 “You seem to think God put all our desires in our hearts. What if we have desires to do things we know are not right, and the doing of which will hurt someone’s feelings? I do not believe ignorance is the only cause of sinning. We do things we know are wrong.” If “God is All,” where can a desire come from if not from God? There is no thinker but the One Great Thinker you call “God.” All creation is made up of God’s trains of thought. The real, informing, thinking self of all beings is that same One Thinker. He (or It) is working through all ages to think out the justice, love, wisdom that is in Him. He weighs one side of a thing through me, and another through you; and He waits patiently until He can figure it all out and arrive at the meeting place of truth. Just as in your individual mind you seem to weigh and reason first one side and then another, so the One Thinker weighs and reasons all sides of The Truth through all people. Sometimes you are inclined to think one thing is right, and then you change your mind and go over to the other side. So the One Thinker seems to change His mind and go from one side to another. He first decides that the Israelites shall go; then He thinks through Pharaoh and says they shall not. Then He thinks still louder through Moses and they start. Then He sees Pharaoh’s side again and “hardens Pharaoh’s heart” (that is just what the Bible record says), and tries again to hold them. Then inch by inch He fights over the two sides in His mind (there isn’t any place but God’s mind, and we are all in it) until he finds the point of perfect justice, or equity. The same One Thinker, or God, has debated within Himself as to whether the Filipinos shall go free or belong to the United States. You thought the people of the United States and the legislators in particular were doing all that thinking and talking for and against. Why, bless you heart, the people and the legislators are dummies in God’s mind—they are little thoughts moving around in the mind of the One Thinker—thought through which He weighs and balances and decides the equities. He thinks out and proves His intuitions in this way. Now don’t all of you anti-expansionists jump up and screech at me that it is not equity that we should own the Philippines. You are only one side of the debate. And don’t all you expansionists come smiling around to pat me on the back. You are only the other side of the question. I AM on the fence and I can see you both. All keep still now and I will whisper to you a secret—God hasn’t thought it all out yet. He is still thinking alternately on one side and then on the other. It is nip and tuck with him whether to hold the Filipinos or to let ‘em go. But He thinks He’ll let ‘em go—when he finds a way. He’s thinking it out through you and me and Governor Taft and President Roosevelt and the rest. There is just One Mind, which fills space full. All minds are inlets of the One Mind. All thoughts are thoughts of the One Mind. Desire is the will of the One Mind. All desires are inlets of the one desire or will. All desires are of God. They are God’s desires, fitting in with that particular train of thought. As the thought changes so will the desires. God’s thoughts and desires change through all eternity. His desires fit the particular train of thought He is working out—one thing in you, another in me; changing in each of us from day to day; but always God. God is proving through you and me what is right and what is wrong; what is just and what is unjust. Wrong ALWAYS brings unhappiness; right ALWAYS brings happiness. It is not enough that you have been told that it is “wrong” to tell lies. God hardens your heart to tell lies and suffer for it until you have so thoroughly proved the wrong and unhappiness of lying that NOTHING could tempt you to lie. So with all other wrongdoings. But lots of times we think things are wrong when they are not really so. We have been told things are wrong—we do not know for ourselves. God “tempts” us to prove things. The gaining of wisdom is all we are here for—here in God’s mind. We learn, and God proves, as much by our wrong deeds as by our right ones. By lying and suffering for it we learn first to wish for truth, then to work to gain it; then finally we love it and live it. But not all in one little span of life perhaps. That is the trouble with people who are so greatly worried over right and wrong—their noses are always to earth and a death makes them lose the trail. They see a single being in one short span of life; instead of looking up and taking all life and all lives as a Whole. But they, too, are learning. |
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