Brotherhood of Life

Sister; I will repeat what I told you before, and you destroyed as merely personal. It applies to anyone else who has lost all or part of any of their five senses. The Law never varies.

I told you that it puzzled us to know why, before you had time to commit any sin, scarlet fever had destroyed your eyes to such an extent you had to forego all those pursuits that you were both fitted for and loved best. We had been here long enough to see that the loss of sight always indicated brutal selfishness and injury of another. Why then were you stricken, when you were guilty of neither of these?

Harry always insisted that reincarnation would solve many baffling problems, did we only accept that theory of life. We knew there was no injustice in the universe, hence there must be somewhere a perfectly good and just reason for your loss of sight; a moral reason. There are no physical expressions anywhere without a moral or spiritual cause. So without any prejudice we started to discover the Law. Harry found a teacher whose task is to read the records of life, past and present, and by these records he found that the individual soul lived many earth lives in order to gather its education, or evolve its God-self.

He saw away back in the experience of your soul that you had wantonly put out the eyes of a little child, then abandoned it to its fate. For this brutal and selfish act you, because of your ignorance, must learn that such an act was wrong. Being ignorant and blind of soul, it took a long, long time to teach you the real lesson of blindness. Four times you were born blind, and always you were unhappy and mourned your cruel fate. Three times then you were given partial sight. Still, through life after life, you thought only of your own privations, your own lack of opportunity to be great. Then little by little the bitterness melted out of your heart. Resentment at your condition passed into a cheerful acceptance of conditions. Only within a few years now, has light dawned in your soul.

Now you feel a sort of despair that the greatest loss of all comes through your being helpless to serve those you love. You cannot read to your boy, nor to your husband, nor to your parents, whose sight is going also. This hurts. This impotence when help is needed is maddening, and this suffering has paid your debt. You will never be blind again.

Not what you lost, but what you could not give! Not what any of us suffer, no matter where, for our personal privation, but what we are powerless to give others, is the illumination of the Law.

So long as those without money bemoan their personal privation they will be poor over and over again. Until they see that poverty prevents them from helping those in a worse plight they have missed their lesson.

To serve our fellows is one of the two fundamental means of growth. Until we accept that, we remain in the kindergarten of life, and suffer blindly. There is no torment equal to a baffled desire to serve. After we learn that, we can enter the class which has dominion over all the elements of earth. We then may wield real power.

Jesus taught this law of service over and over, to a blind people. They, as well as you, worshipped gain. Success meant the possession of material things. The conception of success with most of you has not altered much. You know nothing of power—real power. You can torture a dog or a man until through fear of physical violence he obeys your command. Power could have obedience more complete through the voluntary service of both dog and man because of love.

True love casteth out fear, and there has now and then been a man so fearless, so full of love for all living things, that he masters them, and to him comes no harm from any. There is a brotherhood of life which will give one a true dominion over the earth.

What is power? Surely not the ability to trap and cage a wild beast. That is only stupid force. Power is that quality in the soul of man which can make a wild beast lie beside one and lick his feet in dumb symbol of devotion, and a great love is the only means of achieving such power. When a king is so strong that his subjects will lay aside selfish desires for his sake, he is truly a king.

Love and absolute brotherhood between man and beast is the solution of all the earth's problems. Cheerful, loving service is far ahead of the sullen task compelled by a lash of any sort. How blind and stupid most people are. It is pitiful. Forgive your enemy. It is the only way to help him learn his lesson. Serve him. Be patient. Forgive seventy times seven.

How many of us forgive at all? Someone has hurt us, we who are kind and good and well meaning. Therefore that one is mean, cruel, base. We hate and shun him. We let him severely alone and thank God that we are different. Are we?

Even a very low type of man finds it exceedingly difficult to injure a person repeatedly who bears no resentment and even performs services for him. The voice of the God within cries out to his other self in the heart of one who returns good for evil, and in time the injurer must bow to its power.

Love—not hate—conquers.

The God within the heart of man is the only ruler who is victorious beyond any doubt. The tangled skein of human life will all come straight when each has learned that one truth. How long will it be before more than a pitiful handful at a time will learn that?

Helen

Yes, Sister, we are both ready to write, Harry first.

Tell Marie I am delighted with her life as she has been living it. She may be certain I know and feel all her trials, as well as see and applaud her successes. We live nearer now than before, which seems strange, doesn't it? But clearer understanding always brings people closer together. She may do whatever seems best in her judgment, and bank on my being pleased and satisfied every time. She can't possibly fail because she has the true spirit of unselfishness. I marvel at the beauty of her soul every day she lives.

Tell Marie I am learning from her, and trying to make good here as she does there. She is one of my most powerful inspirations. A wife like her is a gold mine to any man if he only knew it. Tee knows, and I know, but few can see it. It takes men ages to see what they owe to the woman soul. But they are waking up all along the line, up here as well as with you.

Tell Marie that A. won't hurt her in any way so long as she can keep her own spirit happy and serene. A's darker nature is powerless against any who stand in the sun. M. knows what that means. Just let her live her life as usual, and she will be impervious to harm from anyone.

Do try, Sister, to rise above that angry feeling A. inspires. It is stupid for it hurts your own soul. A. can harm none but himself unless the others allow hate and unkind judgments to enter into their own hearts. Only what is within can hurt us. No danger, no harm comes from without. Everything, good or bad, comes first from within our own natures. This attracts to itself either good or bad. Like seeks like. This is the law. If you would love and pity A, instead of knocking and hating him, you would call out all the natural good in him, and so help to save his soul. Can't you at least try that method? You all know the Law. Why don't you live it? Never say a word again in criticism. Keep still and pray for more love. See how much it will improve the situation. It is the only way out. Do, we beg of you, try. Buck up!

Harry