Thomas Parker Boyd, D.D., PhD.

Life begins with a question mark, and it should end with an exclamation point! Our business here is to know the realities, to accept them as such, to interpret life’s meaning by the facts, and to adjust our thinking and living to that meaning. In this way we open the whole field of knowledge. From this search for knowledge we develop certain final statements of truth, which are inclusive and conclusive, if not self-evident, which we call categories.

The first category is Being, embracing all that we know or may know of life, of substance, spiritual or material. The second is Reality, embracing the truth in the unconditioned Absolute, and the relative. The third category is that of Quantity, which includes the truth of unity, plurality and totality. The fourth one is the category of Quality, having reference to reality, negation, and limitation. The fifth is Relation, embracing substance and attribute, cause and effect, action and reaction. The sixth is Modality, embracing possibility, actuality, and necessity.

These are loose adaptations of Aristotle and Kant’s famous categories. We accept the categorical imperative for all life in our study, which is the absolute claim of moral law to our obedience, the legal supremacy of the right, as revealed by scientific knowledge and as asserted by conscience or the moral sense, over human life. We have not followed these categories in any formal way, but have always kept them in view while blazing the trail in a wilderness of opinions, where so many have pioneered, but few have left any helpful landmarks.

We intend to interpret life according to scientific principles, to present obligation in a rational philosophy, to outline a conception of God, and formulate a destiny based upon science and philosophy’s dealings with our experience, rather than past traditions. We do not disregard or discredit these traditions when they have any content of proven value, but use them as side lights to interpret life. We seek to explain only one phase of life: If there is a God, why do so many troubles loom so large? The very inadequacy of the answers to this question has made many despair of finding a suitable answer.

The origin, the course, and the end of troubles resolve into a ministry whose outcome is beneficent. As we ponder the course of human development, the furnace of trouble has played a mighty part in the world’s evolution – from chaos up to form, order and beauty, from animalism, to savagery, to barbarism, and finally up to civilization. It has been our one chief means of extracting the clinkers and slag from human nature.

The scientific observer beholds the sparkle the fast-flying emery wheel of trouble polishing some rough diamond of spirituality. We see pig iron refined into finely-tempered spring steel by heat, chemical action and heavy hammering. We behold the entire universe, which is ultimately one Spiritual Substance, and the fundamental law that raising lower energy forms to a higher expression requires heat, stress, and eons of time to reach the stage of soil and fruit. This material world process corresponds to the action of pain and trouble in lifting human nature from animalism to Godlikeness.

All things in this universe are incorporated into a University of Hard Knocks, into which we matriculate ourselves at birth. It offers no correspondence course, no proxies. Attendance is compulsory. We all begin as pupils and end sometime, somewhere as masters. Life adapts the course to each pupil.

Just how we will have trouble depends upon our heredity, environment, temperament, and other factors that lend a personal bias. One takes his schooling in one allopathic knockdown dose of calamities, while another gets hers in little homeopathic pellets of annoyance. We may not always choose how we will receive the lessons – life seems to adjust them to us automatically. However, we may choose how well we learn them, and how soon we may graduate. It is just possible that we may, as many have done, suggest improvements in the course of instruction to the Absolute Wisdom, our teacher, only to find that He retires into "ways that are not our ways, and thoughts that are not our thoughts."

Sometimes we throw down our books and quit school over night. Yet in the morning we find the tutors of pain and trouble remain, and that school keeps right on. Daily we add new words to our vocabulary. Every day an angel turns a new page in the great book of life, and we find a new set of words to learn. Monday we spell "joy," and Tuesday we wonder why we find lusterless "grief." Wednesday we learn to spell "love," and too often we next learn "disappointment." Friday we spell "happiness," and another day we read "sorrow." One day we spell "wealth," the next day we meet the hatchet-faced teacher, "want." Some words we have learned repeatedly, until they are our very own. Often we rebel and feel like quitting school, only to find that we cannot until we have at least learned to take good and bad with equal good grace.

Often we worry about tomorrow’s lesson. We find that the words that troubled our thoughts and dreams are not on the page at all, but new and strange ones. When will we learn that "sufficient unto the day is the spelling lesson thereof?" We would go to school with a happier attitude and come home to a refreshing rest if we were content to learn today’s lesson. As life proceeds, we learn at length that some great, loving and wise purpose lies back of all our experience, directs our schooling, and interprets our thoughts and actions according to their spirit, rather than their form.

This course is personally conducted. It is yours while you are taking it, and the results will be yours when you are promoted. You begin as a pupil, you develop into a student, you are promoted to a teacher, and you unfold into a master. It matters not whether you finish the course in this world. Having entered, you may not quit until you finish the course. The illustrious ones of every age are those who, without shrinking, have taken good and bad alike with full understanding of their purpose and results, and have passed upward into divine or cosmic consciousness.

Science’s function is to discover, describe and register facts regarding the ways of being and of happenings. It finds events occurring in a certain way, and formulates the hypothesis that all similar facts occur in that way. This hypothesis, which explains that class of occurrences, becomes known as a law.

Science furnishes us with the great hypotheses of gravitation, the undulatory theory of light, the electronic theory of physics, the "Big Bang" hypothesis of cosmology, evolution, etc. Since these theories of operation were the best explanations of the facts in a given series of events, observers accepted them as the law of procedure in their respective realms. Similarly, by scientifically observing the effects of various methods of directing mental and moral action for the individual and society’s welfare, we have evolved a knowledge of the laws governing mind, morals and conduct.

Science, concerning itself with matter and material happenings, gathers a mass of facts, classifies them and discovers how they happen. Certain axioms have arisen from this scientific study, valuable self-evident truths, such as, "Out of nothing, nothing comes. There is a cause for every effect. Nothing just happens." The laws of matter apply to all material things, no matter in what form they exist. The law of gravitation acts on the human body, just as it does on a piece of iron, and no amount of thinking can suspend this law.

The nutrients and methods of metabolism, or change, are similar in all living forms. Oxygen, alone and in combination with other chemicals, is indispensable to all material life. Water is a large element in all living bodies.

Under the law of the conservation of energy, the form of these bodybuilding factors may change, but the substance must be present. Literally, "No man by merely taking thought can add a cubit to his stature." Pure thinking alone can no more build the body than can feeding the body train the mentality without mental activity and "thought sustenance." Elijah, hungry, deserted his duty, but twelve hours of sleep and two square meals made him the lionhearted prophet again.

The body must have a proper ratio of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, with water and minerals, and no mental or spiritual substitutes exist for these. Science determines that the mental powers develop through contact with the material world, acting upon it and reacting to it.

The brain, the instrument of mental activity and power, reaches its maximum weight about the age of forty. Then it begins to decline in weight and efficiency, unless kept constantly active by feeding on new truths, wrestling with new problems, and seeking new achievement, in which case it constantly increases in power. No material nor spiritual substitute exists for mental exercise in the realm of truth and fact. A law of the mind exists, just as does a law of the body.

The development of the spiritual life, while largely influenced by the body’s condition, through the nervous system and the mind in their contacts with the world of material things, cannot depend on either material or mental things for its sustenance. The soul must find its nourishment in a realm of purely Spiritual Substance, and be sustained by discourse and communion with an ultimate Spiritual Being.

Beyond the study of such exercises and their effects, science has made no explicit pronouncement as to the essence of the realm of Spirit. However the spiritual activities and their effects warrant a cause, just as do movements and effects elsewhere.

The ideas of God, the soul’s immortality, the rational exercise of prayer, the effects of faith, hope and love in producing character, all stand upon the same logical base as do the theories of gravitation, evolution and other great scientific doctrines. Their fundamental principles are identical, and their manner of proof is similar. They best explain the facts to which they relate.

