all the physiological processes that soul-self is
shrouded in darkness. We climb a physiological
ladder from sense perception through all body pro
cesses to reason, and flatter ourselves that we are
studying soul, culturing soul, knowing soul.
Elihu Vedder has painted a marvelous picture rep
resenting the meeting of two souls in the Spirit World.
One asks the other, "Who are you?" The reply is,
" I do not know ; I only died last night." So long as
we hold reason to be the crown of the cognitive pyra
mid of self, we shall be forced to answer the questions,
"Who or what are you?" in the same way, "I do
not know."
My sensorium and motorium give me direct con
nection with the universe; and through and by this
connection soul is generated in the body, by the body,
and through the body. I must comprehend it, if I
36

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
would study soul, or make a psychology. If such
knowledge is too wonderful for me, too high and deep,
then why is this sensorium and motorium used for
the purpose of generating that which is unknowable?
When we acknowledge this science to be beyond our
knowing, we are building continually altars to the un
known God, and we say the germ-self becomes the
man-self. Life covers a period of years from birth
until death. Psychology is, then, only a science of
the evolution of man — not the evolution of soul; and
character is the art of manhood, not the cipher of the
soul. Educational psychology is, according to this
light, only a mechanical science — a study of the mach
inery that is used for the purpose of generating soul;
but knows its product no more than the type-writer
comprehends the message printed upon the page.
Froebel tells us that the infant soul is made up of
germ-faculties which education develops. Evolution,
a leading out, by the activities grows the soul; but
not a material soul, as Herbert Spencer finds it. Edu
cation is soul-evolution. Plato, Agassiz, and Horace
Mann have been our teachers ; but Christ is the great
high-priest of psychology or soul-science. Christ tells
us how we can make this physical organism an ally —
how it may be made the fittest instrument of soul, and
how the sensorium and motorium receive messages
from mind-world as well as matter-world, and sends
them out again, in either direction, with the signet of
soul upon them. The cerebro-spinal system has direct
connection with the organic sense-organs, and with
the magnetisms of the mind-world. Did Christ, in
all His wonderful lessons, ever tell us anything about
the mind of Satan ? No, but He has told much of the
spirit of that evil one. Self-intuition is direct soul-
sight into mind-world. Why, then, do we not know
37

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
soul ? It is clear that perception is not soul-intuition ;
self-perception is perceiving the will. Soul-intuition is
altogether different; one is cause, the other effect.
Conscious personality is one thing, conscious individ
uality distinctly another perception. Conscious per
sonality is proof of soul-evolution — an eternal develop
ing process, immortality, — an endless life. Soul-study,
the science of soul, the evolution or education of soul,
does not aim at perfect manhood; for manhood cul
minates physical evolution, and soul-evolution is not
physical. I (will) am conscious of building a character; in
other words (meaning the same thing), I (will) am
conscious, through intuition as well as through my
sensorium, of building a soul. I know that I am doing
it, if I am a student of myself as will; if I am a self-
determining individual. I know how I am doing it,
how I am building soul, where I am building it, where
the /, quarries material for it, and what the soul is.
While awareness occurs in connection with the cere
bral hemispheres, the animal, though capable of reflex
(physical) action, gives no indication of conscious
ness ; yet every attempt to connect consciousness with
special ganglia of the brain has proved an utter fail
ure, and will prove a failure so long as awareness and
consciousness are connected with the sensorium from
the without-world alone, and no connection made be
tween the sensorium and the mind-world or the with
in. Here the door is closed on the medical student,
on the materialistic scientific student, and also closed
to the theological student who studies theology in the
light of sense psychology.
Soul is as distinctively soul as eye is eye, or brain
is brain. We would not think of confounding hand
with tooth ; yet these are perishable, temporal, vanish-
38

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
ing possessions — instruments for our temporary use.
Then why do we call self-soul, and soul mind, and
soul-spirit, and mind a conscious self-entity? We also
class mind with matter, and call them both noumena,
and not phenomena. And self-perceiving is gaining
soul-emotions: then why do we not know more of
soul — if soul is the self, the actor in life's drama?
In proportion as we evolve soul by mind, do we
magnify the Lord : " My soul doth magnify the Lord."
The culture of soul consciousness opens to us the
everlasting door of heaven. The evolution of soul
that is not by mind, but by intellect, opens the gates
of hell : " By their fruits ye shall know them."
" Beloved, now are we sons of God, and it doth not
yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when
He shall appear, we shall be like Him for we shall
see Him as He is." If we continually build up our
selves by praying in the Holy Ghost; living in action
with God, in building self or soul in the keeping of
the Father, and it doth not yet appear what that build
ing will be, but while we build we know what mater
ial is being put into the structure — whether it be that
which will stand or fall. We know where it is being
built, because of our choice; but just how it shall ap
pear is not yet known, because it is in process of con
struction. " A house not made with hands — eternal
in the heavens." Christ was a Builder and Architect,
and we are builders, architects of our own souls; we
plan them by our choice, and build them by our
actions. The oak is generated in the acorn, and when
it is oak, it is no longer acorn, nor in the acorn; and
as oak it has not the appearance of the acorn ; nor does
the oak look like oak while in the germ, or even in
process of germination, although all the possibilities
of the oak are in that from which it is built, put out
39

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
from — away from — above. It starts from a sound,
well-formed, beautiful body (the acorn) ; is put forth
little by little, growing larger and more perfect, yet
more unlike its source, and continues to be built until
finally all connection with the little house, (acorn-
home) or workshop is severed, and the shell or used-
up generator is cast back upon the earth, and the oak
has been grown by addition until it has lost all sem
blance of the seedling — and spreads its branches far
and wide, absorbing from, and radiating to, the atmos
phere (in which it finds itself). All beauty and purity
and life.
The child, as will, gains experimental knowledge of
mind-world at the same time that it gains experi
mental knowledge of matter-world. The child's first
smile to its mother, the first love expression proves
this conclusively. And we know that we have such
evidences very early in the child-life-world; we say,
because the acorn is small, that it is impossible for it
to immediately put forth the oak. We must grow the
acorn into a larger body first, or we must hold it as
acorn for several years before it has power to become
an oak. Can we deny that it assimilated all the pro
perties and possibilities of the oak, even while it was
becoming a separate and distinctive acorn. What,
then, of the child? And why is self-intuition left out
of count until the period of youth? This is very like
the darkness of atomism. The period for self-culture
and soul-build is the period of early childhood ; this is
the golden period for the study of self and the culture
of soul.
" It is impossible but that offenses will come ; but
woe unto him through whom the offense cometh! It
were better for him that a mill-stone were cast about
his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should
40

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
offend one of these little ones." Remember, they were
infants whom Christ blessed and said, " Allow them
to come unto me and forbid them not." He also
affirmed that the little child receives the kingdom of
God, for He warned us that whosoever shall not re
ceive it as a little child shall in nowise, enter therein."
Can we have stronger proof that in the tiny child-
seed, as well as any natural seed, is all power
to become? We dare not assert that the child
must first gain experimental knowledge of matter-
world before it can have any awareness or
culture of the self, or soul. " Little children, it is
your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."
If soul-growth is not hindered, hampered, and looked
upon as an abnormal condition and even stopped, by
adults, we will soon have a generation of psychologists
who define soul in every act; who know self better
than the lineaments of their own bodies; who begin all
teaching from the spiritual side to reveal and explain
the material world. And the world will lose sight
of its degraded human beings : the animal in man will
be subdued before it has grown to such proportions
that it takes a life-time to overcome it.
The reason for so much haziness, second-hand self-
knowing, is because, at the first indication of true
communication with mind-world and a genuine effort
at soul-build, the parents and teachers become alarmed
and think the child is too subjective, and is developing
an abnormal condition, which must, of course, be
quenched — " snuffed out," as the light of a candle,
and every effort made to keep it from igniting again.
Can we wonder, then, at the masses who are ignorant
of what soul-growth means ; who say, " Yes, I believe
I have a soul ; but what it is, or where it is, is more
than I can comprehend." 41

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
Apperception — the combination of awareness of all
that constitutes matter-world, mind-world, and neces
sary truths into the production of soul — into an eternal
product, into that which magnifies or makes greater
God. This, and this alone, is true self-culture, soul-
growth ; all else is the making of bad fruit. " Every
tree, therefore, which bringeth not forth good fruit
is hewn down and cast into the fire." Herein lies the
psychologic lesson and great responsibility of parent
hood : shall their fruit be unwhole, worm-eaten, half-
formed fruit, made up of that which has no living
quality of being — only composed of matter that the
worm will soon destroy; fruit that will never have the
power within it to build a glorious tree; never build
anything more beautiful than it brought into this
world? Of whom it will be said, "Sown a natural
body, raised a natural body;" only to be counted as
chaff. Of the soul it is said, " Other foundation can
no man lay than that which is laid." The soul can
not be grown or raised one way to-day, then recon
structed to-morrow, and made all over again."
We speak of ideal characters : these are real soul-
builders, beautiful soul-creators — "Sculptors of life are
we, with our souls uncarved before us." We are, by
the activities of will, carving and chiseling, molding
and fashioning, that heavenly beauty which at the
last will be revealed to us as our own souls.
Where is this structure being built? Where is it
kept while in the process of making? Do I hold it
within my body? Is it a possession of my mind or
of my spirit? Does the acorn hold the oak while it is
growing it in all perfection of a tree? No, it sends
it forth from itself, by activities — away, apart from
self into the world of necessary realities ; while, at the
same time, its source, its root, is a fixture in the earth.
42

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
So we, by purposed, chosen acts of will, in harmonious
action with conscience, send out from self that which
builds soul, act by act, out into space (this is faith),
into the keeping of God, for His adjustment, His sig
net, to be placed upon them; His glory and light to
be their light and glory. For hath Christ not said,
" In my Father's house are many mansions. If it
were not so, I would have told you! I go to prepare
a place for you, that where I am, there ye may be
also." Mansions of soul-build. Christ knew His
soul. The perfect communion and co-operation of His
will with the Father revealed His soul to Him ; for He
said, " I am the resurrection and the life ; no man
cometh unto the Father but by me" (but by my life
He constantly beheld His resurrection: as it was a
momentary, " I and my Father are one") made it pos
sible for Him to know His own soul, so that He could
see His resurrection — I am already conscious resur
rection. Shall our souls be where Clinton Danger-
field has pictured this one in his "Soul of the Skeptic,"
(Soul in Hades) :
THE SOUL OF THE SKEPTIC.
By Clinton DangerpiBld.
They told me that this was all : a tomb and the marble grin
Of a fatuous cherub half carved, and a coffin to molder in;
But I look with penetrant eyes on my dead flesh lying in state,
And it seems to mock me with stifled curled lips and to whisper:
" You learn too late.
" I was the thing you set as your absolute Overlord ;
Now you are loosed and away, while I am of men abhorred;
Now you are loosed, and yet — you are not glad to be free,
For you colored the cast of your life by this, that you would
decay with me — 43

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
"The angels' selves must laugh, and the pitiless friends will jeer;
Yet one or the other you must go face, while I am the sleeper
here!
Bravely you lived and loved, secure in the intellect's lie,
Yielding your soul to a sensuous death, a death that it could
not die."
Some one spoke those words ! Was it those poor lips of clay,
The thing I held as my Overlord, from whom I escaped to-day?
I am sitting alone, alone, and my terror no words can tell;
For I dare not knock at the Gate I mocked, and I would not
go to Hell.
" Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious
fruits of the earth and hath long patience for it."
We know not the soul, nor whither it goeth : there
fore, the husbandman waiteth ! There are many more
no-soul theorists than confess it, or even are clearly
aware of it. All who confess ignorance of the soul
can not possibly be building anything in light, can not
possibly be self-determining in good; they must be
drifting aimlessly on the sea of life without compass
or rudder, or blown hither and thither by tempest-
tossed captains — leaders, tutors, who know not whence
they came or whither they go.
Finding truth is the direct scaffolding for soul-build ;
whatever calls truth-emotions into full activity will
build a stone in the soul structure. To simply culti
vate truth-emotions, in order to comprehend material
facts, is of no value. All values must have upon them
the eternal stamp, or they are satanward bound ; they
are limited, and make for soul-destruction instead of
soul-resurrection. A beautiful soul is a soul of wholeness, soundness;
one built of the choice of the true, the good, and the
beautiful. Our destiny is our life-work in becoming
44

