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Lessons In Truth
Lesson 11
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[Lessons In Truth]
[Emily Cady's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Spiritual Gifts
Lesson Eleven
1. It is very natural for the human heart first to set out
in search of Truth because of the "loaves and the fishes"
(Mt. 15:36).
2. Perhaps it is not too much to say that the majority of
people first turn to God because of some weakness, some
failure, some almost unbearable want in their lives. After
having vainly tried in all other ways to overcome or to
satisfy the want, they turn in desperation to God.
3. There is in the heart of even the most depraved human
being, though he would not for worlds have others know it,
an instinctive feeling that somewhere there is a power that
is able to give him just what he wants; that if he could
only reach that which to his conception is God, he could
prevail on Him to grant the things desired. This feeling is
itself God-given. It is the divine self, though only a
spark at the center of the man's being, suggesting to him
the true remedy for all his ills.
4. Especially have people been led to seek Truth for the
reward, "for the very works' sake" (Jn. 14:11), during the
last few years, since they have come to know that God is
not only able, but willing, to deliver them from all the
burdens of their everyday life. Everyone
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wants to be free, free, free as the birds of the air--free
from sickness, free from poverty, free from all forms of
evil; and he has a right to be; it is a God-given right.
5. Thus far nearly all teaching has limited the
manifestation of infinite love to one form--that of
healing, Sickness, seemingly incurable disease, and
suffering reigned on every side, and every sufferer wanted
to be free. We had not yet known that there was willingness
as there was power--aye, more, that there was intense
desire--on the part of our Father to give us something more
than sweet, patient submission to suffering.
6. When first the truth was taught that the divine presence
ever lives in man as perfect life, and can be drawn on by
our recognition and faith to come forth into full and
abounding health, it attracted widespread attention, and
justly so. Both teachers and students centered their gaze
on this one outcome of a spiritual life, losing sight of
any larger, fuller, or more complete manifestation of the
indwelling Father. Teachers told all their pupils most
emphatically that this knowledge of Truth would enable them
to heal, and they devoted all their teaching to explanation
of the principles and to giving formulas and other
instructions for healing the body. Time has shown that
there are larger and broader views of the truth about
spiritual gifts.
7. Healing of the body is beautiful and good. Power to heal
is a divine gift, and as such you are fully justified in
seeking it. But God wants to give you infinitely
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more.
8. Why should you and I restrict the limitless One to the
bestowal of a particular gift, unless, indeed, we be so
fairly consumed with an inborn desire for it that we are
sure that it is God's highest desire for us? In that case
we shall not have to try to heal. Healing will flow from us
wherever we are. Even in a crowd of people, without any
effort of our own, the one who needs healing will receive
it from us; that one will "touch" (Mt. 9:21) us, as did the
one woman in all the multitude jostling and crowding
against Jesus. Only one touched Him.
9. Healing is truly a "branch" of "the vine" (Jn. 15:4),
but it is not the only branch. There are many branches, all
of which are necessary to the perfect vine, which is
seeking through you and me to bear much fruit. What God
wants is that we shall grow into such conscious oneness
with Him, such realization that He who is the substance of
all good really abides in us, that "ask whatsoever ye will,
and it shall be done unto you" (Jn. 15:7).
10. If you are faithfully and earnestly living what Truth
you know, and still find that your power to heal is not so
great as it was at first, recognize it as all good. Be
assured, no matter what anyone else says to you or thinks,
that the seeming failure does not mean loss of power. It
means that you are to let go of the lesser, in order that
you may grasp the whole, in which the lesser is included.
Do not fear for a moment to let go of just one little
branch of divine power; choose
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rather to have the highest thoughts of infinite mind, let
them be what they may, fulfilled through you. We need to
take our eyes off the ends of the branches, the results,
and keep them centered in the vine.
