How To Get What You Want

Faith moves mountains.

“To him that believeth, all things are possible.” The man who does not believe in something and believe in it with all his soul is a pretty poor stick.

Let nothing undermine your faith in your ultimate triumph. Hold this tenaciously, vigorously, intensely, and after awhile you will see things coming your way. Don’t be afraid to think too highly of yourself. If the Creator made you and is not ashamed of the job, certainly you should not be. He pronounced His work good, and you should respect it.

Faith increases confidence, carries conviction, multiplies ability. Faith doesn’t think or guess. It sees the way out. It is not discouraged or blinded by mountains of difficulties, because it sees through them—sees the goal beyond.

There are marvelous utilities, infinite good, and unspeakable beauties in the great cosmic intelligence, the unseen world, ready for our use and enjoyment. If we only had sufficient faith to believe they were there we could draw them to ourselves.

Writing of heroes discovered by the world war, Edmund Riemper Broadus says:

“There are stories of the heroism of ‘our boys’ that stir us beyond words—stories, too, that change with astonishing abruptness our estimates of those whom we had too lightly regarded. There was a certain youth, for example, for whom I fear that I had scant respect during his student life; a sickly fellow with rather a hang-dog air. He was out of his classes a good deal of the time and he was not successful in examinations. I believe that I suspected him of malingering. He tried to enlist and was turned down by the medical inspector, and tried again and yet again without success. How he ever got in, nobody could understand; but one day he went, and we shook our heads and prophesied that he would be incapacitated in a week or two. We heard no more of him until word came in letters from his friends that he had quietly picked up a smoking bomb and thrown it clear of the trench before it exploded, and then had climbed out in the face of the flying bullets and brought in a wounded comrade. And this was he who had only last year seemed such a faint-hearted traveler along life’s common way!”

Every now and then, like this writer, we are amazed at some youth we knew, starting out all at once and doing some tremendous thing which we did not believe was possible to him. He may not have had any more ability, perhaps not as much, as those around him, but he had a superb self-faith, which enabled him to dare and do, when the more timid ones, even perhaps, with far superior ability, hesitated, wavered, did not dare to attempt what in reality they were able to do.

It is faith that everywhere does the “impossible.” It is faith in God and faith in oneself, a divine self-confidence that makes men gods, whose will must be obeyed.

If it were not for wrong thinking such faith would be the rule in human life instead of the exception, for “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” Unfortunately most of us measure ourselves by our weakness instead of by our strength. We estimate ourselves at our worst instead of our best. We seem to think that the vision of ourselves we see in our optimistic, hopeful, uplifted moments is a mere mirage of the imagination, and not our real selves.

Comparatively few people realize how much self-faith has to do with achievement. The great majority never seem to think that it is a real creative force. Yet faith is not only a real power, but one of the greatest we know. In fact, men do great things in proportion to the intensity and the persistency of their faith.

When Goliath, the great giant of Gath, came to the Israelite camp, with his pretentious boasting, challenging the Israelites to select a man to fight with him, to determine whether they or the Philistines should be conquerors, the Israelites were so terrified that none dared offer to do battle with him.

Later, when he returned to repeat his challenge, a mere youth, David, heard his boasting, and took up his challenge. After much pleading with his elders for the privilege, the youth was allowed to go fight the giant. They insisted, however, on putting him in heavy armor, as a protection for his body, and placing a sword in his hand before he went to meet his foe. But he said to them: “I am not used to these things, I cannot fight with these handicaps. These are not my weapons. I have other weapons with which to fight the giant.” So he took off all of his armor and went forth with no other weapon than a simple sling and a few pebbles which he took from the brook.

When the giant leader of the Philistines, protected from head to foot with armor, armed with mighty weapons, and preceded by his shield bearer, saw the unarmed and unprotected Israelite youth approaching, he was angry at being so insulted, and said to him, “Come to me and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field.”