The material method of science is one of exactness by weight and measure. It has the facts in hand. In studying the mind, the method deals with mental action and the results left behind as the mind proceeds from the self as a center. In spiritual things it depends upon secondary evidences, for example, faith produces peace and content. These are determined and reported by the actions and experiences of those who exercise and enjoy them.

A difficulty common to scientific study of mental and spiritual activities is that the same stimulus fails to affect two people in the same way, mentally or emotionally. They do not see or feel alike. Also, the reliability of their states and experiences is not always dependable, especially their reports and explanations of the causes. Finally, the difficulty of reproducing their experiences makes it necessary for science to generalize by studying the spiritual activities of humanity at large. We may take no individual experience as a criterion.

Science also discovers spiritual occurrences and experiences that lie outside the methods of material activity. It discovers the ego, or self, experiencing and perceiving activities outside the range of the five senses, and the realm of three-dimensional activity. It therefore posits, because of these facts, a fourth dimension as a possible field of activity and experience, such as Jesus used when he sent a vibration across a space to heal the nobleman’s son. It also posits a sixth sense of universal power of perception: Elisha, the prophet, saw the hosts of limitless Power on his side, ready to help at Dothan. Jesus saw Nathaniel around a material corner.

Science, from tabulated facts, recognizes that character, intangible but very real, arises from such spiritual activity. It also recognizes that we can grade and classify character, every individual form of life eventually finds its own level. Every person comes or goes to his own place according to a certain "affinity" or spiritual gravitation.

Science, applying the law of the conservation of energy, recognizes that all seen things have come from the unseen, and that they may be resolved again into the unseen. Since the source and goal is unseen, it follows that supplies from the unseen constantly maintain all life and all that pertains to life, which God sustains through the channels of activity, called laws.

Science reaches the dignity of Divine Science when, by using the scientific method, they observe that all things proceed from a first great Spiritual Cause, whose methods of operation are uniform, whose effects are unfailing. The most potent agencies are those nearest the purely spiritual. Those that we call mental take their place lower down in the scale, while material forms of energy are still less refined. Yet, they are divine energies, adapted to use in their respective realms, as in Ezekiel 47:12 it is said, "the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine."

Applying scientific methods to the problem of health, we can study the incidents and experiences in the careers of history’s great healers, and deduce certain general principles. The first principle is that all disease comes from the violation of law, technically called "sin." Thus, all healing, technically called "righteousness" or "wholeness," comes by a return to keeping the law.

Science finds many diseases and ills of character purely material in their origin. Wounds, fractures, lesions, infections, auto-intoxications and abnormal forms of cell growth are in some way violations of material law. We cure them by faithful obedience to the law that we have broken, and by using material agencies, with a recognized specific action. Science recognizes a large class of life’s ills, which arise from wrong thinking habits or violations of mental laws, which we must cure by reeducating the mind in the proper methods and thought habits.

Many ills and afflictions, both of mind and body, grow from the violation of moral and spiritual laws, whose cure must logically depend on the sufferer being restored to harmony with the sources of moral and Spiritual Power and Life. The great Healer himself stated the principle of all these classes of ills arising from violation of the law, and their cure being in keeping the law: "Thy sins be forgiven thee" – a declaration that invariably attended and was understood in the injunction, "Be thou made whole." So extensive was this truth that the Master Healer of the Ages made it apply to every form of ill.

Facts gathered and classified by scientific method reveal the common method of all healers, actively to involve, or implicitly to depend upon the faith of the individual who sought healing, or his friends’ faith. Without this faith, even the Master himself "could do no mighty works."

The same scientific analysis of healing reveals that faith was merely an instrument in the healing. The patient must exercise implicit faith, no matter whether the things that he believes are true or the person in whom he trusts is genuine. Faith is the means of arousing within the patient powers that, operating through the channels or laws of heath, restores the sick one. The same analysis of healers’ methods reveals a spiritual quality in the healer and in the patient, which proceeds from some unseen, limitless reservoir of health and power.

Some mighty practitioners of healing, such as Elijah and Jesus of Nazareth, frequently relied on the element of physical contact and the use of material agencies. Elijah used the working principle of the modern artificial respirator to restart a boy’s breathing. Jesus touched blind eyes, deaf ears, paralyzed bodies, put spittle upon the tongue. He anointed a blind man’s eyes with clay, which by the time he had traveled to the pool of Siloam and scrubbed off this sticky mess, had by manipulation thoroughly stimulated the circulation and nervous activity in his eyes, besides arousing his faith and expectation. We observe the same practice of material contacts in the experiences of Paul, Peter and James. Similar scientific analysis reveals the fact that a healer can send healing vibrations without the use of oral word or direct contact with the patient, as we see in the healing of the nobleman’s son and the centurion’s servant.

The scientific deduction from these facts is that the use of material agencies alone is sufficient in many cases of purely physical ill to set in operation the healing powers that work through physical law. Right thinking, established in many mental disorders, will restore the sufferer to normal mental balance and experience. The restoration of harmony with the Spiritual Source of Life – the Infinite God – will produce health commonly arising from spiritual disharmony. In other cases, combining two or all these classified powers will prove effective where one might fail. Finally, whatever agencies may be used, we can trace their source to that region of perfect health from which One spoke and said, "I am the Lord who heals thee."

In its last scientific analysis, therefore, health is a spiritual matter, the result of spiritual powers having their source in the Absolute and operating through every agency which embodies the energy of the great "I AM." Similarly, we may deduce the truth that every good for us, whether it is peace, harmony, power or abundance, arises from our relationship to the invisible and Spiritual Reality, and it does manifest according to the measure of our conscious realization of that fact.

If knowledge of the truth gives us such wonderful privilege, then it also follows that ignorance of the truth imposes our only limitation. The supreme test of scientific method is that thinking does not make anything true. We can know only that which we have put to the test. The only way to graduate from the U.H.K. is to know things by proving them.

We are steadily moving back toward the Power House. We are still waiting for some master who shall give us the formula by which we may unlock the atom and set free its vast power to replace our clumsy efforts at power, using the fast diminishing stores of coal, gas and oil.

Likewise the whole world is waiting the author of the Principia of the Spiritual Life, giving us its powers, principles and laws so that the spoken word of truth shall become the living word of the Christ. Its miracle-working power shall banish the physical miseries of humanity by the finger of God, and make men whole through spiritual realization. The day is here – the glory of its dawn is upon us.

The liberal art is a skillful adaptation and application of means to an end. In substance, it is a system of rules and methods to simplify how we do certain actions. Applying the term "liberal" in its largest sense to art, we open the way continually to readjust to the rules to meet new conditions as they arise. Seven liberal arts open the field of scientific achievement for spiritual interpretation and application to the Fine Art of Being Well, Happy and Prosperous.

The first art is grammar, which is powerful expression through words. The grammar of the Absolute Life has one tense – the present, expressing itself as "I AM THAT I AM." In human life it has three – the future, the present, and the past. We see the working method of the tenses of the spiritual life in the words, "Thus saith the Lord: It shall come to pass." A conditioned present, in which certain things were done as prescribed, follows this future, and the record of the past reads, "And it came to pass."

The grammar of the spiritual life rises to the dignity of a fine art when we move its rules and expressions past the textbook stage, and embody them in the personal pronoun – I am. I can. I will — thus rising from principles and formulas to the Personality of God in humanity. All of the moods, potential and otherwise, reach their highest expression in the indicative – I am. I can. I do. I love. I believe, etc. – and, in the imperative – "Go thy way. Be thou made whole. Take up thy bed and walk."

