THE INITIATIVE RELINQUISHED

219

and in very truth a new birth, a new life. One holding it lives consciously in a spiritual world. 'God is seen to be no longer the cause of things,' as Milton expresses it, but the fact of things.' Belief in spirit is thus no more authropomorphic than belief in power, or force, or energy. All of these are nothing else than modes of spiritual being." And further he says: "Thus it is now coming to be seen, we must start with God, at the very outset, as the first principle in even the physical and mechanical world. * * 'We say,' says Calthrop, 'God has nothing but himself to make His children out of. They are spirit because He is spirit. They live because He lives. They inherit into His love, His wisdom, His eternity. There is only one mind, and they share it; only one life and in that life they live; only one spirit and they are spirit. Verily then, 'In Him and of Him and by Him we live and move and have our being.' * Tesla says 'God in the ether is no more strange than soul in the body'."

*

It is impossible to get away from the conception of the Psalmist of an omnipresent God-no less present in the universal substance, ether, than in the material universe.

Who (unless it be a metaphysician) can distinguish any difference in the thought of the Old Testament Psalmist concerning God and that of the modern scientist, as presented above? An Omnipresent Intelligence is the God of both. And (quoting from the same volume):

"All is one; all life, all substance;
One, all power and action wide;
Atoms are but thoughts extinguished,
Thoughts but atoms vivified.

Not a jar nor imperfection

Know the never-ending years,

For the law that guides volition

Is the law that guides the spheres."

-Rand.

And does not St. Paul say: "God is all and in all!" This, too, is the final word of science. Modern thinkers, many of them, want to be accredited with having gone, in deductive research, beyond the ancients. But Egyptian, Hebrew, Hindu, Persian, Chinese and Greek sages and philosophers reached as lofty a height, in that direction of thought, as did the ancient Greeks in art and literature a height that may never be risen above.

YE 160TH LESSON.

The Initiative Relinquished.

That the people are becoming, through heedlessness and eagerness for riches, "incapable of free government" is evidenced by the fact that they have relinquished the initiative in selecting officers of government by letting professional office-seekers seize on the places by corrupt means the use of money and ballot-box stuffing. It was not two weeks after the inauguration of President Roosevelt, March 4, 1905, before it was given out through press dispatches that there were four candidates already in the field for the high office in 1908. And it is so in respect to every office from president down to justice of the peace. Office-seekers get the places. The maxim, "Let the office seek the man, not the man the office," will one day be enforced. Forty years ago ye old schoolmaster of ye olden time wrote in his book entitled "American Patriotism of Memoirs of Common Men," commemorative of his neighbors, pupils and companions who lost their lives in their country's service: "How corrupt are the politicians

that led the South into rebellion! And I greatly fear that the same corruption exists to-day among the acknowledged leaders of the North; and unless the people rebuke them, bring them down from their high places, putting new and honest men in their stead, not office-seekers, but men sought out and selected by the people; such as the people bring out, not such as force themselves into notice, we will certainly be undone and the country go to ruin; for politicians seeking for office are willing to sacrifice every sacred principle to gain high place. Men who have been honored by the people and supported by them all their lives, begin now to think, like spoiled children, that they are the head and front of all things; that they are of vast consequence, forsooth, that the Republic is but a medal to hang about their necks as a reward for what the people have already given them; as if there were not ten thousand farmers, and as many mechanics and laboring men in the United States better fitted by education and natural endowments of mind, and a thousand times better fitted by the possession of honest, patriotic, incorruptible hearts, to fill the offices than any number of hungry politicians. May every man who seeks for office meet with sad disappointment. May such never be elected. A great and good man will come to a high place with reluctance, acknowledging his incapacity to fill it acceptably, as did Washington. He will also rejoice, as did the Father of His Country when the time has arrived for him to return to his quiet home of retirement."

The people all must give less attention to money-making and more to government. Let the people really and in fact rule, as is their duty, privilege and right in America. This duty and this privilege and this right seem to have aborted. We have the form of pouplar rule; but of the substance we have little more than have the people of Russia. How many of the candidates for the chief magistracy of the Republic are now looking to the great banking, railroad, mining, Standard Oil, insurance, manufacturing, lumber, whisky and other and all the trusts combined, for money-backing in their candicacys? They all are doing so. And he that gives assurance of subserviency to their demands will receive their help and secure the nomination for office. President Roosevelt reached the goal across lots. He had the people's support, and not that of the syndicated trusts. He is the most popular statesman in America at this hour. He is a good man-an uncompromising patriot, as were Washington and Lincoln. There are many true men like him from whom to choose a candidate for the next term of the presidency, and which will be done from that honorable class, despite the trusts and office-seeking politicians, if the people be not still asleep:

Why, why asleep? The cruel strife

Had almost quenched the nation's life;
And who can wonder at its close
If tired nature sought repose?
Reaction follows action sure,
In all we do and all endure:
Now slimy reptiles noiseless creep
And bleed the giant in his sleep—

Eternal vigilance will be

Ever the price of liberty;

For freedom is not adamant.