The undaunted youth answered: “Thou comest to me with a sword and with a spear, and with a shield; but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel whom thou hast defied. This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand.”

David did not, like the Philistine, put his faith in armor, in sword, or in shield, but in the Almighty; and by faith he conquered his mighty foe. Putting a single stone in his sling he buried it in the forehead of the giant, who fell prostrate to the ground.

Faith is the very pith and marrow of achievement. No faith, no achievement. All-absorbing faith, great achievement. Show me a great achiever and I will show you a man of great faith, faith in himself, in his ability to achieve his aim. Faith has ever been the miracle worker of the ages. It is the connecting link between God and man; it is man’s strength, the cornerstone of all his building, all his achieving.

The trouble with those of us who are not doing what we can and ought to do is that we lack faith. We do not believe that we can go into the great within of us and simply and naturally make connection with divine force, with the all-supply, with the Power that made us, that Power which has created and which upholds the universe and from which we derive our strength.

We make this connection through faith. This is our trolley pole, and if we could only put it up until it taps the wire which carries omnipotent power we should feel the thrill of divine life, of inexhaustible strength surging through us.

If you do not make this connection; if you lack the divine self-confidence born of faith in Omnipotence, you will never be what you long to be. Your prayers will come back to you unanswered; your efforts will bear no fruit; your negative attitude will make it impossible for you to achieve your object.

A negative, doubting mind, a mind saturated with fear of failure can no more accomplish, create, or produce, anything of value than a stone can violate the law of gravitation by flying up in the air. The Creator does not change the law of gravitation because a man walks off the roof of a house, even though he may do it unconsciously, in his sleep. The creative principle, the law of achievement, does not vary any more than the law of gravitation, and you will achieve what you desire, be what you long to be, only when you obey the law. The Creator himself can not fulfill your desire in any other way, any more than He can make the sun, contrary to law, turn from its course in the heavens, any more than He could make the world turn about and go in the opposite direction around the sun, when the heavenly bodies are pulling it the other way.

There is all the difference in the world between the power of the person who believes in his destiny, who has unquestioned faith in his mission, who believes that he is a part of the divine plan, that he is in the current which runs Godward, and the one who does not have this faith. The one is equipped for a victorious life; the other is headed toward defeat.

It is always the men and the women with a stupendous faith, a colossal self-confidence, that do the great deeds, accomplish the “impossible.” Those who do not take much stock in themselves, who have only a sort of milk-and-water purpose, who do not believe that they were intended to do anything in particular, never have been and never will be the doers of the world.

I have before me a letter from a young woman, who says she never expects to amount to anything or to accomplish much of anything. “I have always been unlucky, a blunderer,” she writes. “I am always making mistakes, and nearly always fail in whatever I undertake to do. I never have had any confidence in myself, and I fear I never will.”

Now, the reason why this girl fails to accomplish anything is very clear. Her mental attitude is the main cause of her trouble. No one can succeed with such a mental attitude as hers, for achievement is first mental. It begins in the mind.

There is no philosophy, no power in the universe that can help me to do a thing when I think I can’t do it.

More people make wrecks of their lives from lack of faith in themselves than from any other cause. There is only now and then a man who really believes in his own bigness, who has sufficient faith to back up his ability. And ability must be backed up by a superb self-confidence before it can accomplish anything. The ability of a Napoleon or a Webster would be absolutely powerless without self-confidence.

Before we can win out in life we must believe in our power to win. We must be confident in our expectations of success, vigorous in our self-faith. We must believe in ourselves and the thing we are doing without reserve, with all our hearts.

When Jane Addams left college she was in such poor health that physicians told her she could not live more than six months. “All right,” she said, “I will take that six months to get as near as I can to the one thing I want to do for humanity.”

Can any one doubt that Miss Addams’ restoration to health and the great work she has accomplished for humanity in founding and conducting Hull House, with its many beneficent activities, in the long years since the physicians gave her only six months more of life, are due to her deep faith in God and the divine power within herself?

