Chapter

SOMETHING TOUCHED HIM

The most valuable thing which ever comes into a life is that experience, that book, that sermon, that person, that incident, that emergency, that accident, that catastrophe-that something which touches the springs of a person's inner nature and flings open the doors of their great within, revealing its hidden resources.

A cub lion, as the fable runs, was one day playing alone in the forest while his mother slept. As the different objects attracted his attention, the cub thought he would explore a bit and see what the great world beyond his home was like. Before he realized it, he had wandered so far that he could not find his way back. He was lost.

Very much frightened, the cub ran frantically in every direction calling piteously for his mother, but no mother responded. Weary with his wanderings, he did not know what to do, when a sheep, whose offspring had been taken from her, hearing his pitiful cries, made friends with the lost cub, and adopted him.

The sheep became very fond of her foundling, which in a short while grew so much larger than herself that at times she was almost afraid of it. Often, too, she would detect a strange, far-off look in its eyes which she could not understand.

The foster mother and her adopted lived very happily together, until one day a magnificent lion appeared, sharply outlined against the sky, on the top of an opposite hill. He shook his tawny mane and uttered a terrific roar, which echoed through the hills. The sheep mother stood trembling, paralyzed with fear. But the moment this strange sound reached his ears, the lion cub listened as though spellbound, and a strange feeling which he had never before experienced surged through his being until he was all a-quiver.

The lion's roar had touched a chord in his nature that had never before been touched. It aroused a new force within him which he had never felt before. New desires, a strange new consciousness of power possessed him. A new nature stirred in him, and instinctively, without a thought of what he was doing, he answered the lion's call with a corresponding roar.

Trembling with mingled fear, surprise and bewilderment at the new powers aroused within him, the awakened animal gave his foster mother a pathetic glance, and then, with a tremendous leap, started toward the lion on the hill.

The lost lion had found himself. Up to this he had gamboled around his sheep mother just as though he were a lamb developing into a sheep, never dreaming he could do anything that his companions could not do, or that he had any more strength than the ordinary sheep. He never imagined that there was within him a power which would strike terror to the beasts of the jungle. He simply thought he was a sheep, and would run at the sight of a dog and tremble at the howl of a wolf. Now he was amazed to see the dogs, the wolves, and other animals which formerly had so terrified him flee from him.

As long as this lion thought he was a sheep, he was as timid and retiring as a sheep; he had only a sheep's strength and a sheep's courage, and by no possibility could he have exerted the strength of a lion. If such a thing had been suggested to him he would have said, "How could I exert the strength of a lion? I am only a sheep, and just like other sheep. I cannot do what they cannot do." But when the lion was aroused in him, instantly he became a new creature, king of the forest, with no rivals save the tiger and the panther. This discovery doubled, trebled and quadrupled his conscious power, a power which it would not have been possible for him to exert a minute before he had heard the lion's roar.

But for the roar of the lion on the distant hill, which had aroused the sleeping lion within him, he would have continued living the life of a sheep and perhaps would never have known that there was a lion in him. The roar of the lion had not added anything to his strength, had not put new power into him; it had merely aroused in him what was already there, simply revealed to him the power he already possessed. Never again, after such a startling discovery, could this young animal be satisfied to live a sheep's life. A lion's life, a lion's liberty, a lion's power, the jungle thereafter for him.

There is in every normal human being a sleeping lion. It is just a question of arousing it, just a question of something happening that will awaken us, stir the depths of our being, and arouse the sleeping power within us.

Just as the young lion, after it had once discovered that it was a lion would never again be satisfied to live the life of a sheep, when we discover that we are more than mere clay, when we at last become conscious that we are more than human, that we are gods in the making, we shall never again be satisfied to live the life of common clods of earth. We shall feel a new sense of power welling up within us, a power which we never before dreamed we possessed, and never be quite the same again, never again be content with low-flying ideals, with a cheap success. Ever after we will aspire. We will look up; struggle up and on to higher and ever higher planes.

Phillips Brooks used to say that after a man has once discovered that he has been living but a half life the other half will haunt him until he releases it, and he never again will be content to live a half life. When one becomes conscious that the reality of them, that the truth of their being is God, that they are indissolubly connected with omnipotent power, they feel the thrill of divine force surging through every atom of their being, and can never doubt their divinity or possibilities again. They can never again be timid, weak, hesitating or fearful. They rest serenely conscious that they are in close touch, in vital union, with the Infinite. They feel omnipotent power pulsating through their very being, they feel the omnipotent arm sustaining, upholding them, and they know that their mission on earth is divinely planned and divinely protected.

