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Jesus Christ Heals
Chapter 6
[<- Go back to Chapter 5]
[Jesus Christ Heals]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Chapter VI
God Said, and It Was So
EMERSON said that the utterance of true ideas by one with a
mission causes kings to totter on their thrones. Words of
Truth from a zealous man possess dynamic power to heal and
bless because the spiritual man enters into them. This is
why they move multitudes and are not stayed by conditions
or time. When the zone of Spirit, from which healing words
emanate, is unobstructed, they feed the souls of men and
are creative as well as re-creative. This is why the
sayings of the prophets and mystics have such enduring
qualities. They are attached by invisible currents of life
to the one Great Spirit, and they have within them the germ
of perfect wholeness that keeps them perpetually increasing.
The scriptures of the different races are examples of the
outward expression of this inner germ. The Book of Job is a
dateless work that has been preserved through great
changes, including the rise and fall of nations. Who wrote
it no one knows, but it was not lost with the loss of its
custodians. They were wiped out, their lands taken from
them, and they are no longer known among the nations of the
earth, but the mystic word of Job was not consumed. If they
had applied in their own lives the power of the germ word,
the fate of these people would have
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been very different. But the history of the Book of Job is
that of nearly all the sacred writings of all peoples.
Secular histories and records of the exploits of men and
the affairs of nations have disappeared and been forgotten
because they told the tale of the passing world of flesh;
but the records of those who had to do with the spiritual
are preserved, and they are living today as they have lived
ever since they were given forth: through the power derived
from Spirit. The true prophet of God does not even have to
write his words down. He may speak them to the ethers, and
through their own inherent power of perpetuation and growth
they will find their way into the minds of men to uplift
and to heal. Jesus did not write a line except in the sand,
yet His words are treasured today as the most precious that
we have.
We know by these many examples that the word of Truth has
life in it, that it has power to restore and make whole,
and that it cannot perish or grow less with the changes
that come with the fleeting years. The more spiritual the
individual is who gives forth the words the more enduring
they are, and the more powerfully the words move men the
more surely they awaken them to their divine nature.
The words of Jesus Christ were given to common
people--according to the world's standard--by a carpenter
in a remote corner of the earth. Yet these words have moved
men for more than nineteen hundred years to realize, to
dare, and to do as no other words that were ever uttered.
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When Jesus said, "The words that I have spoken unto you are
spirit, and are life," He was speaking in terms of that
inner Word which creates all things. He knew that His words
were vivified with a life essence and a moving power that
would demonstrate the truth of His statement.
These words have rung through the souls of men and set them
afire with God's Spirit throughout the ages. This is
because they are spiritual words, words that have within
them the seeds of a divine life, of a perfect wholeness.
They grow in the minds of all who give them place, just as
a beautiful flower or a great tree grows from the seed germ
planted in the ground.
Jesus knew that the consciousness of man was submerged in
the things of sense, that it could not perceive Truth in
the abstract, and that it must, under these conditions, be
stirred into activity through some stimulating force
dropped into it from without. Hence He sent forth His
powerful words of Truth to the thirsty men, and said unto
them, "Keep my word."
To "keep" a word is to resolve it in the mind, to go over
it in all its aspects, to believe in it as a truth, and to
treasure it as a saving, healing balm in time of need.
All peoples have in all ages known about the saving power
of words and have used them to the best of their
understanding to cast out demons and to heal the sick. The
Hebrews bound upon their foreheads and wrists parchments
with words of Scripture
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written upon them. The Hindus, Japanese, Chinese, and
nearly all other nations have their various methods for
applying sacred words to the alleviation of their ills, and
for invoking the invisible powers to aid them in both their
material and their spiritual needs. Although these methods
are faulty in that they tend to use the letter of the word
instead of its spirit, they are significant as indicators
of the universal belief in the power of the sacred word.
We know that words express ideas, and to get at their
substantial part we must move into the realm of ideas.
