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By Root 601 0

work will cease to be fruitful. If we rely unduly upon anyone else, upon a particular teacher or healer, for instance, he will be certain to fail us, probably through no fault of his own. He will be out of reach when we most need him, or for some other reason will be unavailable in our hour of need. The same principle applies when people allow themselves to become the slaves of special conditions. A certain woman said: “I can treat myself only when I am in the reading room of our local center; the atmosphere there is so beautiful.” The time came, and not very long afterwards, when her husband was transferred by the government to a mid-African station where she had to meet a crisis thousands of miles from a reading room, and more than a hundred miles from any other white woman. Then she was driven back on her real knowledge of Truth, and, of course, made a great advance in understanding.

It is your duty to get all the help that you can from books and teachers, and so forth; but unless your real reliance is upon your own understanding, you are only crying “Lord, Lord” with your lips, and pretending to prophesy in His name while essentially “knowing Him not” which, for practical purposes, will be as though He knew you not. There is no entering the Kingdom of Heaven in this way. For the thousandth time let it be said, you have to earn your salvation by genuine, consistent hard work upon your own consciousness in realizing God.

Many people hesitate to free themselves from an orthodox church which they have really outgrown, because of the practical or merely sentimental inconvenience of breaking a family tradition; but “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” Again, many people seem to find it possible to summon up enough energy and courage to break from the orthodox church, only to settle down once more, almost as inertly, into one of the more liberal churches, or into some spiritual center or organization, where they seem to go to sleep again, under the impression that they have now at last discovered the Truth, and need take no further trouble. As if this were not exactly the same old mistake made by the pioneers and founders of all the orthodox churches themselves; all of which originally started as reforming heresies. What do you gain by breaking free from one organization if you are only going to surrender your newfound freedom to another one?

In other cases people have developed a personal devotion to some independent teacher which has caused them entirely to yield their own judgment to his. Others again have some favorite textbook which, in fact if not in name, they regard as infallible.

Now the only infallible thing known to man is the simple test for Truth that Jesus gave us—By their fruits ye shall know them.

You should gladly take advantage of helpful teaching wherever you may get it; go to churches or meetings that help you; listen to speakers, and read books that inspire you to find yourself; but do not surrender to anybody your own spiritual judgment. Thank those who have helped you, and acknowledge the good received; but always be ready to pass on to the next step. Remember that the Truth of Being concerns Itself with the infinite, the impersonal Principle of Life; and does not lend itself to the exploitation of particular personalities or organizations. You do not owe an atom of loyalty to anyone or anything in the universe except your own Indwelling Christ, your own spiritual integrity. If merely enrolling oneself in the membership of some organized body were a guarantee of spiritual understanding, our salvation would be a much simpler matter than it is. Unfortunately the problem is much more involved. Centers, churches, schools, all fill a useful purpose in providing the physical framework for the distribution of right knowledge, through lectures, books, and so forth; but the actual work must be done in the individual consciousness. To claim more than this for outer things is to reestablish superstition. If, when the testing time comes, we attempt to lean upon a church membership,