A NEW MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR

WE are born into a strange time - a time that tries men's souls. Bewilderment and fear hold many; change and uncertainty stalk through the land - all lands.

Those who keep their courage up and go serenely on are coming through in a way that those who weaken or lie down cannot know. But to do this many lives need help—real concrete help. A remark by an old college friend some years ago has come to my mind every now and then of late. 'After all,' said he, 'it is well for one to have a little philosophy in ones life. A farm boy, eager for a better education and to get ahead pushing his way through college in the face of great odds, he has been doing a splendid work in a great city, and for his country, and yet has always remained humble. His own character indicates to me he has in goodly measure the philosophy which he commended.

'Yes' I replied 'if it has the element of use.' For I had even then read much in the philosophies of the present and of earlier times, and was forced to the conclusion that very large parts of them are of little real value—interesting, but of little real value—because of their lack of the element of use; use in the everyday problems of life.

Each of us has their problems of one sort or another, and no life is free from them. We all need help. This is particularly true at present because of the peculiar time we have been born into.

I have often said to friend and acquaintance during the last two or three years that there is perhaps no one quality men need so much, and right down in their hearts long for so much, as the quality of courage. For courage to me is nothing more or less than a positive, creative type of thought. It not only keeps us going, but all the time works out effects on the course of our journeying. Thoughts are forces, subtle, vital, creative, continually building and shaping our lives according to their nature. It is in this way that the life always and inevitably follows the thought.

Thoughts of strength engender strength from within and attract it from without. Thoughts of weakness actualize weakness within and attract it from without. Courage therefore begets success, as fear begets failure.

There is something in the universe that responds to intrepid thinking. The POWER that holds and that moves the stars in their courses sustains, illumines and fights for the brave and the upright. Courage has power and magic in it. Faith and hope and courage are great producers—we cannot fail if we live always in the brave and cheerful attitude of mind and heart. He alone fails who gives up and lies down.

To open ourselves to this sustaining POWER, to live continually under its guidance, this is our part. Those of us who do our part will keep free from fear, and therefore from a weakening, corroding worry, the two black twins that carry the germs of despair and defeat, costly for ourselves, unfair for our families, our friends and as our neighbors, costly even for our country.

Years ago, shortly after this book was written, I used on the title page of a little book, as a sort of keynote, the sentence: 'The moment we fully and vitally realize who and what we are, we then begin to build our own world even as God builds His.'

What is the fundamental fact, the fundamental principle of life, the real basis of any healthy or even worthy philosophy of life—Can we find it and know it? There's the rub. But long ago there came one who with a great aptitude for discerning the things of the mind and the spirit, a great clarity of perception that enabled Him to understand the reality of life, the One Life, and to identify His own life with it—the Infinite Spirit of life and power that is back of all, animating and working through all, the life of all.

So direct and intimate was His understanding of it that He used the term Father: I and my Father are one. And to make it of value in that it was not for Him alone, He said: As I am you shall be. My consciousness of the One Life shall be your consciousness, My insight and power shall be your insight and power, if you will receive My message and do the things I tell you. And truly He handled the stuff of life with a wonderful artistry. This is the message that the Master, Jesus of Galilee, tried so hard to get over into the world. It is through this that He becomes the supreme Way-revealer, the Way-revealer to us men of earth.

The Way He showed is what man so sadly needs for a higher and a more efficient individual life, and what the world needs for a more efficient and harmonious and co-operative life. Here is the basis of all idealistic philosophy -a philosophy, a religion of power, of concrete creative power and therefore of use. All are partakers and individual expressions of the One Life, all related and interrelated. As we open ourselves fully to the realization of this we bring harmony into our individual lives, and out of that harmony we create a world of harmony and co-operation, in which each individual and each country enjoys freedom and the fruits of labor, instead of enslavement, of disruption, and of eventual destruction.

Yes, from the conception of the One Life flows the inevitable reality that all men are brothers. There is great gain, there is even an obvious self-interest in building our individual lives and our world life upon that reality. If we do so, we will establish a just and therefore more lasting peace.

What a frightful price we have now to pay for our ignorance, our negligence, our self-seeking, our forgetting that the good of all is the only real and lasting good! Out of all the travail good may come, but again that will depend on us.

We must keep our courage up, must keep our vision clear, must keep our balance, so that we may free ourselves and others with us from the frightful dangers dislocation and disorder that are the results of the great world conflicts.

A single stanza by Edwin Markham voices the poet's inspiration:

At the heart of the cyclone tearing the sky,

And flinging the clouds and the towers by,

Is a place of central calm.

So, here in the roar of mortal things

I have a place where my spirit sings,

In the hollow of God's palm.

This was the poet's way of expressing the great truth we are considering and I know he believed it thoroughly, for we talked it over many times together. This was his belief as to the mission and the revelation of the Master, and the Kingdom of God that comes into being when all men realize they are brothers, and are wise enough to live and to act as brothers.

In this again lie the truth and the song that arose from it and sang itself through our earlier poet Whittier, good Quaker and true always to the "Inner Light":

I know not where His islands lift

Their fronded palms in air,

I only know I cannot drift

Beyond His love and care.

A dark age can come only if we men of earth fail to do our part. We will not fail. We cannot fail. But the sands in the hour-glass may be running lower than we know. We must bestir ourselves.

Ralph Waldo Trine