Ideas are in the mind, and it is there we must go if we
want to get the force of our words. The Hebrew's
phylacteries and the Buddhist's prayer wheels are
suggestive of the wordy prayers of the Christian; but this
is not keeping the words of Jesus, nor reading the inner
substance of the mystical words. This can be done only by
those who believe in the omnipresent Spirit of God and in
faith keep in mind the words that express His goodness,
wisdom, power, and wholeness.
Jesus voiced this nearness of God to man more fully than
any of the prophets, and His words are correspondingly
vivified with the divine inner fire and life and wholeness.
He said that those who keep His words will even escape
death, so potent is the energy attached to them. This is a
startling promise, but when we understand that it was not
the personal man Jesus making it but the Father speaking
through Him, then we know that it was not an idle one; for
He said, "The word which ye hear is not mine, but
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the Father's who sent me." This is why these words of Jesus
endure and why more and more they are attracting the
attention of men as the years go by. That is the reason why
Jesus' words heal.
Whoever takes Jesus' words into his mind should first
consecrate himself to the Truth that they represent. That
Truth is not the formulated doctrine of any church nor the
creed of any sect; not even of Christianity. That truth is
written in the inner sanctuary of every heart, and all men
know it without external formulas. It is the intuitive
perception of what is right in the sight of God and man. It
is this Truth and justice which every man recognizes as the
foundation of true living. Whoever consecrates himself to
follow the inner monitor, the Spirit of truth, and lives up
to its promptings regardless of social or commercial
customs has consecrated himself to do God's will, and he is
fitted to take Jesus' words and make them his own. His
words are then spirit and life.
It is no idle experiment, this keeping in the mind the
words of Jesus. It is a very momentous undertaking, which
may mark the most important period in the life of the
individual. There must be sincerity and earnestness and
right motive, and withal a determination to understand its
spiritual import. This requires attention, time, and
patience in the application of the mind to solving the
deeper meanings of the sayings that we are urged to "keep."
People have a way of dealing with sacred words that is too
superficial to bring results. They juggle
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words. They toss them into the air with the heavenly tone
or the oratorical ring and count that a compliance with
divine requirements. But this is only another form of the
prayer wheel and the phylactery. It is that lip service
which Jesus condemned, because the purpose is to be "heard
of men."
To keep the words of Jesus means much more than this. It
has peculiar significance for the inner life, and it is
only after this inner life is awakened that the true sense
of the spiritual word is understood. But through his
devotions the sincere keeper of Jesus' sayings will awaken
this inner life or Spirit, and the Lord will come to him
and minister to him as carefully as to the adept mystic.
Jesus said, "The words that I have spoken unto you are
spirit, and are life." Spirit is that indescribable
invisible cause that produces all reality. He who lives in
the consciousness of effects alone can know nothing about
Spirit, because he has not made himself acquainted with the
realm in which it operates. But no one is barred from
becoming acquainted with Spirit and residing in its domain.
It is just as accessible as the material and far more
attractive. If you want to know about Spirit, you will have
to take up spiritual ways. You cannot go to the realm of
Spirit by traveling the lower road. The road to the realm
of Spirit does not lie on the map of the earth, and no man
has found it in his physical geography. That spiritual
things "are spiritually discerned" was the discovery of
someone long ago, but he had no copyright on it. To him it
was a revelation, just as it
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will be to you and to everyone when it dawns on the
consciousness. It is a great advantage to the spiritual
seeker to make this discovery. Millions of persons in every
age have tried to find Spirit through matter and material
ways, but they have returned unsuccessful to the dust. "For
verily I say unto you, that many prophets and righteous men
desired to see the things which ye see, and saw them not;
and to hear the things which ye hear, and heard them not."
They did not fulfill the promise of Jesus, because they saw
death and succumbed to its dissolving hand. They missed the
goal because they did not keep the words of Jesus. They
kept the letter instead of the spirit. They applied in an
abstract way what was intended for everyday practical use.
