The Hidden Power, and Other Papers upon Mental Science

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teaching at the present day as constituting the highest degree of human attainment. By some this is pressed so far as to make it an instrument of actual oppression, and with all it is a source of weakness and a bar to progress. We are forbidden to question what are called the wise dispensations of Providence and are told that pain a

and that the suggestiveness of the whole arose from its satisfying the artistic sense of balance which requires a compensation of this sort. But which of the two figures in the picture would they themselves prefer to be? Surely not the weak one needing help, but the strong one giving it. By itself the weak figure only stirs our pity and not our admira

t can see as well as others the beauty of weakness leaning upon strength; but it sees that the real source of the beauty lies in the strong element of the combination. The true beauty c

is the expression of the will of God, then doubtless we must resign ourselves to the inevitable with all the submiss

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ook which contains the fullest delineation of these universal laws, we shall find nothing taught more clearly than that submission to the evils of life is not submission to the will of God. We are told that Christ was manifested for this end, that he should destroy him that hath the power of death-that is, the devil. Now death i

egation can never be Affirmation; and the error we have always to guard against is that of attributing positive power to the Negative. If we once grasp the truth that God is life, and that life in every mode of expression can never be anything else than Affirmative, then it must become clear to us that nothing which is of the opposite tendency can be according to the will

tion requires us to re-arrange the truths which we possessed before: not, indeed, to lay any of them aside, for Truth once recognised cannot be again put out of sight, but to recognise a different relative proportion between them from that which we had seen previously. Then there comes a submitting of what has hitherto been our highest truth to one which we recognise as still hig

espairing resignation to a superior force external to ourselves, which we can only vaguely hope is acting kindly and wisely, but it is an intelligent recognition of the true nature of our own interior forces and of the laws by which a robust spiritual constituti

rofits. It is a universal rule that Nature obeys us exactly in proportion as we first obey Nature; and this is as true in regard to spiritual science as to physi

o the power of another-a man cannot be said to submit to himself. When the "I AM" in us recognises a greater degree of I AM-ness (if I may coin the word) than it has hitherto atta

approaches of the Negative which would invert the true position. The Negative always points to some external source of strength. Its formula is "I AM NOT." It always seeks to fix a gulf between us and the Infinite Sufficiency. It would always have us believe that that sufficiency is not our own, but that by a

acters upon our banner, and advance undaunted to