Somewhere in your make-up (perhaps in the cells of your brain) there lies sleeping the seed of achievement which, if aroused and put into action, would carry you to heights such as you may never have hoped to attain.
Just as a master musician may cause the most beautiful strains of music to pour forth from the strings of a violin, so may you arouse the genius which lies asleep in your brain, and cause it to drive you upward to whatever goal you may wish to achieve.
Abraham Lincoln was a failure at everything he tried, until he was well past the age of forty. He was a Mr. Nobody from Nowhere, until a great experience came into his life, aroused the sleeping genius within his heart and brain, and gave the world one of its really great men. That “experience” was mixed with the emotions of sorrow and love. It came to him through Anne Rutledge, the only woman whom he ever truly loved.
It is a known fact that the emotion of love is closely akin to the state of mind known as faith, and this for the reason that love comes very near to translating one’s thought impulses into their spiritual equivalent. During his work of research, the author discovered, from the analysis of the lifework and achievements of hundreds of men of outstanding accomplishment, that there was the influence of a woman’s love back of nearly every one of them. The emotion of love, in the human heart and brain, creates a favorable field of magnetic attraction, which causes an influx of the higher and finer vibrations which are afloat in the ether.
If you wish evidence of the power of faith, study the achievements of men and women who have employed it. At the head of the list comes the Nazarene. Christianity is the greatest single force which influences the minds of men. The basis of Christianity is faith, no matter how many people may have perverted or misinterpreted the meaning of this great force, and no matter how many dogmas and creeds have been created in its name, which do not reflect its tenets.
The sum and substance of the teachings and the achievements of Christ, which may have been interpreted as “miracles,” were nothing more nor less than faith. If there are any such phenomena as “miracles” they are produced only through the state of mind known as faith! Some teachers of religion, and many who call themselves Christians, neither understand nor practice faith.
Let us consider the power of faith, as it is now being demonstrated, by a man who is well known to all of civilization, Mahatma Gandhi, of India. In this man the world has one of the most astounding examples known to civilization of the possibilities of faith. Gandhi wields more potential power than any man living at this time, and this, despite the fact that he has none of the orthodox tools of power, such as money, battle ships, soldiers, and materials of warfare. Gandhi has no money, he has no home, he does not own a suit of clothes, but he does have power. How does he come by that power?
He created it out of his understanding of the principle of faith, and through his ability to transplant that faith into the minds of two hundred million people.
Gandhi has accomplished, through the influence of faith, that which the strongest military power on earth could not, and never will accomplish through soldiers and military equipment. He has accomplished the astounding feat of influencing two hundred million minds to coalesce and move in unison, as a single mind.
What other force on earth, except faith, could do as much?