Jesus tells us that His words are spirit, and then says to
keep them. How can we keep a thing that we know nothing
about? How can we keep the words and sayings of Jesus
unless we get right where He was and grasp them with our
minds?
Surely there is no other way to keep His words. Those who
are trying to do so from any other standpoint are missing
the mark. They may be honest and they may be good, sincere
people, living what the world calls a pure Christian life,
but they are not going to get the fruits of Jesus' words
unless they comply with the requirements.
"There's no getting blood out of a turnip" is a trite
saying. Neither can you get Spirit and life out of matter
and death. Unless you perceive that there is something more
in the doctrine of Jesus than keeping
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up a worldly moral standard as preparation for salvation
after death, you will fall far short of being a real
Christian.
Jesus did not depreciate moral living; neither did He
promise that it would fulfill the law of God. Very negative
persons are frequently trustworthy and moral. But that does
not make them Christians after the Jesus Christ plan.
Jesus' Christianity had a living God in it, a God that
lived in Him and spoke through Him. It was a religion of
fire and water, of life as well as purity. Men are to be
alive: not merely exist in a half-dead way for a few years
and then go out with a splutter like a tallow dip. Jesus
Christ's men are to be electric lights that glow and gleam
with perpetual current from the one omnipresent energy. The
connection with that current is to be made through the mind
by setting up sympathetic energies.
The mind reacts to ideas, and ideas are made visible in
words. Hence the holding of right words in the mind will
set the mind going at a rate proportioned to the dynamic
power of the idea back of the words. A word with a lazy
idea back of it will not stimulate the mind or heal the
body. The words must represent swift, strong spiritual
ideas if they are to infuse the white energy of God into
the mind. This is the kind of words that Jesus reveled in.
He delighted in making great and mighty claims for His God,
for Himself, for His words, and for all men: "I and the
Father are one." "All authority hath been given unto me in
heaven and on earth." "My
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Father . . . is greater than all." "Is it not written in
your law, I said, ye are gods?" "He that believeth on me,
the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works
than these shall he do." These were some of the claims with
which He stimulated His mind, and He produced the results:
He fulfilled His words. He even raised the dead.
But He did not copyright His words or forbid anyone else to
use them. He importuned you and me to keep them as He kept
them--right in His heart--to realize that this is no idle
repetition of words but the setting up of a living fire in
the soul that will never go out. This is what the words of
Jesus will do for everybody who keeps them in the inner
sanctuary of the mind. They will kindle a fire there that
will burn higher and higher until it licks the very canopy
of heaven and burns a hole in the blue vault of Truth,
revealing the wonders of God to the astonished eyes of man.
Jesus' words are varied, but all are food for the minds of
His disciples. None of them is too hard for him who would
be a disciple, nor is it too far from his present power of
realization. What you now comprehend is not the ultimate of
your ability in any direction. Your not consciously feeling
that you and the Father are one does not militate against
its being true. Men in high states of civilization lived
for centuries on this planet without knowing that it was a
globe and that just across the seas were other continents
inhabited like their own. The race today is in the same
position as regards the spiritual world. We
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look with longing eyes across a sea of doubts, fears, and
delusions, trying to catch sight of the "Promised Land,"
but there seems to be no one to pilot us over. But here
comes one who is to us a Columbus and who has given us a
ship and compass. He has sailed the sea and found the other
shore. He asks us to follow Him, and keep His words. His
words are the ship and compass.
In about twenty places in the New Testament Jesus is
recorded as saying in substance, "Follow me." When we
inquire into Jesus' teaching, it is evident that He meant
for us to follow His example of being receptive to God's
wisdom, peace, power, and health. For instance, let us
consider His healing of the man at the Pool of Bethesda who
had been afflicted with an infirmity for thirty-eight years.
Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which
is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porches. In these
lay a multitude of them that were sick, blind, halt,
withered. And a certain man was there, who had been thirty
and eight years in his infirmity. When Jesus saw him lying,
and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he
saith unto him, Wouldest thou be made whole? The sick man
answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is
troubled, to put me into the pool; but while I am coming,
another steppeth down before me. Jesus saith unto him,
Arise, take up thy bed, and walk. And straightway the man
was made whole, and took up his bed and walked.
This healing of the man at the pool represents the power of
the Christ (typified by Jesus) to restore the equilibrium
of the organism through the
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activity of spiritual ideas in consciousness, independently
of the healing methods utilized by the sense man. The true
spiritual healing method employs the word of authority, as
spoken by Jesus, which must be set into activity. Through
the power of the word the "infirmity" gives place to
perfect equalization and strength.
To the rich young man who desired to enter into eternal
life Jesus recommended the keeping of the commandments, but
in addition there was the inevitable "Sell that which thou
hast, and give to the poor . . . and come, follow me."
Faithfulness to law alone will never make you a follower of
Jesus in the regeneration. You must go deeper than this;
you must know the inner secrets of the universe. These are
revealed in Spirit, and Spirit is found only by those who
go about looking for it in an orderly way. People who have
for years been students of the science of Christ and who
have a clear intellectual perception of its truths are yet
outside the kingdom of Spirit. They anxiously ask, "Why is
it that I do not realize the presence of Spirit?"
Have you kept the "words" of Jesus? Have you said to
yourself in silence and aloud until the very ethers
vibrated with its truth, "I and the Father are one"? Have
you opened your mind by mentally repeating the one solvent
of crystallized conditions, "Even as thou, Father, art in
me, and I in thee"? This means mental discipline day after
day and night after night until the inertia of the mind is
overcome and the way opened for the descent of Spirit.
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The personal consciousness is like a house with all the
doors and windows barred. He who lives within may hear
voices without, but the doors and windows unlock from
within, and it is left to him to unfasten them. The doors
and windows of the mind are solidified thoughts, and they
swing loose when the right word is spoken to them. Jesus
voiced a whole army of right words, and if you will take up
His words and make them yours, they will open all the doors
of your mind, the light and air will come in, and in due
time you will be able to step forth.
No one can do this for you. You do not really want another
to do it although you sometimes think how nice it would be
if some master of spiritual ideas would suddenly help you
right into his understanding. But this is a childish dream
of the moment. You want to be yourself, and you can be
yourself only by living out your own life and finding its
issues at the Fountainhead. If it were possible for one
person to reveal the Truth to another, we should have
heaven cornered by cunning manipulators of mind and its
glories stored up in warehouses awaiting a higher market.
Let us be thankful that God is no respecter of persons;
that Truth cannot be revealed by one mortal to another. God
is a special, personal Father to every one of His children,
and from no other source can we get Truth.
Jesus, who has clearly revealed the Father in His
consciousness, tells all men how it came about. He points
out the way. He says, "I am the way, and the
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truth, and the life"; but there is always a condition
attached to its realization by the seeker. He must
"believe," he must "keep my words," "follow me." Summed up,
the condition is that by adopting Jesus' methods you will
find the same place in the Father that He found. But the
Father is Spirit and spiritual understanding is the open
sesame to His kingdom. The secrets of Jesus' words may be
said to be in sealed packages to be opened by those only to
whom is given "the mystery of the kingdom of God."
But Jesus did not peddle His doctrine. He did not copyright
His "words." He claimed to hold converse with the Father,
and He demonstrated extraordinary abilities in many ways in
substantiation of this claim. He did not found a sect or in
any way fence off His doctrine. He opened wide the way:
"Whosoever believeth on me" and "keepeth" My words--shall
do thus and so; shall do as I do and do greater things. He
made a special prayer to the Father that all who kept His
word might be made one with the Father as He was one with
Him.
The mighty "words" of Jesus are handed down to us. By using
them in the silent corridors of our own consciousness we
may come into the place where He now is.
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[Jesus Christ Heals]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
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