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
or creating a beautiful soul — a whole soul, a sound
soul; one that is built in the presence of the Holy
God. The wisdom of developing a beautiful soul is
above all art. A beautiful soul is the climax of our
destiny. But why do we build, or desire to create a
beautiful, whole soul? That we may receive the re
ward of our labor, that we may obtain a crown, that
we may be saved from punishment, that we may be
in the pleasantness of light instead of the unhappiness
of darkness, that we may be conquerors, and rise to
power, that we may have the honor of being on the
right-hand of the Throne in heaven, or that we may
be saved from the horrible burning of hell? No — a
thousand times, no ! For any one, or all, of these
motives, for they are the direct builders of unbeautiful
souls — souls preparing in the presence and under the
direction of the spirit of evil. But the object and
destiny, motive and choice for beautiful whole soul-
building is, and must be, solely for the honor, power,
majesty, and might of our God. The greatest defect
in educational motives rests in their limitations. We
hear educators again and again make the incentive for
true, good, and beautiful choice and acts, self-better
ment, self-superiority, self-ability to enjoy, etc. There
are hundreds of just such motives for — education,
while education should have but one purpose. My
intellect, heart, brain, nerves and will should so blend
in one aim toward one goal, that there can not pos
sibly be what is called "one-sided education."
Froebel was really the first disciple who saw the
educational psychology of Christ's life-lessons, and
applied them exactly where Christ applied them ; there
fore, he has been called " the psychologist of child
hood." Christ was the first psychologist of childhood ;
and it has taken nineteen hundred years for man to
45

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
see the light of truth, for man, in Christ's teaching.
Intellectual culture divorced from emotion-culture,
or soul-culture, is what makes many educational
means, burdens, tasks, stumbling-blocks, and blunders.
Mathematics are supposed to crush out beauty-emo
tions, why? Because the true use and meaning of
mathematics is entirely lost sight of. All number,
measurement, proportion, is a symbol of eternity, and,
as such, it should be understood and utilized. And
then it would harmonize and make clear every other
subject. A little boy of four years, who was much
interested in numbers and in learning to count, would
ask his father what came next, each time that he had
added ten to his count; finally, when he had learned
to build to one hundred, he greatly surprised the
father by asking the question, " What is the last count,
father?" The great truth that should come to every
little child, came in that father's answer, " There is no
last count, my child." Showing at once the symbol
of eternal progression, everlasting repetition of the
one ; one and one — always one added to one or from
one. One soul added to the One or taken away from
It. The great power and value of mathematics to
each individual is the full realization of One. To
understand perfectly that a unit is one whole, and only
one ; is all we build for or against ; is to weave mathe
matics into the joyous warp and woof of all our fabric,
which will surely make a cloth of gold with God's
pattern understood and woven therein, for His use
and His glory; and the mightiness of His kingdom
will be known among men.
A little girl asked her mother if she knew what a
soul looked like, and where one can see it. The mother,
greatly puzzled by the first part of the question, seized
upon the latter part and replied, " Sometimes you can
46

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
see the soul in the eyes." The child gazed long and
earnestly into her mother's eyes, and with a glad
clap of her little hands, exclaimed : " Now I know
what a soul looks like; it looks just like a little child! "
Shall we say that the child was deluded or misled?
The mother's ignorance was her excuse for the answer
given; but the little one's search for light, her prayer
so earnest, her will so centered upon the answer that
would come, that God used the means at hand — the
mother's eyes, in which to reflect the child's image,
and gave the little one her answer in full divine truth
— in the very words of Christ. If only we would let
the little child lead us and believe that Christ's word
is true ! — " A little child shall lead them." Christ
came as a little child to lead the world, and the divine
Christ Spirit is in communication with the whole
child. It would lead us into the light, it would open
the ears of our hearts, if we would only not forbid it.
Next to mothers, kindergartners have greater oppor
tunities for light and help in soul architecture than
any one else — not excepting ministers of the Gospel.
Study the Scriptures, for in them ye think, ye have
eternal life." How many ministers do we find study
ing the Scriptures and turning away from their chil
dren as a great nuisance, disturbance, and hindrance
to their theological research? How much more light
they would receive if they would spend hours of every
day in holy communion with the little child ; not look
ing upon it as a plaything of sense, a toy to amuse for
a little while, and then set apart as a mischief-making
little animal, banished to the nursery and the nurse,
but a heaven-sent blessing, to bring light and life and
love to the home and to the heart of every parent who
is really looking for the Christ Child. Light, Life,
and Love are God ; and if the child brings these gifts,
47

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
it brings the Christ Child to help us build more beau
tiful souls than we could build without Christ. Saint
John was born filled with the Holy Ghost from his
mother's womb, to go before the Christ announcing
His advent, and "to turn the hearts of the fathers to
their children ; to make ready a people prepared for
the Lord." To-day, do the parents turn to their chil
dren to prepare for the Lord; to build souls for the
Lord? Nay, rather do they turn away and provoke
their children to wrath, so that they too turn aside
from the true path, and gather darkness instead of
light. And Jesus said to His disciples, " Whosoever
shall receive this child in my name receiveth me."
Why will we not heed His voice?
" Which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth
not down first and counteth the cost whether he have
sufficient to finish it." This is the building without
the temple of God, the material consideration, the
thought of commendation, the approval of the world,
the accumulation and use of that which is material
build. The tower of the soul counts naught, but
give; not what I have, but what I do; not what I
get, but what I give, not what I possess, but how I
live — as the lily of the field purely and perfectly ex
haling its essence ; unfolding in perfect harmony and
purity all its members, rendering unto God the things
that are God's. The lily is a symbol of the Christ and
of the little child living its soul straight out in every
breath, every exhalation : so we can so will to make
every act a return to heaven every thought an impres
sion and reflection of light.
All our thoughts perish. Let not the same be said
of our souls. A reflection is only the shadow of a
thing, and not the thing itself. Thoughts are not, as
48

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
some have defined them — " things" or reals ; they are
only adumbrations of the self. To think soul, and to
know or do soul, are two distinctly different opera
tions; the misconception of thought brings about the
same results of which Christ spoke when He warned
the lawyers, the thinking men of the time, — " Woe
unto you lawyers ! for ye have taken away the key of
knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them
that were entering in, ye hindered." " Let him that
thinketh he standeth, take heed, lest he fall." " Ye
must be born again," ye must be re-created : soul : ye
must be born into the kingdom — born of the Spirit by
the Spirit for the Spiritual life. Christ taught as One
having authority. He said, " We speak that we do
know." He never said I think this or this, but I
know. To know is to be a conscious builder of soul.
When Christ's ministry was finished, and. the last acts
of Kis life from the Cross were to be fulfilled, what
were they? A perfect rounding out and completion
of His earthly destiny, and the perfecting of the
corner-stone of the Temple of God. He gave of that
which He received to Saint John, to the Mother Mary,
to those who crucified the flesh, and to the thief who
turned to Him at the eleventh hour: all these borne
on the wings of spirit to the finishing of that soul
the glorious corner-stone. And all that was left
passed on at the very last moment of His earthly
working experience. The very last finishing touch
that Christ could put upon His soul was, " Father, into
Thy hands I commend — not my soul — but my Spirit."
That which has worked for Thee, in Thee, and by
Thy guidance; that which has lived for Thee and in
Thee, and that which has died for Thee.
Jesus committed not His soul to God, for it was
49

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
already in God's keeping — all of it except the last
touch that passed from His will to the Will of the
Father with His last breath.
What shall my soul be like in the Kingdom of
God ? Will it be a bright, beautiful, large soul ? " To
day, shalt thou be with me in paradise," Christ
said to the thief. What kind of soul, compared with
Christ's soul, will he find his to be? Oh, such a tiny
speck of light! For one star differeth from another
star in glory; and whatsoever a man — (a will), sows
in heaven or hell, that shall he also reap. What you
build will remain for you to find ; the product of your
acts will be great or small, in proportion to the truth
of the labor, of your will, and you will find the same
soul you have built, just as God will find it. Then
shall you know even as you are known ; then shall
you recognize yourself as God recognizes you. You
have raised up a spiritual temple not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens or the reverse. A glorious,
luminous soul, or a tiny speck, just as you have willed
to make it; for the soul is constantly going out from
us, bit by bit, act by act, beyond recall. And we
know where each fibre (spiritual) is being borne ; we
now know where we shall find it. Let us, then, set
ourselves to work perfectly in the light of self-deter
mination, under guidance of conscience for the now
and eternal glory of God by our souls.

50

CHAPTER IV.

SPIRIT AS SELF-ENERGY, OR IN
OPPOSITION TO SOUL.
Spirit and soul are generally considered synony
mous. My soul desires this, or my spirit longs for
that, my soul passes from my body at death, or my
spirit has left its earthly tenement. In the preceding
chapter on soul, we found that it was soul that magni
fied the Lord. In this we will see that the, Spirit hath
rejoiced in God our Saviour. The difference is as
great as between fire and smoke. When we are con
sidering spirit from a human stand-point, we make
it one with zeal, and thus find many spirits blended
in one individual; that is, we take unto ourselves or
place ourselves to, different spirits in such rapid suc
cession that they seem to be blended as one, making
it a difficult task, as early as the twentieth year of
life, to separate them one from the other, to distin
guish between them, or choose, — which of them to
reign by will; which makes the crying necessity for
self-knowledge in the very beginning of our earthly
career. We hear so many dark, ignorant, misplaced
excuses for non-self-government — as, " The spirit is
willing, but the flesh is weak ;" " I don't know why
I did this or that ;" " I couldn't help it, as though the
flesh of itself," etc., could act — spontaneously or with
purpose! To-day, many murderers are excused on
51

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
the plea of emotional insanity, because this or that
spirit dominates will — they have not developed them
selves; but have been possessed by other spirits —
legions of spirits. " It is the spirit that quickeneth : the
flesh profiteth nothing." For we wrestle not against
flesh and blood, but against principalities, against
powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world,
against spiritual wickedness in high places (in
the God-made and God-given will). These are
the spirits that war against the soul-build; they
attack the will, the heavenly creation. As they
attacked Christ and led Him in the Wilderness,
so we are led in the wilderness until we know
not ourselves; we are led by these spirits (in
stead of standing as Christ did in the power of the
Father) — until we reach the years of manhood and
womanhood and are so confused and blinded by them,
and are in such darkness about the real self, that we
are powerless to answer the simplest question in re
gard to self or soul ; — in darkness, in the wilderness of
existence, between heaven and hell ; not knowing
whither we are tending. Fortification against these
adverse spirits is the need of every life, and this for
tifying of the self must be done by early understanding
the power of self to prove these spirits before the time
comes when we heap to ourselves teachers having
itching ears, and can not endure sound doctrine, we
will wander after every delusion, not discerning the
truth or the true spirit.
Moods, tempers, irritability, desire to lie, cheat, de
ceive; pleasure in inflicting pain, inclination to scoff
at that which is holy ; loss of poise, regarding the con
science as troublesome and inconvenient; inordinate
affection for anything; eating, drinking, dressing,
pleasure-seeking; desire for applause, approbation,
. public opinion, fame, riches ; every thing that is not
52