11. You are a vessel for some purpose. If, when the time
comes, you let go cheerfully, without humiliation or shame
or sense of failure, your tense, rigid mortal grasp on some
particular form of manifestation, such as healing, and
"desire earnestly the greater gifts" (Cor. 12:31), whatever
they may be in your individual case, you will be simply
marvelous in the eyes of men. These works will be done
without effort on your part, because they will be God,
omnipotent, omniscient, manifesting Himself through you in
His own chosen direction.
12. Paul said, "Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I
would not have you ignorant. . .Now there are diversities
of gifts, but the same Spirit. . .For to one is given
through the Spirit the word of wisdom; and to another the
word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit: to another
faith. . .to another gifts of healings. . .to another
workings of miracles; and to another prophecy; and to
another discernings of spirits: to another divers kinds of
tongues; and to another the interpretation of tongues" (1
Cor. 12:1,4,8-10).
13. The same Spirit, always and forever the same, and one
God, one Spirit, but in different forms of manifestation.
The gift of healing is no more, no greater, than the gift
of prophecy; the gift of prophecy is no greater than faith,
for faith (when it is really God's
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faith manifested through us), even as a grain of mustard
seed, shall be able to remove mountains; the working of
miracles is no greater than the power to discern spirits
(or the thoughts and intents of other men's hearts, which
are open always to Spirit). And "greatest of all these is
love" (1 Cor. 13:13); for "love never faileth" (1 Cor.
13:8) to melt down all forms of sin, sorrow, sickness, and
trouble. "Love never faileth."
14. "But all these worketh the one and the same Spirit,
dividing to each one severally even as he will. For as the
body is one. . .all the members of the body, being many,
are one body; so also is Christ. . . .If the whole body
were an eye (or gift of healing), where were the hearing?
If the whole were hearing, where the smellig? . . .Ad the
eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you." "But
now hath God set the members each one of them in the body,
even as it please him" (1 Cor. 12:11, 12, 17, 21, 18).
15. Thus Paul enumerates some of the free "gifts" of the
Spirit to those who will not limit the manifestations of
the Holy One, but yield themselves to Spirit's desire
within them. Why should we fear to abandon ourselves to the
workings of infinite love and wisdom? Why be so afraid to
let Him have His own way with us, and through us?
16. Has not the gift of healing, the only gift we have thus
far sought, been a good and blessed one, not only to
ourselves, but to all with whom we come in contact?
17. Then why should we fear to wait upon God
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with a perfect willingness that the Holy Spirit manifest
itself through us as it will, knowing that, whatever the
manifestation, it will be good--all good to us and to those
around us!
18. Oh, for more men who have the courage to abandon
themselves utterly to infinite will--men who dare let go
every human being for guidance, and, seeking the Christ
within themselves, let the manifestation be what He wills!
19. Such courage might possibly mean, and probably would
mean at first, a seeming failure, a going down from some
apparent success that had been in the past. But the going
down would only mean a mighty coming up, a most glorious
resurrection of God into visibility through you in His own
chosen way, right here and now. The failure, for the time,
would only mean a grand, glorious success a little later on.
20. Do not fear failure, but call failure good; for it
really is. Did not Jesus stand an utter failure, to all
appearances, when He stood dumb before Pilate, all His
cherished principles come to naught, unwilling to deliver
Himself, or to "demonstrate" over the agonizing
circumstances of His position?
21. But had He not seemed to fail right at that point,
there never would have been the infinitely grander
demonstration of the Ressurrection a little later on.
"Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it
abideth by itself alone: but if it die, it beareth much
fruit" (Jn. 12:24). If you have clung to one spiritual gift
because you were taught that, and you begin to
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fail, believe me, it is only the seeming death, the seeming
disappearance, of one gift, in order that out of it may
spring many new gifts--brighter, higher, fuller ones,
because they are the ones that God has chosen for you.
22. Your greatest work will be done in your own
God-appointed channel. If you will let Spirit possess you
wholly, if you will to have the highest will done in you
and through you continually, you will be quickly moved by
it out of your present limitations, which a half success
always indicates, into a manifestation as much fuller and
more perfect and beautiful as is the new grain than the old
seed, which had to fall into the ground and die.
