CHAPTER X

The Home Refurnished

within and without. For the home is also the place to picture forth heaven, and

often it is the training school where wild, crude mortality learns the joys of peace, order, and loving service, a preparatory school for heaven here on the

earth.

Each home that is consecrated to this ministry of the Christ message and healing

becomes an example of purity and harmony to those seeking heaven on the

earth. Perhaps your ministry cannot yet be an open one, but it can do a silent

work by its hospitality, comfort, restfulness, and love. The very walls can sing of

goodness and truth. The common furniture can caress us; the homely fare can

give us sweetest satisfaction.

Fill your home with blessing. Remove every suggestion of discontent, If there is a

room that savors of selfishness or impurity or deadness in its mental

atmosphere, heal it, You can do this by spending in it each day a half hour of

silence in which you meditate upon the omnipresence of heaven, declaring

that some special expression of heaven centers there. The richness of your spirit

must enter the place where you reside and permeate it, even though it be a cellar

or a hall bedroom. The ease and comfort of a rich consciousness must radiate

from your personality. For riches draw riches, and prosperity gravitates to the

things and the people that are like it, especially when backed by principle. There

are people who look prosperous and who yet are undermining themselves by a

false state of mind; and there are people who are rich but do not look prosperous, and they are missing some of the good things that belong to them.

The kingdom of heaven appears when there is perfect harmony and unity between the without and the within.

ACT AND LOOK PROSPEROUS

In proving God to be the health of your circumstances, see to it that your home

does not contradict your faith. There is a great law fulfilled in “putting one’s best

foot forward.” Businessmen know that it is a good augury of the later success of

their projects to have a good office, well furnished.

When an instrument like a harp, violin, or guitar is tuned too low, then one string is raised to the proper pitch and the rest keyed up to it. Sometimes one can raise the whole “tone” of a house and of the household by introducing some rich up-to-date feature

and then keying all the rest of the establishment up to that tone, even though many days go by before it is finished.

Act wealthy. Talk prosperously. Be a free avenue through which riches may pass to all. The world needs to learn the spiritual science of wealth, and your home

can be a classroom.

FOURTH MEDITATION

BLESS, PRAISE, GIVE THANKS

There is no greater prospering power than the word of blessing, of genuine

praise, and of thanks from the heart, directed especially toward those people and

those things and events which have seemed to curse us.

As this word must not be merely from the lips, it will require skill, discernment,

inspiration, and a prophetic sense to find out what one can praise in one's

enemies; to see what one can be thankful for in misfortune or can bless in time of

treachery. The very excercise itself will enrich one, as it did the sons of the wise

father in the fable.

An Aesopian fable tells of an old farmer who had four lazy sons, and who in dying

told them he had nothing to leave them but a field but that in the field was buried

a treasure. So when he died they vigorously dug up the field. But they found no

treasure. However the next crop that grew in the field yielded four times as much

as an ordinary crop; and then the sons know that the treasure in the field was

what they put into it--their own energy and faith.

Practice skill and discernment in finding the good in the people who have injured

you and in the failures that have burdened you. Let the Spirit inspire your

thanksgiving and open your prophetic sense so that you may see the blessing

that is coming out of it all. The exercise is enriching both spiritually and

materially.

FOURTH TREATMENT

Listen to the divine voice within you.

It guides you. It cheers you. It shows you the way of righteousness and eternal

prosperity.

The divine approval overshadows you and protects you.

Your heavenly Father awaits lovingly your return to the spiritual life and its ways, and runs to meet you, saying: Thou art my beloved in whom I am well pleased.

"The blessing of Jehovah, it maketh rich."

The Lord in you blesses your whole world, and the act of blessing enriches you.

You give your heart and mind to blessing everybody and everything.

You bless them that curse you. You do good to them that hate you.

You know no rivals. You have no competition.

All that is done against you helps you.

Your destiny is to know the secret of prosperity.

You cannot fail. Your success is decreed from the foundation of the world.

The Spirit opens your eyes to see the way of success.

There is a straight line between you and the next successful step, and you go

forward upon it.

Fear passes utterly away. You are calm and trusting. Your confidence inspires

confidence.

You lay up treasures in heaven. You do good and forget it.

You give freely you tenth, our tithe and you reap a hundredfold.

“Bring ye the whole tithe into the store-house, that there may be food

[substance) in my house, and prove me now herewith, saith Jehovah of hosts, if I

will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour

you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”

No anger can undermine you. No envy can corrode your affairs.

No selfishness can rust you. No greed can overload you.

You are God’s free instrument of distribution.

Riches flow to you and through you to bless all the world.

You freely receive and you freely give. No foolish accumulation burdens you. No

loss disturbs you.

You bring faith into the storehouse of plenty. You bring love into the storehouse

of opulence.

You bring knowledge into the storehouse of abundance. You bring goodness into

the storehouse of all your prosperity.

And they return to you in all the world’s forms of wealth, unlimited, unceasing,

full, perfect, and free.

Rest in the divine bounty.