LESSON XII
Luke 7:24-35 Isaiah 9:3-7
The great musician's eyes seem always to be looking backward and
upward. He also has stumbled upon the first lesson of Jesus Christ. The great
artist's eyes have an upward and backward expression, as though he saw into
some exalted region of his own being. He also is stumbling toward doing that
which Jesus of Nazareth said was a miracle-working principle.
We hear a great deal about getting one's self into harmony with
certain forces that are supposed to be moving through this universe. We are
told that there is a secret "glame" (Old term for reflected ice
crystals in the atmosphere) in our atmospheric ether which we can extract after
a little practice and it will have an astonishing effect upon us. We are told
of elixirs that float and crackle all about us, which only a few on this round
ball have ever caught any of, but they have been filled with extraordinary
powers.
According to Jesus Christ those powers really all start from the
soul principle in each one of us, and it is what we ourselves have generated
that we finally inhale as "glame", "elixir vitae", or
"forces".
"The kingdom of heaven cometh not by observation" of
the outside world. As long as we look that way we shall see the prison face the
church and the poorhouse glare at the college. The first lesson of Jesus was,
"Stop gazing among the ways of men hoping to find a cure of their
scourges. Turn your eyes backward and see into that kingdom of heaven that hath
its everlasting abode within you. There your eyes will catch fire, light,
miracle shining rays, and wherever you look after that something new and
strange will happen."
"The kingdom of heaven is within you. Behold! Heal the
sick, cast out devils, raise the dead. These signs shall follow."
He taught that, standing at the belt line between reality and
unreality, we will take our choice; look at soul or not soul. The soul is that
deep place in man that says "God is". There are no outward signs of
any God such as man proclaims. He always insists when he speaks from his soul
that God is good, but there are more signs that the ruling principle is evil
than good. There are five times as many words to express evil as to express
good, and five times as many signs of evil as good. But such signs all come
from "without" where dogs and sorcerers and whatsoever makath and
loveth lies.
The first thing to do in order to be natural, as we stand here
at this belt line between the without and the within, is to keep a steady eye
on the soul.
When the dogs and sorcerers and lies will dissolve into
nowhere. This turning back of the
vision faculty is the mystic meaning of "repentance".
In The Light That Is Within
Whoever, in the deeps of mental darkness, sorrow disappointment,
keeps for a certain stretch of time his vision fixed on his own soul, suddenly,
sometimes catches the fact that there is a mysterious light, different from
sunlight, different from electricity, different from any light he has ever
seen, which is in himself, around himself. He becomes aware of being a
different being; from what he was before. Looking around he finds very few, if
any, of his neighbors shining with that quality. Under these circumstances he
must be thoroughly acquainted with some of the principles, the letters, which
that light faithfully watched and rightly named has revealed to unmistakably
truthful people, or he will get to speaking very hatefully of his neighbors
because they do not have that light he has exposed.
Then he will get the name of being a great religionist. He will
scold and lash and condemn those who are going back over the tracks toward
their soul by scientific statements. But they, poor things, are traveling as
best they know to that region from whence he let loose the light. He says they
are not spiritual, they are intellectual they devote too much time to
scientific reasonings.
But when that light does break through and over those who have
been very obediently reasonable in their statements, they will know better than
to scold and lash other people for keeping the letter of the truth long before
they see the light thereof.
As the "glame" which people catch in the atmosphere is
really something which they liberated from within themselves, so the light
which is caught stealing out from watching our own soul is what we liberate.
The musician turned back toward his inner kingdom and liberated harmony. The
healer turned back to his own soul kingdom and liberated soul health. Each one
wonders why the other does not liberate his particular genius.
Today's lesson has for its principal theme: "Unto us a child
is born". We have liberated something. Each one has borne from within,
outward, some new genius. What is it? If it is born from the very altar fire of
the heaven within ourselves, through steadfast watching it according to the
mystic direction of Jesus, it here declares that "of its increase there
shall be no end." (Isaiah 9:7)
If it is born from looking away from our own soul we are told
that we may indeed have multiplied, but no joy comes with it. (Isaiah 9:3)
There is no forgiveness without repentance. That is, we have no streaming forth
of enduring power, light, heavenly miracles, except from first finding the deep
place within us which not only says, "God is," but knows it. Then,
finding it, we must "watch" — watch till the light breaks forth.
Watching is repentance — turning back, retracing steps. Streaming light of any
kind is forgiveness.
Significance Of The Vision Of Isaiah
The artist sees beautiful colors everywhere. This is the nature
of his liberated vision. The musician hears tones everywhere. This is his kind
of forgiveness — giving for. The sorrowful one sees the finger of God
everywhere. When they, any of them, begin to find flaws and inharmonies they
shut the gates
again. They must strike back toward the soul point again.
"For always without are dogs," said Jesus till you have really struck
your vision like grappling hooks back and up into the exalted heaven. "Therefore turn ye."
Isaiah looked by prophetic glance into our day, and there he saw
us as a people wandering in very great darkness of trouble of all sorts. He saw
that though a great separating of good from evil, reality from unreality,
disease from health, had been made by pronouncing health the supreme over
sickness, and reality the supreme over unreality, yet the world was fairly
anguishing with hate.
Isaiah had looked backward toward the soul kingdom by some
process of thinking which had liberated prophetic knowledge for him. Paul
called it the "gift of prophecy". He flung forward his searchlight
into our own age and there he finds us, A.D. 1894, with nearly every sentient
creature wise enough to discriminate between good and evil, spirit and matter,
Christ principles and world methods, and yet this discrimination knowledge not
lessening but rather intensifying the hatred of life conditions.