The Centurion said to Christ: “Speak the word only and my servant shall be healed.” And when he returned home he found his servant healed. When he asked at what hour he had begun to improve they told him it was at the seventh hour—the very hour at which he had talked with the Christ. The Centurion’s was the faith that makes miracles possible.

Lack of faith is the supreme cause of failure. How can any one accomplish anything worthwhile when one’s very executive power is paralyzed, disheartened, discouraged by the thought, amounting almost to a certainty, of failure? It would be to overcome or to set aside the working of the law of cause and effect. Your achievement will never rise above your faith. That is the high-water mark of your attainment.

I have seen a man of ordinary strength who was hypnotized, stretched between two chairs, with his heels resting on one chair and his head on another, holding up six or eight men on that part of his body which lay between the chairs. This man supported a horse in the same way. Now, where did this extraordinary increase of power come from? It only lasted while the hypnotist made his subject believe that he could support the men and the horse. The moment the hypnotist shook the man’s confidence in himself, shattered his faith that he could bear up the enormous weight laid on him, the man dropped to the floor. And when the hypnotist made him believe that he could not bear up a single man, he could not do it. In fact, under this influence of hypnotic suggestion he could not even support his own body.

We never can get farther than our faith in ourselves. We cannot do anything bigger than we think we can. We are hemmed in by our opinion of ourselves, and until we enter that larger atmosphere of faith where we shall find the belief that we can do the thing we were made to do beating within us, we cannot do it.

A hypnotist could make a Webster, or a Shakespeare, believe he was a fool. He could make a Sandow believe that he could not lift a chair, and the man, strong as he is, couldn’t do so simple a thing as this until his faith and self-confidence were restored.

Now the power which enables a man to obey the command or suggestion of a hypnotist to do things easily which in his conscious state would be impossible does not come from the hypnotist. It was in the subject himself all the time. The hypnotist merely aroused him, made the man believe he could do the thing suggested, and he did it.

Muscles that are trained to lift and support enormous weights receive the most of their power from the mind of the athlete. The same muscles, if separated from the mind that controls them, if taken from the man’s body, could not support a tenth part of the weight without breaking.

Experiments have shown that the deltoid muscle, taken immediately from an athlete’s arm at the moment of an accidental death, would sustain only about fifty pounds of weight before it would break, while just before the man’s death this same muscle would have supported hundreds of pounds. This great difference had a mental cause. It was the athlete’s self-confidence that added all the extra power. As a matter of fact a man could not hold up his hand if he did not believe he could do so, if he had not confidence that he had the strength to do it.

The size of our faith indicates the size of the cable which connects us with our Maker. If this faith cable, which carries the omnipotent current, is small we get but a little of the force from the mighty current that runs heavenward.

If our faith were large enough we should be larger men and women, and we should travel Godward infinitely faster than we do.

One reason why many people do not amount to more than they do is that they seem to look upon their life dream, their ambition as a sort of fanciful mental picture, something that has no definite basis in reality. These people never take their life mission very seriously, and consequently never grow to their full stature. They do not seem to grasp the unity of God’s plan, or to realize that they were meant to play definite and distinct individual parts in it. Yet that is just what we are here to do. We were not thrown off as independent, unrelated units of the universe. There is still just as vital a connection between ourselves and our Maker as there is between the branch and the vine. We are a projection of His mind, a definite part of His plan, and our ambitions, our longings, are in a way a reflection of the universal plan. Those who have faith in themselves feel that their ambitions are evidences of ability to back them by accomplishment, to make their dreams realities.

Abraham Lincoln was a very modest, unassuming man, but when the first rumblings of the Civil War reverberated through the North and a presidential election was near at hand, the Spirit moved him to put himself forward as leader of the nation. When the politicians were looking round for a suitable man for that great position, Lincoln asked them why they did not nominate him. He said he felt within his breast the power to carry the nation through the threatened crisis, and that he believed he would be elected. Coming from a less modest man this assurance would look like a boast, but Lincoln’s motives were pure, and his faith, based upon a marvelous fitness for the work to be done, carried him to success.

