As heard on “This Thing Called Life” Sunday, May 21, 1950.

After many years of patient work, Dr. Albert Einstein feels that he has found one law governing all physical phenomena. If so, it is one of the greatest and most important discoveries of all time. But what has this to do with our subject – with This Thing Called Life, or with the possibility of using a Power of good greater than you are? Well, let’s see what we can figure out.
Is it any different to say that there is one law governing all physical phenomena, or to say with Emerson, “There is one mind common to all individual men”? The universe is a spiritual system. It is a manifestation of Divine Intelligence. Another world famed scientist has said that we can think of the universe in the terms of intelligence acting as law, which means mind in action. And another scientist has said that we can think of the universe in the terms of an infinite Thinker thinking mathematically, which means that faith acts as a law, and this is why prayer can be answered.
Here is another remarkable thing: Dr. Einstein has also said that time, space and light curve back upon themselves. This means that everything moves in circles. It explains what Jesus meant when he said, “Give and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom.” It also explains another saying of Jesus when he said that they that take up the sword shall perish by it. It really means that what goes out will again return; that the inner action of our minds decides what is going to happen to us, for “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
I would like for us to consider one more of Dr. Einstein’s propositions, in which he states that energy, which is invisible, and mass, which means physical form, are equal, identical and interchangeable. Is this any different from one of the initial statements of the Bible where it says, “In the beginning was the Word,” and while it tells us that the thought of God becomes form. What we see comes out of what we do not see. The invisible becomes visible through a law of mind. This is what is back of psycho-somatic medicine. Thoughts are things in that mental states produce definite results. This is why we meditate, pray and affirm the presence of good in our lives.
The cause of everything is hidden. What we experience outwardly is a result of silent but intelligent forces that operate on the invisible side of life. And, so far as you and I are concerned, our minds represent this invisible side of life. Another great scientist, Dr. Gustof Stromberg, said in his book, “The Soul of the Universe,” that there is an invisible pattern for everything in the visible world. This is no different from the Bible statement that the invisible things of God are made manifest by the visible. Everything, including our own being, is rooted in, and draws its life from, an invisible source. Is this any different from St. Paul’s statement that there are bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial; there is a spiritual body as well as a physical body?
It is wonderful that so many scientists are giving us a faith in the spiritual universe – a faith which we have already had through intuition, but which now is coming clearer and clearer into the mind’s eye. Wouldn’t it be strange if we should discover that the Bible is not only a book of spiritual inspiration, but that it also lays a spiritual foundation for many of the recent discoveries of science?
If there is one law governing all physical phenomena, then there must be one law of mind governing all mental action. And if time, space, and light bend back upon themselves then our thought will return to us. This is why Emerson said, “If you want a friend, be a friend.” And this is why Jesus said if you want something good to happen, accept that it is happening, which implies that there is a law that brings back to you a direct result of your thinking. Did he not say, “. . . when ye pray, believe that ye have . . .?“
Science also teaches us this very important fact: nature wills ill against no one. The laws of God are for us and not against us. It is our use of them that produces pain instead of pleasure. When we learn to live in harmony with them they will become our servant instead of our master. This means that many of the laws we have been using destructively can as easily be used constructively. Often our bondage is a misuse of freedom, just as much of the world today has used its freedom to destroy its liberty.
To realize this, is a step toward freedom, and will have a direct bearing upon our health, our happiness, and our success. For we shall no longer feel that we are fighting a power opposed to good, but rather that we are using a good power in a wrong way. We shall know that we have an ally with us, an unconquerable power of good and an irresistible law of love.
But the skeptic may say this is too good to be true. May I ask you this: is modern invention too good to be true? Are automobiles and nylon stockings too good to be true? Are the things being worked out in modern laboratories real or unreal? There is only one answer to this. They are real enough and we are merely discovering the possibilities of life. There are great spiritual and mental laws that govern everything and you and I really are living in the Mind of God, right now. There is a power for good available to all of us.
The laboratory of our mind is a place where we test out what our thoughts can do for good or for ill. “For mind is the power that molds and makes, and man is mind, and evermore he takes the tool of thought, and shaping what he wills, brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills. He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass; Environment is but his looking glass.” Life is a mirror, reflecting back to each one of us what we really are.
Life has willed it this way, and you and I cannot change it. There are only two things we can do. We can learn to live in harmony with the law of our being, or, by opposing it, live in unhappiness until through suffering we learn how better to use that silent force of good that flows through us the Power greater than we are, but a power that is right where we are.
But if one can know, with complete certainty, that a law of good conspires to help him when he uses it, and that this law is a real law of God and cannot be changed, then he becomes victor, as the Bible says, through Christ who strengthen him. And Christ means the son of God within us, the Divine Pattern in which we, as human beings, are rooted, the perfect man that Jesus spoke of when he said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
Faith is the most wonderful thing in life and we need a faith so rooted, so firm, so unshakable, that it will not waver. And this kind of faith is arrived at through a conviction in the intellect and through a feeling in the heart. For we need both conviction and inspiration to live happily. Without conviction we are never sure, and without inspiration we lack that most vital of all things – a zest and an enthusiasm for living.
Now I ask you, in all sincerity: Have you and I really tried God? I wonder. I wonder and I still wonder. Have you and I really tried God? Can we sit down in the midst of confusion and think peace? For if all the forces of nature curve backward upon themselves, then if we can think peace even in the midst of confusion, we shall establish peace in our lives. “Be still and know that I am God.”
This is no idle statement. It is as profound as life itself. Have you and I really consistently, over a period of time, kept careful enough guard over our thinking actually to know what might happen when we exercise a dynamic faith? I am afraid we haven’t. Well, there is no use crying over the past. If we have been defeated, the only thing to do is to rise and strive again, but this time with a new hope, a fresh vision and a greater certainty.
I cannot help but believe that the world is on the verge of great spiritual discoveries, that the late Dr. Steinmetz was right when he said the next hundred years of research in the realm of mind and spirit, will produce more important discoveries than the last seven thousand years of research. Let us definitely accept that we have an intimate and personal relationship with This Thing Called Life; that there actually is a Power for good greater than we are, that we can use, and that no one but ourselves can bar our way to a fuller life.
The one sure thing that you possess, and that no man can rob you of, is yourself – that hidden you, that something within you greater than all fate. Learn to trust yourself, because you first have faith in God. Take time each day to re-affirm your intimate relationship to the Spirit. Act as though you were the son of God, and you will surely discover that you are. Inspiration, hope and joy will come with this revelation.
This is the secret of life, the pearl of great price that you are to treasure in your innermost being, even as you share it with others. For the love you have for them will come back to you multiplied and the good you set in motion will return to you a thousandfold. This is the way of life. This is the law of your being. This is what the saints, the sages, the poets, the wise and the good of the ages have known. This is what Jesus taught. This is what you and I believe. This is what is true.