Many a poor child has grown up in the slums believing that they were like all the other children in their neighborhood, that there was no special future for them, nothing distinctive, nothing out of the dead level of their monotonous environment; but something unexpectedly happens, some emergency, some catastrophe, something which makes a tremendous call upon the great within of themselves, and they are suddenly surprised to discover that they are different altogether from those about them. Something has touched them, something in them have been aroused, something which shows them that they have a tremendous latent power which they did not before know they possessed, and they unhesitatingly answer the call. They go out into the great world, and are never again satisfied with a cheap success, never again satisfied with their old nature or content with their old environment.

There are men and women who have won distinction in every field who would not believe that there was such a possibility for them until they had actually proved it. Twenty-five years ago, for instance, you could not have persuaded Charles M. Schwab that he was the man later years have proved him to be. If twenty-five years ago anyone had given a picture of himself as he is today, had declared that he would be such a man, he would have ridiculed the idea. He would have said, "Such a thing is absurd, I am not such a man. This is the picture of a giant. I am no giant, nor genius. I am just an ordinary, hard-working man." But Mr. Schwab has not even yet fully found himself. He has not discovered all the man that it is possible to develop, or anything like it. He has only brought out part of the giant in him. Emergency may some time call out the rest, the bigger giant.

There are plenty of young men and young women in our great industrial institutions today who could not be made to believe that perhaps in a single year they will be filling positions of great responsibility and power, and yet the possibility is there. The future great general, the successful executive, is slumbering in the soldier in the ranks, in the clerk today. Many a future superintendent, many a manager is today filling the humble position of office boy, errand boy, or waiter in a restaurant or hotel.

Every discovery of new powers, new assets in yourself, stimulates you tremendously to new efforts, to new endeavor. We have all seen instances where an ordinary clerk, with seemingly ordinary ability, has suddenly been promoted, and the stimulus, the tonic of advancement, the new hope of further success that has prodded them, has often added twenty-five or fifty per cent to their ability by uncovering new resources, new and before undreamed of powers.

They were not conscious of what was in them until the opportunity came, until the motive uncovered, unlocked and liberated their before undreamed of resources. In the last world war thousands of young men who did not think they had much courage, perhaps even believed they would be cowards in battle, were whirled into the armies by the excitement, the hypnotism, the daring of their associates, and found that the bigger man in them responded to the call, and that when it came they did not hesitate bravely to face the enemy's shells, the enemy's guns. Many youths have joined the army who were not thought much of at home, who were called stupid and dull and ne'er-do-wells, blockheads, by their parents and teachers, but when they got into the army they found themselves, found they had courage, grit, determination, daring, stick-to-­it-iveness.

The experience of a multitude of men who have realized an infinitely bigger man in themselves than they ever imagined was there, ought to teach us that in every human being, no matter how successful they may be, there are still enormous undiscovered possibilities.

It is the person you are capable of making, not the one you have become, that is most important to you. You cannot afford to carry this enormous asset to your grave unused. As a business man or woman you would not think of having a lot of idle capital in the bank, drawing no interest, uninvested, unused. Do you realize that this is exactly what you are doing with yourself? You have assets within you infinitely more valuable than money capital. Why do you not use your capital? This is what you would ask a businessman who was pinching along, worried all the time because he thought he could not meet his obligations, pay his notes, when he had a large amount of idle capital in the bank. You would declare the man was foolish. You are more foolish because you have immortal capital lying idle. Why don't you use it? Why do you hitch along in this little one-horse way all your life on a little capital when you have so much unused capital, so much reserve assets? Why not use them?

Try to bring out that possible man or woman. You know that you never have done it to anything like its possibility as yet. Now, why not plan to bring out this enormous residue, these great unused resources, this locked-up ability which has never come out of you? You know it is there. You instinctively feel it. Your intuition, your instinct, your ambition tell you that there is a much bigger person in you than you have ever found or used. Why don't you use them, why don't you get at them, why don't you call them out, why don't you stir them up? Why don't you get the spark to this giant powder within you and explode it?

The finding of the larger possibilities of man, the unused part, and the undiscovered part is the function of the New Philosophy. It may be covered under all sorts of debris-doubt, lack of self-confidence, timidity, fear, worry, uncertainty, anxiety, hatred, jealousy, revenge, envy, selfishness. These may all be neutralized by right thinking.