The grammar of the spiritual life is imperfect because it has no term for third personality without a gender coloring. Its pronouns have no neuters. They are "I," "thou," "thee," therefore, God and the angels are all represented as masculine. However, the grammar of the spiritual life knows that "there is neither male nor female," nor any other sign of division or incompleteness in the spiritual realm. "He who does the will of my Father, the same is my brother, my sister, my mother."

Words are the incarnation of ideas. They bring us in sight of the Creative Word that was "with God in the beginning." For the creative process is that God thought and called by name that which He thought, and He became that which He thought, and it was Good. God spoke and it was done, He commanded and it stood fast, He sent His word and healed them. "Go thy way, thy son lives." "With great power they gave witness and great grace was on them."

Now God has given it us to speak the creative word if we will learn the grammar of the spiritual life. Then whatever we shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever we shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. This is another way of saying that we will have authority over all things. The Spirit has a new language for each new unfoldment of the truth. In the grammar of the spiritual life, none but himself knows his new name.

Rhetoric is the art concerning the form and power of the symbolic expression of Truth. The mind is not content with the bare facts. It must know their nature, the power behind them, and the laws of their production. It is not content with bare statements of Truth, but seeks ever to beautify the truth with ornate diction, perfected formulas, and glowing symbolism.

The principle of evolution moves upward from crudeness to perfection, from ugliness to beauty, from roughness to polish. The simplest spiritual service, obeying the same law, moves upward until it reaches the most elaborate ceremonial. The commonest daily activity inevitably takes on the character of a sacrament.

We naturally turn to rhetoric for help in dealing with the immensities. The ten spies returning to Moses reported that, compared to the powerful Canaanites, "We are like grasshoppers." The ecstatic Isaiah, comparing the nations and peoples with the God who is vision-revealed, saw them as a "drop in the bucket," as the "small dust of the balance." Only the boundless dimensions of length, breadth, height, and depth can express the greatness of Divine Mercy, Love, and Forgiveness.

Spiritual rhetoric exhausts language and imagery in picturing the greatness and goodness of the Supreme One. It does so properly to impress us with the dignity and character of His Life, of which we are living expressions, and thus help us to realize and use our own potentially divine natures to accomplish Godlike results.

Logic is correct reasoning, especially by inference. The logic of Being is, "I am God, and beside Me there is none else." When science has gathered all facts, philosophy has formulated their purpose and end, and art has devised rules of application, the logic of life is that it begins with God and ends with God.

Behind every effect stands the Cause. Back of all causes and causality stands the Changeless Cause. God alone is the Ultimate Being. Beyond light and darkness, truth and error, right and wrong, matter and spirit, and all expressions of duality, stands the one Ultimate Reality, saying, "Look unto Me and be ye saved." By "ever looking unto Him, the Author and Finisher of our faith," all else is relative reality.

Steadfastly beholding Him who is Good, there is no evil.

Steadfastly facing Him who is Spirit, there is no matter with its laws.

Steadfastly facing Him who is Abundance and Completeness, there is no lack, loss, absence or deprivation.

Steadfastly facing Him who is Love, there is no fear, for there is nothing to fear.

Steadfastly facing Him who is perfect Wholeness, there is no sin, sickness nor death.

Steadfastly facing Him who only hath Immortality, we are immortal.

Life detriments are all real to the downward vision that entangles our feet in the web of things, while things are nonexistent to the uplifted eye, beholding the One Reality. This is the logic of the spiritual life, and points the way to be saved from the bondage of the senses, time, space, and limitation, into freedom, aspiration and Godlikeness.

Because God is, I AM.

Primarily mathematics deals with numbers and spaces. Nevertheless, its principles, applied to the spiritual life, appear in such problems as, "Give all diligence to add to your faith, power, and to power, knowledge, and to knowledge, self-mastery," etc.

Subtraction comes first in spiritual mathematics. We debit false notions, wrong ideas, actions and hurtful habits, obsolete words and statements of truth. Then follows addition, for in spiritual addition only likes can be added to likes. The unlike cannot be added.

Multiplication, the short method of addition, follows this. Spiritual potencies grow so fast that only the terms of multiplication can express the process. "Grace and peace be multiplied by the knowledge of God." Grace and peace are the multiplicands. Your knowledge of God is the multiplier. The product depends on the size of the multiplier for spiritual attainment. "Acquaint now thyself with God and be at peace." The measure of your peace is your knowledge of God.

Spiritual division follows, in which diversities of gifts are imparted among humankind, according to the proportion of their faith. This spiritual ratio and proportion are always evident in the endeavors we put forth and the results that we obtain.

Spiritual mathematics presents the enigma that one and one make one, never more and never less, and these countless unities eventually make one unity, "that God may be all in all." It is an axiom of mathematics that "a whole is equal to the sum of all its parts," which finds its parallel in Spiritual Being, in which all individual expressions of life are summed up in the One Being.

The great science of measurements, dealing with three-dimensional principles, deals with space that is topless, bottomless, sideless, endless. Spiritual geometry finds this boundless space filled with a Being whose Love dissolves sins, restores integrity, inspires effort, and molds character.

Spiritual geometry announces the great triangle of spiritual experience: Faith, Hope, Love. Faith and Hope find and bring all the riches of the spiritual existence into spiritual realization, and make them soul possessions and endowments. Love goes forth with arms extended, to shower its blessing and abundance upon others, and so to reflect its kinship to that God of Love, Whose language is giving.

Harmony is an adaptation of parts, one to another, to form a connected whole. The lack of proper adaptation between the various intervals in the scale brings disharmony, or discord. In the realm of spiritual harmony is a conceivable kingdom of harmony, in which all wills move in unison of thought, word and deed. This is the Universal Stave.

Poetry has dreamed of the "music of the spheres." The illumined prophet saw in the seraphim the personification of the powers of the universe offering themselves to God in service. All inspired ones have at times risen above the tumult and discord in the wheel of earthly things to see a Kingdom in which nothing offends, peopled with beings "without spot or wrinkle or any such thing," where evil, sorrow, and death end.

In moving upward toward this "far-off divine event, toward which the whole creation moves," human experience has developed two songs to still every earthly disharmony. A song is the constantly recurring note about a single theme, and its purpose is to fix our wandering-mindedness upon the one essential truth by repetition.

The ancient "Song of Moses" has for its theme, I AM THAT I AM. The "Song of the Lamb" has for its central theme that one Matchless Name, forever enshrined in the world of harmony, or heaven – Jesus the Christ. Facing the troubles, the trials, the afflictions of this life, which have separated us from our heritage, "the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads." These are the songs they sing, the shouts of triumph before which all walls of obstruction fall down.

Steadfastly facing Him, sing this old Song of Moses:

Oh, High and Lofty One inhabiting eternity,

Clothing Thyself with beauty, as with a garment,

Hiding Thyself under the names of relationship,

I know that Thou art, and that Thou art

The Rewarder of them that diligently seek Thee.

Deliver me by the might of Thy great name – I AM.

Or this Song of the Lamb:

Oh Face of the Blessed, behold me

Bowing with every kindred and tongue

In glad allegiance to Thy loving care;

Breathe into me the breath of Thy deathless Life;

Feed me with Thine unfailing Substance;

Enfold me in the secret place of Eternal safety and power,

Thy matchless name – Jesus the Christ.

Hidden in these songs is the might of that kingdom which, released by faith, brings food and clothing and plenty, rolls back the stone, stops the lion’s mouth, quenches the power of flame, makes Aeneas’ palsy to depart, and makes Dorcas rise into life again. They are the songs of High Deliverance.

