Emma Curtis Hopkins ~ RESURRECTION OF CHRIST ~ 1893

Matthew 28:1-10

One Indestructible

There is one indestructible substance pervading all things from the remotest star to the nearest dust particle. This substance is finer than any substance cognized by the senses. It is finer than the attraction of gravitation, cohesion, disintegration. It can only be cognized by the mind. It can only be handled by the thoughts of the mind. And only the understanding power of the mind can make it useful.

He who by any manner of thinking handles this substance and realizes that its nature is his nature soon finds himself experiencing vital renewals throughout body and mind. He has begun the "animation of the particular from the universal," an art earnestly sought after by the ancients.

If he shall ever enter into an understanding of what thoughts are invariably certain to revitalize his being he will see that, though the temple be destroyed, yet in three days can he raise it again. He will see what Jesus Christ meant by all mankind's being of the same family with himself, having the same Father and gifted with the same abilities. The resurrection will be to Him no miracle. That the beauty of the all-pervading substance must break out here or there, in rose or infant, because of its having been molded by beautiful thoughts; that the wisdom of the all-pervading substance must break out here and there by reason of having been handled by true thoughts, will be to him as easy to demonstrate as that the angles of a triangle are two right angles. He will realize literally, "I am in the Father, and ye in Me, and I in you." He will know this substance perfectly, and knowing it will be eternal life for him.

"And this eternal life, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."

Life In Eternal Abundance

He will see that if beauty breaks forth here and there because of the here and there activities that produce beauty, and now he can himself act in the way to manifest beauty wheresoever he will, that all things and all people may as well exhibit the beauty of the willing waiting principle as for only a few to be beautiful. If he finds the activities within his own nature which by using he can bring forth music by voice or instrument, and he sees that everything and everybody might surpass the symphonies and sonatas of the great masters through understanding the substance which is divine harmony itself, he will not drill with voice or instrument to bring forth the songs of Zion, but will finger the chords of the everlasting spirit of harmony stretched in infinite number every object on earth and in heaven. The substance that holds the worlds in its breath is life itself. He who understands it has life in eternal abundance. It is wisdom itself. He who understands it knows all things. Nothing is hidden from him. He laughs at death. "Though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." He is removed from the fear of senility. The secret of perpetual light is his.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ was the necessitous result of his understanding of the all-pervading substance. Whoever understands this substance must roll away the stones from his tomb, must ascend out of his grave bodily, must be indestructible being because he has drunk his full of indestructible fluid, he has eaten his full of imperishable bread. Having once risen from the tomb, he may or may not appear substantially present to mankind. Jesus Christ does not choose to appear often in our time as he appeared shortly after the apparent crucifixion, but he can thus come there is no doubt, for whoever has learned the way he taught, most nearly to his knowledge thereof, has most nearly touched his miracle working.

The twenty eighth chapter of Matthew, first to tenth verses, describes the belief of the Christian world in the potency of the universal substance as a revival to the body and mind in defiance of the worst possible efforts against its action. Jesus Christ had said that "The Father" was not ready for Him to make the test at one time, and He slipped through the multitude and escaped from them that He might bring more fully unto Himself the quickening principle. He had been thirty years working with it by means of thoughts untaught in the schools and churches of His time before He wrought a miracle. Then at Cana of Galilee, He turned water into wine. After three years of working outward demonstrations of dealing with the mysterious and unknown substance He was ready to demonstrate that full and perfect life for every faculty would waken after a necessary period in every human being; within three days if as fully in the understanding of the life substance as he was; within longer periods if not as fully in the understanding.   He knew He had solved the problem of the ages.

The Resurrection

There was in His friends no full faith in His ability to rise from so covered a grave. Yet so gloriously did He demonstrate it that His very thoughts formulated angels with countenances radiant in light and penetrating as lightning and forms clothed in dazzling white raiment. His very thoughts were alive and glistening. The two Mary's sought for His closed sepulchre. His nearest friends mourned His unrisen body. But He was alive and in Galilee. Galilee means circuit. All the places chosen by Him were significant of the demonstration He made at each one. He closed the circuit of His minority at Galilee. He closed the disciples' belief in poverty and disgrace at Galilee. He closed the circuit of their doubt of His power on a mountain in Galilee.

