Chapter Eight: The Law of Grace

When you have gotten your mind and soul into right relationship with God or the divine Spirit, you do not have to seek, strive, struggle, or painstakingly select and decide as to your actions. God's spirit acting through you makes you immune from harm and wrong. Your mind being right, your actions must of necessity be right, because an act is but a thought in motion.

Then all of the harassing, details of life become simplified. What you shall say, how you shall dress, what the particular actions of the day shall be—all are as naught. Life becomes automatic, divinely so, and regulates itself if you but have the covenant of grace.

   —Elbert Hubbard.

WHEN YOU invoke a law of abundance that reaches beyond the plane of strictly human action, you must be prepared for a good many surprises. You will find that things that have always seemed very important to you are really not important at all, and that seemingly negligible considerations suddenly loom mountain high.

The method of attainment of the practical Christian is a spiritual method. It demands spiritual vision. Things often look quite different, viewed spiritually, from what they appear to be in material sight.

As you become accustomed to this "new" way of looking at things, often you will see that what usually has been termed chance or coincidence is the definite, though to human minds mysterious, working out of spiritual law.

The spiritual way of attainment is often called "the way of grace," because it comes as God's free gift, and not by arduous human effort. By this we must not understand that human effort is to be abandoned when divine aid is invoked, but

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rather that such effort is to be directed effort rather than an aimless, blind "striking back" at circumstances.

Working "under grace," you may suddenly feel impelled to write to a friend, including an item of information, only to find that your letter has crossed his in the mails, and that he needed just the word that you sent. Walking along the street, you may turn off to an unaccustomed route, and suddenly come face to face with some one that it is important for you to meet. Or you may unaccountably change your travel plans at the last minute, to learn later that by doing so you had avoided an accident.

Are such things "chance"? No, they are only "chance" to you when you do not recognize a law greater than "chance" working in your life. When you recognize and cooperate with divine law, the law of grace, "all things work together for good" for you.

Under the law of grace, one never seriously grieves over the miscarriage of human plans. Human dfs-appointments will so often prove, by the law of grace, to be divinely His appointments that one hesitates to condemn as evil any situation or combination of events.

Invoking the law of grace, you will witness the power of Spirit to bring harmony out of discord, abundance out of lack, health out of illness, blessings unnumbered out of what had seemed to be only troubles and confusion. An experience from one of the writer's early adventures in Truth

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may serve to illustrate the point.

I was working for a small wage, and my affairs were complicated by other problems that seemed discouraging in the last degree, when by "chance" I attended a Truth meeting, after a period of staying away in the belief that while Truth might work for others it apparently would not work for me. It was a winter night, and the weather was very disagreeable, the more so to me because I had a very long way to go by street car, and a long walk from the car line to my home. I wondered why I had come. Curiously, a similar thought was in the speaker's mind. Jokingly he referred to the inclement weather, and said that it seemed ridiculous for him to have left California, where he had a charming home, to face the cold and snow of the northland. "But," he added, "I believe I have come here for just one person."

With his words, something was suddenly galvanized to attention within me.

I knew that I was that one person!

Perhaps it was only natural for me to feel that I was that person. Surely my need of inspiration and direction was great, and no doubt there were many others present who felt, as I did, that they were "that one person," too, but the conviction seemed like a special revelation to me, not to be gainsaid or disputed.

I attended meetings frequently after that.

I came to know the teacher well. I began to "demonstrate." With an improved mental attitude

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my work improved. I received one increase in wages, then another. Meantime I was studying Truth and trying to apply to my affairs the new ideas that I was receiving. New mental vistas opened before me. Many things that I learned seemed familiar to me, as if I had always known them but had merely forgotten them for a time. Later I learned that this was a common phenomenon. At that time, however, it seemed amazing to me.

One day the teacher said to me, "Would you like to be a teacher?"

"You mean, a teacher such as you are?"

"Yes."

"There is nothing in the world I should like so much to do," I answered. And in the years that have followed I have never regretted that statement, or wished to modify it.

"Then, why don't you?" he asked.