We first think of the world, our little earth, as the center of things. Then we learn that appearance has deceived us. We find some far-off sun to be the center. When we adjust to the heliocentric idea, astronomy aids us with a scale of distance and immensity beyond our power to conceive adequately. It tells us of another center about which all things move, and guesses that even this great system is only a small part of a vastly greater, until the mind can no longer grasp the thought, for it leads to infinity.

Astronomy shows us the wonderful forces playing in this material universe, the marvelous exactness of the laws that govern it, the infinite intelligence manifest in the movements of its numberless worlds, and in the development processes everywhere. Astronomy hints of a wonderful beneficence in the results of these activities, and how the whole situation adapts remarkably to our needs at our present stage of unfoldment.

So we are led to see in this universe, governed by Law and Order, the temporary form of a Spiritual Reality, a Spiritual Universe of perfect Law and Order, of perfect Being, Life, Intelligence, Love, Goodness, and every other right idea, the sum of which we call God. God is over all, through all, in all, and all in all, the totality.

Our first thought of this infinity is that we are the Center of Being, which has no circumference. Yet astronomy leads us to think of other centers like ours that make up a system of spiritual life called the body of the Christ – the divinely conscious. We are led to think of other worlds of intelligence, with their activities, "other sheep not of this fold," until at last, the mind conceives that all of them are gathered into one Being who is Infinite.

In this Being who is bottomless, topless, endless and boundless, we are ever in God. We cannot get lost in material earths or spiritual heavens. We cannot wander from our Father’s house, which embraces all. We cannot lack any good thing, for all things are ours at any moment when we claim and use them.

We are born from above, from the limitations of our earthly temple into largeness of consciousness. Gradually we move upward to a destiny as limitless as God, in whom we live and move and have our being. Our highest attainment in the University of Hard Knocks is to become fully conscious of this Spiritual Reality as always in action, always available, which works in and through us to attain every ideal, and fully to realize every divinely inspired impulse.

Besides these arts, and embracing them all, is The Fine Art of Being Well, which consists in the use of methods and rules by which we bring the body to harmonious cooperation in all of its functions, making it a fit temple for the indwelling of the Spirit of Life. We set our mind to the task of developing its forty and more faculties until it comes to the "measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ."

The spirit, following the art of spiritual attainment, must reach that perception of the spiritual realities of existence and so work in harmony with them that when we shall appear in the glory of spiritual realms, we shall be like Him, clothed with equal brightness and crowned with equal glory. This unity, in turn, may encompass that spiritual consciousness lying behind and expressing itself through the material universe, to produce such a harmony in the workings of the body, the mind, and the spirit, and realize completeness here and now.

We formulate certain simple rules here, according to the laws of art to carry out the Fine Art of Being Well, which includes well-being for body, mind, and spirit, whether it is health, happiness, prosperity or serenity of spirit, or whatever you want to be.

Earnestly desire to be perfectly whole, successful, beautiful, or whatever else you wish. The desire is innate. It is of God. The very fact that you desire it is the prophecy of its possibility and the warrant of its full realization, but you can intensify it by dwelling upon it, thinking and talking about it.

Visualize it. Mentally picture yourself as perfectly well and filled with abounding energy, as graceful in movement, beautiful in form, bright and active in conversation, perfect in your love toward others, as successful and happy. See yourself as the image of the Perfect One. If you clothe yourself with His Health, Strength, and Goodness, you will find every ill slipping away, for "no man can see God and live" after his former estate. This method applies for success or any other possible attainment.

Declare that the thing you desire and visualize is yours. Keep declaring it until it becomes the habit of your mind to think of yourself as you want to be. When it becomes your habit to think of yourself as you want to be, you will be what you want to be. Declare until you no longer exercise declaration, but dwell in full consciousness and realization.

Believe that it is now yours, that your real self partakes now of the nature of the Divine Mind, the Source of perfect health, the Source of unbounded success. Know that health as now yours in reality. Because perfect health fills every part of your body, it will make every cell in your body vibrate with perfect health.

This faith arouses and calls all the healing powers of the Absolute to action, and your faith is the measure of its working. "According to your faith be it unto you." Your faith is the sixth sense, the incorporeal eye that sees the Spiritual Reality, sees the crooked arm already straight, sees the troubled mind in perfect peace, sees the disturbed spirit resting serenely in the bosom of the God of love, sees the one Absolute Reality in which appears the Divine Nihilism of all negative and relative things.

Get your will into action, for "It shall be unto thee even as thou wilt." Your imaging faculties may visualize health or success. Your desire may focus on what you want and put you in the right condition for realizing it. Your faith may arouse all healing potencies, but it remains for your will to direct these to the desired end.

Your will must hold you in the attitude of receptivity to the divine healing agencies. It must direct your thoughts and imaging faculty to the thing desired. It must resolutely divert your mind from pain, weakness, failure, depression, poverty or whatever it is. These negative ideas and conditions return with devilish persistence, and only the edict of a royal will can keep you from thinking, worrying, and fearing about them. Resolutely set your face away from them and toward the spiritual realities. You need only to attend to the causes of health. The effects are certain.

Interest yourself in others’ welfare. It will react on you. Go out and comfort someone in trouble, and you will go home relieved of your own trouble. Send out a thought – a prayer – to another, the vibration will reach and help its object and will react for good upon you. Reduce your message to code form, a single sentence, a single word. Let your love, compassion and desire to help empower your message to wing its flight as you earnestly send it. No matter what the mental attitude or state of your friend, it will bring him relief.

Health, success, and happiness are all by-products of simply busying ourselves about other things and other people’s welfare. Scatter the seeds of truth, and the golden sheaves of freedom, health, prosperity, and happiness will be the rich harvest along your pathway, and will return manifold to your own bosom.

The life of every individual proves the renewing power of a new interest. The art of living to defy the ills of old age consists in forever finding a new and fresh interest for the mind and new activities for the body. Many great minds of the ages have done their greatest work late in life by finding some new problem to solve.

Service reveals the genius of living. The secret formula of genius is, "I am among you as one who serves." The indelible watermark of genius is to work patiently to achieve the desired end, and resolutely to put aside discouragement or impatience, at least to prevent anyone from finding it out if you should feel them.

If you would graduate from the College of Arts, and know and enjoy The Fine Art of Being Well, you must "study to show thyself approved unto God a worker who needs not to be ashamed." You must earnestly seek the vision of the higher ends of living, then "endure as seeing Him who is invisible." You must "be strong and of a good courage." You must hold clearly in your mind your objective and "patiently wait for it." You must fully believe that it is for you, and then "show your faith by your works." You must "work out your salvation," keeping ever in mind that "it is God that works in you both to will and to do." For the Eternal Promise, "it shall come to pass," prefaces whatever life holds for you, and is crowned with the Absolute Period, "and it came to pass."

The universe in its final analysis is spiritual. It is being adjusted to material form and mechanical means of expression, an evolution from the unseen to the seen, from the Absolute to the relative, from everywhere to here, from eternity to the now. Evolution proceeds by certain orderly methods called laws. Law has no causality in it, but is a rule by which some power beyond it acts. A law is the way a thing is done, energy following a certain norm or method of expression. Things exist and events occur in certain ways, called laws.

The reign of law is universal. All realms are formed to be governed and perpetuated by law. Laws suitable to their nature of existence and condition likewise govern all beings. A law exists for inanimate things, a law for the animate, a law for intelligent beings in the flesh, and a law for purely spiritual beings. Everything must obey the laws governing it. The material world would be chaos if it did not obey the laws of inertia and gravitation. The animal world would cease did it not obey the laws of nourishment and growth.