With His demonstration of the ability of a doctrine to feed the being of man He proved that nothing is too small to express all the beauty, the joy, the light of the universal principle.   He explained how nobody is too ignorant to know all things without the necessity of a well-developed intellect. By the exercise of the intellect, intellect fails. By the right draught upon the all-pervading substance intelligence is intensified with unlimited possibilities to infinite wisdom.

By His rising from the sepulchre after a seeming of crucifixion He brought the circuit of man's belief in the power of death to a close for whosoever would accept His instructions. He showed that the fine force that pervades the planets, being itself consciousness whoever breathes it by that process of believing in it suggested by Him must have life in all its manifestations fully energized in himself.

It is conscious hearing in itself; therefore thinks about this fine vital elixir in the right way must make a draught upon it which reanimates the life of the hearing faculty in man infinitely. Jesus unstopped deaf ears by the life force he radiated wherever he walked, as a consequence of his understanding the fine life of the inner ears. "He unstopped deaf ears," He did more and further than that. He caused the ears to hear angelic voices giving explicit direction, which way to walk to find the satisfied life.

The fine force is the conscious skill of demonstration in itself; therefore, whoever thinks directly toward it instead, of toward instruments and methods must make a draught upon it for deftness and conscious skill in bringing to pass good works of whatever kind he chooses.

It is conscious ownership of all things, and therefore whoever looks straight to it for his provisions must, if looking by the understanding of his mind and not by his physical endeavors, find that he makes a draught upon it for plenty. He cannot help bringing his sustenance from it when he understands it as sustenance any more than he can help coming forth from ignorance by handling the fine fluid thereof with those thoughts that make a draught upon it for wisdom.

It is light itself in pure consciousness. Whoever came near Jesus Christ felt the reanimation of His sight by the conscious seeing, radiated by His mind. By a process He made clear to His disciples. He made a draught upon the universal principle, which is conscious seeing, and He healed every blindness by His radiation of the seeing mind with which He had stored himself. He called it the Father sometimes. He called, it God sometimes. He called it Lord and Holy Spirit.

He found in this universal essential all good in conscious readiness. He gave all the years of his human travel to practicing with it, leaving entirely out of his interest the methods of men. "Your fathers did eat manna and are dead," He said, "I have a bread which if a man eat thereof he shall never die". Then they thought He meant material bread, but He said matter profiteth nothing.

Shakes Nature Herself

This lesson shows how the sight of Him and the hearing of Him for three years without practicing the instructions He gave brought the continued sight and hearing of Him. It shows the effect upon the world which opposition to the life, necessitously set going by the understanding of life, itself brings, "There was an earthquake."Opposition to the action of this energy shakes nature herself.

Jesus Christ by his coming forth unharmed from material injuries brought to light the immortality of all the powers of mankind. He had already taught that one virtue in a man is one unconscious feeding upon eternal substance that will by and by permeate and quicken all the other virtues. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." Thus one virtue, though it seems not to save the life of man, will by reason of its irresistible life, here or there, today or tomorrow, "raise him a glorious body."   Many virtues raise him promptly.

All the virtues keep him forever raised out of the reach of death, out of the reach of loss, out of the reach of feebleness, out of the reach of ignorance. A virtue is only a right handling of the wondrous pervading substance.

The glory of Jesus Christ was that, having all the virtues through drawing rightly upon all the life of the universe, He took each man's estate and explained unto him separately how, through all time, he should proceed to have more abundant life by exercise of his nearest talent. As nearly as we can catch the words of His law of life, He meant for us to ignore the claim of evil by making wise draughts upon the full good in this universal presence. He would have us ignore burdens and drudges by breathing in large draughts of the everywhere pervading consciousness of freedom. He would have us ignore poverty and loss by turning our faces toward the consciousness of ownership, which being once felt as present soon potentialities every faculty of him that recognizes its presence.