A thousand objections came to my mind. I had never spoken a word in public, except to read a few secretarial notes at church-membership meetings, an agonizing experience. I was painfully self-conscious. I had no voice. I had no training (as I thought) for such work.

"Nevertheless, you can do it, if you really want to seriously enough." [TruthUnity note: Ernest Wilson's memoirs is entitled: "If You Want To Enough." I hope to be able to share the text of this wonderful book one day here on TruthUnity.]

I thought a great deal about our conversation. I could see no way to bridge the wide gap between what I was doing and what I should like to be doing, yet somehow I never quite lost the gleam that I first caught in that statement, "I have come

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here for just one person."

Before long the teacher returned to his home. I felt more lost in many ways than I had before "chance" took me to that first meeting. Lost, but with this difference—that I knew now that somehow things were going to change. Had Hutchinson's book, "One Increasing Purpose," been written at that time, and had I been familiar with it, I should no doubt have said, as did Simon of the book, "God is on my trail."

Then quite suddenly things began to happen. I received an offer of employment in the California city where the teacher lived. A little later the phone at my office rang. It was the ticket agent of a transcontinental railway calling me.

"Are you expecting a ticket to California?" he asked.

"No, but," for I was beginning to catch the magic of the law of grace, "there might be one."

"There is," he answered. "Come and get it."

And I did. There were other lessons for me to learn before I got the position, but get it I did, and it lasted until I was ready to teach.

Under God's law of grace, adverse outward circumstance, even influence, position, and power, seem to count for very little. Perhaps in His sight they are not important. How can any human power seem important in its resistance to infinite power? How can humanly appropriated wealth, however vast, seem important in comparison to the measureless abundance of Spirit? How can titles, possessions, appearances, seem important

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to Him who looks upon the heart? How can a single span of life seem important in view of infinite life?

The student who would follow Christ must be steadfast, most of all when evil appears. "Only be strong and very courageous, to observe to do according to all the law ... turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest have good success whithersoever thou goest." The demands upon you may seem greater than your strength can bear, greater than your resources can satisfy. You may seem to be outnumbered, handicapped in a thousand ways. Nevertheless, if you would find the blessing of Spirit and invoke the law of grace, you must not run from the problem that faces you. Patiently, trustfully, you must do your best, however little, inadequate, or useless it may appear. That is your reasonable service. Do not neglect it, for it is all-important, though its importance is not in itself, but in the connection that it establishes between you and the Power that answers your need.

A business man in great financial distress once went to a Truth practitioner for help. His obligations reached into the thousands of dollars, and his creditors were pressing him for an immediate settlement. He was desperate.

"What have you done to meet the situation?" asked the practitioner.

"I have tried in every way that I know to raise the money, but collections have been very poor and the banks will not loan me the money.

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My friends have been more than generous with their help, but still I have been unable to pay my just bills. My creditors are about to close me out," he answered.

"Isn't there anything you can do?" the practitioner insisted.

"No, I've done everything I can."

"Have you prayed?"

"Prayed! Man, this is no time to pray. It is time to do something. My creditors are demanding thousands of dollars and you ask me if I have prayed!"

"This is just the time to pray, if you haven't done so before," the practitioner answered calmly. "Why did you come to me?"

"I don't know. You'll do anything when you're desperate," he answered.

"Are you willing to pray with me?"

"Yes."

Together they prayed. At first the practitioner spoke aloud, and the business man simply listened. Then they sat in silence for a time. The practitioner's eyes were closed, so the patient closed his eyes, too. Finally the practitioner spoke again. "I give as I would receive, richly, freely, joyously, and promptly," he said. "Will you repeat that with me?"

They repeated the statement together several times. Then, "I should like to do that, but I can't. That's just the trouble," the business man said.

"Haven't you anything to give?"

"Not nearly enough."

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"But you have something. You could give what you have."

"No use. They wouldn't accept it. They are demanding all that I owe."

"Try it. Give what you have. You have not really done your best until you have done all that you can. Apportion what you can pay among your creditors, and at least they will know by that that your intentions are good. Until you have done that you will not know that the case is hopeless; and nothing is ever hopeless when we do our best."

