Chapter VI: Part 6

Words, words, words! How can you express Life--how can you express something that is greater than you? You have your place, but not the whole place. It is you that make Life inconsistent when you represent Life. You who hearken to false witnesses will give false verdicts. Words themselves will tell you so, and when they do they are in harmony with Life and are Life.

I saw words that were aflame with Life. I saw words that burned like living fire. I saw words that aroused anger and resentment; and words that calmed the storms of passion; words that refreshed and invigorated like the friendly rain after a parching drought. I saw complex words and I saw simple words, and there was Life in them all. I saw cruel words that pierced like daggers, and words fraught to the full with balm of happiness. When words take their rightful place, and are satisfied to be what they are--merely words--how illimitable their sphere enlarges--how grand and potent they become!

The words in this book are the words of Life. It remains for you to decide what relationship exists between you and the words in this volume. Without effort to be consistent it is consistent; and by tearing down it builds up. Its education of you progresses as it succeeds in tearing away the mask you wear.

Consistent! I am consistent when I do not condemn, for neither does Life condemn. Life gives itself alike to the just and to the unjust. And I am consistent when I condemn, for Life, too, condemns.

I am consistent in my condemnation of you when you condemn yourself by concealing yourself behind a mask. You condemn your acts, and for that reason you cover them. I do not condemn you for what you do, but for wearing the mask--the mark of your self-condemnation.

You are inconsistent in your self-condemnation, nor is there sincerity in it. For when you condemn a thing you cover it over, in order to protect and conserve the very thing you condemn.

What Life condemns it extirpates. It has served its time and its occasion, and is condemned to be no more. Life executes its mandates, and from its judgment there is no appeal.

I know that you are what you are because you were what you were: and you will be what you will be because you are what you are. The action of Life through me upon you is in the process. I condemn your condemnations, and by condemning them I destroy that which I condemn, and leave you free from that which is condemned, instead of shielding you and protecting that which you condemn.

For, look you! Life it is and Life alone that has the power to condemn, for the thing that is dead is condemned to its grave, while you have fertilized with your concealments the things you have condemned, and they have flourished under your condemnation.

And as to Ideals. You cannot fall short of your highest ideals when you are purged and cleansed of that within you which condemns. The residue--the real You--is pure, holy, divine. What greater ideal could you entertain?

Nor need “human nature” be changed to accomplish the transformation. Does not your nature help me preserve the very thing which I wish to preserve? You condemn, but nature in you, which is my Master as well as yours, preserves that which I need, and when I condemn your mask to be shattered to fragments you will then come forth like the little chick when the time has come for its emergence from its imprisoning shell. When the hour strikes you will heed the clarion call of Life to unmask--to leave the outworn shell and blighted mask behind which you were to get the experiences that fitted you to stand forth as one of whom it might with truth be said: “It is Finished.”

Brother! Sister! Life has condemned the divided house in which you have been dwelling--condemned it to its fall. Life has condemned in you the old, that the new may become established. You will be transformed into Man! A New Man! A man with a new sense--a sense capable of conscious happiness--of a happiness that the old could never know. A peace, indeed, that passeth understanding.

Life is building a new world, and preparing new beings to inherit the fullness thereof. New beings that will sense the full fruition of the comradeship of Man. Can you picture an ideal destiny transcending this--that you are in the laboratory of preparation to become a master-builder in this new-world building process? Yes, Life is making you over in its seething crucible, that you may realize the Joy of Life--such joy as you have never known.

The old world--the shell in which you are being formed--is pleasureless to you. You conceive of pleasure only by the intellectual deduction that pleasure ensues when pain ceases. Pleasure and pain are comrades; one follows the other as light succeeds darkness. So, too, does happiness follow misery.

It will come, brother, whether you want it so or not. You cannot stop progress any more than you can stop the sun from shining. To stand in the way of progress is suicide--like standing in the way of an express train at full tilt; you are ground beneath the wheels, while the train rushes on, heedless of the trifle that has sought to stay its flight.

Life has you in its laboratory. It is making a new man of you. And you will build the new world. A world in which joy will be in everything well done. Work will be a pleasure. A new civilization approaches. It will bring with it new concepts--new concepts of work. Man has passed through the theological civilization to the capitalistic, and our concept of work has changed in the process. In the theological civilization all human activity, mental and industrial, sprang from the church. All that was achieved was done in the name of the church--God and the church.

Painter and sculptor spent their lives in embellishing a cathedral. Labor was deemed a curse of God on man. You must labor because you have sinned, was the call of the church to diligence. All the “better” industries were fostered by the church, and the laborer was a galley slave. The redemption of Adam was to be a surcease from exertion. Labor was esteemed a punishment for sin, and Salvation was a promise of endless idleness.

Man went to war for the church, for then the church was supreme. Now capital is supreme in the minds of men, and with the newer sovereignty comes a remodeled philosophy. Work is no longer viewed as a curse. We work because of our present needs rather than because of a desire to expiate the sin of Adam. Nor do we now kill people for God’s sake or for the greater glory of the church. We do our killing in the name of Commerce, for the establishment of broader markets. Expansion is our war-cry. When a railway magnate declares that God in his wisdom had given him and his associates control over the coal deposits of Pennsylvania, the good people laughed at him. Not because they disputed the ownership of the select. No, they concede thus much. They smiled at Mr. Baer’s anachronism. He was some centuries behind the times, invoking a dethroned sovereign instead of the recognized reigning monarch. Five centuries ago all ownership was justified as from the grace of God, and no one had then the temerity to laugh the pretension to scorn.

In the new civilization--in the new world that is to be built by man for Man, rather than for God and Capital--work will assume a newer and saner phase. We will work because of the pleasure we shall derive from serving. We will serve well because we will love well. And he will be greatest among us who serves most, until in the common love and service all distinctions of greatness will be dissolved in the effulgence of boundless, bondless Love.

Can you conceive of this? Can you see the new world coming?

Yes, it is coming, and it will be built by you.

Yes, you are condemned to the cross of the great preparation, that in your resurrection you may build a new world, here and Now.

So, you see, that mask of yours served its purpose. You were at a masquerade, and it was fitting you should wear your mask. But midnight approaches. Only a few minutes more, and life will remove all masks. Then you shall stand revealed to me as you are, and you shall see me as I Am. And we will recognize each other as comrades, and laugh together at the way we fooled each other with our sham.

Hark! Do you hear the gong?

Lo! the hour is at hand.

TAKE OFF YOUR MASKS.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Table of Contents added to this edition.

Extraneous chapter divider pages removed.

Typos corrected: “caballist” to “cabalist” (p. 166); “it it not evil” to “it is not evil” (p. 222); “corpus delictu” to “corpus delicti” (p. 234)

Page 35: missing comma added after “if you like”.

Page 221: missing closing double quote added to end of paragraph.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been left unchanged.