H. Emilie Cady - The Essential H. Emilie Cady - Lessons in Truth, How I Used Truth & God, A Present Help

33. The very pain that you suffer, the very failure to demonstrate over some matter that touches your own life deeply, may rest upon just this spirit of unforgiveness that you harbor toward the world in general. Put it away with resolution.

34. Do not be under bondage to false beliefs about your circumstances or environment. No matter how evil circumstances may appear, or how much it may seem that some other personality is at the foundation of your sorrow or trouble, God, good, good alone, is really there when you call His law into expression.

35. If we have the courage to persist in seeing only God in it all, even "the wrath of man" (Ps. 76:10) shall be invariably turned to our advantage. Joseph, in speaking of the action of his brethren in selling him into slavery, said, "As for you, ye meant evil against me; but God meant it for good" (Gen. 50:20). To them that love God, "all things work together for good" (Rom. 8:28), or to them who recognize only God. All things! The very circumstances in your life that seem heartbreaking evils will turn to joy before your very eyes if you will steadfastly refuse to see anything but God in them.

36. It is perfectly natural for the human mind to seek to escape from its troubles by running away from present environments, or by planning some change on the material plane. Such methods of escape are absolutely vain and foolish. "Vain is the help of man" (Ps. 60:11).

37. There is no permanent or real outward way of escape from miseries or circumstances; all help must come from within.

38. The words, "God is my defense and deliverance," held in the silence until they become part of your very being, will deliver you out of the hands and the arguments of the keenest lawyer in the world.

39. The real inner consciousness that "the LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want" (Ps. 23:1 A.V.) will supply all wants more surely and far more liberally than can any human hand.

40. The ultimate aim of every man should be to come into the consciousness of an indwelling God, and then in all external matters, to affirm deliverance through and by this divine One. There should not be a running to and fro, making human efforts to aid the Divine, but a calm, restful, unwavering trust in All-Wisdom and All-Power within one as able to accomplish the thing desired.

41. Victory must be won in the silence of your own being first, and then you need take no part in the outer demonstration of relief from conditions. The very walls of Jericho that keep you from your desire must fall before you.

42. The Psalmist said:

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains [or to the highest One]:

From whence shall come my help?

43. "My help cometh from Jehovah,

Who made heaven and earth.

44. "Jehovah [your indwelling Lord] will keep thee from evil . . .

45. "Jehovah will keep thy going out and thy coming in

From this time forth, and for evermore."

(Ps. 121:1, 2, 7, 8)

46. Oh, if we could only realize that this mighty power to save and to perfect, to deliver and to make alive, lives forever within us, and so cease now and forever looking away to others!

47. There is but ONE WAY to obtain this full realization--the way of the Christ. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (Jn. 14:6), spoke the Christ through the lips of the Nazarene.

48. Your holding to the words, "Christ is the way," when you are perplexed and confused and can see no way of escape, will invariably open a way of complete deliverance.

Table of Contents

Who And What God Is

Who And What Man Is

1. When Jesus was talking with the Samaritan woman at the well, He said to her, "God is Spirit: and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth." (John 4:24 A.V. reads, "God is a Spirit," but the marginal note is, "God is Spirit," and some other versions render this PASSAGE, "God is Spirit.") To say "a Spirit" would be to imply the existence of more than one Spirit. Jesus, in His statement, did not imply this.

2. Webster in his definition of Spirit says: "In the abstract, life or consciousness viewed as an independent type of existence. One manifestation of the divine nature; the Holy Spirit."

3. God, then, is not, as many of us have been taught to believe, a big personage or man residing somewhere in a beautiful region in the sky, called "heaven," where good people go when they die, and see Him clothed in ineffable glory; nor is He a stern, angry judge only awaiting opportunity somewhere to punish bad people who have failed to live a perfect life here.

4. God is Spirit, or the creative energy that is the cause of all visible things. God as Spirit is the invisible life and intelligence underlying all physical things. There could be no body, or visible part, to anything unless there was first Spirit as creative cause.

5. God is not a being or person having life, intelligence, love, power. God is that invisible, intangible, but very real, something we call life. God is perfect love and infinite power. God is the total of these, the total of all good, whether manifested or unexpressed.

6. There is but one God in the universe, but one source of all the different forms of life or intelligence that we see, whether they be men, animals, trees, or rocks.

7. God is Spirit. We cannot see Spirit with these fleshly eyes; but when we clothe ourselves with the spiritual body, then Spirit is visible or manifest and we recognize it. You do not see the living, thinking "me" when you look at my body. You see only the form which I am manifesting.

8. God is love. We cannot see love or grasp any comprehension of what love is, except as love is clothed with a form. All the love in the universe is God. The love between husband and wife, between parents and children, is just the least little bit of God, as pushed forth in visible form into manifestation. A mother's love, so infinitely tender, so unfailing, is God's love, only manifested in greater degree by the mother.

9. God is wisdom and intelligence. All the wisdom and intelligence that we see in the universe is God, is wisdom projected through a visible form. To educate (from educare, to lead forth) never means to force into from the outside, but always means to draw out from within something already existing there. God as infinite wisdom lies within every human being, only waiting to be led forth into manifestation. This is true education.

10. Heretofore we have sought knowledge and help from outside sources, not knowing that the source of all knowledge, the very Spirit of truth, is lying latent within each one of us, waiting to be called on to teach us the truth about all things--most marvelous of teachers, and everywhere present, without money or price!

11. God is power. Not simply God has power, but God is power. In other words, all the power there is to do anything is God. God, the source of our existence every moment, is not simply omnipotent (all-powerful); He is omnipotence (all power). He is not alone omniscient (all-knowing); He is omni-science (all knowledge). He is not only omni-present, but more--omnipresence. God is not a being having qualities, but He is the good itself. Everything that you can think of that is good, when in its absolute perfection, goes to make up that invisible Being we call God.

12. God, then, is the substance (from sub, under, and stare, to stand), or the real thing standing under every visible form of life, love, intelligence, or power. Each rock, tree, animal, every visible thing, is a manifestation of the one Spirit--God--differing only in degree of manifestation; and each of the numberless modes of manifestation or individualities, however insignificant, contains the whole.

13. One drop of water taken from the ocean is just as perfect ocean water as the whole great body. The constituent elements of water are exactly the same, and they are combined in precisely the same ratio or perfect relation to each other, whether we consider one drop, a pailful, a barrelful, or the entire ocean out of which the lesser quantities are taken; each is complete in itself; they differ only in quantity or degree. Each contains the whole; and yet no one would make the mistake of supposing from this statement that each drop is the entire ocean.