Every rational being in the universe is bound to fail in obtaining this life’s vast good if he neglects to keep the law of his being. Tradition says the early progenitors of our race so failed. Another tradition concerns "angels which kept not their first estate," and it is possible that God Himself might fail if He did not fulfill the whole law, just as a vast business might fail for lack of organization, order, and central authority.

Among the fundamental laws of the material universe is the law of inertia, which holds matter in a state of rest. Another is the law of gravitation, which maintains the relation of each part to the others, and of all parts to the whole material organism. The law of the conservation of energy preserves the total of matter against waste, and under the law of the conversion of energy, the working forces may adapt materials to any possible need.

Within the operation of these laws is the fact that heat and stress invariably attend in raising lower forms of matter and energy to higher forms. The gold is extracted from the ore by heat and hard pounding. The fast-flying emery wheel brings the diamond to its power of expression. Ore goes from pig iron to spring steel by heat, hammering and chemical action. Perfume comes out of the flower under pressure.

In the realm of moral law, we realize strength of character under the influence of trial and temptation, just as the muscle gains strength by exercise. These grow from the laws governing the individual expression as it meets the laws governing the social body, and the necessary adjustments to it.

The law of development in the mental realm is that thinking power unfolds according to mental laws. The mind acquires power in its contacts with material things, in seeking knowledge and control over them. The mind gains facility of action through the stress of work. We strengthen the will by repeatedly exercising the will in choosing one of two or more alternatives.

Cognition becomes clear only by our unceasing effort to think. Feelings become deep, reliable and inspiring only when we adjust the emotional life to changing conditions that constantly test them. Thus, the mind moves upward from ignorance to knowledge, wisdom and understanding through the stress and challenge of difficulty.

In the realm of Spiritual Laws, God makes those things of highest value most difficult of attainment. The things that he suffered made the Great Captain of our salvation perfect. We find the same thought in the words, "The God of all grace . . . after ye have suffered awhile, makes you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you." Those who were "clothed in white robes" had already "come up through great tribulation." Humanity moves up from animalism to spiritual supremacy and power only in the University of Hard Knocks.

The law works after the Principle of Cause and Effect, rather than by rewards and punishments. We accept this in all material things, but debate it in human affairs, because we can feel the effects of disobeying the law. We can think about it, conjure up the specters of right and wrong, and do ourselves to death by letting them gain a headway in our life. We think that God is rewarding or punishing us according to our experiences, pleasurable or otherwise, when the operation of this Law of Cause and Effect is really correcting our views of life and enlarging our outlook.

The idea in Job’s day was that when someone suffered, it was a sign that he was a sinner. The severity of his suffering determined the enormity of his sin, all of which they attributed to the action of a Personal Being against whom he had offended. It was a crude groping after the Law of Cause and Effect.

In Job’s particular case, he had ceased to grow because he was so well situated and so comfortable. This violation of the Law of Growth caused all the effects as we see them in that wonderful narrative. Trouble emancipated him from the limitations arising from failure to grow, and saw the result in a greatly enlarged enjoyment of life.

He had not knowingly violated the law, true. Nevertheless he received the full benefit of the effects of his unknowing violation of the Law of Progress, not because he deserved it, but because he needed the emancipation into larger life, through practicing a higher obedience to the Law of Life.

All its results are beneficent if we know and keep the natural movement of the law. When we violate the law, consequences follow whose repetition may eventually become a law of itself. Digestion, for instance, normally follows keeping the law of dietetics, while the violating the law brings a new and unpleasant law of procedure called indigestion. The laws of heat, when kept, can bring comfort in any climate, but violated, a new law of expression, called cold, comes as the absence of heat.

The Laws of Light, when kept, flood our pathway with light and certainty, while their violation brings darkness and uncertainty or the absence of light. Mental activity brings knowledge, while mental indolence leaves us in negative ignorance. The positive "Law of Life in Christ Jesus" – a law of conscious oneness with God, obeyed gives us character like God, and makes the soul "free from the law of sin and death," which is the absence of conscious oneness and harmony with God, and becomes a rule of existence by disobedience. From these facts it appears that what at first is merely a negative, or the absence of the positive, rises by continued action into the dignity of a law of wrong procedure, with its effects.

All good comes from the keeping of the law in its particular realm. All evil comes because of not keeping the law. Every ill, therefore, is the result of law unkept. No moral turpitude may be attached (perhaps the law was not broken intentionally, especially not with the purpose of injuring self or another), yet the effect comes from sin, which is the violation of the law, consciously or otherwise, by the afflicted one or by someone else.

The Master of the University of Hard Knocks recognized the fact that all evil – moral, mental or physical – arises from some form of sin, when he said, "It is as easy to say thy sins are forgiven thee, as to say, arise, take up thy bed and walk." He could not say one without saying the other. The fact that he could say the one and it would happen was evidence that he could say the other and it, too, would happen. When he said one, it always included the other. Finally the fact that he used the expression, despite whether the trouble was physical or spiritual, showed that he regarded all ills as arising from sin.

All ill comes then from sin. Sin is a violation of the law, a missing of the mark. The remedy for sin is to keep the law, to hit the target. The remedial work begins when we stop sinning.

The consequences of the law are automatic. If we get pain by violating the law, we get ease by keeping the law. Every law is remedial and healthful, and the moment we begin to keep it, recovery begins. To use the old form of thought, if the law is self-punishing, it is also self-rewarding. "Cease to do evil, and learn to do well," was the scriptural recognition of the automatic, remedial, self-healing action of the law.

All law is immutable. We cannot change it. It cannot be broken with impunity, but we may adapt it to the conditions of existence. As the conditions in a given case change, the law adjusts to meet the new conditions of existence. For example, vegetarianism was the dietary law when the population was scattered and the activities of life were simple. With a complex civilization arose the necessary use of foods in more concentrated form and more easily procurable under all conditions.

Society permitted things in the time of Moses were no longer sanctioned under the more enlightened times of the Master. Our consciousness concerning the use of intoxicating substances, slavery, and the rights of women, has risen so that we are again adapting the law to ever-changing conditions.

A law is important according to the interest it protects. The Law of Existence, expressed in the primal instinct of self-preservation, has made respect for human life, and the right for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, to assume the place of first importance, while the questions of possessions, morals, and all else come in as secondary considerations.

The laws of the physical body are very important, but they relate to what is but temporary. The laws concerning the mind and soul are supremely important because they concern the immortal soul and its destiny through development. The violation of the physical laws does not popularly fall in the same category of sinfulness as the violation of moral laws.

The law is remedial, every time, great or small, in the interest it protects. The moment the lawbreaker becomes a law-keeper the healing action of the law begins. The Master calmly stood in the midst of the blindest, most bigoted definition of sin and their demand for its punishment, and said, "Neither do I condemn thee. Go thy way and sin no more."

God promised Israel that when they began to keep the law, the Lord would restore to them the years the locusts, the caterpillar and the cankerworm had eaten. It is a wonderful way of saying that what one needs to do is to know and keep the law, and he shall be made whole. What he has lost or its equivalent shall be restored to him. To know the truth and keep it, as it applies to his particular case of violating the law, will make him free from the bondage of sin and enter him into the glorious liberty of the sons and daughters of God.

The remedy for any ill is to know the law, declare and keep it. We do not deny the darkness nor try to drive it out, but we obey the Law of Light by turning on the electric current. We do not cure pain by merely denying it, but by obeying the law of ease and comfort, by emphasizing the fact that God is the God of all comfort, and using the things that make for comfort.

