Chapter 5 - The Substance of Things

Where are the cowards who bow down to environment --
Who think they are made of what they eat, and must
conform to the bed that they lie in?
I am not wax, -- I am energy!
Like the whirlwind and waterspout, I twist my environment
into my form, whether it will or not.
What is it that transmutes electricity into auroras, and
sunlight into rainbows, and soft flakes of snow into
stars, and adamant into crystals, and makes solar
systems of nebulae?
Whatever it is, I am its cousin-german.
I, too, have my ideas to work out, and the universe is
given me for raw material.
I am a signet, and I will put my stamp upon the molten
stuff before it hardens.
What allegiance do I owe to environment? I shed
environments for others as a snake sheds its skin.
The world must come my way, -- slowly, if it will, -- but
still my way.
I am a vortex launched in chaos to suck it into shape.

-- Ernest Crosby.

“To a certain extent I have been benefited by these teachings. In some ways they do not appear to have a very practical result. It is possible to concentrate and obtain small things, but any real change of surroundings seems to be quite dependent upon circumstances entirely outside my own will.” H. B.

Thus writes a shortsighted and faithless one -- faithless because of her shortsightedness. Another woman who has observed the same things writes thus: “If I see no great results now I know it is because I am working for large things.”

Life “concentrates” on a mushroom and grows it in a night; but an oak requires twenty years of “concentration.” A woman “concentrates” on a good dinner, a bit of sewing, the control of her tongue for an hour, $5.00 for a new hat, the cure of a headache, and success crowns each effort. These are little things, the mushrooms of an hour, used shortly and soon forgotten.

The same woman “concentrates” for a complete change in disposition or environment, for anything in fact which seems a long way off from present conditions. Now, if she is a shortsighted woman she has little or no faith in anything which she cannot see, hear, taste, smell or feel. She can see, taste and smell a mushroom, so she believes in it. She could see an oak and believe in that. But she cannot see the acorn growing

underground; therefore she has no faith that there is an oak growing. And if there is already a little oak in sight she cannot see it grow, no matter how steadily she looks at it; therefore she “fears” the oak is not growing.

But the far-seeing woman is different. She sees through things. She feels the intangible. She hears, smells, and tastes that which moves upon the face of the deep and brings forth things. She touches the true substance (that which stands under) of things which are to be.

Her faith rests in invisible life; the other woman’s faith rests only in the visible things which life has made.

To say that H. B. has no faith would be an untruth. Every living being is full of faith, or he could not live.

Faith is in the atmosphere and we live by using it, just as a fish lives by using the water. Faith springs eternal in every human breast, fed from the universal source. To talk of one’s little faith or one’s much faith is like talking of the earth's squareness.

Every soul lives by faith and plenty of it. But he lives by faith in what? There’s the rub. Until we emerge from a sense of materiality -- and no one has as yet got more than his nose above these muddy waters -- we live by faith in things seen, smelt, tasted, heard and felt. These are the only things we are familiar with; to them we pin our faith, and pride ourselves upon our good sense, reason and lack of “superstition.”

“I can't believe in anything unless I can see it” is our self-satisfied cry; “you can't fool me with your religious hocus-pocus, nor with your rabbit's foot and horseshoe and four-leaved clover; I can see no connection between a rabbit’s foot and your good luck, therefore I know no connection exists; I can see no big God on a great white throne, consequently I know none exists; show me your God; show me the string which connects the four-leaved clover to your good luck and I’ll put my faith in it.”

The material one reckons without his Unseen Host. By and by the Unseen begins to juggle with him. His beautiful plans, every step of which he could plainly see, are blown awry. He can’t see why! The things in which he had such faith begin to totter and tumble about his ears. He can’t see why! Reluctantly he begins to see that there are mighty forces he can’t see. His whole beautiful material world begins to dance to strings he can’t see!

Ah, so there are things he can't see, hear, smell, taste or feel! They may be a fearful and chaotic jumble; they seem to be; but they are there, after all his certainty that he could see, smell, hear, taste and feel The Whole Thing.

And he begins to reach out toward these unseen things. He peers and peers into the darkness and stillness. And as he peers his faiths gradually loosen their hold upon the old visible things and begin to reach out into the darkness and silence.

He sends his faiths groping, groping, feeling their way through the Invisible, always seeking the strings to which visible things have been dancing and tumbling.

At first all is darkness; but by and by faith gets its tentacles around Something Unseen; -- ah, there is Something which disposes what man proposes -- an unseen, untasted, unheard, un-smelt, unfelt Something.

A terrible Something it may be, but still a Something, all-powerful, all-present. He has sent his feelers into the Invisible and touched God, the soul, the life-principle, which makes and unmakes, gives and takes away all those little things to which he was wont to pin his faiths.