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRTST.
committed to Him that judgeth righteously is a spirit
of evil or a spirit of opposition to the spirit of truth.
lack of poise is the result of lending will to that which
is for to-day or to-morrow. And who, then, has poise ?
He that is angry hath lost poise ; therefore, he has lent
himself to an evil spirit, and has lost sight of himself,
which is a true divine being; for we are sealed unto
the day of redemption by the Holy Spirit of God, and
in lending self to adverse spirits we grieve the whole
Spirit of God.
The Holy Spirit is the whole spirit, because we
have access to the Father by one whole spirit, so that
it is easy to try the spirits, whether they be of God,
the Spirit of truth whom the world can not receive,
because it seeth him not, being in darkness by ad
verse spirits — yielding the self up to this or that at
traction, sending the will out upon it, and entering
into union with it, making it one with the self.
People differ because of the innumerable differences
of spirit. One person will have one spirit to-day, an
other to-morrow, and so on ; these are they who are
in constant warfare with themselves and others — hard
to understand and impossible to live together in peace
and harmony. They believe one thing now, another
the next minute, and self is a chaos of spirit attrac
tions. Not so with the spirit of truth — the Spirit of
Good. God has one spirit (God the Father). Christ
has one spirit and the Holy Ghost has one spirit; so,
too, the self-poised cultured Christians, or children of
the Kingdom, have one spirit — one zeal, one earnest,
one purpose for all, action and in all life; one spirit
whereby they cry, " Abba, Father ! "
If we with the Spirit of truth, search the history
or recorded life of Christ, we will find how impossible
it is to confound spirit with any thing else. Christ
53

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
always made spirit distinctive. An effort is being
made to substitute the word Holy Spirit for Holy
Ghost, as though one will ever take the place of the
other. Horrible, indeed, will it be for those who ac
cept such a change ! " If any man shall take away
from the words of the book of will-prophecy, God
shall take away his part out of the Book of Life and
out) of the holy city."
The excuse given for the substitute is, that the word
Ghost has an unpleasant, uncanny effect upon them.
These ar.e not they who have received the spirit of
adoption, and can pray the Lord's Prayer; they may
say it, but they can not pray it, for the Spirit is not
discerned. A clear elucidation is made in the twenty-seventh
verse of the eighth chapter of Romans : " And he that
searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the
Spirit, because he maketh intercession for them ac
cording to the Will of God. Holy Ghost is the Third
Person of the Trinity; Spirit is of all three — in all
three, as certainly as different spirits or currents eman
ate from, and are possessed by, human children. We
can no more say or believe that spirit is Holy Ghos:
than we can accept the statement that soul is body,
or that water is light or sun. There is one sin of the
children of the kingdom unto death — that is, the sin
against the Holy Ghost; therefore, let us beware of
false prophets. If we connect the word impetus with
spirit as a definition that covers both the spirit of
the Godhead and all spirits, we will readily under
stand the falsity of considering Spirit and Holy Ghost
synonymous ; the very fact of there being evil spirits
and Satan spirit, proves that the Third Person of the
Trinity is more than spirit. The Holy Ghost comes
to us by spirit and reveals Christ through spirit, just
54

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
as we do acts different in kind {i. e., in spirit). If
we die for our friends, we die in spirit; if we murder
an enemy, we murder in spirit. But while spirit is
the kind or quality of the motive, we do not place
the condemnation or approbation on the spirit, but
on the will, which takes this or that spirit as its
motive as the impetus of the deed.
When we act from low motives, we make or try to
excuse ourselves on the plea, that we could not help it,
because it is our nature, or human nature, so to do.
Poor wills, deluded by spirits ! lost in the maze of their
confusing environments or atmospheres. Angels are
spirits created by God as attractions, men are spirits,
devils are spirits, the Trinity is spirit, the magnet is
spirit, electricity is spirit. So we must hold fast the
spirit of truth, without wavering ; we must forever try
the spirits, whether they be of God, and what, of all
that surrounds is the one spirit of unity: what spirit
harmonizes life with the eternal progress ; what draws
the self heavenward. If God is the goal for this spirit,
and Christ the incentive for this spirit and Holy Ghost,
the understanding of a third motive, then we know
that we are in the one spirit of truth, which is the spirit
of unity. This is that testing of spirits which prompts
the little child's off-repeated questions, " Why is it,
mama?" "But what for, mama?" This spirit of
investigation and research is not to solve the problem
of material environments which surround him, for his
eye, ear and touch are forever busy doing that — it is
to blend the spirit of this with the spirit of that. And
if the mother is wise, (not in her own conceit, for
then she only thinks she is wise), really wise, the
child will make the true selections, and use of spirit :
then will the child grow as did the Christ Child — in
wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man
55

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
— in favor like unto God, like unto man — a Godman,
a man after Christ, or, as we make it, a Christian.
The story of the tempest, when Christ and His dis
ciples were in the ship, is a most graphic picture of
the play of spirits over the will of man, in contrast to
the Spirit of Christ. The marvelous pictures that
Christ drew in His Parables of life, self, soul, spirit,
the true psychologic interpretations and revelations
for man, in which he may easily see himself pictured
in strong colors.
It is because we think that the life of Christ was
one thing, for one purpose, and ours something
totally different, that we fail to find in His life our
psychology. Christ in a trying hour, said, that if He prayed the
Father, He would send Him twelve legions of angels.
Think of it — twelve legions of angels bringing to Him
the power of the same spirit ! How great would that
spirit have been. Yet, He did not need to ask, for
He had all that spirit-life within Himself. When
Saint Paul made his defense before King Agrippa,
was it the words which he used that caused the king
to say unto Paul, " Almost thou persuadest me to
be a Christian ? " No— never ! for the word as word
killeth ; it was the spirit in and behind, before and
around, the words which met the king. " The spirit
giveth life," and life by spirit was beginning to dawn
upon Agrippa, because he as will in attention had
come to meet the spirit of Saint Paul.
So much stress is laid upon the culture of reason by
thought, the acquisition of facts accumulated, weighed
and balanced with each other, so that we will have a
host of vigorous thinkers, reasoners, formulating
knowledge into systems, systems into law, until we
think we have, by this process, such a great mental
56

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
force that works wonders for the world of educators.
" Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit
to his stature?" and the stature of man is not only
his body, but his soul as well, — his whole , psychic
being; — not thought, but spirit that quickeneth, that
giveth life — that is, adds to life. Spirit that works in
the mental economy, spirit that carries weight and
force. Reason is a door through which spirit comes
from other worlds. Thinking is adherence to the
letter; knowing is adjustment to spirit; thinking is
living on a negative plane ; knowing is on a spiritual
eminence. Education does not imply building in
power, and knowledge into the mind of the child, or
student, but the coming out, leading out of will in
spirit to meet other spirit, or spirit elsewhere. Good
teaching is the unfolding of good spirit or magnetism :
those who work in the light brought to them by spirit,
which covers the whole ground of the world of neces
sary intuition or realities, exploring the plant-world
and animal kingdom as a process from the without in
will, cultivates negativity; this is not mental force.
Cramming makes for insensibility ; while education in
creases the spirit power, or power of, and for, life.
Every lesson in all periods should be to manifest the
spirit of truth, beauty, and goodness ; — one spirit, for
what is truth is beautiful, and the beautiful is good.
To awaken self-activity in the child is not to occa
sion thinking, for how often, in the little child's beau
tiful spontaneity, the adult will find a flaw — and ask
why the child neglected to do that which had been re
quested of him. The answer will invariably be, " I
didn't think." True, he didn't think ; but He did what
was a thousand times better — lived His soul right out
to heaven; his spirit was in full activity willingly;
he was doing — which is in every case better than blind,
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unwilling obedience, — for here is no spirit, but dead
thought, that which always makes for death. With
out the spirit, there is no life. What we think, we
see in pictures and describe in words. Neither pic
tures nor words have life, because they are only rep
resentations of the real, not the real; but that which
comes of the spirit we feel, therefore, we know, and
we know because we feel.
True apperception is making true relatedness by
inner connection ; and this is done by spirit with will,
and will in spirit projected. Then we know because
— " The spirit beareth witness with our spirit."
" Right feeling occasions beautiful pictures, which
is right thinking" (so called). Altruistic emotion
prompts deeds of kindness to our fellow-men ; it is the
spirit which makes the deed a count, not the deed — a
spirit-count. Oh, no ! All the alms and deeds in the
universe are but as sounding brass and tinkling cym
bals without the spirit of charity, of love, or truth be
hind and in the deed." We feel spirit as we feel the
air blowing about our faces. We can even feel the
approach of spirit to the entire intellect as we are
conscious of approaching thunder-storms. Thus, the
invisible is present in the visible ; life in death, or the
changeless in that which is subject to change.
The new commandment given to us by Christ is a
manifestation of the spirit of truth ; the same spirit
that emanated from Him in life ; the same spirit that
must permeate the gift, to make it an eternal act, and
not sounding brass : " A new commandment I give
unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved
you." The little word as conveys the meaning of the
conception of the Spirit of Christ love.
We love to watch the flight of a bird, and as it
soars heavenward, we feel the spirit within us to be
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exactly what Victor Hugo has so beautifully ex
pressed : " Let us be like the bird one instant lighted
Upon a twig that swings;
He feels it bend, yet sings on unaffrighted,
Knowing he has wings."
Wings of the soul — wings to bear us onward and up
ward — spirit wings. How easy to picture, by phan
tasy, an angel with wings — literal wings, as we know
them in material form ! Borne along by spirit : so are
all living properties. What is it that is exhaled from
the rose but the spirit. What the exuberance of the
bird-song, but spirit. The story of life is most beau
tifully told in a little song addressed to the bird, which
ends: " What is the best thing of all birdie,
Seeing the sunshine and sky?
No, best of all things must be birdie
Wings ! and a place to fly ! "
That is just it — the wings of spirit, upon which will
may conduct the soul-material to the eternal home.
To know where to fly, and how to use our wings, is
the purpose of life and value of education. The major
ity of our school children give the same reason for
education that the masses of college students express
—namely, self-betterment, attainment, acquisition, ac
cumulation, knowledge of men and things, etc. ; show
ing the appalling limitation of the educational aim,
compared with educational teachings and purpose,
life and aim of Christ — which was the addition and
multiplication of the One in perfection. Christ said
always, " Not mine, but thine;" " Thine is the kingdom,
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
Thine the power, and Thine the glory." To make
greater, good or God; this is why we live, why we
are educated, why we study self and its environments,
material and spiritual. We explore the earth and the
heavens, but alas ! mind is unexplored, and the result
is a people full of sense-knowledge of matter-world,
but with little or no recognition of mind, or distinction
of spirits, and the object or application of all the years
of school and college research gone for naught, so
far as they see or know of the ideal, the real, and the
true spirit. That "spirit which helpeth our infirmi
ties," (our lacks, our great gaps in every sense) ; for
we know not what we should pray for as we ought,
but the spirit itself maketh intercession for us with
groanings that can not be uttered. And he that
searcheth the hearts (he that really studies self in the
spirit of truth) knoweth what is the mind of the spirit,
because he maketh intercession for the saints accord
ing to the will of God."
" The same spirit that raised up Jesus Christ from
the dead : if this Spirit be in you, shall also quicken
your mortal bodies" — then will the intellect, which is
in and of the entire mortal body — the emotions and
the will — be charged with light, with understanding,
with awareness, with perfect sense-perception and self-
perception, with apperception and knowledge of mind.
And in no sense will we then be debtors to the flesh,
to live after the flesh, but through the spirit will mor
tify deeds of the body? We will then be numbered
among the quick, not the dead. " To whom we yield
ourselves servants to obey, His servants we are."
Shall we, then, walk after the spirits of darkness,
which are chained, limited, and which must keep us
in bondage? or shall we yield our wills to the same
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Spirit of abundant life which was in Christ Jesus?
This spirit which never comes to closed doors, but has
access to character, to nerves, to emotions, to intel
lect, to heart, to brain, to soul, to mind and will, and
to all other spirits and masters them ; the spirit which
has access also to the trinity of humanity and the
Trinity of Divinity. Students, what will we choose,
the life of Christ or the life of man; the light of
Christ or the light of men; the wisdom of Christ or
the knowledge of our philosophers ? " Christ received
not testimony from man," yet he was a burning and
shining light. He received by the spirit, and radiated
with the same Spirit of truth. " Of making many
books there is no end, and much study is a weariness
of the flesh." Much study, much reasoning, judging,
concluding, thinking — oh, such a weariness of the
ganglia in the flesh ! And all because we will not
accept, as our very own, the Spirit of Christ, which
said, " What I hear I judge, and my judgment is
just: because I seek not mine own will, but the will
of the Father which hath sent me." " For He whom
God hath sent speaketh the words of God, for God
giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him." See
now why we have not the Spirit of Christ, because
we are filled with, and idolatrously hold to, the spirit
of fear: but no man hath power to retain the spirit
of truth, neither hath he power in the day of death.
The spirit is a free agent, a free messenger, a free
force and power that can be held by no inferior power
or spirit. But fear we hug closely to us unto death,
or unto the limitations of the flesh ; and it hath been
written, " We shall be afraid of that which is high,
and fear shall be in the way when man goeth to his
long home." Fear is the spirit that stands in the
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way from earliest infancy, because the adult places
before the child — not only places, but forces, fear upon
him in a thousand ways ; — this evil monster, that
killeth the will. Christ so tenderly and beautifully
said, " Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's
good pleasure to give you the kingdom." Then why
will we fear? We find this spirit everywhere. Our
enemies are the spirits of evil. It is not what is said
or done that counts for anything, but the spirit in
which it is said and by which it is done, even with
the tiny child : the spirit of the child is what makes
it beautiful or unbeautiful. The Christ Child from
His birth, waxed strong in spirit. Oh, that we might
see all the little ones who are sent,into our lives (into
our atmosphere) wax strong in the spirit of the Christ
Child. If Christ came to teach us how to live, what
life and soul, what heaven and God are, then why
must the child be in darkness for so many years, and
be considered too young, too innocent and unde
veloped to even be allowed to study self or use the
spirit of wonder in things that belong to the period
of youth and , manhood. Life with Christ was one
life, and God in all life. He never relegated the things
of spirit to periods : remember, " God giveth not the
spirit by measure."
If a child ask bread of its earthly parent, will he
give him a stone? And if an earthly creature knows
how to give good gifts, how much more will your
Heavenly Father give to them that ask? Those who
ask in true spirit receive — it is not sufficient to ask
but in the spirit of truth. To look for Christ in the
right spirit is to find Him. " For whatsoever ye shall
ask in my name ye shall receive." Ask to see the
Christ Spirit in the little child, and you will see it.
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God is no respector of persons ; age or youth makes
no difference with God. Remember that Christ said:
" I thank Thee, Father, that Thou hast kept these
things from the wise and prudent (meaning the self-
contained, the learned, the reasoners and judges and
hast revealed them unto babes" (the untutored, un
learned and ignorant, so far as the world counts knowl
edge). Receive the Spirit of Christ from the child
and give the Spirit of Christ to the child, and then
we will find the truth of Christ's psychologic lesson,
both for ourselves and the child. " Seek ye first the
kingdom of God, and all else shall be added unto
you." This is not our method; we fear to pursue such a
course, because doubt, the spirit of the devil, is an
ally, and we listen to his messages. He tells us that
all else will not be added : we must use other means,
follow other methods, and build a thinking, reasoning
brain for ourselves ; and then, if the things that belong
to the Kingdom of God accord with our reason, we
may accept or reject the spirits that be from thence,
for we have reached the years or period of discretion.
Do we not thereby crucify our Lord afresh, and put
Him to an open shame? If the culture of reason is
not the effluvium of the Spirit of Christ, (the spirit
of truth), then are we indeed slaves, and in darkest
depths of confusion by adverse spirits ; just as man is
in darkest confusion of doubt and question when he
attempts to place limitations and explanations upon
electricity. All reasoning without the Spirit of Christ
is blind credulity; necessarily must be, because it is
built up of sight and sound (that is, ear and eye) evi
dence out of the physical inferences given by his en
vironment. 63