In the sight of the law, pain is but a symptom of growth. Trouble is a trumpet call to triumph over difficulties. Stumbling blocks form a golden stairway leading to the heavens of repose and peace. Every knock is a boost. Every fall is an upward movement.

Accept them, therefore, as a part of the curriculum in the University of Hard Knocks, which is eventually to graduate you into self-mastery. Take them cheerfully. If the cup of trouble is presented to you, drink of it. Take your medicine and do not play with the spoon, at least not until you have swallowed the dose.

You neutralize half the ill when you get rid of self-pity. Do not be sorry for yourself. Do not try to work on others’ sympathy. Such an attitude is a sign of weakness. The call to suffer and endure and to master the causes of suffering challenges the best within us. Only a weakling wants to be protected from the necessity of meeting and solving the problems of life of his own initiative and persistence.

Matter is the material expression of energy. Withdraw energy and matter disappears. Energy is kinetic and potential. It is God in action or at rest. It is uncreated, for it is a principle of Divine Being. We cannot increase or diminish it. We may raise its action and materialization takes place. We may decrease or change its action, and dematerialization takes place. In other words, certain combinations of energy move into material expression while other combinations move to destroy material form. Yet we neither increase nor diminish the volume of energy.

The number of the laws of expression a given person can obey measures the manifestation of power in that combination of energy that we call human life. Since all the powers of God are potentially in us, subject to our command, it follows that we can at will increase or decrease the volume of energy we express, and so determine the richness and beauty of our life.

Isaiah 45:11 recognizes this power to command the powers of the universe in the pastoral parable of Edenic creation, where God is represented as saying, "Concerning My sons, and concerning the works of My hands command ye Me." God offers this mastery of energy to him who will know and keep its laws, so that he may at a word make the oil and meal or the loaves and fishes increase, the swelling or blindness to be healed, or the anxious mental fretting to cease. It is the authority to command the invisible powers and know that "it shall be as thou wilt."

The reign of law is universal. The law is no respecter of persons. If even God should violate His own laws, He would cease to be God. If we violate them, we cease to be Godlike. The law is corrective and constructive. Its effects are educative rather than destructive. The whole scheme of living consists in learning the laws of life and keeping them.

The physical body passes through all the processes of growth and change and renewal in obedience to law. Any attempt to run one department of the organism by the laws governing another department inevitably calls up the old tutors of pain and disease. No amount of right thinking can make an amends for eating wrong food combinations. Nor can perfect breathing in the open air replace nourishing food, or proper exercise. The laws of metabolism, which demand the breathing of plenty of oxygen, are as imperious in their demands as those of dietetics or hygiene. The law is, therefore, our schoolmaster to bring us to health.

The laws of mental development are just as specific as those for the organism. Any neglect or over-development of any of the elements of mental life, as Cognition, Feeling, or Will, results in unbalanced mentality. Obedience to the laws of education gives one balanced mentality, a trained mind, and leads to mental efficiency and culture. The law is therefore our schoolmaster to bring us to knowledge and wisdom.

Likewise the moral nature develops by obedience to the moral laws as ages of human experience have revealed them. However faulty the form of the Ten Commandments, they stand for the protection of specific interests of the moral nature, which can never change while we live on the earth. The law is therefore our schoolmaster to bring us to character and self-mastery. From this triple realm of the reign of law, the spiritual life develops by attention to the spiritual laws of being, and so "the law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ," the Anointed, which is, in a word, the consciousness of Oneness with God.

History relates to the material world, its development, the forces and processes involved therein, and the probable end. It relates to the processes by which life came upon the earth, and the steady upward movement of that life through all its variant forms until it reached human form. It deals with humanity’s rise from animalism, up through savagery to civilization. History studies the records of that progress as they appear in the political, social, economic, and personal experiences of people.

The sources of the history of the material world are found in the structures that abide. The stories of the rocks, and soil, the testimonies of the air, earth and water are all eloquent witnesses of some intelligent purpose, finding material expression for some fruition beyond the material world itself. Living forms carry the record of an evolutionary process within them, by which we may learn to understand their rise, their use, and their probable end.

Biology, a scientific study of these records, has shown us how life began with a single cell whose unlimited multiplication has resulted in peopling the earth with living creation. It shows how each form carries the history of its own development within itself, and the hereditary influences of all the forms that have gone before it and of which it is an improvement.

We are rewriting history concerning our origin in the world and the length of our stay here as we discover records in the vestigial remains in the human body, hereditary traits, other marks of life, and certain impulses, both vague and well defined. Traces of human life, from remote geological ages and others more recent, yet antedating written records, have enabled the modern historian to present an intelligible case for humanity, which has put a new interpretation upon the ancients’ highly colored symbolical attempts to account for the world and the life upon it.

We must read even the written records of human progress as if we were entirely detached from them, otherwise the element of personal interest or sympathy enters and we make the historical record to say things that the facts do not warrant. For history is not only a record of the facts of life, but is also a philosophy of these facts. Moreover, we must have the facts in hand before we formulate the philosophy, or we will read the facts to suit the philosophy, instead of adjusting the philosophy to the facts.

In every age, persons of special gifts and unusual illumination have organized and recorded the experiences of humanity in a way that enables them to formulate some statement of the cause, method and purpose of living. These have been the seers of the ages, the men and women who have towered above their fellows, and their records have been incorporated in what we know as the "Sacred Books" of humanity.

Among all the volumes so written and classified, one stands out, peerless and alone as an authority in all matters of physical, mental, and moral life, because of its evident fidelity to facts, and its reasonable explanation of those facts. It deals with personal and national affairs in every stage of human progress and experience. Its text, in poetry and in prose, deals with the most interesting and exalted subjects, the earliest origin and history of the human race, the providential government of God, the alternate progress and declension of civilizations, the ways of God in dealing with men, the consummation of Divine Wisdom, Purity, Love, and Life in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

The scope of the Bible’s records embraces laws, hymns, prophecies correspondence, philosophy, nuptial songs, and elegies, in their bearing upon national, social, and individual life. One strain of agreement runs through it all – a harmonious presentation of the most sublime views of God, as to His Nature, Character, words and works, as to humanity, our origin, fall, redemption, hope, and destiny, duties and privileges, relationships in life, here and hereafter. Illumined ones from every walk of life wrote it in the most simple style, yet in the most beautiful, dignified and ornate diction. In short, it is the record of the unfolding of the Consciousness of God in humanity.

The Scriptures stand out among the world’s "Sacred Books" as the standard of religious history. It is the faithful record of the greatness and weakness of human nature, of humanity’s oft-repeated failures, and glorious achievements. In it are exhibitions of human animalism and divine possibilities. In it are traces of the origin of all religions and the ideal for the attainment of spiritual supremacy by looking upward to the Absolute. In it is marvelous symbolism, and commonsense, matter-of-fact statements. We can read it as history, as a summary of human experience, although it deals largely with humanity as a single nationality.

We have never understood some of its figures of speech, subject to a great variety of interpretations. Its writers give most of its facts from an experimental viewpoint. Many of its terms are obsolete, and some of its substance mythical. Many of its texts suffer in translation from the original languages, while others gain in significance.

We must study the Bible, take it as a guide, but not worship it as a fetish. We do not accept its statements because of some theory of inspiration, but because the facts recorded are in line with similar facts verified today by scientific method. It is the organized experience of good and bad people, for encouraging and warning. We accept the Bible as authority, not from a single statement or text, but from the general principles of rightness underlying all its statements.

This history, like all history, is not merely a record of happenings, but a study of the movement of great principles and forces underlying the phenomena of life, as they crop out here and there in some upward movement and its climax. These usually involve some nation or individual, sometimes giving the impression that history is made for a few nations or for the glorification of a few individuals.

