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The right course, beloved brethren, when you feel a loss of faith is to hold fast to what you can and wait patiently upon God. For presently, when you least expect it perhaps, the darkness will pass and the light will surely shine brightly once more. Great and ever greater tests of faith will come these days to the disciple or the initiate. Be therefore patient and tranquil; and when life seems to become difficult, beloved, to some very difficult, seek the quiet places of the Spirit and visualize the power of love sent forth into each one from the body of the Cosmic Christ. You will receive peace of mind, and serenity of spirit will be yours. Those who have a knowledge of the light, those who have knowledge of certain teachings, can go fearlessly on their way. They can have perfect faith that they will be looked after. There is no need to fear for God's children. Those that do God's work are bound to have their needs provided for. He does provide and care for all his children, of course; but those that understand know where to go for their supply and, therefore, they can teach others to have no fear and to go serenely forward. Make provision, certainly, but go forward with faith and do your work just the same as you are doing it now. There is no need to worry. It is spiritual values rather than the material ones that will be sought and known on the earth when the conflicts are over. Things will be very different then, for mankind will have learned its lesson. My beloved, there is no surer means by which an initiate can test his faith and its adequacy than by his success or failure in dissolving fear. Religion, as you call it upon the earth, supplies only one of various methods by which fear can be counteracted. It may certainly be neutralized by a deliberate blindess, a closing of the eyes to unwelcome facts. It may be repressed, at least in moments of crisis, by a resolute act of the will--an effort rightly gaining the name of courage. But the action against fear, to the true follower of Christ, is of a different nature; it neither ignores nor represses but dissolves fear, causing it to vanish as does snow in the spring sunshine. Of all remedies for fear this dissolving of fear is the most effective and enduring, and it was used by the Beloved Master himself. He regarded fear as a malady, a poisonous source of evil and misery from which man needed deliverance. The truth of that view has become most evident. There is a grave responsibility upon the leaders of each nation; they should seek to fulfill these aims which they have brought forward and not to render only lip service. The leaders should seek to bring into human lives trust and true brotherhood, the only solution to the problem of establishing a true and lasting peace upon this sad and troubled planet. The beloved Master Jesus was more directly concerned throughout his ministry with the effects of moral disease on individual lives. he lived in Palestine at a time when men's hearts were failing them because of fear. He saw that fear caused much wrong-doing and was the source of great misery to its victims. Yet, from his viewpoint it was so utterly needless. Fear should, indeed, have been impossible for anyone who had really understood and accepted that revelation of the Father which he had been given. 'Why are ye so full of fear?' he asked his disciples after a storm; 'How is it that ye have no faith?' In these two sentences the beloved Master recognized the malady and indicated its cure. Those two sentences might still be the comment of Jesus on certain attitudes amongst his disciples and followers today, my beloved brethren. Have they forgotten already the miracles of deliverance brought during the last few years to the English-speaking peoples? The trust in his Father God which the Christian should feel concerning his individual life can be reasoned faith fortified by experience. It must not be assumed, however, that because a man calls himself a Christian he will always be protected against danger, misfortune or suffering. The incidence of these may be a part of God's plan for the shaping of his character or as a test of it. What he can be sure of, however, is that no distress or tribulation can separate him from the love of God. And if escape is not given quickly, strength to bear will be. At worst, the sorrows of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory of what lies beyond this period of life. 'Why call ye me "Lord, Lord," and do not the things which I say?' Such a challenge comes with renewed force in a world which, above all things, needs for its salvation not so much dogma as character, a sacrificial spirit and that utter devotion to god and his purposes which are seen in the completeness of the life of Jesus, and of which he is man's perfect example." (continue at link) This section from Fourth Book, pp. 87-92. |
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