There was no good, which he did not draw from the fine breath which, when caught consciously, man becomes alive with. The man who molds the vital ethers of omnipresence by right thoughts about its bounty brings forth bountifully. He need not sow seeds into arable soil to fruit in corn and wheat in a far-off autumn time. He handles those plants and trees which were created before their slow shadows were flung into seed time for harvest summer and winter. Jesus Christ ignored every process of creation and brought into sight those things which He pleased, not by skill in quick op-          erations with material things, but by understanding that back of the material things lies the substance that waits to be molded into manifestation, through forms, or independent of forms. The loaves that He wrought out of the spirit were not stones or wood made eatable according to the wishes of Satan, but were repetitious of the five loaves at hand. The angel who spoke to the women was not an inspired man, but the formulation of one of His masterful thoughts as it swiftly gathered out of the first cause of all things its glistening beauty.

But He did not disdain to inspire forms with new qualities, new potencies. The water at the wedding feast was inspired with red wine. The apostles on the day of Pentecost were inspired to speak with new tongues. Thus it is not the destruction of forms but the inspiration of forms which understanding of the nature of this everywhere-present substance gives. Everything quickens with the wine of gladness, which will suit it best. "Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price," that ye may live anew. The poor having this gospel preached unto them are inspired with plenty and so the resurrection of the universal ether in them comes as substance.

Gospel To The Poor

Prophecy had said that the Messiah's words should be a gospel to the poor. Whoever understands this substance molds it wisely into bounty for all men, instead of leaving millions in squalor through not understanding how to feed every one.

Knowing this law of action, nobody is poor. All the plenty with which certain men are provided has come to them through the right use of the origin of bounty which somebody unknowingly made. Close attention to the origin of bounty reveals its readiness to bless all creatures alike.

The substance which is the primal essential out of which all things are fashioned yields itself utterly to thoughts. The fingers cannot handle it. The eyes cannot see it. The thoughts make of it what it names.

If a man's thoughts choose to proclaim that he is unfortunate he makes misfortune manifest. If he chooses to mold, the fine substance with gracious praises of his rightful inheritance of good he cannot help rising, filled with the good he has praised. If the lack of Judgment besets a man he has only to reanimate his mind with touching the life stuff that is judgment itself. The touch thereof is life. He will gather to himself large draughts of the mind on which his judgment can revive, and the judgment within him being fed by the judgment without him, comes forth from its tomb. This is resurrection, as demonstrated by Jesus. The life stuff of which His being inhaled to infinite overflowing was the Christ. All who learn the way of life that he taught, so that every faculty is revived out of its hiding sepulchre, are Christ also. For that which is universal good is Christ. They who expand all their inherent powers to infinite overflowing are Christ resurrected again, as in Jesus. It is no miracle. It is law.

The life stuff pervading all things now, may now be manifested in all things, as infinite life, infinite health, infinite strength of any faculty. Who is there with understanding of how to resurrect or revive all things now from the substance whose name is not the past or the future, but Now? Though you do know how to mold a measure of health out of this presence by your thoughts, do you know how to think into it and around it with thoughts that revive every department of being now?

As its name is Life so its name is Now. Whatever Jesus did He did at once, because He fed His innate love of the present with the substance that can revive your love of the present into fulfillment. Before the Marys arrived He had already risen. This is the way of the Now.

There is no law of resurrection from death except by the revival of the deathless germs of faculty hidden in the tomb of non-usage.

When you touch the fine pervading influence of the world with the thoughts which will spring up from thinking over this fact of existence it shall come to pass that "while ye are yet speaking I will answer, and before ye can call I will hear" for this substance is named the visibility of God while we are speaking.

Inter-Ocean Newspaper, April 2, 1893

Life is ceaseless delight.
The Divine Will guides you.
Those events that seem disastrous are the pushing aside of some things for others better for your progress in Light.
Your prayer should be:
"Lead kindly Light."