Chapter One: Beyond the End of Things

I held it truth, with him who sings
   To one clear harp in divers tones,
   That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
      —Tennyson.

When you are "at the end of your rope" there are three things that you can do. You can let go, you can tie a knot in the rope and hang on, or you can splice the rope and begin again! None of these ideas is original, and only one of them is worth serious consideration. The first is destructive, the second is negative, and only the third is constructive.

If you look beyond the end of anything you will find a fresh beginning. The trouble with many persons who reach "the end of things" is that they let pain, or grief, or discouragement keep them from looking further along. If they would keep on, they would come to a fresh beginning.

The Greatest of men faced defeat, torture, death on the cross, but He had faith to look beyond to the resurrection, and He thereby wrested triumph from defeat.

Once, into a little Emerson study class of which I was a member, there came a stranger. She was dressed in somber black. I learned later that she had recently been widowed and was left virtually

Page 12

penniless, with no material resources, and with five small children to rear. Apparently she was at the end of her rope. The stalwart spirit of Emerson's words aroused new hope and faith in her. She refused longer to admit defeat. With the love of her children and with her desire to keep her family intact as an incentive, she began anew. Instead of mourning the loss of, her husband, she made her life and that of her children a monument to his memory.

She made wonderful discoveries beyond "the end of things." She became most successful in business, provided a beautiful home and a fine education for her children, and became the unknown benefactor of hundreds of persons, as well. Some years ago a famous opera star faced the end of her career. Her voice no longer had the power and flexibility demanded by her roles. She decided to become a motion-picture actress, but her films were only mildly successful. Instead of trying to conceal the changes that time, and perhaps a change in mental outlook, were making in her voice and appearance, she went abroad, courageously discarded a singing method to which she had devoted all her life, and began again. She developed an entirely new method of singing, and with it a new personality. Freed from the anxiety and worry of trying to maintain a position for which she had begun to fear that she was no longer quite suited, she seemed to find the secret of rejuvenation. Her face, framed in softly graying hair, had a new youthfulness of appearance,

Page 13

her voice displayed new qualities of tone and charm in the Lieder that displaced operatic arias in her concert programs. She proved to herself and to others that for her "the end of things" had become only a challenge and a new opportunity!

At an age when many young men are just getting their foothold in the business world, one young man not long ago faced "the end of things" in his life. Transgressions against society had brought him a long gray stretch of years in prison. But he became interested in Unity, and is interesting some of his fellow prisoners in the study of Truth. He has become a member of the prison band, and he is carving out a career as a writer of verse. His poems have appeared in many of the national magazines, some of them in Unity publications, and the story of his comeback has been told to the readers of one of the national magazines devoted to articles of the "success" type. For him "the end of things" was really the beginning, perhaps the first really good square start he had yet had, even though it was made in the gray shadows of a penitentiary. We believe in him, and we have faith with him that the freedom that he has begun to find in Truth will one day lead him out of the grim shadows into the sunlight.

A woman who for years had been an invalid came into the study of practical Christianity, and was impressed by the desperate need of many who sought its help as a last resort. Inspired by that need, she arose from her couch of pain, and became a widely known and successful healer.

Page 14

"Their need was so much greater than my own that mine was forgotten in trying to help a little," is the way she explained the miracle.

A financier was faced with the ruin of his vast promotion plans. He was content to admit defeat and to yield to a desire to lead a life of obscurity until one of the humbler of his stockholders visited him, a little old lady who confessed that her life savings had been intrusted to his care and that she had faith that he would be able to save them for her. Inspired by her avowal, he "came back" and rewon his lost fortune.

When you come to "the end of things" in some part of your life, or even, as it sometimes seems, in all parts of your life, there is only one thing to do, and that is to begin again. Nothing that expresses failure is ever final. In the larger view of things, life knows no failure. Obstacles and delays may appear, but in the long run life goes along over them or around them.

In the history of mankind, civilizations have fallen time and again, but always new life and progress have risen again, phoenixlike, from the ashes of the past. The forces of life cannot be destroyed. He who admits failure is out of harmony with the eternal plan of life. Life knows no failure.

Life persists because life is of God.

God can know no failure. He works in and through humanity, and despite our apparent obliviousness to this fact His work persists. He works in us to accomplish His divine will. That

Page 15

will for man is life, health, success, happiness. Knowing His purpose, we must likewise know that whatever contradicts that purpose is itself a contradiction. It cannot persist. Only that which is like the Creator is worthy of being.

Wise indeed is the man who in the face of apparent failure can say within himself: "God works in me to will and to do whatsoever He wishes me to do, and God cannot fail!" Such a man is in stride with the upward, progressive movement of life. The mark of success is upon him.