Out of the mystery gates of birth came forth these three to hallow our earth.

John Milton Scott (1855-1928) was born in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania. He attended Lafayette College in Easton, PA, becoming a Baptist minister. Later he became a Unitarian, becoming minister at Ithaca Unitarian Church. He earned a graduate degree from Cornell. Over the years he authored many nooks of sermons and poems.
He was married to Mary Maude McCormick and together they had John, Donald, Roger, Jean, Malcolm and Karl.

For the help of others and the help of myself, these affirmations were written.

They are visioned in the truth that in God we live and move and have our being; that we are born in the image and likeness of the Father and Mother Infinite, who, nameless, declares, I AM.

We, born of this Nameless One, and ourselves nameless, can in the deep truth of our childhood say, I am; and, when we are in the consciousness of this being-truth of us, we can, in the world of the numbered and the named, radiate, transform and wisdom, so that we live a full, harmonious, joyous, successful life.

Outwardly, in the quiet of tropical mountains and in the din of tumultuous cities, these words have been written. Inwardly, they have been written in the visioning of the truth, that Divine Love is the origin and end of each thing, each one; that in the finished work of that Divine Love the ways of God to man are justified.

Beyond what they say is the truth of you,—the God-meant-you,—whose glory, nor eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor mind conceived, nor words said; yet the imperfect of these words may help you on the way home to yourself, in which being-home of you. God is the glory and the peace.

Their help will be helped, if you read them aloud with your voice vibrant in earnestness; there being in the spoken word some power creative beyond what the silent thinking may realize.

If you read them with mind eager for truth, with heart earnest for love, with soul athirst for its eternity, or with heart and with flesh crying out for the living God, you will read clear through them into the consciousness of your own beinghood, forgetting them as they pass in your light, as clouds are forgotten in the glory of the sun.

It is not a book, consecutive, to be read through, passing from your thoughts, or but dimly abiding in your memory. It is a book for daily use, the one affirmation at a time, as your need may be, as your yearning may ask.

If this book helps you some little way into the glory of you and the glory of God eternalizing together in the white blaze of Being, its printing will have been more than worth while.

When you are in the consciousness of the truth, that the beauty of you and the Beauty of God, rupturing together, make the Beauty of the Everlasting Holiness, you will, then, as inevitably as the musical heart of a mocking bird sings, transform this outer of you and your life, until it shine in that Beauty of Holiness, even as what time He was transfigured, shone the dust-stained garment of the Christ in a brightness above the brightness of noons.

I am (1913)
John Milton Scott
Grail press
Los Angeles, California

Saint Francis was born where Assisi smiles

On vineyards whose purple the heart beguiles,

Making it think of Him, the Vine,

Who gives His blood in the Holy Wine,

That the Holy Ghost in perpetual fire

Burn out of the soul every base desire.

Saint James opened his Norman eyes

Where the blue of the Saxon haunts the skies;

Where, with ripping wings, the lark upruns

To sing the souls out of English suns,

Dropping them over the wide, green meads

In notes that fall like some sower's seeds,

That they hallow the hearts of the English boys

With regardful reverence for all bird-joys.

Making each life which the wing-flight wears

As holy as altars from which lift prayers.

Saint Scraggles was born in Syracuse

Where the lake laughs green and the sky smiles blues,

Where through the uglying dust is seen

The beauty of trees with refreshing green;—

Came through an egg 'neath a bird-warm breast;—

But a storm-fate tumbled her out of the nest,—

Out of the nest on the cold, wet ground.

Where a kinder than storms the wrecked bird found,—

Out of the nest which was blown apart,

She tumbled into Saint James's heart.

Out of the mystery gates of birth

Came forth these three to hallow our earth.

TO

George Wharton James

IN LOVE WITH HIS LOVE FOR ALL LIVES THAT LIVE,

BE IT WILD OR TAME,

BE IT BIRD OR BEAST OR MAN,

BE IT CHRIST OR GOD

WHOSE JOYOUS LIFE EMBOSOMS AND LIVES

WITH ALL OTHER LIVES,

THIS SERMON IN SONG,

WITHOUT HIS PERMISSION,

FROM HIS FRIEND,

JOHN MILTON SCOTT.

Saint Francis, Saint Scraggles, and Saint James (1916)

"KINDLY LIGHT," a book of "Inspiration and Aspiration," commended for its spiritual helpfulness by Frances E. Willard, whose great work of reform has recognition in her marble statue being in the Capitol at Washington, the only woman thus recognized; the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Founder and Minister of Abraham Lincoln Center, an Institutional Church in Chicago; Prof. Nathaniel Schmidt, of the Semetic Languages in Cornell University, and sometimes Ethical Culture Lecturer; the Rev. R. Heber Newton, D.D., eminent Episcopalean Minister, who said: "These poems and prayers are beyond criticism. They are the whispers of the soul in the secret place of the Most High. As we listen to them, we find ourselves drawn within the most holy place of the temple, and becoming conscious of the presence of the Infinite and Divine."
Written by JOHN MILTON SCOTT