If we are to read history intelligently, we must fix our attention not on the events of a year, a lifetime, or even centuries. We can read it aright only in millenniums. We cannot safely write the history of any given generation for at least a century afterward. We can read and understand the history of the Jewish people only in the light of millenniums, reaching back to Moses, Jacob and Abraham, and can account for it on no other ground than the worship of an Almighty Jehovah, by people who were His chosen elect and specially privileged. This made the Jew the miracle of history.

We read the history of an individual or a race in millenniums of the past, not by a few spectacular items or persons, but in the final achievement. Just as the life of an individual does not consist of a few prominent actions, but must be interpreted by a process called the "logic of life," the summing up of all his actions and thoughts, as they have obeyed the movement of the great Divine Impulse that "works in him both to will and to do." History is, therefore, the record of the expression of the Universal Life, in all its forms of growth, flower and fruit.

An individual’s history must begin back beyond all material worlds in that most Supreme Oversoul, the Father of Spirits, the Source of all Life. There it entered all the movements of the Absolute Life, and when it came forth into material incarnation, it brought with it factors of the Divine Nature and Character, which have outlived all incarnations, and rise into unutterable longings to return to its Source. This is the "spirit in man which the inspiration of the Almighty hath given understanding."

We read the first steps of humanity’s material incarnation in the protoplasmic forms of all organic life, thence through the seven great stages of animal evolution in which they took on their physical and mental characteristics, traces of which still abided with them after they had taken on human form and were "planted" or made to stand upright in an earthly Eden.

We must read the record through all those ages of savagery, in conflicts with animal creation from which humanity was but a few steps removed. In the struggles to preserve life, constant fears and alarms, and watchfulness against surprise, each human took part in all the lives of his ancestral strain, at last rising from savagery to civilization, with instincts of fear, suspicion, and conflict. Then we read humanity’s history in the light of national ideals, racial prejudices, tribal characteristics, and family traits. This is the hereditary setting of individual history.

Biography enters into all the facts of environment, home, school, work, love, and religion as they affect our personal peculiarities of temperament. Our relations to these beget habits of action and thought, which eventuate into character. And character is the honor earned in the University of Hard Knocks in which we struggle from the first protoplasmic cell of organic life until that moment when we lay aside the temple of the flesh, and put on the vesture of Immortality.

History is therefore the individual collective record of living souls, each of whom came from God, under the motive of finding expression. Each bears the characteristic qualities of its source, who is Life, Love, Truth, Goodness, Power, Beauty. Every exercise of initiative in obeying the laws of expression, and in finding variations in the applications of these laws, brings results that make up the sum of living. All the experiences of loving and serving are additions to our personal knowledge. These we must compare with the organized experiences of all the past, carefully checking up with the same, yet keeping the way open for variations of experience so that the history we are helping to make shall be an advance on the past. The history of the body opens with the sentence, "Unto us a child is born." It closes with the sentence, "He is gone."

The history of the Soul is written in countless aeons when it came from the bosom of the Absolute into material form, moved up through all creative stages of development, learned to stand upright, learned to make intelligent sounds, found symbols for their expression, learned to make fire, and invented written symbols for ideas. Humanity thus achieved personal character, which we finally make into the likeness of the Son of God, then leave the flesh and rise into the Paradise of the spiritual life.

The coming out from the Father of Spirits into flesh records the "fall," whose memory all traditions hint. Our return to God in conscious oneness is our rising again. We weave the facts of these experiences into the philosophy of History, which is the unfolding record of God’s loving purpose.

The wise psalmist, beholding in wonder the glories of the heavens, and the economies of earth adjusted to the use of humanity in its development, asked, "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?" He knew that God provided for all other things in this world, but they were secondary to the interests of humanity (Anthropos, the one looking upward), for we alone are capable of the rational use and appreciation of it all. Then he answered his own question, "Thou bast made him a little lower than God, and crowned him with glory and honor."

The traditions and myths conceived our origins as an immediate creation at the hand of God, as the crown and splendor of all creative action, perfect in all respects. Then came the story of the Fall, to account for our present condition. Then began the process of our recovery. This is the brief outline of tradition accounting for humanity.

Science, reading the unimpeachable records written in our body, organs, and features, our mental and moral nature, all bearing the marks of kinship with the animal world, has answered the question that we are the climax of an evolutionary process that began with a single cell, in which the Oversoul clothed a particle of Being with material form, gave it the power of multiplication or growth, caused it to unfold upward through vast periods of time by selection and fitness, until, at last, Homo sapiens stepped forth from the rest of his kind, an animal looking upward, and standing upright.

Science follows this history from animalism, savagery, barbarism, and all the intermediate steps in which humanity slowly left its animalism behind, and finally reached a civilized state. Science dates the period when the animal stepped upward to human form, which corresponds to the biblical creation, to a far more remote antiquity than the records of tradition suggest. We find the traces of human culture and civilization far earlier than any records. Pictographs are the earliest intelligent records, then the tools of still earlier ages, and we find human remains with animals of a long forgotten past in another geological period.

The pictures and symbols that were the earliest forms of record followed the prehistoric culture, then signs for letters, then writing, language, the family, the clan, the tribe, marriage, the nation and other social origins, all indicating a vast evolutionary process. The teaching power of all these facts is that life, from the Source of all life, somewhere in ages past began to express itself in material form, and that the essence of this life principle is the same, whether it is in protoplasm, tadpole, frog, fish, serpent, animal or human. In other words, we prove the unity of all life, so that we safely posit our origin in the Absolute Life of the universe.

As we develop, we first attain a human consciousness through whose activities we realize that we are brothers to the race. We next develop cosmic consciousness, in which we are brothers to the worm and all living. We finally develop Divine Consciousness, by which we are the sons and daughters of the Absolute, in the sense that we are a part of the Universal Being.

A scientific study of the body reveals the indelible marks of our animal ancestry in some forty vestigial remains of organs and parts that we no longer need. In the lower forms of life, automatic and reflex movements were in the ascendancy, while as the scale of intelligence rises, these decrease and volitional actions increase. Those parts of the body least controlled by intelligent volition, such as the vegetative organs, are most richly endowed with reflex equipment, while those parts of the body equipped for motived movement are very scantily supplied with reflex movements. All these facts indicate the steady movement upward to the supremacy of mind over matter.

Science detects the traces of our emotional and mental life in the lower forms of life, as the instinctive power of nest-building, or the remarkable structural skill in a honey bee’s cell, or the maternal instincts in birds and animals. It finds our intuitions, instinctive movements, many of our emotions and animalism of mind and character to be improvements upon similar qualities in our more humble ancestors. As the brain, the seat of the higher consciousness, develops, the altruistic sentiments arise, the arts and sciences develop, and the higher qualities of life and character are in the ascendancy.

Stress and danger filled primitive humanity’s surroundings. Their constant effort to defend their life and interests, their recent emergence from animalism, made fear a hereditary feeling, and by far the most powerful and elemental emotion. In their ignorance of the nature and laws of the great natural forces playing upon them and about them, in which they detected some seeming intelligence or method, they attributed their action to gods, whom they constructed in their own image. They gave their gods the same selfish passions as themselves, and feared and placated them by any and every means. The first gods were fear gods, and the first religion reverenced fear.

They evolved social customs growing from contact with their fellows, which resulted in trust, mutual dependence and love, until the gods became the gods of love, while religion changed to the reverence of love. Humanity gradually merged the many gods, whom they esteemed to be necessary to carry on the various interests of the universe, into the conception of one God, and faith passed from polytheism to monotheism.