He did as the practitioner suggested; a simple thing to do, perhaps, and one that possibly would occur to almost any of us as we read this article; but what occurs to us as being sensible and logical when we are calm and poised and unbeset by a sense of pressure and anxiety may be quite different from what we think and do when we are harassed and distressed. His creditors were impressed by his new spirit of courage, and by his gameness in being willing to pay part of what he owed them—even without any assurance that they would not take over his business and leave him worse off than he would have been by holding on to the little money that he had. They reached an agreement by which his business—and, even more important, his spirit—was saved.

What we need most, when we are faced by ambitions or by problems that dwarf our apparent resources, is courage to use in good faith what we have. Perhaps you, too, say that you would like to give richly, freely, joyously, and promptly,

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but that you cannot do so. If so, you must know that the richness, freedom, joyousness, and promptness of your resources do not depend upon their quantity, but upon the spirit with which you use them. If your resources seem small, all the more reason why you should put into them the abundance of Spirit. The abundance of Spirit with which you infuse your resources will help to increase them.

Remember, too, that your success does not depend wholly upon yourself. "God gave the increase." Life will respond by meeting any honest, intelligent effort more than halfway.

The student of practical Christianity must learn to trust life. No man of himself alone can possibly exert enough effort, mental or physical, to bring into his world all that he desires; but any man using his powers intelligently, in cooperation with the law of increase, can call forth abundance to meet all his needs and to spare.

Once, as a lad, the writer boarded a street car with a heavy suitcase. The car was crowded, and he was obliged to stand. The suitcase seemed to grow heavier and heavier. He shifted it from one hand to the other, and then used both. Finally a kindly man turned to him, and said, "Let the world hold it up, sonny, and rest yourself." The thought is an old one. It has been told with many variations by many persons. Doubtless the idea was not original with the man who voiced it, but it was original to me, and it has impressed me many times since.

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God gives the increase. The help that He gives is no less divine, no less truly of Him, because it manifests through natural laws. How else should we expect Him to manifest? Part of our fascinating task in life is to become acquainted with His laws, but our knowledge of them does not determine their operation. Our knowledge simply gives us greater freedom and greater confidence in their use.

What we do is far less important, spiritually, than how we do it and why. What we do is important in establishing a connection with, and in putting into motion in our life, forces greater than those that we ourselves possess. I have seen a whole bank of sand transformed into a veritable avalanche by the dislodging of one tiny pebble that started the movement. Crowds have been transformed into mobs by the cry of a single voice, ominous, terrible, "Fire!"—and many a mob has been restored to reason by the single voice of courage and reason.

What we do, only occasionally outstandingly significant in itself, becomes mighty and powerful by reason of the spiritual forces that it releases— in us, in others, or in both. To know this is to find faith in doing well the seemingly insignificant and inconsequential thing. Nothing is insignificant that invokes spiritual power. When you say, "I give as I would receive, richly, freely, joyously, and promptly," and accompany the statement by the fact, you are calling upon mighty spiritual powers of increase and bounty. The results of

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your statement are not limited to the carrying powers of your voice, or to the masterful quality of your thought, or to the resources that you consciously release when you give what you have. Compared to all that there is to be given in life, the wealth of Croesus or, more modernly, of a Henry Ford is of little more significance than the widow's mite. What you give, of service, of money, of thought and word, is less important than the spirit in which you give it. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith Jehovah."

Do not fear the limitations of circumstances. Do not fear an evil outcome to events simply because you cannot quite see their favorable culmination. No combination of circumstances, no appearance of adverse power or of evil, no disease of the flesh, can withstand the power of God. "Fear not ye, neither be dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God's."

You have only to keep your relationship to God right, and to follow His leading. You are not to be inactive, although even inactivity is better than to be active in the wrong way. Rather you are to be active in the service of God. This means that you are to make your thoughts and acts such as to be open channels for His expression. You are not to be limited and overcome by your own idea of things. It was your own idea that got you into trouble, if you are in trouble. Your next step is to seek His ideas, and to act with Him in the manifestation. No man of himself has power that amounts to very much. Any man, working with God and thus making God's power available through his life, has unlimited power. This is "working under grace."

