The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit by Ralph Waldo Trine online

I THE SILENT, SUBTLE BUILDING FORCES OF MIND AND SPIRIT

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Life is not so complex if we do not so continually persist in making it so. Supreme Intelligence, creative Power works only through law. Science and religion are but different approaches to our understanding of the law. When both are real, they supplement one another and their findings are identical.

The old Hebrew prophets, through the channel of the spirit, perceived and enunciated some wonderful laws of the natural and normal life--that are now being confirmed by well-established laws of mental and spiritual science--and that are now producing these identical results in the lives of great numbers among us today, when they said: "And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand and when ye turn to the left."

And again: "The Lord is with you, while ye be with him; and if ye seek him, he will be found of you; but if ye forsake him, he will forsake you." "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee; because he trusteth in thee." "The Lord in the midst of thee is mighty." "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." "Thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee." "Commit thy way unto the Lord: trust also in him and he shall bring it to pass." Now these formulations all mean something of a _very definite nature_, or, they mean nothing at all. If they are actual expressions of fact, they are governed by certain definite and immutable laws.

These men gave us, however, no knowledge of _the laws_ underlying the workings of these inner forces and powers; they perhaps had no such knowledge themselves. They were intuitive perceptions of truth on their part. The scientific spirit of this, our age, was entirely unknown to them. The growth of the race in the meantime, the development of the scientific spirit in the pursuit and the finding of truth, makes us infinitely beyond them in some things, while in others they were far ahead of us. But this fact remains, and this is the important fact: If these things were actual facts in the lives of these early Hebrew prophets, they are then actual facts in our lives right now, today; or, if not actual facts, then they are facts that still lie in the realm of the potential, only waiting to be brought into the realm of the actual.

These were not unusual men in the sense that the Infinite Power, God, if you please, could or did speak to them alone. They are types, they are examples of how any man or any woman, through desire and through will, can open himself or herself to the leadings of Divine Wisdom, and have actualised in his or her life an ever-growing sense of Divine Power. For truly "God is the same yesterday, and today, and forever." His laws are unchanging as well as immutable.

None of these men taught, then, how to recognise the Divine Voice within, nor how to become continually growing embodiments of the Divine Power. They gave us perhaps, though, all they were able to give. Then came Jesus, the successor of this long line of illustrious Hebrew prophets, with a greater aptitude for the things of the spirit--the supreme embodiment of Divine realisation and revelation. With a greater knowledge of truth than they, he did greater things than they.

He not only did these works, but he showed how he did them. He not only revealed _the Way_, but so earnestly and so diligently he implored his hearers to follow _the Way_. He makes known the secret of his insight and his power: "The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." Again, "I can of my own self do nothing." And he then speaks of his purpose, his aim: "I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly." A little later he adds: "The works that I do ye shall do also." Now again, these things mean something of a very definite nature, or they mean nothing at all.

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