The history makers have ever had overmastering convictions in regard to their life work. They have believed in their vision and the part they were to play. They have believed that their ambition foreshadowed a prophecy; that it was the substance of things expected, and not a mere figment of the imagination. In other words, men who have won out in the world have been profound believers in their destiny.

The faith of such men impresses us with a conviction of their power. We all feel that there is something about the man who believes in his destiny that commands our respect, our homage. The world itself makes way for the man who believes he was born to play a grand part in the human drama. The world makes way for such a man or such a woman as it made way for the peasant maid of Orleans.

Practically all of Joan of Arc’s miraculous power over the French army was due to her conviction of a divine call to free her country from its enemies. But for this conviction she would have carried no more weight than an ordinary soldier. Indeed, but for her faith in the divine call she never would have reached Charles the Dauphin, never obtained his consent to take the chief command of his army. She got her commission from him “by taking the positive stand that she was the one person who could save France—that she had the consummate courage of a whole army in herself— that she knew beyond doubt that the army under her leadership would be victorious.”

From the time when, a little girl tending her father’s sheep, she first heard the call in her soul her faith was unshakable. What good did it do for Joan’s father to threaten to drown his daughter if she persisted in her silly dreams that she was to liberate France? What effect had ridicule, especially the coarse ridicule of her sex by the soldiers, on her deep-rooted conviction? Was there ever anything more foolish than that a simple peasant maid who tended sheep on a farm, and who had never been away from home, or had the slightest military training or knowledge of war tactics, could lead a defeated army to victory? How did she treat all such questioning, ridicule, abuse and contempt? Her supreme faith ameliorated them all. They left her absolutely unmoved.

By faith alone the simple maid performed one of the greatest miracles of history. No human being even with the mental power of a Napoleon, without a superb military training, could have performed the miracle which this uneducated, untrained peasant girl performed.

What good did it do for the wise men of Italy and Spain to laugh at Columbus, and to picture at their meeting in court, men standing on their heads, and everything, including his ships, falling off the edge of the earth if it were round, and revolved, as Columbus claimed? The more these men laughed at him, the stronger grew his faith in his mission, and the more determined he became to prove the truth of his claim. And the mutinous crew of Columbus, after many weary weeks’ wandering on an apparently limitless ocean, met with the same immovable faith, the same stubborn resolution, when they threatened to put their leader in chains. Day after day on this memorable voyage we find this entry in his log book, “This day we sailed west because it was our course.”

What hardship, what persecution, what ridicule, or contempt, what denunciation even of those who knew him best could have induced such a man to give up his voyage of discovery? Although no geographer had ever referred to any land on the other side of the globe, and no scientist had hinted at such a thing, nothing could turn Columbus from his purpose because there was that something in him which looked beyond insuperable obstacles, beyond every objection, and saw land beyond the seas. It was this faith born in the divine within of him, this faith back of the flesh but not of it, which sustained him in all his trials, both before and after his great discovery.

The men who have left their mark on the world have had a faith which nothing could shake. Not the direst poverty, the most inhospitable treatment, not cruelty, not ridicule could separate them from their belief in their mission and their resolve to carry it out.

When a man’s faith in himself and in his mission is the dominant note in his life, nothing can daunt him, no power can keep him from his own. Think of the faith which Peary exhibited before he discovered the North Pole! Time and time again he tried to find it, risking life and all his resources in the search. The loss of his ship, the loss of his men, and his own scores of hair-breadth escapes did not daunt him, could not shake his faith. The North Pole was written in Peary’s heart. He must discover it. Nothing could turn him from his object. Many a time his friends pleaded with the explorer not to risk his life again, but to no purpose. “To the North Pole” was the slogan which haunted him day and night until at last he found it.

