Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought in some direction. It is an indication that the individual is out of harmony with himself, with the Law of his being. The sole and supreme use of suffering is to purify, to burn out all that is useless and impure. Suffering ceases for him who is pure. There could be no object in burning gold after the dross had been removed, and a perfectly pure and enlightened being could not suffer. The circumstances, which a man encounters with suffering, are the result of…

Circumstances, however, are so complicated, thought is so deeply rooted, and the conditions of happiness vary so, vastly with individuals, that a man’s entire soul-condition (although it may be known to himself) cannot be judged by another from the external aspect of his life alone. A man may be honest in certain directions, yet suffer privations; a man may be dishonest in certain directions, yet acquire wealth; but the conclusion usually formed that the one man fails because of his particular honesty, and that the other prospers because of his particular dishonesty, is the…

Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound. The man who does not shrink from self-crucifixion can never fail to accomplish the object upon which his heart is set. This is as true of earthly as of heavenly things. Even the man whose sole object is to acquire wealth must be prepared to make great personal sacrifices before he can accomplish his object; and how much more so he who would realize a strong and well-poised life? Here is a man…

A man does not come to the almshouse or the jail by the tyranny of fate or circumstance, but by the pathway of grovelling thoughts and base desires. Nor does a pure-minded man fall suddenly into crime by stress of any mere external force; the criminal thought had long been secretly fostered in the heart, and the hour of opportunity revealed its gathered power. Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself No such conditions can exist as descending into vice and its attendant sufferings apart from…

Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself. That circumstances grow out of thought every man knows who has for any length of time practised self-control and self-purification, for he will have noticed that the alteration in his circumstances has been in exact ratio…

EFFECT OF THOUGHT ON CIRCUMSTANCES MAN’S mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind. Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and…

Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul which have been restored and brought to light in this age, none is more gladdening or fruitful of divine promise and confidence than this that man is the master of thought, the moulder of character, and the maker and shaper of condition, environment, and destiny. As a being of Power, Intelligence, and Love, and the lord of his own thoughts, man holds the key to every situation, and contains within himself that transforming and regenerative agency by which he may make…

THOUGHT AND CHARACTER THE aphorism, “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he,” not only embraces the whole of a man’s being, but is so comprehensive as to reach out to every condition and circumstance of his life. A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts. As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them. This…

When he reproduces the likeness of existing forms, it is not for the sake of imitating or mimicking them, but because his finer perceptive instinct enables him to discern in forms ready at hand in Nature, certain pure ideas; and an indwelling Presence, of which he is conscious and with which his own life has become identified, clothes those ideas according to the peculiar artistic predilections or specially cultivated tastes of the individual mind through whose instrumentality they find outward shape. The Author and Creator of all expression within the…

Some men of genius underestimate their creations, while others overestimate theirs. In Art, as in Nature, the deeper Self creates with lavish hand, and frequently scatters abroad the choicest material with prodigal recklessness. Every man is a genius, did he but know it; for he has latent capacities waiting to come into exercise whenever he allows himself to forget his finitude in contemplating and obeying the Infinite, which incessantly calls to him from within. If he listens to the voice it grows louder; if he obeys, it becomes more authoritative…

Thus we see that Nature and Art constitute one world. They blend so imperceptibly that, in many cases, the line of demarcation between superhuman and distinctively human expressions is obliterated. Their mode of revelation is the same, and their forms are of the same description. Both are perceptible through the same outward medium sight. They are partial expressions that a deeper consciousness enables us to recognize as the work of one Creator. Genius is spiritual insight. It penetrates the outer envelopes of life and makes it possible for one to…

13.ART AND NATURE. As man beholds the process of creation going on around him in the outer world, he at first supposes himself to be a product of natural forces or a mere cog in the machinery of the world, as it were. Recognizing only the finite in himself, not yet being aware of the existence of a deeper Self within, it is impossible for him conciously to identify that Self with the creative Spirit he sees manifested outwardly in beauty, goodness, truth, and harmony. But as he gradually becomes…