THE ROAD TO SUCCESS COLLECTION. Henry Harrison Brown
recreation, and for any improvement in myself. I affirm :— Real emancipation.
Real freedom,—to make the very best in my life.
The Call of the Twentieth Century
These addresses were well received. They were carefully prepared. They contain thoughts to which I desire to give a wider circulation. I believe them an important incentive to the unfolding human Consciousness and Conscience.
I have the faith that all the members of the Federation who so kindly elected me its President and New Thought people generally, will be glad to see them in this form.
As an evidence of the Love I bear to, and the appreciation I have for, the Federation and the Principle for which it stands, and because of the importance which I think it has in the development of the race, I dedicate to it this little volume.
Future years will show the great good that this body of men and women, who meet in Love and Truth to inspire, encourage and assist each other, are doing. The New Thought is the one movement for which all past movements have been. It is doing much by the mere Suggestion of its existence, but still greater is the good it is unconsciously doing by the most potent power of the Thought it radiated and the Love which inspires its Thought.
Trusting the All-Good to make these addresses important factors in swelling the "Call" and in hastening the "Emancipation," I add them lovingly to the great trend of public sentiment that is now so increasing that its argosies of Thought fill every sea of literature, bearing treasures richer than the silks of the Orient or the pearls of India.
In Truth and Love I desire this Emancipation for you all.
HENRY HARRISON BROWN.
(As Mr Brown was on a tour when this book was printed, and as he was unable to correct the proof, before going to press, many typographical errors crept in. He has thus tried to correct them as best as he could. – Henry Harrison Brown)
Delivered at New Thought Convention in St. Louis, October 26, 1904
In the Evolution of Life each century has left some distinctive mark upon the race. The student as easily realizes epochs in human history as he does in the geological life of the earth. These epochs begin in twilight and overlap each other. I can now simply note the gift of the nineteenth century to the twentieth. That century was the culmination of an era begun in previous ones. Its great contribution was first the complete verifying and acceptance of "The Law of the Correlation and Conservation of Force." All energy is one. It can neither be created nor destroyed, be neither increased nor diminished. This Energy may change its form but is itself eternal. In the latter half of the century was enunciated the now almost universally accepted Principle of Evolution. The century was pre-eminently a philosophical and scientific one, and all tendencies of these were toward materialism. Herbert Spencer was its highest product in these lines. In him the philosophy of the past culminated. He perceived Unity, but reasoned from duality. It was with him, Energy and something unknowable. He declares that he cannot think of Spirit in terms of matter nor of Consciousness in terms of energy. Life and Intelligence is something added to his Unity. Thus while his philosophy is materialistic to the mass, it is noncommittal to himself. He represents the fruit of the scientific and materialistic tendencies of the nineteenth century. He is the last of a long line, and distinguished line, that through the study of objective phenomena have at last brought the human mind to the understanding of Unity. From this we have given us the Affirmation—All is Mind. Spencer will have no successor, for out of the old the New is born. The last student of Duality has given his volume and closed the discussion. The New Century calls for new men and new themes. The First century of our era began with the recognition of Universal Life, as evolved in the Human Soul to Love. "God is Love." "Love God and Love your Brother." The NEW COMMANDMENT is this: "That ye Love one another." Twenty centuries are a brief period for the race to learn that Force has yielded to Love; that Thor's hammer lies at the foot of the Cross of Christ. But it is learned. Never before was Love the ruling principle as even now when the sounds of tremendous battles reverberate across the Pacific and echoed, along our California coast. They once took the echo—"Revenge;" now they sing—"Arbitration and Peace."
In the Evolution of God's thought, from the Universal, the individual must be from the Absolute, the Special; from the Unconscious, the Self-conscious. Truth is the individualization of God. God is Love, but Truth is Man. Each century has been and will be religious. But Fear that "peoples the dark inane with spectral lies" departs as Love penetrates the systems man makes for his worship. Some of the old terror us, its duality, the diverse, the divided making good and evil remain to plague mankind.
But truth is a unit. False or true, is the decision of Man concerning all propositions. Truth is the Human expression of Unity. The Self-conscious expression of God. Power evolves to Life, Life to Emotion, Love, the out-motion from the Soul center is still homogeneous. Love is the same in all individuals. Love evolves into Self-consciousness and Man says: I AM; IT IS. The Individual, the Personal, are the only possible Human expressions. They come through God's method of evolution. Man comes "as a son of God," to his own. In the past Love and Truth have been divorced; each had its organizations and votaries; the areas of each have constantly been encroaching; each has been swallowing the other.
Religion has been lost in a philosophy called theology, and science has been struggling through philosophy to prove religion non-existent. Love IS; Truth IS; but both are one. Science has dealt with effects and religion with cause, but Cause and Effect are inseparable. On the threshold of the New century these two expressions of Life are wed, no more to separate. It is no longer Science and religion, philosophy and worship, physics and metaphysics, for there is no line dividing God and man, cause and effect, love and Truth. Coming generations will know only Unity, and will name it God Power, Life, Love, Truth; and man will say of these–I AM IT.
The field of theology has pre-empted only its study of the future. Man has studied the Effects of God, and surmised the Cause; now he is to study Cause, and know that all is God–Mind.
New Thought people are but a little ahead of the specialists along the old thought of matter. But the miss on their part is the difference between life and death; between time and eternity. Elmer Gates and Dr. Anderson are pioneers, beckoning to the great College forces to "Come up higher." The president of the scientific Congress, whom I met in this city, said there was but one science greater than all those they were discussing, namely, "mentology." God epitomizes himself in a Human Soul. When we study Him there we know all. "Flower in the crannied wall when I know you root and all, and all in all, I shall know what God and Man is," not because the flower tells me, but because I find in it only that which I am, and which I carry to it. I am ALL! "Know Thyself!" is the command of Unity to the Individual Soul.
I am an Unfolding Soul. In that unfoldment I have begun to know myself and I call that knowledge "New Thought." New Thought is neither a science nor a religion; for Priest of God, the New Century, has wed the two and the One is named Life. I AM, means, I live, I love, I think.
New Thought is the recognition that All that was, is, or shall be, is now, and is in the Human Soul. Unity needs expression through the Conscious just as there has been from all eternity, expression through the Unconscious. The one command of God to man is, LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE. The New Thought is the shining through expression, of "the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world." New Thought is not a discussion, a speculation, a theory an hypothesis, it is demonstration through living Life, of Truth. It is doing, and not thinking; it is being and not seeming. "Doing the will of the Father," and thus demonstrating that we are indeed children of God.
New Thought is neither the science nor the religion of Life. It is the Conscious living above the limitations of sense, and partaking of the eternal life here and now. Man limitless, may live above the so called Laws of Nature, by becoming a Law unto himself, and realize Emerson's wisest expression, "Conscious Law, is King of Kings!"
The last step the school-men have to take, in this welding of science, and religion, is the recognition of the Unity of the