Faith is the force that moves mountains, that has ever performed the miracles of civilization. What incredible things, “impossible” things, have been done in the world’s history by souls aroused to a sense of their own power! Who can ever estimate what the mental attitude of self-confidence has accomplished! Who can figure what the world has lost from the inaction or the failure of people with splendid ability, men and women who had no faith in themselves, who were so filled with doubt of their own power that their initiative was discouraged and their creative ability killed!

There are thousands of people in very ordinary positions today, who are not only capable of filling much higher ones, but who would actually be advanced if they only had sufficient faith in themselves to branch out and compete for the superior place. There are men in all sorts of inferior positions who, in many instances, are abler than the managers and superintendents over them, but who do not know their strength, because they have never tested it.

Not long ago a friend of mine, a comparatively young man, was unexpectedly called to fill temporarily a position much above his own, which had suddenly become vacant. So well, however, did he fulfill the duties of the higher place that he was complimented by his employers and retained in the position.

This man had been working for a small salary for years, and said that he had never dreamed of being advanced so suddenly. In fact, he had begun to have a feeling that he did not amount to much, that he was a kind of failure anyway. He knew he had ability in certain directions, hut he did not dare to start or to go ahead with anything. All these years his lack of confidence in himself had acted upon his great ability like an anchor to a balloon. But when he found that he was really capable of assuming a great responsibility; when level-headed business men showed their belief in him by entrusting him with the handling of a large business, his power was trebled. His awakened faith in himself made a man of him. He began to think he amounted to something; that he was somebody after all, and thereafter he advanced by leaps and bounds.

It makes a tremendous difference how you approach your life work, whether you come to it with a superb faith in yourself, an unshakable belief in the Power that sustains you, and a firm determination to make a triumphant success of it, or whether you come to it with a faint heart, a doubting, wavering mind, and weak endeavor.

The timid, fearful, questioning, “What if I should fail?” attitude has ruined more careers than anything else. On the other hand, there is everything in holding the courageous, self-confident thought. We fail only when we have lost our grip on ourselves, lost our faith in our ability to succeed. We could all do infinitely more than we have done, or are doing, if we only had enough faith in ourselves to undertake what we long to do. New strength comes to the man or woman who dares to begin.

It is through faith we touch the very source of life. It is the key which unlocks the door to power. Faith opens the door to the great within, where principle dwells, where strength is generated. If we could measure a man’s faith we could come very near to predicating accurately the measure of his success in life.

It is not what other people say of you, but something you feel, inside of you, that you are capable of doing. This is your pattern, your model. Your true model is the one you see when you are the most optimistic, and not the mean diminutive figure of yourself which you see when you have on your pessimistic spectacles.

“Nothing in life is more remarkable than the unnecessary anxiety which we endure and generally occasion ourselves,” said Benjamin Disraeli, a man who had attained the lofty position of Prime Minister of England, in spite of difficulties that would have completely vanquished a timid, unbelieving, worrying soul. It was his unconquerable faith in himself that raised the once despised Jew to the proudest place in England—next to Queen Victoria, who honored him as a personal friend.

Disraeli, who was made Earl of Beaconsfield by his queen, is a splendid example of the tremendous force of the miracle-producing power of self-faith, of the conviction that one is born to do great things or to become a man of power and influence. Even in the face of disappointment, failure, and ridicule, the young Jew never lost faith in himself, never swerved in his purpose to be the great political leader of England.

Whatever other weaknesses, defects or deficiencies successful men have had they have all had a powerful conviction of their ability to perform the things they have undertaken.

One of the chief factors in Colonel Roosevelt’s many-sided success has been his superb faith in Theodore Roosevelt. Nothing has ever undermined that faith. No abuse, no lying about him, no criticism has ever shaken his belief in himself. Nothing that has ever come his way has phased him, because he has felt equal to any task thrust upon him.