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
Let us drop these dead formulas, and go on unto
perfection in the spirit of these beautifully true words
of Charles Wesley:
" By Thine unerring spirit led,
We shall not in the desert stray ;
We shall not full direction need,
Nor miss our providential way,
As far from danger as from fear,
While Love, Almighty Love, is near."

64

CHAPTER V.

MIND OR SOURCE— THE FOUNTAIN-
HEAD.
" Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ
Jesus." One of the strongest contradictions of this
statement is made, by psychologists in general, by
such assertions as these : " Mind must have materials
of thought before it thinks ; man must look out of him
self before he looks within ; great care should be given
to the acquisition of ideas, in order to develop mind."
" The mind searches its previous knowledge compar
ing and assimilating, and thereby enriches itself: the
cultivation of memory grows mind; fancies are pro
ducts of our own minds." " We are dependent on
self-perception for our knowledge of the mind-world;
holding a subject before the mind strengthens mem
ory." And a thousand more of the same character;
yet, in them all, we do not find a definition or solu
tion of mind. All this grows or makes mind, yet
when the question is asked, "What is mind?" we
are told that it is unknown and unknowable. Why,
then, did Christ say, " Be ye all of one mind ;" when
each personality builds a separate and distinct mind,
" Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ
Jesus." This means the same, the one mind. Much
has been written, long lectures have been delivered,
teachers' conferences have been held, and clubs have
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
discussed the subject of child-mind — what is there,
and what must be read or put into it? Teachers
spend many valuable hours on the thought of how
they may develop the undeveloped mind of the child;
they place this and that object and subject before the
child, as they believe that sense-knowledge of these
things will have a culturing effect on the mind of the
child; for mental activity may become a means of
culture. In the first place, there is no such thing as
child-mind in the sense of weak, small, undeveloped
or childish. "Be ye all. . . ." "All" includes
humanity, the children of one Father, God. Nor has
mind plurality. Mind is one: so Christ taught and
so we believe, so we know. If we know self we know
Christ, and if we know Christ we know the mind of
Christ, and also what this one mind is, which He had
and gave to His disciples and to all the world, if the
world would receive it.
There is one thing that the whole world will ac
knowledge, even while they see not what it is : all will
confess that mind is power, the greatest power in the
world. " God anointed Christ with this power, so
that He, by the power of mind, healed all that were
oppressed with devils (spirits of evil), and raised the
dead. When Saint Paul persecuted the churches and
Christians, it was because he thought he was doing
God service : he was not doing it by the power of mind,
because scales, as it were, so covered his sight that
he did not see what mind was. So soon as he saw he
was willing to receive that mind which was in Christ,
and did receive it, so that his acts which were done
before were in the spirit of thought. After he saw
he worked in the spirit of mind. In the prayer of
all prayers, offered for men by Christ to the Father,
He tells us of this one mind. " Holy Father, keep
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
through Thine own name those whom Thou hast
given me, that they may be one as we are." " Neither
pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall
believe on me, that they all may be one as Thou,
Father, art in me and I in Thee, that they also may
be one in us. O Righteous Father; the world hath
not known Thee, but I have known Thee." True,
indeed ! The world hath not yet known the Father,
because like Saul, they keep the scales closely cov
ered over by insisting upon plurality of mind and its
unknowableness. There are thousands of professing
Christians over the world to-day, but are they of one
mind, and has that mind power over all flesh? No:
neither is there oneness of mind, nor comprehension
of what mind is; much less is there power over all
flesh — one of the greatest proofs of which is the strug
gle to cultivate memory.
Whence comes the Spirit of truth but from Mind,
as mind is the source of truth, and Christ said that
" The world could not receive the Spirit of truth be
cause it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him." How
can the world know Him, if it knows not Mind,
whence it comes? "He that walketh in darkness
knoweth not whither he goeth." Man does not hesi
tate to acknowledge this darkness when he knows not
Mind, nor whence it comes except that it is power.
Christ told the disciples to tarry in Jerusalem until
they were endued with Power from on High — the
same Power which made all things possible to Christ ;
and He being filled with this power, knew the thoughts
of those about Him. He knew, with Mind, their
thoughts, which were not mind, but their own false
conclusions and judgments after the flesh ; for Christ
distinctly said to them, "Ye judge after the flesh."
Saint Simeon judged not after the flesh, for he knew
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and possessed Mind. The Virgin Mary was also
conscious of Mind in fullest experience. If we walk
in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship
one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His
Son, cleanseth us from all sin." " But the anointing
which ye have received of Him abideth in you, and
ye need not that any man teach you : but as the same
anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and
is no lie, even as it hath taught, ye shall abide in
Him." And what is this anointing? What is this
teaching, which is all of truth, needs no growth, no
building, no culture, no development, no education?
According to physiological psychology, mind must be
developed, cultured, strengthened by all kinds of phy
siological exercises from a weak wavering, faulty con
dition in childhood to a strong, educated mind in man
hood. And we are given by man, specific laws and
means by which this growth may be brought about.
Because we can originate thoughts, make new com
binations, build new ideas* invent new and unused
formulas, does not say that we have a strong mentality
or are working in the mind-world, and from it. Men
tality — that which pertains to mind — how then can
we call this or that, mentality if we can not define
mind. Christ possessed mind from His mother's
womb. We often hear of people being called mind-readers,
when in truth they are thought-readers, only discern
ing what is passing in thought, as. it is impossible to
read mind from man. Again, it is said that "certain
thoughts pass before the mind's eye." But do we
know what is meant by "mind's eyes?" Ignorance
often develops sacrilege. A few years ago, an anony
mous article on " The Improvement of Mind "
appeared in one of our daily papers, which was
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
indeed most ignorantly sacrilegious. Ignorance is
blamable in such cases, for we are told, "Be ye not
stumbling-blocks." The article in question made the
following statements : " The mind is a very delicate,
complicated piece of mechanism, and although made
to do a certain kind of work marvelously well, yet,
when put to an entirely different use, its efficiency is
ruined; just as the delicate machinery intended for
producing fine watch-parts would be completely
spoiled for this purpose if used to make clock-parts.
When the mind becomes deflected to a certain extent
from its normal condition by vicious reading habits,
it diverges more and more, and rarely goes back to
the normal. Desultory reading puts the mind in a
chaotic state, because you let every thing run into
the mental reservoir without order, and everything
comes out of the mind as it went in; and if it does
not enter in an orderly manner, it will come out in
chaos." In this terribly misleading bit of information
we have the gist of most of the instruction given to
children on the great and holy subject of Mind and
Mentality. If these things were given in light in
stead of darkness, they would be perfect blasphemy.
As it is, without light, it is not an unpardonable sin,
yet sin, because it is willful, and we are accountable
for every act of will. We will be responsible for
every idle word, and how much more the weight of
that which is a matter of choice with us !
Can it be possible that we read into the Bible what
is not there, but in our own thoughts? In the first
place, if it is in mind — the truth which is in mind, is
also in the Bible; if it is not truth, it is not in mind
at all, therefore, not in the Bible ; but a manufactured
conception of our own brains ; for much that is erron
eous is manufactured by perception and conception.
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
Falsehood is all man's product; all that is the oppo
site of truth is manufactured by man. Mind can not
invent falsehood; mind gives only truth.
To the efficient teacher the physical, moral and
mental economy of the; child is an open book; happy
and blessed indeed, then, is the efficient teacher, for
she is one who is filled with mind constantly, which
enables her to meet mind in the child. We may safely
think and speak of physical and intellectual as well
as moral economy; but the application to mind is
altogether impossible to man as he is. Mentality is
understandable and applicable, but not mental econ
omy; because mind is not a corporation nor a state;
it is not a system of rules by which we manage it,
for we can not manage mind. Neither to us is it a
system by which mind manages or rules, for we can
not know anything about it, since it emanates from
the inner court of the Almighty God. Mind is the
Power from on High : " Behold, I send the promise of
my Father." The Power from on High which gave
to the disciples power of mind, the same which Christ
had from His birth ; for the Virgin Mother was over
shadowed by the Holy Ghost, and that which was
conceived in her was of the Holy Ghost. The angel
of the Lord appeared to Zacharias, foretelling the
birth of Saint John ; he announced that the child John
would be filled with the Holy Ghost.
It was revealed to Saint Simeon by the Holy Ghost
that he should not see death before he had seen the
Lord Christ. Because Saint John was filled with
the Holy Ghost, he was to give light to them that
were in darkness ; and by the power of the Holy Ghost
Zacharias confessed that, through the tender mercy
of God, the dayspring from on high had visited us.
The dayspring is the light, and the light of God is
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
the Holy Ghost — mind is light. The spirit of the Holy
Ghost descended upon Christ at His baptism, to show
the people that it was He which should baptize with
the Holy Ghost. " Except a man be born of the Holy
Ghost he can not see the Kingdom of Heaven. So
is every one that is born of this spirit. Mind comes
and goes like the wind that bloweth. We can not
hold it, or possess it as our own ; it is of God and re
turns to God. No rules or plans or mechanisms can
guide, control, or grow it. We can never cultivate
mind, for it is of the Holy Ghost. Christ hath said,
" The word which ye hear is not mine, but the
Father's which sent me" — showing, plainly the differ
ence between the individual thought-expression and