How often it happens that people who have long been "down-and-out," who have been considered "nobodies," "good-for-nothings," not well balanced, have changed suddenly, as though touched by a magic wand, and have quickly become men or women of power, inspirers, and helpers of others! Something happened that quickened their spirit, and from miserable liabilities they have suddenly been converted into valuable assets to their community.

John B. Gough was an intemperate nobody. All at once, apparently by accident, he was converted. Something touched Gough and from being a slave of the bottle he became its master. From a miserable example he was transformed into a tremendous uplifting and inspiring force in the community. Before he came to himself he was dragging men down; after he responded to the call of the divinity within, he was leading hundreds and thousands of men to take the pledge, to lead cleaner and nobler lives.

When a poor youth working as scullion in a kitchen in Italy first got a glimpse of a great painting, the sight aroused something within him which he had never before felt. It revealed a new artistic impulse, and he exclaimed, "I, too, am a painter!" Following this inward call, he got a chance to work in the studio of a famous artist, and finally became a greater artist than the painter of the picture which had inspired him.

How many men who had been a positive menace to society, all at once have turned about and become inspired leaders! Something touched them, awakened the God within, and they turned their faces from darkness to light, from the lower to the higher, and accomplished grand things. It may have been an inspiring book, a lecture, or a flash of divine illumination that gave them a glimpse of themselves, but whatever it was it started them on the right road, turned them from ugliness to beauty, from wrong to right, from enemies of society to great benefactors.

The transformation of Saul the persecutor into Paul the great apostle of the Gentiles is one of the grandest instances of self revelation through a flash of divine illumination.

What a revolution would be effected in the whole race if this something which touched Saul on his way to Damascus, when "suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven," could touch all the human beings who are going wrong, the "nobodies," the "down-and-outs," the discouraged, the despondent, those who have fallen by the wayside! What a leap toward the millennium the race would take if all these dead souls could be awakened and made anew by this mysterious something which made the vengeful persecutor of Christians the greatest of the teachers of Christianity! If this divine spark, which en-kindles a new fire in human hearts, makes men out of beasts, and good citizens out of hobos, drunkards and criminals, could be ignited in the breasts of all, despair and misery would vanish from the earth.

When one has once discovered or uncovered a bit of their divine pattern, when enough light is thrown upon it to enable them to see the divine, immortal plan foreshadowed in their nature, they will never be content until they uncover the rest of the pattern; and no one can do this by living a coarse, low, sensual life. Such a life puts a film on the ideals, and dims the spiritual vision.

The world has a right to expect those who have even partly discovered themselves, who have become conscious of their divine origin, to hold up their heads, to do their work a little better, to be a little more dead-in-earnest, to live on a higher plane, to set a little better example in general than those who have not yet tasted of their hidden power. The world needs great inspirer's more than it needs great lawyers, physicians, clergymen or statesmen. It needs the Lincolns more than it needs railroad magnates, steel magnates, great financiers or great merchants.

When the consciousness of his heredity touched the lion cub, when his inheritance of strength, of terrific power, was revealed to him, he turned his back forever on the old life. Never again could he return to the sheepfold, never again could he be satisfied with his sheep nature, with the half life he had been living. From the moment he realized he was a lion, there was no more sheepfold for him. Freedom, the great open world, the jungle, the forest for him, for he felt his kingship, his power over all the things that had so terrified him in the past.

When an individual has once proved beyond question that they have great latent power, vast possibilities which had never before been called out, it would be impossible that they should ever again be satisfied with the half life they had been living. Their whole newly discovered nature would revolt against a return to the lower plane on which their weaker, lesser self had lived.

You perhaps were reared under conditions which have kept you ignorant of your own possibilities until something has happened to throw a new light upon your real nature. Then you discovered that you were not the tame, timid sheep that you had always thought you were, until that something happened which has revealed the lion in you.

Perhaps you have been wandering all your past life, living in the shepherd's folds in the churches, perhaps never dreaming that you were not a sheep, that you did not belong to that particular shepherd's fold. Yet you may have had an instinctive feeling that there was something in you which did not respond to the sheep call, that there was a something within you which did not fit your environment, which did not belong to the conditions in which you found yourself. You may have been conscious that there was something in you which never responded to the call which appealed to those about you.

You may have heard the voice that answered your yearning while reading an inspiring book, or while listening to a new philosophy conversation which seemed to open up a new compartment in your nature. No matter where you hear this call, when you do hear it something within you will answer the call and you will know that you have been touched to a higher, a finer purpose.

The new philosophy, however, especially appeals to the undiscovered part of us, to those hidden, latent forces within us, which we have not hitherto been able to get hold of. In other words, it appeals to our hitherto unused assets, our plus or surplus life capital. You will find something in people who have embraced it, in people who understand it, which you do not find in others.

