Prentice Mulford - The Collected Works of Prentice Mulford

If you make this an excuse to sin, or commit excess, or lie or steal or murder, and say, "I can't help it; I'm predestined to it," you will be punished all the same, not possibly by man's law, but by natural or divine law which has its own punishments for every possible sin,--for murder or lust or lying or stealing or evil thinking or gluttony; and these punishments are being constantly inflicted, and today thousands on thousands are suffering for the sins they commit in ignorance of the law of life; and the pain of such punishment has grown so great, and bears so heavily on so many, that there is now a greater desire than ever to know more of these laws; and for that very reason is this desire being met, and these questions are being answered; for it is an inevitable law of nature that what the human mind demands, that it, in time, gets; and the greater the number of minds so demanding, the sooner is the demand met, and the questions answered. Steam but a few years ago relatively met the demand of human mind for greater speed in travel. Electricity met a demand for greater speed in sending intelligence from man to man. These are but as straws pointing to the discovery and use of greater powers, not only in elements outside of man, but in the unseen elements which make man and woman; in the elements unseen which make you and me.

Henceforth our race will commence to be lifted out of evil or cruder forms of expression, not by fear ot the punishments coming through violation of the law, but they will be led to the wiser course through love of the delight which comes of following the law as we discover it for ourselves. You eat moderately, because experience has taught that the greater pleasure comes of moderation. You are gentle, kind, and considerate to your friend, not that you have constantly before your mind the fear of losing that friend if you are not kind and considerate, but because it pleases you, and you love the doing of kind acts. Human law, and even divine law as interpreted by human understanding, have ever been saying in the past, "You must not do this or that, or you'll feel the rod." God has been pictured as a stern, merciless, avenging deity. The burden of the preacher's song has been Penalty and Punishment! Punishment and Penalty! Humanity is to forget all about penalty and punishment, because it is to be won over, and tempted to greater goodness, to purity and refinement by the ever-increasing pleasures brought us as we refine. The warning of penalty was necessary when humanity was cruder. It could only be reached by the rod. The race was blind, and as a necessity of its condition it had to be kept somewhere near the right path by a succession of painful prods and pokes with the sharp goad of penalty. But when we begin to see clearer, as now the more quickened and sensitive of our race do begin to see, we need no rod, anymore than you need a man with a club to prevail on you to go to a feast.

Table of Contents

YOUR body is acted on in its growth and changes by the same laws and elements which govern the growth and enter into all other organized bodies, such as trees, plants, birds, and animals.

In the early spring of every year, there comes and acts on this planet a force from the sun which affects all organized forms of life,--trees, birds, animals, and, above all, man. Man's being the highest, most complicated, and most powerful mental organism on the planet, absorbs the most of this power, and will absorb far more in the future, and to far greater advantage than at present, as he learns to place himself in the best states to receive it.

Material science calls this force "heat''; but the quality known as heat is only its outward or physical manifestation. The quality known as heat which comes from the sun is not converted into heat until it reaches our planet and acts on the earth elements. There is little or no heat a few miles above the earth's surface. Were this force in the form of heat on leaving the sun, or during its passage, the air on the mountain tops would be as warm as that of the valleys. As we know, on the highest peaks snow and ice are perpetual, for the sun-force at such elevation is not sufficiently mingled with earth elements to convert it into that degree of heat felt in the valleys and plains.

This force causes the the increased movement and circulation of sap in the trees, which commences as soon as the sun of the new year acts on them. The sap is a new life to the tree, from which later comes its buds, blossoms, and fruitage. The inflowing of this unseen sun-force gives the tree power to draw new supplies of nourishing elements through its roots from the earth. It gives it power also to cast off any dead leaves remaining of the last year's crop which have hung on during the winter, as you may see in forests of oak or hickory.

This force acts also in the later winter and earlier spring months on animals and birds, especially if in their wild or natural state, causing them to shed their last year's coats of fur or feathers. But this casting off of old visible matter is but a relatively small part of the change going on within them. There is also a casting out or shedding of old invisible matter throughout the bird or animal's entire body. It goes off through the pores or other passages in various forms, some visible, others invisible, and is succeeded by new elements within, as the new fur, hair or feather is grown without.

Your body is governed by the same law. During the later winter and earlier spring months, you are "moulting." You are casting off old, dead matter, and taking in new, providing you give this force opportunity to act on you to the best advantage, by ceasing to be active either with mind or body when they call for rest, as do birds and animals during their moulting period, or process of casting off the old elements and receiving the new.

This element or force received at this time by you and them is invisible to the physical eye, as all force is invisible. The new fur, the new plumage of the bird, the new skin and tissues without and within your body, if received, the new buds, leaves, and twigs, are all materialized expressions of this force. They are new crystalizations coming of a new solution of invisible chemicals, in which bird, animal, tree, and your body are bathed. All of last year's solution or elements so absorbed have been used up. The tree or other visible organization of bird, animal, or your body, stands in the same relation to this re-clothing solution as does the slip of metal in the solution of mineral which attracts out of such solution the crystallizations which form on it.

There is no great dividing line betwixt what we call matter and spirit. Matter is but a form of spirit or thought seen of the physical eye. Matter is force temporarily materialized, as in the lump of coal which, when set on fire, sends off the force bound up in it to move the engine. The lump passes then mostly into element invisible. So all about us we find force ever passing from physical visibility into invisibility, and vice versa. Millions on millions of tons of invisible matter may be on a clear day suspended over our heads one hour, the next to fall in the visible form of rain or snow, which a few hours after may be drawn upward again, but invisible.

The Indian called February and March the "weak months," recognizing, as he did, being a closer observer of nature than we, the tendency to sluggishness and inactivity in animal and man, which always prevails when this power is recuperating, and renewing any organized body.

The most perfect crystallizations out of mineral element come of the solution kept most free from agitation. Your body is governed by the same law in this spring renewing and re-crystallization of its elements. To receive the fullest benefit of the heating and renewing element of spring, you should rest whenever you feel like resting, whether it be the middle of the day or the middle of the night. If you keep the body or mind at work against their inclination—if you force your muscles to exertion through mere strength of will—if you work with either mind or body to the verge of utter exhaustion, not knowing how depleted you are of strength until your work is over, as thousands on thousands do and are compelled to do, through our unnatural system of life and the arbitrary demands of "business," you prevent this healing and recuperative power from acting to its fullest extent on the body. You prevent the new element, which is renewing the tree and causing the buds to swell, from assimilating with your body. You hold on to worn-out element which should be cast off as the oak has cast all its dead leaves before the winter is over; you carry, then, this dead element, a "dead weight," about with you, instead of the new and upward rising life. It is this, among other causes, which stoops the shoulders, bleaches the hair, and furrows the face with wrinkles, through shrinkage of tissues.