But only a most tender plant

That must be kept with watchful care

Lest blight destroy or wintry air.
Much has been done, much is to do
Before the promised land we view.

THE PEOPLE AND THE INITIATIVE

YE 161ST LESSON.

The People and the Initiative.

221

What does this mean? Listen: "There is one fold and one shepherd." Who is that shepherd? Jesus. Who the sheep? His disciples. What is their office and personality? He defines them "priests, kings, and sons of God." A distinguished flock! And the humblest bears all three of these distinguished titles. The highest office among men is never so high as that of a true disciple of Jesus Christ. "Son of God." Above kings, emperors and czars! "Feed my sheep," said the Master. But did he ever say "Feed your sheep?" He never did, because nobody owns one of these but Jesus. Nobody is shepherd but he: "One fold and one Shepherd!"

We see no account in the press dispatches of the "Chefs" that feed the kings of the old world; nor do we read of pageants at their funerals; nor of statues or monuments erected to commemorate them. What order of men did Jesus commission to "feed" his sheep-his grand flock of "priests, kings and sons of God?" They were to be meneals-"washers of his disciples' feet.' But these "feeders" of the sheep of the Good Shepherd have named themselves assumed the title of "pastors" (shepherds) unwarrantably, and they would, it appears, be thought to "own" the Master's sheep. And the poet, John Milton, said: "they do even shear them."

But what has this to do with the initiative I have mentioned? It has much to do with it. The "servants" have become the "masters." Instead of the one shepherd of the one flock we behold many shepherds of many flocks. And these flocks, for hundreds of years, have been fighting each other, shedding each other's blood-a strange thing for sheep to do-and they the "Master's Sheep" (so-called). Yes, many flocks: Roman Catholic, Church of England, Methodist (divided into numerous names) Congregationalist, Quaker, Presbyterian (divided into many), Baptist (divided), etc., etc., hundreds of flocks, and thousands of would-be "shepherds" preventing the oneness prayed for by the Master.

Who has ever heard of a would-be "shepherd" (pastor) when visiting a strange town, calling on the several so-called pastors (shepherds of the many divided flocks of the town) to advise with them as to whether or not that town would be benefited by another split in the ranks of the population and another church building erected, and another congregation gathered? Who has ever heard of the authorities of the town being consulted by him on the subject or the people as a whole? Sea and land are encompassed to make one proselyte and raise funds to build another church when half the seats are always empty at meeting time in the score of costly church edifices already built, and this in a little town. How many earsplitting bells do

"Clang and clash and roar

What a horror they outpour

On the bosom of the palpitating air!"

on every Sunday morning and evening. What need of another discordant bell to be hung up and rung in another belfry?--and, too, for no other practical end than to neutralize or prevent the prayer of the Master's being answered, "that ye be one?" (John XVII: 20, 21). So many church buildings all empty six days in the week. "Who comes without purse or scrip enter not here," is in effect written over the portal of every so-called "House of God." If Jesus and his twelve came into the town they could not find sanctuary for one moment in any church building even on Sunday, from arrest by the police, nor welcome in any so-called "Christian home;" but would be lodged in jail before an hour as "vags." Poverty a crime! It was never so in Pagan lands and is not so to-day.

Let the people take the work into their own hands and teach by their own good example the youth of the land-being themselves the kind of men and women they would have the future generations to become, depending no longer on teachers of Sunday-schools and weekday-schools to build up character in the youth And the pastors (shepherds) of the many flocks, whom "do they feed with the bread of life?" Only the so-called "upper and middle classes" of grownup people-not the day laborers. And the "upper and middle classes" are they "patterns of righteousness?" Precisely the same kind of exemplars as were the Pharisees and Scribes in the year one of our Lord. Let the people-the common people-rule. They do still, and they ever will, "hear gladly" the Master's voice.

YE 162ND LESSON.

Greek Philosophy and Semitism.