The new philosophy acts like a leaven in the nature, giving new life, new force, new meaning to the individual. In short, it discovers a new human being in the old one. It neutralizes, destroys, that which would degrade them, those things which were working against their welfare, and it develops new forces, unlocks new resources which enlarge the individual.

During the past hundred years not a single new quality or new principle has been added to the laws of chemistry, not an iota of change has been made in the laws of physics, and yet what miracles of discovery, of invention, the great scientists and inventors have called out of these very same qualities and laws during the last hundred years!

Sir Isaac Newton had the same identical material, the same identical laws of chemistry, physics which Edison is using today, but Edison has called out hundreds of inventions to Newton's one discovery.

Human nature, like natural law, is the same today as it was centuries ago, but what a marvelous development of man's power we are witnessing today! How amazing has been the advancement of human ability! What marvelous strides in intelligence, in efficiency, and in the development of his natural resources man has made!

We marvel at all this, but the new philosophy is disclosing to man a new and more potent law back of the flesh but not of it, an intelligence back of the crystal, back of the atom, back of the electron which directs, molds, fashions, conditions the future of every particle of matter in the universe. Previously this was ascribed to an unknown law. A hundred years ago people did not know that when a crystal was dissolved it would always assume the exact form of the same kind of crystal when its particles were free to re-arrange themselves. We did not then know that the ambition which appears in man is really an aggregate of the ambition in the separate electrons. We did not then know that a man's history was largely determined in the electrons themselves. But science is now beginning to recognize that the great cosmic intelligence is back of everything in the universe, of every expression of nature, of every step in man's upward journey through the ages.

The new philosophy especially appeals to that unknown part of us which is still waiting to be discovered, that part which is still locked up tight in the great within of us. It plays the part of a Columbus, and discovers vast territory within us of which we had been unconscious.

An honest dissatisfaction with our achievement means we have more resources inside, and that until we find at least a measure of satisfaction there is still more to discover. We have an instinctive feeling, that there is something sublimely beautiful in life we have never yet found, because we have never yet been satisfied. We have an intuition that this something will satisfy our inmost yearnings, that it will quench the soul's thirst, satisfy the soul's hunger.

The orthodox churches undertook to find this satisfying something, and while they have done much, yet many church members feel that there is still a tremendous, unfilled vacuum in their hearts, unsatisfied longings and yearnings in their souls. After centuries of hunting for the divine balm of Gilead, the elixir which would heal the soul's hurts, the great majority of churches are being less and less frequented. Pastors are finding it more and more difficult to induce people to attend their church services, because they are not fed; they do not get that satisfaction which they instinctively feel belongs to the children of the King of Kings.

On every hand we find people who have been groping all their lives in vain, trying to find something which would answer the inner call for a larger life, something which would satisfy their longings, feed their soul hunger, and help them to find fulfillment of their life dreams.

If you are groping to find that something which will give enduring satisfaction, which will satisfy your soul; if you have not yet found that something which answers the persistent inward call of your being; if you have not yet found that living water which quenches the soul's thirst, come and drink at the fountain of the new philosophy.

Man has glimpsed only a little bit of the divine plan, but this glimpse promises so much that he feels he must see the whole. The part of ourselves we have discovered reveals only a part of the divine pattern, and we shall never rest until we trace the whole.

The larger, grander, superb thing we know and instinctively feel we ought to be beats so mightily so persistently beneath the little dwarfed thing we are that we must uncover it, we must develop it, and we must use it. No human being can be satisfied while they are haunted by that other part of the divine pattern, the part which was shown to them in the mount of their highest moment. The part of ourselves we have discovered is a prophecy of an infinitely larger and more magnificent whole, and we must find it. This is the great object of our existence. We are here to find the rest of the pattern of the divine man.

Individually we have gotten a glimpse of the larger possible man, and we must bring them out. We have been shown a part which prophesies the possible whole, and every now and then lest we become discouraged and give up the pursuit, nature gives us a Lincoln, a Gladstone, a Phillips Brooks, in order apparently to show us the possibilities of man and to stimulate us in our efforts to evolve the God man.

The new life philosophy is the Christ motive which has been working in man all up through the ages in its efforts to produce the master man, not the selfish, grasping, greedy man, but the masterful, selfless, impersonal man, the Christ like man or woman with the God consciousness, the man or woman who realizes that they are part of all mankind; that they have come out from God and that they are going back to God.