The Collected Works of Prentice Mulford. Prentice Mulford
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of our natures to sense such happiness. Life is eternal in the discovery and realization of these joys. Their source is inexhaustible. Their quality and character must be unknown until they reach us. In the words of the Apostolic record, "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him."
In so-called ordinary things we get out of our lives and our senses but the merest fragment of the pleasure they can be made capable of giving us. Our food is capable of giving far more pleasure to the sense of taste than it may now. We do not get nearly as much pleasure from the ear and eye as they are capable of giving. With bodies more highly developed and refined, food when taken into the stomach should act as a healthy stimulant and give that impulse, vigour and bounding life which it gives to the young animal. The movement of every muscle, as in walking, can be made to give pleasure.
Through following the Spiritual Law, that peace of mind "which passeth all understanding" is in the future to come to many. That it has not in the past been realized is no proof it will not be. Life, then, whether its forces are in activity or at rest, will ne perpetual Elysium.
But millions of our race do not look forward to such joyous possibilities at all. They have never heard of them. The great majority would not believe did they hear of them. They press on in mind to what?
To a belief which grows stronger with years that life is short, that old age and decay are absolute certainties and must come to all, that at a certain age of the body its powers must decrease, and that as weak and feeble old men and women now are before their eyes, so, in time, they must be, and that one great aim of life should be to lay up a store of money to "provide for old age."
These are not pleasant things to contemplate. The many do not contemplate them. They shut their eyes to these gloomy views of their future, but they believe in them just the same. They believe and dread. If they believe, they must in mind press on to such belief. It is this pressing forward that makes of the thing believed in, a material or physical reality.
"Providing for old age" makes the old age of the body, because the person so "providing" sees him or herself for years as helpless and decrepit. What the mind so projects for the future it is making for the future. A material thing (money) is relied on to secure one from ills, when all material things are quite powerless to prevent such ills. The rich man with an aged, worn, diseased body can only buy with his money a better room and bed to live in than the poor man. His money does not prevent disease and weakness. It cannot give him an appetite for the costliest food. In pain and anguish the Emperor is in all respects on the same level with the pauper, for in extreme misery a soft bed and numerous attendants give little or no comfort.
Now in all this, thought element worked in ignorance in the wrong direction proves that it brings a result, but a woeful one. It is only the cultivation of the power of the spirit over the body that can prevent these ills. That power we first begin to cultivate and increase when we come to recognize and believe that mind or spirit is the power governing our bodies, and that whatever mind persistently images, thinks or imagines, it makes. Now, unconsciously, we image in the wrong direction. We think the old age or wearing out of the body must be, because, so far as we know, it always has been. We press on in imagination and unwelcome belief to gloom and physical decay. We hold these sad pictures ever in our minds. Having no faith in the brighter view, we do not look toward that view to life, and ever increasing life.
In the New Testament (the last revelation) we find the Christian and Apostolic teaching full of the sentiment of life, and life everlasting. Death is not argued or implied as an absolute necessity, but as an "enemy" which is ultimately to be destroyed.
It was never said or implied that the advent of "greater revelations" was not to be until millions on millions of years in the future. The dawn of such advent may be now. It is now, not because of any one man's writings or assertions, but because many minds are now open to the reception of the greater revelation, which for centuries has been knocking at humanity's door, but could not enter by reason of the obtuseness and dull ear of those whom it sought to arouse and benefit.
The only dead people in the Universe are the spiritually dead, those "dead in trespasses and sins" who have not as yet learned to forget or rather to refuse to live in and depend on the relatively dead or inert element of earth instead of that drawn from a higher source.
Still the few in the vanguard pressing onward are crying out: "Why, here under our noses is the greatest of all motive powers! Why, human thought is a real element, a real force, darting out like electricity from every man's or woman's mind, injuring or relieving, killing or curing, building fortunes or tearing them down, working for good or ill, every moment, night or day, asleep or awake, carving, moulding and shaping people's faces and making them ugly or agreeable.
Before you give so much of your thought to others, ask. in view of these possibilities, if some is not due to yourself. If you can build yourself up into a living power--if you can, with others, prove that physical health and vigour can take the place of old age--that all disease can be banished from the body--that material riches and necessities can come of laws and methods not now generally practised, and that life is not the short, unsatisfactory, hopeless thing which at the best it now is, will you not to the world at large do a thousand-fold more good than if you expended your thought in feeding a few hungry mouths or relieving a few physical necessities of others?
Our richest men, our rulers, our famous men in art, science and war, our professors, our ministers, our greatest successes, what is their end? Weakness decay and disease. Our more thoughtful people admit that by the time they have learned something of life, it is time to die. The obituary from the living is at best an apology for the unsatisfactory ending of a human life. Mankind demand something better. That demand, that cry has been swelling and increasing in volume for many centuries. Demand must always be answered. This demand is now being answered, first to the few, next to the many. New light, new knowledge and new results in human life and all it involves, are coming to this earth.
THE GOD IN YOU
Chapter 1. POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE THOUGHT
Chapter 2. SOME PRACTICAL MENTAL RECIPES
Chapter 3. SELF-TEACHING; OR, THE ART OF LEARNING HOW TO LEARN
Chapter 5. THE ART OF FORGETTING
Chapter 6. SPELLS; OR, THE LAW OF CHANGE
Chapter 7. REGENERATION; OR, BEING BORN AGAIN
INTRODUCTION
THERE is a gospel older than Christianity, older than Buddhism, older than Brahmanism, older than the classic religions of Greece and Rome, older than the worship of idols and the worship of ancestors. This gospel has been preached under varying forms and names, and with stress laid upon different aspects of its truth and its applicability to differing conditions of civilisation and to the different characters of the peoples to whom the message has been addressed. It is probably as old as the earliest traditions of civilised man, and the preaching of it becomes a periodical necessity through