that which comes from God the Holy Ghost, which is
mind. God, the loving Father, comes in spirit to
us. Christ, the Word or Expression of God, comes
to us again in the same spirit; and the Holy Ghost,
the Mind of God, comes to reveal God to us, and make
us one : for only by knowing God can we be one with
Christ, as He was and is One with the Father of Love
and Light and Life. \
Christ revealed the wk?rk of the Holy Ghost to His
disciples when He said, "/The Comforter which is the
Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my name:
He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to
your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."
The Holy Ghost would give mental light to them
of the things which Christ had told them, but which
they did not, and could not understand until they re
ceived the Holy Ghost. " The time cometh when I
shall show you plainly of the Father." "-For this is
life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true
God and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." Holy
Father! keep through Thine own name these whom
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Thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.
That was a prayer for the Holy Ghost to give the one
Mind which made Christ and God the Father One.
How easy, with Christ's psychology, is it to define
mind from thought! "Ye judge after the flesh; I
judge of the spirit." Mind comes not by a struggle
of the flesh, not by much study, which is a weariness
of the flesh. "But pray the Holy Ghost, and He will
give thee whatsoever thou askest." When the dis
ciples waited together in one place with one intention
of will (which is the fullest, highest, and deepest kind
of prayer), they were filled with the Holy Ghost, so
that they spoke in different languages, that the truth
might be made known to all who were of different
nations and tongues and tribes. This is mind, this is
intuitive knowing: the same as when we feel and ex
press our surety of God above, and our belief that
Christ came in the flesh. This is done by the power
of mind, and does not come of reasoning conclusions.
Christ rebuked those that reasoned among them
selves, trying to come to conclusions about Him:
" Why reason ye among yourselves ? Know ye not ? "
That which comes of mind admits of no question; it
is positive evidence in itself. All prayer that is in
the Holy Ghost (in mind) is answered prayer, whether
it be in seclusion on our knees, or fully humiliated
will in mind, in the busiest marts of life-activity;
fulfillment always comes ; but that which is not in
mind builds up nothing. Saint John said, " Ye have
an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all
things." Saint Peter had this unction when he said,
" Take heed to the word of prophecy as unto a light
that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and
the day-star arise in your hearts."
For prophecy came not, in old times, by the will
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of man : but holy men of God spake as they were
moved by the Holy Ghost."
" Until the day dawn and the day-star arise in your
heart" — what can be more beautifully clear concerning
mind? Is not the day-star light — a light that shineth
brightly? And light, in the Spirit sense or mind,
world is knowing intuitively : knowing in light ; know
ing without question, without need of interpreters,
without text-book or history — seeing only as it is re
vealed to us, not forestalling God ; for the one requisite
which brings the anointing by the Holy Ghost is
humility. " Humble yourselves, therefore, under the
mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due
season." How then, can we study the mind-world;
how look into; it, grow it, cultivate it, and develop it,
by our own conceit, our opinions, concepts and con
clusions; in other words, our pride? "For by the
power of mind Saint James said, " Ye rejoice in your
boastings, and all such boastings is evil." Wherever
we find the true spirit of humility, there we find mind.
" For the word of God is quick and powerful, and
sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to
the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the
joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts
and intents of the heart." What a mighty condemna
tion is this of our physiological psychology! — divid
ing soul and spirit, cleaving them so that there is no
communication with soul by spirit, severing joints and
marrow; making it impossible for mind to be a light
to us. Without brain, or gray matter connections and
cerebral processes ; and mind discerning these pro
cesses in thought and the intention of will. " The
gifts of the, Holy Ghost are by the will of God," not
by man's will. Herein lies the essential requisite for
the power of mind-activity or anointing of the Holy
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Ghost: absolute surrender of the self-will to God —
true, pure, humility.
To make confusion by placing spirit and Holy Ghost
in thought as one and the same power; is only to
wrap the cloak of darkness more closely about us; to
be stiff-necked and puffed up, vain in our own conceits,
perverse and stubborn. But let us, with Saint Paul,
give thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet
to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light,
"strengthened with all might according to His glorious
power; even the mystery which has been hid from
ages and generations, but now is made manifest to
His saints," and His saints are those who take on the
whole armor of God, and the helmet of salvation, and
the sharp, piercing sword of the Spirit of truth, which
is the Word of God, or Mind of God, in the Holy
Ghost. Now we know why we should study the physical
from the stand-point of self, in order to so guide
and care for the marvelous mechanism to which mind
is communicated. We would not expect a telegraph
operator to understand the message received, nor to
transmit a correct or intelligible message, unless he
first made an exhaustive study and investigation of
the instrument used for the purpose of transmission.
In this sense, physical improvement makes for us
a clearer instrument of mind; the more perfect the
instrument, the surer is the music or message: there
are no breaks, weak wires, obstructions, cloggings
by misuse of the physical, or twists and knots of will
to hinder the entrance or anointing of the Holy Ghost.
It is acknowledged that self is in touch with the outer
world by the intellective ganglia and their connections,
and in an unknown way through the emotive ganglia
and connections self feels, enjoys, suffers — what is the
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
unknown way except the failure to see and receive
the truth of the means of connection or entrance of
mind? Because Christ was filled with thei Holy Ghost, be
cause He knew the Father; He spoke as One having
authority, and not as the scribes, the Jewish doctors
of the law ; for their teaching was the result of reason
ing, the judgments of the flesh, as Christ called them,
and they always ring with suggestive interrogations.
Not so the speech of one who expresses mind; for
this speech resounds with authority, because of its
undisputable truth. Christ spoke with the same
authority when He was a little Child — and " Out of
the mouths of babes and sucklings God still ordains
strength. Children born of the Spirit of God; who
receive the Holy Ghost and spontaneously express
what is given to them to speak.
The wise men who sought the Christ Child were
taught by the Holy Ghost. Why, then, do we clamor
for knowledge continually, and pick at the lock of
what we suppose to be the door of knowledge, — not
waiting for God's word, but forestalling it?
Know thyself as the graphophone of God; study
thyself as a marvelous mechanism through, and by
which God may reveal Himself more fully, more
clearly, than in any other natural form; for man is
made in the image and likeness of God — mind (after
the mind of God; patterned according to the image
He had in mind for eternal creation. So by this study
of self, man may daily and hourly with more and
more surprise, exclaim, " I am fearfully and wonder
fully made, Oh, my God!" "Know thyself," is the
imperative of the age, as it has been the cry that has
reverberated along the avenues of time since Christ
lived on the earth. The education of self is the sphere-
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melody which Christ set in motion, and which still
resounds with thousand-fold accompaniments and
symphonies through all our hearts. As we interro
gate the outer world and find its secret treasures, so
we should interrogate self to become acquainted with
the inner world of mind — the world of God the Holy
Ghost; for by the Holy Ghost alone will the inner
world be revealed to man. " Education that is worthy
to be so called, is a living in the soul-life that feels
and finds the One in all," as Froebel tells us. Study
self to find harmony and unity; and only by finding
what is in mind-world will we begin to realize or
understand harmony.
Phantasy is the woof of outward experiences; it is
the work of self as a mechanism, while imagination
is the mechanism acted upon — that which gives power
to see, hear, reproduce (generally called create) ; that
which is beyond the self — as the writing of a sym
phony by Beethoven, the, picturing on canvas of that
which has never before been seen, the fulfillment of
a vision seen in the hours of sleep, the wonderful
revelations that come to the child which the adult
either places as the play of phantasy or the deliberate
creation of lies, and forbids him to represent or re
produce that which comes to him as imagination. In
this alone is a mighty field for self-study ; for imagin
ation is really the lens, the tympanum, the touch-
organ which opens to us the door of the mind-world,
and reveals to usi that which comes in no other way;
it was planned by the Almighty Creator to come by
that means. Imagination does not create fiction —
can not create it; but phantasy does weave fiction.
Imagination receives truth and truth alone. Much of
the so-called imagination culture is the growth of
phantasy ; and the more we grow phantasy, the greater
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
our capacity for making falsehood, thereby closing
the doors to mind and upon mind, quenching the spirit
of truth ; and the Spirit of truth is of God and revealed
to man only by the Holy Ghost: so we thus do what
we are distinctly told not to do : " Quench not the
spirit." Let imagination have full play, grasp and
reproduce that which comes by imagination as a
gift from God ; but do not confound it with phantasy.
" Try the spirits, whether they be of God." " Let
this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus."
Let it, allow it to be, acknowledge it manfully; fight
under the banner of imagination, for it is the flag of
freedom, the flag of truth, the banner that sets you
free from the bondage of self, as in a prison-house or
out-house, shut off from God. Let us so study psy
chology, that we shut not ourselves out from mind,
but allow mind to have free, open unobstructed ave
nues by which the harmony, unity, and full destiny
of life may be made known to us, so that our lives
may be the joyful song-prayer of Phoebe Cary's
"Wish:" " I ask not wealth, but power to take
And use the things I have aright;
Not years, but wisdom that shall make
My life a profit and delight.
" I ask not that for me the plan
Of good and ill be set aside,
But that the common lot of man
Be nobly borne and glorified !"

77

CHAPTER VI.