The next thing is to find out the nature of this mighty Something whose home is in the Invisible. But how find out the nature of the Unseen? Not by touch, taste, smell, sight or hearing -- not at first anyway. But by its fruits you may know a tree to be good or bad. By its fruits you may know the invisible powers to be beneficent or malefic. And the material one is familiar with fruits, with things. He built such beautiful things himself, so he ought to be a judge of the fruits of labor. The fruits of his labor were all good, he knows they were. If only the great Unseen had not spoiled them all! Oh, the labors of the Unseen brought his own good efforts to naught -- the Unseen must be a terrible and evil power; its fruits are destruction of his own good buildings. He fears this Great Unseen Power to which his faiths are beginning to pin themselves.

But wait: Good is beginning to rise from the ashes of his ruins. This so terrible calamity is turning out a blessing! New and greater things are forming, to take the places of the lost fruits! And they are good.

Oh, this Great Unseen works in terrifying mystery but its fruits are good.

Now he is ready to “come unto God.” He begins to see the un-seeable things, and his faiths tendril them.

Those who would “come unto Him must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.”

Those who would understand and feel and use the invisible forces must believe that they are, and that they reward those who diligently seek to understand and use them.

The Unseen things move the visible world. The material one being pinned by his faiths to the things of the world is moved as the world is moved. He is a mere puppet in the hands of the Unseen powers.

As he looses the faiths which bound him to the world rack, and sends his faith tendrils into the Unseen, he becomes one with the powers which pull the world-strings.

“Faith is the sub-stance (the underlying and creating principle) of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

The material one’s faith is pinned to things already seen; therefore, his creative principle is poured into the thing already created.

Then Life juggles and tumbles things until the material one’s faiths are torn loose from their material moorings, and go feeling out into the Unseen for new things to cling to. When the whole bunch of visible things has failed us; when houses, lands, money, friends, and even fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters have gone back on us, what is there left to pin our faiths to? And without something to have faith in how could we live at all?

We couldn’t live without faiths to steady us; witness the suicides and the deaths from broken hearts.

And if all visible things have failed us, if our faiths are broken loose from fathers, mothers, brothers, friends, houses and lands, where else can our faiths take hold again except in the region of the Unseen? -- the region where “the wind bloweth whither it listeth and thou canst hear the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth;” the region of substance, of creative power.

It seems very terrible to have our faiths broken loose from fathers, mothers, brothers, friends, houses and lands; but it is good for us, as time always proves. Broken loose from the effects of creative energy, our faiths reach out into the Unseen and tendril the very energy itself. From a state of oneness with things we evolve a new being at one with the creative power within things.

What are the unseen things to which our torn faiths begin to attach themselves? Our faith itself is unseen, the sub-stance of things hoped for, the substantial evidence of things not yet seen.

What do we hope for that we have not yet seen?

First of all we hope for peace -- another of the substantial unseen things. We hope for love, the most substantial of unseen things. Oh, if we had but peace and love we could count all else well lost! And behold, by unseen faith tendrils our bruised faiths attach themselves to the unseen substance of peace and love.

Wisdom is an unseen substance -- our unseen faiths attach themselves to the unseen source of wisdom. Thought is unseen; our faiths, torn loose from things, begin to reach out into the unseen realm of thought. Ideals are unseen things. Our faiths, torn loose from the already-realized, begin to tendril the unseen ideals, the race's ideals, the family ideals, and lastly our individual ideals.

Our unseen faiths become one with these unseen ideals; and through these little faith tendrils we begin literally to draw the ideal down into our physical being and out into the visible world.

Through our faith tendrils the ideal is literally ex-pressed, pressed out into visibility.

When our faiths were attached to material things, the material things (being negative to us) sucked us dry. Now our faith tendrils reach upward to the unseen ideal realm of real substance (to which we are negative) and by the same law of dynamics it is we who draw the life; draw it from the unseen realm of real life substance.

Of ourselves we could do nothing -- the things to which our faiths attached us sucked us dry of power, and the unseen powers finally tore us loose; but now that we are tendriled by our faiths to the Unseen, “the Father” in us and through us doeth the works of rightness that bring peace.

And behold, we are filled with the unseen power, and through our faith in the Unseen we pass on the fruits of the spirit, which are “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, meekness, faith, temperance.”

And being filled with the power of the Unseen we pass on the fruits of the spirit to fathers, mothers, brothers, friends, houses, lands; pass it on in every act of life and in every breath we take.

We breathe out that which, through our faith-tendrils, the Great Unseen breathes into us. Then, behold, that which is written comes to pass: “Ye shall have an hundredfold more houses and lands and fathers and mothers and brothers in this present time.” You shall have them to use at will.

While you were attached by your faiths to things they used you; now you use them. Pin your faiths to the Unseen things and let patience have her perfect work. So shall you realize your heart’s full desire. Let things rock as they will; let facts be stubborn and conditions hard if need be. Never mind them. To mind them is to pin your faiths to them.

Mind the Unseen things. Pin your faiths to your ideals.

Flout facts and hard conditions! Believe in the Unseen.

Train your faiths upward.

“Whatsoever ye desire believe that ye receive,” and you shall surely have it.

If it is a mushroom expect it in a night. If you desire a great oak give it time to grow. In due time, perhaps in an hour when you least expect it, it will surely appear.

The one thing needful is to pin your little faiths to the Unseen Source of all things. Believe in the great unseen part of yourself and the universal.