By Abel Allen (1914)
Man can acquire truth only as he is mentally and spiritually prepared to receive it. New Thought is anchored to the idea of finding the good and the beautiful in life, the development of latent possibilities in man, and that law reigns supreme in the universe.
Anchored to these principles, New Thought moves forward in its quest for more truth, in its search for greater light that leads upward and onward toward a unity with God. It has not come to eradicate the old, except as the old fades away before the advancing light of the new. However, we have been told that it is dangerous to put new wine into old bottles lest the bottles may break. New Thought is constructive, not destructive. It is not here to tear down, but to build up. It employs addition, not subtraction. Its symbol is plus, not minus.
It recognizes that the universe is supported upon the enduring foundation of changeless principles and fixed laws, the result of an infinite and divine intelligence. It realizes also that man may grow into a knowledge and understanding of those principles and laws only as his conscious ideals grow from day to day.
Its goal is the understanding of life, of man, and a conscious unity of man with God. If its adherents differ, it is only in methods and not in the end sought. It does not enjoin methods. There are many avenues leading to truth. The arc-light sends out a myriad of rays, but they all lead to the one light.
The adherents of New Thought worship the omnipresent God, the indwelling God, in whom we live, move, and have our being. They do not conceive of God as distant or separated from man, but as a universal Spirit permeating all Nature, finding its highest expression in man.
No better conception of the God of New Thought can be expressed than was given by Pythagoras to the world six centuries before the Christian era. Listen to the great message:
“God is the Universal Spirit that diffuses itself over all Nature. All beings receive their life from Him. There is but one only God, who is not, as some are apt to imagine, seated above the world, beyond the orb of the universe; but being Himself all in all, He sees all the beings that fill His immensity, the only principle the light of heaven, the father of all. He produces everything. He orders and disposes of all things. He is the reason, the life and motion of all things.”
New Thought teaches that the revelation of God to man is a continuous process through Nature, through reason, the whispering of intuition through the events and experiences of life. The objects of Nature convey their message only as they awaken the divine impulse within, the desire to come into harmony with God.
Molding our lives more and more into the divine likeness is the essential thought in any worthy religion; as Plato taught, the highest aspiration of man is “the free imitation of God.”
To teach man to come into a conscious realization of the divinity within, and the unity of man and God, so that out of the sublimity of his soul he can say with the Gentle Master, “The Father and I are one,” is the supreme purpose and meaning of New Thought.