There is in the New Testament literature a fusion of Egyptian and Asiatic with European thought; but mainly the deductions of Greek philosophy fused with Semitism. Alexandrian scholarship had most to do with the evolution of Christianity. The Septuagent was the great foundation of the frame work of the structure. The rest was derived substancially from Greek philosophy. It was the work of many minds. A unity of thought is wanting. Paul's idea of life beyond the grave (I Cor. 15) was of a spiritual body"-Greek. But the Gospels present the view held by the old-time Egyptians that led them to embalm and so preserve the bodies of their dead and to seal them up in rock tombs and in the center of vast pyramids that they might last to the resurrection. Jesus was a Buddha and a Socrates. It is declared and believed by many that, if the Buddha and Socrates had never been, there would never have been a Jesus. The written constitutions of government, of all the minor American republics, bear resemblance to that of the United States, as does this to that of the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell. Similarly, Christianity grew up out of prepared soil, Egyptian, Oriental and Occidental. It was not an original product.

Now the narrowness of Semitism, as well as of patriotism generally, was made to fit the church. The non-church member was a parah of churchism, as was the gentile of Semitism. There were no men but Romans, and all non-Greeks were barbarians; so all non-church members were "children of hell." Religion became bigotry ("I am more righteous than thou") and a tyranny worse than that of Caligula was set up over mankind by the church. Millions of men, women and even children were put to the sword and thousands of heretics burned at the stake to maintain church domination.

Greek philosophy did not give rise to tyrrany. Philosophy had no weapon of defence or of aggression but argumentation-brain artillery -such as Socrates made use of against the Sophists. And the influence of those great teachers (the ancient Greeks) is still the leaven of freedom and enlightenment that ultimately will bring in universal brotherhood and the universal ripeness of humanity-will make beautiful all material creations of human skill and ingenuity and bring to perfection all thought creations, all expressions of pen and voice. The sermon on the mount is Greek. Its birth place was Alexandria. It is the ripened fruit of Greek thought a production of many minds a greater work than Homer's Iliad and as purely Greek. No scholar can successfully controvert this statement and none will attempt to do so; for it is truth patent to all minds to-day.

Now it is time to ring up the curtain. The great play on the worldstage has reached the third act. What do we see? Here my pen

falters. It is beyond my power of narration to portray the grandeur of this final act. Narrowness gives up the struggle. No more Manchurian slaughter-pens where young men are sacrificed to the god of barbarity; no more "Sea-of-Japan" naval massacres; no more mummery of tyrannical priestcraft, as we have seen enacting for the last time for the world in Russia; no more imperalism and exploitation of the globe for the growing of billionaire puffballs and the starvation of millions, as the British have starved the gentle victims of her barbaric tyranny in India, the forcing of the opium trade on unwilling China at the mouths of her cannon, and the shooting of Sepoys from before her brass guns, the patriots bound with their backs to the bores. O Motherland! May every American, pointing a finger of scorn at you, cry "None of those actions shall be repeated; but we will inaugurate peace on earth, universal goodwill, Christianity lifted out of the mud and mire of superstition in which ignorance and bigotry had placed her, when will be enthroned the "Prince of Peace,' and man himself be in virtue, purity and self-respect the kind of man he would have his sons be, and every woman the kind of a woman she would have her daughters be, making every home a seat of beauty, love, uprightness and industry, a school, a college, a place of welcome to the homeless, the habitation of many happy children a house of God, because in truth and in deed a house of holiness.'

YE 163RD LESSON.

The New Day.

A new day is dawning on the world. The nations are about to take measures that will put an end to wars. They are too calamitous to be longer tolerated. By the assembling of a world congress and the formation of a confederated world they will be made impossible. There will be a readjustment of the boundaries of states to correspond with languages comprising each seperate state, excepting, as by voluntary arrangement, they be otherwise united or divided. There will be a code of the "Law of Nations," and international courts to settle questions of international law, after the pattern of American courts. The United States of America is the model for the United States of the World.

Then will come in the new day. "Resist not evil" will be law to all the nations as to all individuals. Men will no more be "overcome of evil" but will "overcome evil with good" If an enemy hunger we will give him food; if he thirst we will give him drink. Evil will no longer be recompensed with evil, but only with good. War is the recompensing and overcoming of evil with evil. The law of force, excepting as applied by the whole against the one, will be no longer operative. A united world will hold in check the individual states, and by the united voice compel obedience of the one to the many, But the law of rectitude will be the law of nations and justice the end. Arbitration will settle all disputes and courts be only courts of arbitration Thus will disputes be settled both general and personal.

But among individuals what will be the law? It will be the law of love. The one sentence of the Stoic philosophy, impressed on all minds as its best expression of the relation of man to his fellow men, is accredited to Socrates as its author, but the sage of Verona first gave utterance to it. It is the following: "Friends have all things common." Interpreted in the light of this Christian age the sentence has a vast meaning. Of course the Greek view was circumscribed. The great majority of Greek society were slaves to the small minority. "A friend" and "our friends" had reference to a