This glimpse of the headlines of human development reassures us that our origin is in the Absolute Being, and prophesies that our destiny is in the attainment of Universal Consciousness. The process of evolution is the chosen method for bringing many life expressions into separate existence, giving them individualities, clothed with personality or character. This is the Infinite in us, and if we would know the Infinite, who is the sum of all finites, and we must learn of God through the Infinite in ourselves and others.

This thought of the Infinite is also the basis of universal hope, and so a warrant for the aspiration to highest attainment, for in science, no energy, substance or life is lost. Some expressions of life rise more rapidly to the Infinite standard by a vast impelling pressure in life, true, but that same truth guarantees the persistence of each individual expression until it reaches its highest destiny.

Science has coined the term "survival of the fittest" to describe the stress under which we have progressed, which shows that all things bearing upon our life, character, and destiny, and the things leading up to us, are incorporated into a University of Hard Knocks. The actual causes and powers embodied in the ministry of trial and trouble provide its curriculum. We can prophesy this outcome with certainty, for we have written its results in the organized experiences of humanity, and they speak authoritatively.

Accepting our matriculation gladly, we find ourselves allied with an Intelligence in whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning. We find ourselves identified with a Love from which nothing can separate us, and eventually we discover that we perfectly reflect all the qualities of the Infinite. Then we have graduated, for we have found the goal of life.

We find the basic principle of economics in the unity of all life, and in the solidarity of all its contents and interests. We include the interests of the individual in the larger interests of the community. We vest those in turn in the State, while we hold those of the State in trust for the nation, and the nation’s interests can stand fairly only in their relation to all peoples. Just as the State holds ultimate right to individual holdings, so we vest all interests of all nations in the ultimate Wisdom and Purpose behind all life. We hold a broad fundamental principle of community of interest in all things that we class as possessions.

In the processes of production and consumption of material, cooperation is the keynote of all real economic progress. Competition may stimulate rivalry and lead to greater prominence of the few, but it ends inevitably in needless waste, for the Ultimate Intelligence has decreed that moth and rust, and profligate sons and daughters shall work to bring these prominent ones back toward the common interests.

Economic freedom rests upon two facts. First is the individual’s ability to produce. Full consciousness of that ability is real wealth. The other is an equitable distribution of the results of this applied ability. These results more than supply everyone’s legitimate needs. We must predicate economic freedom upon the granting to others all the rights claimed for self. The measure of freedom is in exact proportion to the mental attitude toward others and their rights. Wealth further consists in what one can distribute prudently, and this process creates a reflex supply, on the principle of "Give and it shall be given to you again." Yet we prefaced this with the understood truth that you have already had value received.

The eternal Principle of Compensation demands an equitable return, which you either have already given or will receive. Equitable compensation given and required are the stepping-stones to lasting possessions. Therefore, give value received. Pay as you come. Pay as you go. Do not pauperize. Let each person feel that the Law of Compensation demands an adequate return for every service. It is an unwritten law, but a universal proverb, that we appreciate that for which we give an equitable compensation, and the obedience to that law is the stepping-stone to material freedom.

The right to consume is predicated upon the fact that we have earned it. He who receives without making compensation is a loser at last. Any other basis of action violates the Law of Compensation, and tends to pauperize the consumer, for prosperity is what one is, not the abundance of things that he possesses. Apart from the happiness and satisfaction in their use, material resources have no abiding value.

Ownership rests upon the conception that the owner is a custodian of public resources, which office carries the right to one’s quota of supply, and the obligation of stewardship in making sure that others have their quota. Just as economy of personal energy demands the laying up of a reserve for further service in living, so economy of material resources is an obligation to conserve a reserve supply for the practice of altruism.

Jehovah schooled the Hebrew tribes in the principle of the divine ownership of the land and all that the land could produce. Israel was the tenant of the land, and steward of the produce. The custody of these was committed to them as their right because of their relationship to the Most High, and because no high degree of civilization was possible apart from some form of individual ownership.

Two facts safeguarded this ownership. The first was "It is He that giveth thee power to get wealth." The other was that they held it in trust for others. The gift of stewardship is as sacred as the gift of prophecy, and sometimes more immediately practical.

The secret of abundance still rests in an understanding of vital oneness and harmony with the All-abundance, and He has given us a sure method of realizing it. "Be diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." Two counts of the three conditions in this great formula of success concern what the person is, rather than what he has. Riches of personal character bring contentment, and attract material prosperity. The service that we give most freely and abundantly is the key to opulence, for it reacts upon him who gives it.

The laws of supply and demand automatically adjust the two sides of the equation in all economic questions. The demand clearly recognized will find that the supply is nearby. We receive what we are really looking for, with clear recognition of its source, and acceptance of its conditions.

Abundance and want are largely creatures of our own suggestion. Most of the world’s poverty rests upon the highly suggestive heresy that there isn’t enough to go around, while in reality, the Father’s house is filled with an abundance and to spare.

The principle of value rests upon the utility, durability, and quality of a given resource. The tiller of the soil produces elementary resources, which furnish the materials for progress. The builder organizes these materials into forms of utility. The educator develops latent mental resources, which are more valuable and lasting than material ones. The spiritual teacher produces the highest of all resources, for spiritual qualities are the fundamental and everlasting standards of value. Economics must recognize that all values, whether material, mental or spiritual, come within the scope of its provision for governing their production, use, and distribution.

Disease and war do not cause our most stupendous loss, but the undeveloped mental and spiritual powers in the individual, and collectively in the nation. Economics relates to our temporal well-being in the widest sense. It refers not only to material production, distribution, and consumption, but to all the conditions of organized society, as the use or misuse of the resources entering social life has advanced or retarded them.

Primal among these resources is the self-preservation instinct, and next comes the creative impulse and power, an economical and wise use of which peoples the earth with an ever increasing population of an ever advancing type. It equips them with instruments and tools for a steadily growing mastery of all life powers, whether they are physical, mental or spiritual.

Lack of economical rule in directing and expressing this impulse result in waste in the forms of lust, disease, race-suicide, birth defects, crime, drugs, and the instruments of destruction and butchery of modern warfare. No amount of denial of the evil of these things will change them. Only a return to the practice of justice and right, and other ethical qualities in economics can stop the waste, and make "the desert places blossom as the rose."

Economics is also concerned with the proper use of the individual’s own vital powers, challenging his right to waste them by needless indulgence or by such selfish hoarding as comes from a philosophy of egoism whose endless monotony results at last in frazzled nerves, abnormal ideas, and functional disorders, all of which reduce his efficiency.

As the only remedy economics proposes an altruistic activity whose variety and diversion tend to preserve normality of mind and body, and so conserve the energies for the highest ends. The warrant for this "seeking each another’s welfare" is found in the Master’s summary of the law, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." This is at once ego-altruistic, and is the key to the highest welfare of the race.

Only the most careful study and application of the laws of economics in the University of Hard Knocks can steadily reduce and finally eliminate the morally defective criminal class, and populate the world with people who are made in the image and demonstrate that image through unselfish service.

The practice of these economic principles will graduate the student in the University of Hard Knocks into the possession of and the mastery over material possessions, and into the more lasting values to be found in the understanding of mental and spiritual power.

Psychology’s method is to gather the experiences of humanity, and from them formulate the laws of mental activity. Certain terms constantly recur in the study. The spirit of humanity is the Divine Life as it came from God, the Absolute Spirit, sometimes called the superconscious or Divine Mind. The soul is the undivided self. It is the spirit overlaid with the influences and effects of material incarnation and evolution. The mind