23. Old ways must die. Failure is only the death of the old
that there may be the hundredfold following. If there comes
to you a time when you do not demonstrate over sickness, as
you did at first, do not think that you need lean on others
entirely. It is beautiful and good for another to "heal"
you bodily by calling forth universal life through you; but
right here there is something higher and better for you.
24. Spirit, the Holy Spirit, which is God in movement,
wants to teach you something, to open a bigger, brighter
way to you. This apparent failure is His call to you to
arrest your attention and turn you to Him.
"Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace:
Thereby good shall come unto thee."
--(Job 22:21)
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Turn to the divine presence within yourself. Seek Him. Be
still before Him. Wait upon God quietly, earnestly, but
constantly and trustingly, for days--aye weeks, if need be!
Let Him work in you, and sooner or later you will spring up
into a resurrected life of newness and power that you never
before dreamed of.
25. When these transition periods come, in which God would
lead us higher, should we get frightened or discouraged, we
only miss the lesson that He would teach, and so postpone
the day of receiving our own fullest, highest gift. In our
ignorance and fear, we are thus hanging on to the old grain
of wheat that we can see, not daring to let it go into the
ground and die, lest there be no resurrection, no newness
of life, nothing bigger and grander to come out of it.
26. Oh, do not let us longer fear our God, who is all good,
and who longs only to make us each one a giant instead of a
pygmy!
27. What we all need to do above everything else is to
cultivate the acquaintance or consciousness of Spirit
within ourselves. We must take our attention off results,
and seek to live the life. Results will be "added unto"
(Mt. 6:33) us in greater measure when we turn our thoughts
less to the "works" and more to embodying the indwelling
Christ in our entire being. We have come to a time when
there must be less talking about Truth and teaching others
to do so. There must be more incorporating of Truth in our
very flesh and bone.
28. How are you to do this?
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29. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (Jn. 14:6),
says the Christ at the center of your being.
30. "I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth
(consciously) in me, and I in him (in His consciousness),
the same beareth much fruit: for apart from me (or severed
from me in your consciousness) ye can do nothing. . .If ye
abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye
will, and it shall be done unto you" (Jn. 15:5,7).
31. I do assure you, as do all teachers, that you can bring
good things of whatever kind you desire into your life by
holding to them as yours in the invisible until they become
manifest. But, beloved, do you not see that your highest,
your first--aye, your continual--thought should be to seek
the abiding in Him, to seek the knowing as a living
reality, not as a finespun theory that He abides in you?
After that, ask what you will, be it power to heal, to cast
out demons, or even the "greater works" (Jn. 14:12), and
"it shall be done unto you" (Jn. 15:7).
32. There is one Spirit--"One God and Father of all, who is
over all, and through all, and in all. But unto each one of
us was the grace (or free gift) given according to the
measure of the gift of Christ" in us (Eph. 4:6,7).
33. "For which cause I put thee in remembrance that thou
stir up the gift of God, which is in thee" (2 Tim. 1:6).
34. Do not be afraid, "for God gave us not a spirit of
fearfulness; but of power and love and discipline"
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(2 Tim. 1:7).
35. It is all one and the same Spirit. To be the greatest
success, you do not want my gift, nor do I want yours; each
wants his own, such as will fit his size and shape, his
capacity and desires, such as not the human mind of us, but
the highest in us, shall choose. Seek to be filled with
Spirit, to have the reality of things incarnated in larger
degree in your consciousness. Spirit will reveal to your
understanding your own specific gift, or manner of God's
desired manifestation through you.
36. Let us not desert our own work, our own God within us,
to gaze or pattern after our neighbor. Let us not seek to
make his gift ours; let us not criticize his failure to
manifest any specific gift. Whenever he "fails," give
thanks to God that He is leading him up into a higher
place, where there can be a fuller and more complete
manifestation of the divine presence through him.
37. And "I. . .beseech you to walk worthily of the calling
wherewith ye were called, with all lowliness and meekness,
with long suffering, forbearing one another in love; giving
diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of
peace" (Eph. 4:1-3).
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