Now, suppose Roosevelt had this one lack in his nature, the lack of confidence, of faith in himself, with the same ability, the same opportunities, the same favoring environment he has had—what would have been the result?

He probably never would have been heard from outside of his own country. His career has been built on self-faith. He early learned to believe in Roosevelt. He knew that he had ability, and that by training and making the most of it he could do what other people could do, what others had done, under similar or far less favorable conditions. It is this superb self-faith which has always characterized him, that has made him so striking a figure in our national life. Had Mr. Roosevelt lacked this one element, the effectiveness of his natural ability, if not completely nullified, would in every respect have been cut down tremendously.

Our flag says to the American people, “I am what you have made me. I am just as great and no greater than you believe me to be. I stand for what you think I stand for. I cannot rise above your estimate of me. What you think of me I am. I typify your thought of me. If you put a high value upon human liberty, upon democracy, upon human rights, then that is what I mean, that is what I typify. I am that which you think I am.”

The same thing is true of ourselves. What we impress upon our subconscious self, our estimate of our ability, our talent, our initiative, is what we will express in life; is what we will represent not only to ourselves, but to others. The sort of picture other people carry of you in their mind is pretty nearly the sort of man you believe yourself to be. And the sort of picture others hold of you will react upon you to strengthen your own mental picture, your own estimate of yourself, whatever it may be.

The world classifies men by their faith in themselves, in their mission in life, their faith in what they undertake to do. The man who lacks faith in himself inspires no faith in others.

The psychology of faith is one of the most interesting studies in human nature. Faith is the spiritual faculty which runs ahead, the courier which shows the way, the general which encourages the men in the army; it is the commander who gets wireless messages from a higher source. Faith is the Napoleon in the mental kingdom. All the other faculties are like the soldiers in Napoleon’s army,—their power is multiplied many times by their faith in their leader. They will follow faith to the death, but when faith wavers, when doubt takes the helm, it is all up. There is no more fight. That means retreat. He can who thinks he can, and he can’t who thinks he can’t. No one can advance farther than his faith in himself and in his mission. Self-faith leads in every great achievement. Even when others cry “Impossible!” the man supported by faith persists, and achieves his object.

Faith puts us in touch with infinite power, opens the way to unbounded possibilities, limitless achievement. Faith does not think or guess; it knows, for it sees the way out. It is the one thing that we can be sure will not mislead us. Our faith is not a mere empty fancy; it is a positive substance, a real creative force, a force which produces. St. Paul saw this great force back of a powerful faith, when he said, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for.”

Consider the marvelous power of St. Paul’s faith! It gripped every fiber of his being. Every drop of blood in him seemed to tug away at his one unwavering aim—to convert the world to Christianity. A similar thing is true of Martin Luther. What power or influence could have shaken Luther from his mighty purpose? When he nailed his theses on the church door it was war to the death if necessary.

Nothing has ever been so bitterly assailed, so stubbornly fought against, so abused as the Christian religion. No book was ever published that the world has tried so hard to blot out as the Bible, and yet no other book has anything like such a sale as the Bible. Even today the sales of “best sellers” look small in comparison with the sale of this book which the world has tried to destroy. And it is faith only that has enabled this Christian philosophy to survive the frightful attacks made upon it.

It was by faith that the Christian religion was established and that Christ’s teachings survived the determination of the great Roman Empire, then at the zenith of its power, to crush them. Just picture the enormous disproportion between that little band of Christ and His followers and the great Roman Empire, which was determined to destroy them! Yet that mighty empire crumbled, while Christ’s teachings endure and the religion He established spreads to every remotest corner of the earth!

Think of the first little company of the early Christians, unarmed, unaided, pitted against the power of ancient Rome. Persecuted, thrown into the arena in the Coliseum, to be torn to pieces by wild animals; dipped in tar and used as torches to light up the lake in front of Nero’s palace, they suffered without a murmur! What enabled these men and women to persist against such enormous odds? A mighty faith which no power on earth could shake.