WISDOM— AS A RESULTANT.
"In all thy getting, get wisdom."
The material universe furnishes unlimited means for
special sense-culture, which is intellectual develop
ment, if rightly assimilated, and a sound sensorium
enhances sense-perception; and while perfect sensa
tion comes from healthy physical conditions, and
healthy physical conditions make a sound organism,
yet these means alone do not underlie mental improve
ment; nor are they, in any sense of the word, the
basis of all mental activity, as proven in the preceding
chapter on "Mind." Does a discriminating memory
develop wisdom? Am I wise when my taste is culti
vated so that I prefer ripe, sound fruit to unripe or
partially fermented fruit? A beautiful sunset to a cir
cus, or Shakespeare to light and frothy novels? I
am intellectually developed, but not necessarily wise.
Is it a wise teacher who regards hygienic laws and
carefully guides her pupils in sense-perception culture,
and the study of all that may increase their knowledge
of the world and things surrounding them, so that
they may rise in the intellectual scale above their
fellows? She may be called keen, bright, smart, intel
ligent, but not wise : the wise teachers are indeed rare.
In almost every school-room we find our children
being grown by sense, in the sense-world, to and for
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
the sense world, and not growing as the Christ, "In
wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man."
Observe how this is placed by the wise man who wrote
it: "The child increased first in wisdom, and was first
in favor with God, then man. Is this how our chil
dren are growing? No: for in almost every school
room in the land they are being bribed, paid, hired to
rise above their fellows — to reach the head of the
list, no matter how it is accomplished; to be No. 1, so
that they may win the prize and applause of the
world ; to struggle for the head seat in the synagogue,
that he may further be a wage-earner or money-maker,
either to support his family in luxury, or to become a
gold king. America is teeming with boys and girls
whose educational endeavors are just these, because
forced into it in their school-life; if not born with it
tingling in the blood. Can they increase in wisdom
in such a life-school, and do they first grow in favor
with God? Sadly, no! What is largely conceived
as wisdom in our American children is conceit and
may we not easily pass it along the line to father,
mother, teacher? When occasionally a wise child or
man has found pure soil in which to develop, they are
looked upon as Saint Paul, by Festus — that "Much
learning hath made them mad ;" they are beside them
selves or possessed of evil. Wisdom is as hard to
recognize to-day as it was two thousand years ago.
Where we find sensation and awareness, conception
and apperception, we will not always find wisdom, un
less apperception is not that of which we are re
peatedly taught — " assimilation of old ideas with new."
If it is true that thought contributes wisdom, then in
deed was Paul mad ; for wisdom never has been a re
sultant of thought. Storing and reproducing knowl
edge is not the acquisition of wisdom.
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
Madame de Saussure was right and wise when she
asserted that at the beginning of life imagination is
all-powerful ; for who will deny that heaven lies about
us in our infancy," and imagination is the great work
ing model from the store-house of wisdom? Saint
Paul wisely said, "When I was a child, I thought as
a child." He did not say, "I imagined as a child; I
absorbed knowledge and drank of the fountain of wis
dom as a child." As he had so long been dark, he had
lost sight of the child light and called it childish. Saint
Paul, after his conversion, was wise — as he was when
a little child. The well-known proverb, " Fools and
children tell the truth," is a stronger acknowledgment
of the absence and ignorance of wisdom in the masses
than appears on the face of the proverb. The wise
mother, father, and even teacher, will gather inspira
tion from the wisdom of the child, and thereby get
wisdom, if she truly is wise enough to believe that
she can be led by a child ; she can find her Christ
Child if she seeks him. The wise man builds his
house upon a rock, and that rock is Christ ; the foolish
build upon shifting sands, which are the shifting,
wavering thoughts of man. The house on the rock
shall stand forever and ever, but the structures built
upon sand shall be destroyed ; for we are told, by the
word of authority and wisdom, that "all our thoughts
shall perish." He is wise who knoweth the interpre
tation of a thing by the Spirit of the Holy Ghost. " A
man's wisdom maketh his face to shine, but knowl
edge of thought maketh the face bold." " The words
of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the
masters of assemblies, which are given from One
Shepherd." The Word of God is fixed, fastened for all
eternity ; " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my
word shall not pass away. The word of the wise is
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
driven into eternity as goads and nails, for wisdom
results from application of the heart to influences of
the Holy Ghost. To understand what the will of the
Lord is, is to be wise, to have wisdom ; not to know
God's will is to be foolish and unwise ; only followers
of God are wise. That which pertains to temporal
life alone can not be wisdom, for those who work for
temporal gain " have their understanding darkened,
being alienated from the life of God through the ignor
ance that is in them," because of the blindness of their
hearts. " The words of these, however learned, will
soon be forgotten ; they perish almost as soon as
uttered, for the thoughts which formulated them
perish. We think in words and pictures, which are
the dead-letters of the law ; we feel wisdom in spirit
reality or activity, so that they who to us speak wisely
we can not resist the wisdom and the spirit by which
they speak — for the words are goads. The greatest
blessing one person can bestow upon another is, the
prayer which Saint Paul offered for the Colossians,
" to desire that they may be filled with the knowledge
of God's will in all wisdom and spiritual understand
ing, and strengthened with all might according to
His glorious power." " The mystery which has been
hidden from ages and generations is now made mani
fest by wisdom" from on high through the Com
forter, which is the Holy Ghost." He shall reveal
the treasures of wisdom of God the Father and
Christ. It is written by the prophets that those who
come shall all be taught of God.
" Who taught the bird to build its nest of moss and
hay and hair ? Who taught the little ant tne way
its narrow nest to weave? Who teaches the babe to
call for food and smile his God-given love to his
mother? " If any of you lack wisdom let him ask of
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
God, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth
not;" but we can not claim it as our own — an indi
vidual possession, saying: "I am wise; I did this by
my great wisdom," for then is it swallowed up in
conceit, and the doors of wisdom shall be shut against
us, and we are like the nine lepers who were cleansed,
but returned not to give thanks unto God. Not mine,
but Thine is the power, and Thine shall be the praise
and glory.
Wisdom is of God; comes to man from God, and
must return to its source. The light of wisdom is the
result of true cultivation of will — right choice of
spirits, open channels for the reception of God the
Holy Ghost. Only such education will bring wisdom ;
but the query comes, " Will the little child have, soon
after birth, all these requirements?" Each respon
sible adult will, and can satisfactorily answer : " Is it
possible to transmit to the child from the hour of its
conception a cultured will? Can the mother and
father so guide and culture its prenatal environment
that the child is born free of shackles of bondage ? Can
the child be brought to the world in and through and
by choice of the right spirits, so that he is prepared for
right choice? And if the child is God's child, conse
crated in holy communion with the Holy Ghost, even
before conception, will not his channels be open
and unobstructed? Will not God know His own, and
communicate Himself to His child? Herein lies
man's larger responsibility to Heaven than simply
the saving of his own soul, the building of a mansion
in heaven or hell for himself. " No man liveth unto
himself, nor dieth unto himself." He is a link in the
great chain of humanity, and, therefore, responsible
for all other links beside his own.
While sense-perception is at the base of the cogni-
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tive pyramid, wisdom and not reason is the crown,
if we can call it crown; for it certainly does not be
long to the head, or a finish, a covering or termination
of distinction and honor to man: For, if we make a
symbol for wisdom, it will not be a pyramid, but a
perpetual spiral.
Each capability and all separately and collectively
are elemental in mind, co-operative with will. We
have heard of the circular sweep of the soul, let us
transfer it to where it really belongs — the circular
sweep of mind, which, when in conjunction with will,
brings the resultant that is called wisdom.
Infinite mind planned the universe, all things from
atoms to systems of worlds are unitized by the great
cause relationships. Is man alone left out, as an
atom of humanity in this great unity? Only by his
own will does he shut himself off from perfect co
operation with God's great plan; but if we enter the
circle of mind — the unity of the Trinity, then, en
dowed with wisdom, we feel the mind of God, we are
able to lift the veil of mystery and interpret truth.
The babe that comes through pure channels is en
dowed with this unlettered wisdom — and it is the
effort to letter it that makes us cover and forget the
knowing that came from the courts of our God.
Reasoning is cold unemotional calculation, which is
an open sesame to greed, avarice, tact, ambition, art
fulness, and a host of spirits of evil that gladly enter
the field of reason, when utilized as cause and not in
strumental in effect. Utilized and looked upon as
cause lessens moral responsibility and self-perception,
and makes of man a slave, a prisoner, wanderer. Wis
dom is directly emotional and recognized as from the
one great cause"; develops freedom, poise, repose, trust,
responsive activity, moral connections, eternal respon-
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
sibilities and a full consciousness " in all that he liveth,
he liveth unto God." All capabilities are co-operative
implements or instruments for use in the great Mas
ter's service, and wisdom is our torch-light over a
direct road to the goal of action. No bondage, no
slavery, to war spirits ; no locked cells as prison-
houses; no wandering into by-paths of uncertainty:
for your mentality is wisdom.
The little child proves its title to wisdom in that
its willing interest centres upon the living natural
creations of God instead of man — conceive systems,
laws, rules, and regulations. He would find God in
the works of God ; but man forces upon the child's
recognition and enslaves his interest upon formulas,
creeds, dogmas, histories of war, etc., usually all of
which are the outcome of reason, and the pure, un
lettered wisdom of the child is crowded out by the
lettered reason of man.
The great need of the world to-day is wise teachers,
who will unite wisdom with wisdom, and begin the
real destiny of education. We want a race of men and
women like the seven who were chosen by the apostles
for the apostolic succession — men filled with the Holy
Ghost and wisdom, who were appointed to preach,
to teach, to educate the world ; to evolutionize and
revolutionize the human children who were lost in
the maze of their own reason. Of all the followers
of Christ, and all who had heard the words of wis
dom from the twelve disciples, only seven men were
found who were filled with wisdom. Such a tiny
few out of the great family of humanity ! And to-day,
the majority is still on the side of those who are
without wisdom. The great word of command to
every teacher, preacher, mother and father to-day,
should be, " Walk in wisdom toward them that are
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without; redeeming the time." "Being not unwise,
but understanding what the will of the Lord is."
If the sum and substance of all our getting was
wisdom ; if all effort spent upon the acquisition of
objective knowledge were poured forth in one prayer
ful intent upon wisdom, the millennium would not be
far distant, and the kingdom of Heaven would be at
man's right hand.
The great difficulty to-day is not so much that we
have unthinking masses, but unwise, misguided wills,
that think plentifully, but flounder in the mire of
self-judgments; the judgments that Christ meant
when He said, " Ye judge after the flesh : but if I
judge, my judgment is true, for I am not alone, but
I and the Father that sent me. I judge no man." So,
then, if judgments are the stuff out of which reasons
are made, and if reasons are interlocked judgments,
then it is indeed clear that we are astray when we
rely on our judgments and our reason; for the light
of knowledge, which is nothing more or less than a
dark-lantern, or one of the unwise virgin's lamps
without oil — not filled, trimmed or in any sense ready
for the bridegroom.
Philosophy is a product of reason, while prophecy
is the output of wisdom. The first weighs, measures,
balances, calculates; — while the other is authoritative
evidence — conclusive, without any opposite against
which it can be challenged. That which is reasonable
is not prophecy, for prophecy can not be explained
by reason. The output of wisdom does not meet
reason, is not reasonable ; therefore, wisdom is more to
be desired than judgment, gold, or kingdoms of the
world ; for wisdom is of God, while judgment is of
man. One is a natural inheritance, the other a
heavenly heritage. " Judgments are the stuff out of
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
which reasons are made;" truth is the law which
creates wisdom. Culture of judgment develops good
sense; the possession of wisdom develops self. Lack
of good sense is a deplorable intellectual defect, but
lack of wisdom is a spiritual emptiness. It is a diffi
cult matter to induce the child to respond to individual
reason, but there is never a pause in his ready co
operation with wisdom.
We have been taught to think and speak of self as
reason; it is only self in so far as body is necessary,
for soul development, hands necessary for body, eyes
necessary for the transmission of light. Only thus
can we see self as reason, for reason is a faculty or
capability of self; but wisdom is a resultant of the
mind-world, and not of self, as it is not created by
self, but by God.
If faith is confidence in our own conclusions, then
small wonder is it that Christ likened man's faith
unto something more minute than a grain of mustard-
seed. We may study history on such faith, but we
will not so much as enter the threshold of God's King
dom with so small a passport. So long as science
rests in reason, it, too, will have the stamp of limita
tion : " Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." But
open the doors of reason ; " lift up your heads, O ye
gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and
the King of Glory shall come in. Reason is the door,
the entrance-gate, to wisdom. If the education of
reason gives independence, it is not freedom; inde
pendence is only the road to freedom. Wisdom
makes you free, because it is the undeniable truth,
and " the truth shall make you free."
To define the emotions according to Christ's psy
chologic teachings we would group them into —
1. Selfish emotions. 86