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This realization was the secret of the amazing power of Jesus. He acted not from Himself, but from God. He was loving, He was unselfish, and He was unafraid.

He knew the power of the world. He knew how fierce and unreasoning its displeasure could be, how great its power to inflict suffering, how quickly its favor could be changed to scorn. He knew how bitter could be the pangs of poverty, how hurtful the pains of the flesh; He knew, even, the touch of death itself; yet He remained loving, and He overcame the world and all its vices and its ills because He was unafraid.

How could He be loving, unafraid, in the midst of such things? Because He knew something greater than the world could offer.

He knew something that has set Him apart from other men, deified Him, and made His name blessed through the ages, something that enabled Him to be in the world and not of it, to be strong and steadfast and unafraid, hence invincible, in a mad, mad world of the senses.

He knew who He was.

He knew Himself to be the Son of God.

He knew that the power and the presence of God are greater than anything that mankind fears, and He knew God to be kind and loving as well as powerful. He was so sure of the Father's

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power that no other power seemed real to Him.

Men cower in the presence of superior physical force. He faced the wrath of Rome unmoved.

Men cower in the presence of superior intellect and erudition. As a youth of twelve He faced the wise men in the Temple, and confounded them by His spiritual discernment.

Men cower in the presence of disease. Time and again He calmly looked upon the ills of the flesh that strike terror to the hearts of other men, and by invoking a Power greater than that of disease He dispelled such ills.

Men shrink from lack, yet His understanding of God's providing presence was so clear that He did not fear to be homeless or without money or food. He knew what most men only wish to believe: that God's bounty is everywhere present, and that, knowing the law of its manifestation, one may call it forth even where it seems to be lacking.

Men cower most of all before the specter of death. He was so secure in the knowledge of God as omnipresent life that He called forth life in the body of His friend Lazarus after it had lain for four days in the tomb. Then, when the fear of other men demanded His own life to assure them of their power, He quickened His own broken body.

He overcame the world and all in it that men most dread and fear, by His serene, loving fearlessness.

Men quarrel and fight and lie and kill because

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of fear. Only as they overcome fear—by finding that which is greater than what they fear—can they dwell in love and peace and plenty.

This is the outstanding message of the Christ, a message of abiding faith in the literal and practical presence of a loving and powerful Father-God, a presence whose perfect love casts out all fear; a faith that enabled Him to say when the darkest shadow of His life was upon Him, "Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."

All things became possible to Him because He knew the all of Truth, because He was unafraid, and because He acted in faith upon the Truth that He knew. By the power of the same Truth, the same fearlessness, the same active faith, all things become possible to us, also.

Fear not, then, the things of the world, however unpromising they appear to be. Fear not that God is not with you. He is always with you. His power and love and wisdom are yours to call upon at any moment. Fear only one thing—fear not to be with God; and you must not stop with even that fear, but must reach past it—into active unity with God.

God is with us all, and in us all, and over us all. Our part is to be with Him. Our unity with Him must become secure and steady. Have you ever observed an electric lamp screwed loosely into the socket? There may be plenty of current, and the lamp may be a good one, but, if the connection is unstable, the light will flicker on and off uncertainly. So it is with us. We must be

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steadfast, unwavering, and constant in our loyalty to the power of God. Thus we keep the current of His power constant in our life, and insure its being the ever efficient, blessed channel for His bounties.

Primarily, only one thing keeps us from our heritage of good. It is the temptation spoken of in the Lord's prayer, the temptation to believe in evil. Jesus said, "Lead us not into [leave us not in] temptation, but deliver us from evil" (A. v.). The temptation to believe in any of the myriad forms of evil is the trap that insnares many a student, and prevents him from completing his demonstrations of the good.

Your good depends upon you, but not upon you alone. Your part is to be a good transmitter of power from on high. You must clear your thought of doubt, of fear, of a sense of insufficiency or inability, and you must do your humble, simple best, inadequate though it may seem. Faith is the very substance of things hoped for; little though your resources are or appear to be, you must have faith—and prove it by doing your best.

I do my best in faith that God will give the increase.