So it is Isaiah's privilege, as well as Daniel's and the
revelator's, to find a wonderful light breaking out and shining around about
this time. Not the light of distinguishing between good and evil; that light
was the separator's light. Not the light of knowing the Christ principles of
daily conduct; that light is the separator's light. Not the light of knowing
the way to reason on the side of spirit till spirit sets material conditions
face to face with you, while the whole spiritual reasoning rests like a
splendid globe of inactivity just as visible; that is the winnower's light.
That is the judgment hour.
It is, rather, the arrival of a new light with power in itself
to do what none of the other lights have accomplished. The man who finds so
much evil in me is looking with one eye over the belt line among the husks of
unreality, while with the other he knows what I ought to be. This is not a
joyous light. It makes him miserable to see such a discrepancy, and it makes me
miserable to be cast in with the goats by his mind. "This is not that
light" that is to break forth about this time. This is not the child to be
born to this hour for the whole world.
Signs of The Times
We are living, as Isaiah and Daniel saw us, in a time when all
the people on the planet know and think, dress and sing, eat and study, about
the same things. Differences of color, climate, ancestry, counts now for little
or nothing. Therefore, that which happens must be a world event. (Verse 7)
The time of social distinctions is closing. The time of settings
up and puttings down is ending. The time when I am rich and you are poor is
arrested. The time when by some secret contrivance I can be defamed or defended
by anybody that lives is finished. This is not only true of one person,
individual, identity, but of all.
"This shall be with burning and with fuel of fire." (Verse 5)
Whoever sees the starting signals of this light is so busy
watching it, that he is not interested in my wickedness enough even to pray
over it. The redeeming light absorbs all his vision. Whoever sees this star,
whose flash on the belt line of time dazzles the mind with a new effulgence,
when it is discovered to be the long anticipated sun, sees that all his piety
is nothing — nothing; as nothing as my wickedness. He sees that, "the righteousness of the
righteous does not save him nor the wickedness of the wicked
destroy him," for the whole earth burneth as an oven under the new light.
Isaiah was lighting his eyes backward at the altar fire of his
heaven within, exactly as the artist lights his eyes backward at the heavenly
mount within himself; and Isaiah threw forward his sights on the canvas of time
exactly as the artist throws forward his sights on the canvas of cloth.
Other men watch the artist's vision and call it inspiration.
Other men watch the prophet's vision and call it inspiration. The closer their
grappling irons struck into the kingdom that is not alterable, the more
enduring their paintings. Isaiah's painting is still quivering with vitality
after twenty-six hundred years of expression. The divine Raphael's visions
still make beholders weep with touches of far-off but deathless memories of
heaven.
But in this day all men, are to find their minds simultaneously
turning backward to their own soul. They shall, as one man, watch it
steadfastly. They shall not face the life conditions they hate so hard nor face
the spiritual reasonings that have explained those conditions as phantoms of
nothingness. They shall watch their own soul. And unto them a new and glorious
morning breaks.
"O, earth! Where is thy stinging darkness, when morn of
heaven shines on my life? O, religion, where is thy unfulfilling promise when
the true God is sighted by my repenting vision?"
The New Born Story Of God
Thus shall a whole world sing. Not one left out. All telling the
same story. Not good, not evil, but the new born story. It breaks the yoke of
all men's burdens. It takes the staff of religion off man's stooping shoulders.
It takes off the rod of mind with its perpetual reasonings that whirl and whirl
on the same axis time in and time out, so that we find ourselves today not a
whit ahead of Chinese speculative philosophy of a thousand years B.C. It
settles all the confusions of multitudinous sciences. It ends the competitions
of man with man which have rolled his garments in the blood of crying beasts
and unpitied toilers. (Verses 4, 5)
Religion could not do this. Philosophy has failed. Civilization
has only added confusion to confusion. So the mind of man now turns backward
and simultaneously stares at his own soul. This is repenting. There we find
"the city whose builder and maker is God." We see face to face the
countenance of a new power. This new power has a name. Isaiah called it
"wonderful," "Counselor," "mighty God." John the
Revelator called it "Jesus Christ." Daniel called it
"Michael." But all have united in calling it "Light."
We are repenting as a world. Mark that! Turning back from
watching the imaginary notions of men, which are all that the best of our
religions and the best of our sciences amount to, and noting that the kingdom
of heaven lieth foursquare in its beauty within our own selves every one. No
man so sinful but his backward turning vision can kindle at the fires of his
own soul's heaven, and make him see heaven everywhere. No man so poor but his
backward turning vision may kindle at the hearth fire of his own soul's home
and show him God's impartial plenty everywhere.
Immaculate Vision Impossible To None
Immaculate vision is possible in the most outwardly depraved. As
Mary of Bethlehem caught immaculate vision of the kingdom of Heaven where her
soul was dwelling, so all women, all men may catch immaculate vision of their
unstainable soul.
As Mary of Bethlehem brought forth Jesus, the matchless; as his
vision brought forth the God in the fishermen; as the vision brought forth a
new era, so all mankind's united vision of their own soul kingdom, doth bring
the new heaven and new earth everywhere.
"And now it shall be, saith the shining Lord, that thou
shalt call me Ishi; and shalt call me no more Baal". (Hosea 2:16) Thou
shalt be entered into thy inheritance. Thou shalt not be waiting and hoping for
thy light; it is come unto thee, and none shall be afraid again for evermore.
For the Lord that the world seeth hath done great and mighty and glad things.
The true light is shining. The very islands of the sea feel it beams. The
mountains of the west catch its healing changes. The new age opens with the
unprecedented situation of every human being's now looking backward into his
own soul's kingdom and loosening his attention from the grip of his neighbor's
imaginary religion, science or philosophy.
Inter-Ocean Newspaper December 23,1894
Emma Curtis Hopkins
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