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
2. Selfless emotions, and
3. Unity emotions.
The first group, or selfish emotions, are those which
are held in sense; the second, those which are di-
rempted from self as sense; and the third, the emo
tions that are placed by wisdom, into unity, harmony,
love in the universal whole. Emotion is the opera
tion of consciousness of mind. Sensation is merely
the excitation of sensor-organs, caused by material
stimuli; sensations occasion ideas, while emotions
occasion ideals, because emotions are generated
from the same source as wisdom. God is wis
dom as He is love, for mind is of God. While
sensation belongs to the matter-world ; emotion comes
of the world of necessary realities and mind. One is
sense, the other self-activity; one is subjected to
reason, the other to wisdom by the controlled known
self; but when the self is not known and controlled,
emotions are misplaced, misused, distorted by sense
into evil. All purposed self-culture of what is termed
egoistic emotion is the development of that which is
directly opposed to the psychology of Christ and to
the getting of that wisdom which has been so force
fully enjoined upon us.
The mother holds the first place of responsibility in
fostering wisdom in the child. The office of mother
hood is the highest calling on earth or in heaven.
For is it not the office of the great Fatherhood and
Motherhood of God — creation ? Create with God !
This is the high calling of parenthood ; and the mother
has the larger share of nurturing with and for God,
finding God in herself, in her husband and in
her child, and nurturing every ray of divine
light, every spark of wisdom that comes through
the child — for herself, the world, and heaven.
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
After, and co-operative with the mother in the true
life development of the child, comes the Kindergart
ner, or spiritual foster-mother. In the wise hearts of
these love-inspired helpers will be the pure soil, clear
sunlight, and dew of environment in which the child
of God may "grow in wisdom and in favor with God."
The aim of all the mother's getting, therefore, must
be wisdom. The aim of the kindergartner's getting
should be wisdom. The united aim of all educators
is surely the search for wisdom.
Man has been called " the knowledge-seeking
animal." By this united desire for wisdom man will
be called " the wise spirit of humanity," which will
subdue and crush out all animal instincts and raise
to all heights, the divine impulses of wisdom ; so that
we need not wait until we become immortal to read
God's Book of Wisdom; we may here and now walk
with God, work with God, live with God in that
power of mind which shall make all things possible.
Froebel lived in this motto : " I love him who seeks
the impossible." He it is who seeks wisdom, for
what is impossible to reason is possible in wisdom.
Wisdom colors everything with rainbow colors, brings
joy and peace, fullness and fulfillment. Happiness
may come of knowledge, but joy is born of wisdom.
Attention is the condition for wisdom as well as the
condition for knowledge. Attention to the living
spirit of the child gives the truest key by which the
mother or teacher may unlock the treasures of wis
dom. Much of the living light of the child is snuffed
out by adult extinguishers. Let us take Christ's word
for it, and find the Kingdom of Heaven, the light and
love and life from God in the little child, and then
good teaching will consist in wise living with the
pupil, so as to draw out or educate — that is, assist in
88

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
encouraging the pupil to educate, by self-activity, all
of mind that is in him, so as to make free outlet for
more and more income of mind; more and more light
of wisdom, which throws sunlight clearness upon all
subjects and objects. Then will be seen and under
stood mental phenomena; for without wisdom "men
tal phenomena" is merely an empty term, applied to
intellectual acquisitions by sensation and thought, pro
duced by sensation, misused emotion, misapplied im
pulse, and the erection of a monument to the unknown
self by reason. For what is being wise in your own
conception, but placing your own reason on the
highest pedestal and worshipping at that shrine?
" Wisdom giveth life to them that have it." " A
good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, bring-
eth forth good things." Christ said, " When any one
heareth the word of the Kingdom and underslsuideth
it not, then cometh that wicked one and catcheth away
that which was sown in his heart." Note the phrase
"sown in his heart," which is in his emotions. This
is the sowing of wisdom by the Holy Ghost; not
sown in the head, to be reasoned upon, but taken to
reason by the will and there that evil one finds it —
and lays hold upon it.
The multitude reasoned concerning Jesus' power,
when they said, " Whence hath this Man this wisdom
and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's
son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brethren
James, Joses, Simon and Judas? and his sisters, are
they not all with us? Whence, then, hath this man
all these things? And they were offended at Him."
The same history is repeated to-day. " The poor wise
man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not
heard." He has not been instructed in institutions of
learning; his knowledge is not reasonable; he is de-
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
mented or insane on the subject of religion; he is
childish." All these railings and accusations are to
day made against many who are taught of God and
receive power from on high, because they have not
wisdom and know it not. Christ said of these : " In
vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the
commandments of men. Every plant which my
Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up :
let them alone, they be blind leaders." That beauti
ful humility of faith which is shown by the woman of
Canaan, who came to Christ for help for her daughter,
and when tried for the benefit of those about her, said,
" Truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs that
fall from their master's table." This is the spirit
which makes , the faith that is the real cry for food
from on high, and this is the humble faith that is
always filled with the food of wisdom; for, look you,
that woman's daughter was made whole from that
very hour — not only healed of her disease physically,
but made whole. And Christ said, " Be it unto thee,
even as thou wilt."
This is the humility and faith thereby, of the little
child — "and whosover shall humble himself as a
little child," the same is greatest in the Kingdom of
Heaven. Who, then, can question? Who can dare
to say that man's knowledge and man's power, man's
brain-ability and man's mind, is all powerful in
science ? " He that is greatest among you shall be
your servant, and whosoever shall exalt himself shall
be abased; but whoso humbleth himself shall be ex
alted." The spirit that exalts the ego shall be brought
low; the will that humbles self before the mighty
Mind of God, receives wisdom, receives instruction
from on high, receives the Holy Ghost.
Let us be no more blind guides, which strain at a
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gnat and swallow a camel ; but let us, in all humility,
wait for the word of the Lord — for the grace of God,
for He said, " My grace is sufficient for thee." God's
grace is wisdom, His gift by the Holy Ghost, and with
this grace "we are born again, not of corruptible
seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which
liveth and abideth forever. For all the glory of man
is as the flower of grass which falleth away: but the
word of the Lord endureth forever."
Wisdom is the principal thing: therefore, get wis
dom; exalt her and she shall promote thee; she shall
bring thee to honor when thou dost embrace her; a
crown of glory shall she deliver to thee" — the crown
of fore-knowledge, a light that shineth through the
darkness of thy head and illumines the path before
thee. Wisdom is as a search-light into the future;
it counts the strokes of the great clock of destiny as
now, seeing the future in the now. Now is the day
of salvation, now is the accepted time, now is the day
of the Lord, now is eternity ; — not straggling aimlessly
along life's path, hoping for a to-morrow out of the
regrets of to-day (for this is man's vision when he
lives by his reason), but making to-day the eternal
to-morrow, is so embracing wisdom as to " keep the
heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues
of life" — the issues of life, the onward march of eter
nity, the walking with God in eternal progress. If
wisdom is better than rubies or fine gold, what will
be the glory of the soul built in wisdom ? How much
will such a soul magnify the Lord and beautify His
kingdom ?
" The wellspring of wisdom is as a flowing brook,"
going back to the source from which it came, rising
to great heights by light, and ever active in its course ;
giving all things to Him that judgeth righteously;
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
for there is nothing out of wisdom that is true judg
ment, neither is there any justice, for justice is
weighed and measured on the scales of individual
judgments, which are legion, and cannot be counted
by one (1) : therefore, justice is only an empty name
and will bring the same condemnation that was given
to the lawyers when Christ said, " Woe unto you
lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowl
edge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that
were entering in, ye hindered."
To draw from the wellspring of wisdom is to fol
low the word of our Saviour Christ in all things, at
all times, and in all places and conditions of life. " And
when they bring you into the synagogues and unto
magistrates and powers, take ye no thought how or
what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say:
for the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour
what ye ought to say."

92

CHAPTER VII.

CURRENTS THAT ENSWATHE THE
GLOBE AND ALL WORLDS.
Spirit Entity, psychical evidences, physiological
phenomena, all are made possible by the circular
sweep of mind, which produces these currents that are
omnipresent. All life is sustained by them, all acti
vity produced by them ; it is in these currents that we
live, move, and have our being. " All fires are fed
from the sun, all streams from the sea" by these
same encircling currents. The discovery of telegraphy
and all the powers of electricity are but a revelation of
these mighty currents. Wireless telegraphy and tele
pathy are but clearer insights into the phenomena,
and a nearer approach to the noumena. It is by these
same currents that the pure white lily raises its beau
tiful head from the self-same soil that produces the
nettle with its sting and gives to the grape-vine juice
that can madden and cheer, and raises the mighty
oak and elm above the lowly grasses.
To these also are we indebted for all the wealth,
beauty, and marvelous glory of the minerals and jewels
of the earth, if we dare call them ours; ours only in
trust, ours only for our growth and highest use, ours
only for revelation and insight. The current that
draws and holds the needle to the magnet, the ocean
93

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CHRIST.
to its bounds, is the same force or cause which holds
the earth and all worlds suspended in space. The
power of gravitation is one with the law of conscience.
The flash of lightning is on the same principle that
revelations of these truths are made to man; yet,
when they come, man is lauded and almost deified as
a wonderful discoverer. Do we exalt the cornstalk
or the rose because they have appropriated the cur
rents that came into their lives? They have produced
fruit by these same currents : are they, therefore, to be
worshipped ? " Render unto Caesar the things that are
Caesar's, but unto God the things that are God's."
It has recently been seen (discovered) that the cotton
plant has appropriated many more currents, giving to
it several properties that it was not known to have.
Which is the greater power, the man who has found
these properties existing in the cotton plant, the plant
that was built by these currents of transmission, or
the currents which carried the several properties; or,
further still, the producer of the currents? Truth,
beauty, and love are transmitted to man by currents
in the same way, and by the same cause or noumena
that carries the needful properties to the cotton plant,
or crystalizes the carbon into the diamond.
Life currents, according to position and condition,
are termed: absorption, gravitation, radiation, air,
water, wind, magnetism, electricity, spirit, nerves, etc.
Some are applicable to the physical world of things,
some to intellectual processes, while others are set
apart in the moral world or world of spirit and soul, as
it is called. In truth, there is no severing of life into
worlds or classes; the physical life, the intellectual
life, the moral life, the spiritual life, are all one life —
one Whole. We can not separate one part from the
other without weakening the whole ; we can not edu-
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cate one phase of life to the exclusion and detriment
of other phases without loss to the life — even that
curve of it that is supposedly being grown; we can
not appropriate this life current and reject another
without death in some degree; we can not cultivate
the physical as physical without crucifixion; we can
not build soul if we refuse to breathe oxygen, any
more than we can grow the intellect if we never see,
smell, taste, touch, or hear. The whole grasp of life,
with all its currents unified, seen in circular process,
of oneness. Life re-risen, life proclaimed in all things,
life transcendent and sublime is, in the fullest sense
of the word, apperception. Christ's life was apper
ception. Every current of living force was unified in
His concept; was utilized by Him in His every act
consciously; therefore, His life was transcendent, was
sublime. We are often conscious of sublimity in gaz
ing into the heart of a beautiful flower or watching a
bird soar toward the skies. Why is this? Because
the flower and the bird are utilizing and unifying all
of life's forces or currents that come to them. If we
really apperceived, we should be able to do what now
is impossible to the majority of men.
It was apperception of life — a clear consciousness of
the unified currents of life to the finest spirit concep
tion in wisdom — that caused Christ to know and act,
when the diseased woman touched the hem of His
garment. There was a great assemblage, many cur
rents, much absorption and radiation at that moment ;
yet this one current was not unobserved, not left un
appropriated, by Christ. He raised it into the glory
of the true circle of life.
So long as the present looks to the past for instruc
tion and inspiration, so long will man fail, not only to
utilize the great currents of life, but utterly lack all
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conception of them. Christ lives, God is in heaven
and earth, the Holy Ghost is ever present in this great
circular sweep of mind. Then why persist in looking
back, in living in and by the past? Christ is not
dead ; He is risen. The true apperception of life, and
that life, is by these mighty currents of mind making
one perpetual, joyous Easter-day — a risen Lord — a
living Redemption ! This is life, re-risen for all men.
So far as assimilation of the currents of life is under
stood or made manifest by the majority, "self " is an
infant from the first to the sixth year; an infant from
the sixth to tenth year; an infant from tenth to twen
tieth year, and unborn in relation to certain currents
from the twentieth year to the end of their physical
existence. Much of this infant condition is due to the
excuses placed upon human nature. We hear all
along the life-line such ignorant and weak excuses
as, "We could not help this or that defective act; it
was only human." " I do these things because it is
my nature to do them; therefore, have me excused."
Evil, even crimes, are glossed over on the plea of
human nature; and yet, did they but know it, that
very humanity is the current that connects them with
divinity and eternity ; the gift of life that make us
one with Christ and children of one Father, God ; the
humanity that is capable of divinity. It is because
we are human that there are currents of divine life
that reveal to us all force, all life, all heaven — the One
in all, and all in One.
To know self is not to defraud the humanity ot
self, nor to look into the mirror of the past continually ;
but to look into the full, clear light of to-day,
is to see reflected or foreshadowed the life force of
to-morrow. In instruction and education of the child, we must
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not advance this theory and that practice as a pre
paration for life, but as life itself, in the currents that
are now active for and to life; not slowly crawling
from past for future conditions by ignoring most of
life's forces. This encrusted, housed, snail-like evo
lution is the cause of inactive mental powers, weak
mentality, little or no mental phenomenon.
When Pedagogy is the science of life and not the
art of teaching, there will be more evidence of men
tality all along life's path from childhood to manhood ;
with no pause platforms called periods of mental
growth. The life-currents are continuous; they do
not pause or come in periods or seasons ; they are ever
encircling the globe and all that makes the world.
The loss or lack in humanity comes of non-appropria
tion and assimilation and resistance of much that
makes for the fullness of life, the circle, and finally
the consciousness of the sphere of life. The more we
live in the currents, the more we are moving and liv
ing with the stream of eternal life ; thus, we grow in
mentality, in revelation, in radiation of light; it
matters not at what year of life, whether it be the
fifth, fifteenth, or fiftieth, it is living reciprocity with
mind ; and this is the solution of the psychic life of
our blessed Lord from childhood.
Why does the infant, the boy, the man, delight in
a ball? Why will the adult enjoy a ball-game with as
enthusiastic interest and pleasure as the little child?
Because, in the ball itself, is the symbol of his own
life ; and its activity is determined by the same forces
that control his acts ; that keep him in space and con
nect him with space, matter, and mind. This in itself
is conclusive evidence of the uninterrupted life-cur
rents. And we have them not in full and free co
operation with self, because we will not to utilize
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them, but prefer to live in the past by applying only
those which have been grasped before by our pro
genitors. To be a student of Psychology is to know self, and
to know self is to be a psychic. The one example of
a known self, a psychic, is Christ, the true and per
fect Psychic. He had the whole living principle — the
principle of life, in all its currents, gathered into one
human and divine Being.
To apply psychology is truly to apply Christ; to
apply His life principles to our lives in the fullest ac
tivity; to live in all the currents that make physical,
moral, intellectual, mental, spiritual life one life — life
re-risen, life born again, life by the Word of God.
" Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." — these are
the currents of life over and under and about the phy
sical sustenance that only assists in supporting us. The
currents of air, are an activity of a word of God that
makes for life; bound up with the activity (another
word of God) in the growth of grains ; as also currents
that come to us in water, in electricity, and in spirit
through the medium of absorption and the electric
battery of nerves, called sensorium and motorium.
The currents of spiritual magnetism (if it is clearer
to so define them) come in the same channel, by the
same road, that the awareness of hot or cold, light or
darkness is conveyed — except, that the special sense-
organs, as eye or ear, nose or mouth, are not used for
transmission of these currents ; they are met by sense-
nerves, and distributed by the emotive ganglia to
what is known as heart-consciousness. We do not
love with the head, but with the heart; we are not
moved to compassion by the intellective ganglia, but
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by the heart; we do not reverence and worship Christ
with the brain, but with the heart. The emotive
nerves and ganglia receive the currents of wisdom,
and the motor ganglia execute the commands received.
The most marvelous mechanism of the body is the
nervous system; the science of life becomes a known
science by this system of nerves. All other organs of
the body are merely accessory. For this is the instru
ment used in the transmission of wisdom, in the con
veyance of conscience (the voice of God), in the flood-
tide of love, in the power of insight or intuition, in
the development of what has been called the sixth
sense, or seeing that which is invisible to others. All
psychic phenomena are made manifest by this mar
velous nerve telegraphy. God approaches our hearts
by this means ; and it is our business, our first care
and our constant watch that such a valuable instru
ment be made strong, clean, pure, and in perfect con
dition from birth, so that all the currents of life, all
the promises of eternity, all the love of the Father,
all the power of wisdom, will not be missed or lost
because we are nervously in no condition to receive
them. The avenues or wires, let us say, to the heart
are obstructed, weighted down, corroded, rusted by
misuse and disuse, and the flood-tide of mind has no
inlet, and if no inlet certainly no outlet. The first
reverent, prayerful care of the coming child and the
babe, after birth, is the protection and nourishment
of his nervous organism; the gates of the soul, the
inlet and outlet of mind, the keyboard of conscience,
the eye of -the eternity — that text book by which we
may read the self, the psychic harp of a thousand
strings. Shall we use this harp for melody, harmony,
and glorious symphonies, or for clashing, dissension,
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and discord? For where these are, God is not; the
currents are thrown off, there is no means of attrac
tion. Many of the strings of this harp are distorted and
unstrung, even snapped by the way we clothe the
body that encases them, especially the pressure and
weight brought to bear upon the nerves of the spine.
The lightest possible weight clothing should be worn
over the spine, with no pressure anywhere along the
line of the vertebrae, from the base of the brain, to
the end of the spinal column. Neither should the ribs
be pressed, so as to cause any strain upon the back,
or the clothing fastened or suspended from the waist
line. All weight should come from the shoulders,
and that as little as possible. The nerves should have
nothing at their ends to weaken their office or obstruct
transmission of currents ; for by this means God speaks
to man in every way, and enters the emotions (the
heart) directly through the spinal nerves. Make a
careful observation of sound-waves alone, independ
ent of other currents, and it will be found that they
do not all, by any means, enter by the tympanum of
the ear. The spine — or rather, the nerves of the spine
— is the keyboard of conscience and the typewriter
of wisdom.
The deaf, dumb, and blind have conscience and mind
communication ; yet the ear, eye, and vocal organs are
paralyzed, useless. When stirred with sublime emo
tions — of love, joy, beauty, adoration, and worship — >
observe the entire organism of nerves (of the body
self), and it will be clear to any physiologist that the
currents are transmitted through the spinal nerves.
To make a careful study of the self, one must know
the body organs and their nerve connections, and by
feeling will we best prove our connection with, and
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relationship to, the mighty currents of life, good and
evil. It has been said that " thoughts are things."
Yes, verily, thoughts are currents generated by man,
and communicated to man, animals, and the devil, but
seen by God.
Thought-currents pass into space from any point
of the body from which they are directed. There is
great activity of the body over and above that of the
special organs and organic actions. Much there is
in space that we do see, and much more is there that
we do not see, because of our lack of wisdom — be
cause there is so much passing out over the strings
of the harp that is of our own making — so many
thoughts being manufactured in the brain by our false
judgment, and reason; that discord and jangle are in
the way, and we can not see with the eternal and
spiritual eyes; we can not feel the presence nor hear
the symphonies of Heaven that are all about us;
and doubt, made by our conclusions, comes as a
double barrier; when we hear, see, or read of some
one who is free and open to the things that are in
visible and inaudible to the masses. The currents of
mind are more mighty than we can begin to conceive
of. " Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath
it entered into the heart of man, the things which God
hath prepared for them that love Him." These things
are not in the process of preparation, but are prepared
ready for their reception by those whose currents are
flowing in the spirit of love of God ; thus their chan
nels and emotional harp-strings are attuned and in
readiness to receive the things which God has pre
pared. For love is self-diremption, — the outpouring
of all that is highest, strongest, purest, and best that
the seft has ever found — absolute flight of the self
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from the self. The love-current is that which builds
the soul otherwhere above; and the inordinate affec
tions and passions, the selfish emotions, or better
called sense-excitations, build the soul otherwhere be
low. All these marvelous things are prepared and
ready now for our acceptance — for our vision, if we
will only live the abundant life ; only believe that now
is the day of our salvation. Now we may receive the
word ; now we may hear and see things that are
shrouded in mystery — that are now invisible and in
audible. " Unseen by mortal eyes
In the stillness of the night;
There are those who wander
O'er the earth
In robes of airy light.
Sweet messengers of love and hope,
They journey to and fro,
And consolation follows
In their footsteps as they go.
What are the heart's presentiments,
Of coming joy or pain,
But gently whispered warnings
Of that guardian angel train?
We hear them in our slumbers,
And waking fantasy deems
That busy thought was wandering
In the fairy land of dreams.
But the low, sweet strains we listed
Were the strains that angels sing.
To tempt our souls to soar :
Bright gleams of heaven they bring.
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When morning breaks above us,
And we wake to busy day,
These angels go before to guide
And keep us on our way.
When our feeble footsteps falter,
All aweary and alone,
In their arms they gently bear us,
Lest we dash against a stone.
In our journeyings, in our restings,
On the land or on the sea,
In our solitude and sorrow,
In our gatherings and glee.
In the day of degradation,
In the hour of joy and pride, —
These pure and watchful ministers
Are ever by our side."
To the physical eye the world is very beautiful ; but
the eyes are holden, so that we see only half- — no, not
even a hundredth part of the beauty and glory that
would be evident in these mighty currents all about
us. The day is dawning for some who are sensitized
into spiritual truth and light; that they will be par
takers of the glory that shall be revealed to them.
The mother and father who stand by the child's
crib while it sleeps, and sends out currents of love to
that little one, are doing more for that child's nerve-
organism and its whole future life-structure than all
the caressing and fondling in its waking hours will
ever do for him.
" There remaineth a rest for the people of God."
By many this is supposed to mean either in heaven
or in paradise, the transition of the body between the
spirit's flight and resurrection. Now, if we observe
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those who are endowed with spiritual insight — wis
dom, or, as it is sometimes termed, the sixth sense,
we will find that in the times of repose, in sleep, or
when apart from the strain and stress of the crowd,
is the surest, clearest psychic revelation. Poise, re
pose, inner-collectedness, is the condition of prayer;
and true prayer is the outflow of the current of love.
Christ said, " When thou prayest, enter into thy
closet, and when thou hast shut the door of the mater
ial sense-activities, then is prayer; and this same rest
is the pause between sense-world and self-world, be
tween physical and mental, that mental revelations
are made. Mental symphonies played upon the
harp of our emotions, and the rest remains — confidence
in that which has been revealed, even if the whole
world laughs it to scorn and ridicule, as it did Joseph,
calling him " that dreamer," and many others from
whom the scales have been lifted, so that visions of
the invisible are clear.
It has been said that, if an infant smiles in sleep,
the angels are talking to him. This is fuller of truth
than is generally accepted. Surely the currents of
Infinite love are being carried to its heart; for Christ
has said, " Their angels do always behold the face of
their Father in heaven." So, if we believe Christ, we
must believe that currents of His love are in constant
communication and touch, by spirit messengers, with
the heart of the innocent child; and they are in that
rest, for they are the people of God in their purity
and emptiness of the sense I, and receptiveness of the
currents of truth and beauty, light and love, that sur
round them — especially when man's discordant spirits
are shut out from them in sleep. The great beauty
of the architectural work of the soul grows most in
repose — in rest, for then are the spirits of mind surer
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of finding entrance ; and only in that pause do we re
ceive the current messages that come in the waking
hours, or in sleep. "Be still, then, and know that I
am God: I will be exalted in the heaven, and I will
be exalted in he earth."
The globe and all worlds are enswathed by God.
He is Omnipresent. His light and love encompass the
world, and Christ is with us always, " even unto the
end ;" in very truth ; constantly endeavoring to com
municate that love, that truth, that light and abundant
life of His, to men. Why will we not receive it all;
Let us see to it that the means of communication, the
point of contact, which the Father has provided be set
in order for His coming. Let us prepare the way of
the Lord, and make his paths straight, that all the
mighty currents of light, life, and love may flow into
our hearts, so that we may know the only true God,
and Jesus Christ, whom He hath sent by the Holy
Ghost. " Come, Holy Ghost, our hearts inspire
And fill us with celestial fire."
That great electric current of love and light from
the Creator of love and light ! May we find it in every
breath, and in every emotion that sways our being!
"The wind that blows can never kill
The tree God plants ;
It bloweth east, it bloweth west;
The tender leaves have little rest:
But any wind that blows is best.
The tree God plants
Strikes deeper root, grows higher still,
Spreads wider boughs ; for God's good-will
Meets all its wants." 105

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With this beautiful suggestion from Lillian E.
Barr, we may draw for ourselves a new psychologic
tree — a tree planted by the River of Life.