Think you the early Christian martyrs could have gone serenely to the stake, and could have declared their faith without a sign of wavering, even when the flames were licking the flesh from their bones, without that supreme faith which savored of divinity?

Who could ever enumerate the miracles which faith has wrought in human history? It was through faith that the greatest discoveries and inventions were made.

The sufferings, the sacrifices, the years of painful, heartbreaking waiting, which hundreds of inventors had to endure, are beyond all human comprehension. Their superhuman endurance was made possible simply because of their faith in their own power to achieve, their loyalty to a voice which spoke from the great within of them, a voice which others could not understand or appreciate.

It has always been just in proportion to man’s loyalty to this voice, this faith which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, the prophecy of possible reality, that he has succeeded in accomplishing great things. It has ever been this supreme faith which has, little by little, lifted the race from the Hottentot to the higher civilization of today.

We do not understand the nature of this marvelous faith at all. Those who have it in a remarkable degree simply follow it. They obey the voice as Joan of Arc obeyed her “voices,” the God urge within them which always leads its follower to a goal which not only lifts him, but lifts the race with him to greater heights.

Mankind has climbed to its present height upon the steps of faith. But while there is only now and then one who is willing to follow the voice of his soul, the faith that calls to him to advance, especially if it leads through trials and hardships and all sorts of deprivations, that voice haunts us all. There is some discovery, some invention, some possible improvement for humanity prophesied in every human being. There is not one of us that cannot do something toward lifting the race a little higher, if we only obey the call of God!

The lack of self-confidence, of a vigorous faith in one’s mission is a weak link in most lives. The most difficult thing in the world is to make human beings believe in their own bigness, the grandeur of their mission, in the sublimity of their possibilities; and the greatest service that can be rendered a human being is to help him to discover his possibilities, for this establishes his faith, inspires him to pursue his ambition.

When a man gets a glimpse of the enormous power locked up in his nature he will not doubt again. His faith is established; and he will never rest until he brings out the other half of himself which is waiting to help him fight his battles and to move on to higher planes of thought and life.

A soul-consuming faith has ever been the power which has moved things in the world, which has built up all of the great religions, the new philosophies. It has been the fundamental principle of all human development and of all great achievement.

Faith is emphasized more than almost any other thing all the way through the Bible. It was by faith that Abraham accomplished his marvelous work; it was by faith that Moses led the children of Israel through the Wilderness. All the prophets in the Old Testament are constantly emphasizing the power of faith; and Christ Himself, Paul and all the other great New and Old Testament writers were constantly emphasizing the miraculous power of faith to achieve, to accomplish.

How many times Christ said, “According to thy faith be it unto thee.” Two words that He emphasized more than all others were faith and belief. These seemed to be magic words. They carried a tremendous force, more powerful than electricity. The Savior constantly reiterated the might of faith, the power of belief. “Be not afraid, only believe.” “Be of good cheer; it is I, be not afraid.”

“According to thy faith.” This is the burden of His message to His chosen twelve.

And how often He had to reprove them for their lack of faith, their timidity, their fear, their unbelief! Again and again when they failed to accomplish that which He sent them out to do, He reproached them: “Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?”

He assured them that only on one condition could they do the work He was training them to do—that they have faith. Having this, they should do even greater things than He was doing. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.”

“Heal the sick,” He urged, “cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils; freely ye have received, freely give.”

That something in human nature which, more than all else, reflects the divine in man, is faith. It is lack of it that causes many of the ills, much of time unhappiness, and most, if not all, of the failures in life.

If you lack this self-faith which is the sublime of man, if you are deficient in this great motor power which accomplishes things, which builds superb, masterful characters, you can make good your lack; you can supply your deficiency by daily auto-suggestive treatment for the acquisition or the strengthening of this greatest and most necessary of all human traits—faith. When giving a self-treatment, always get by yourself, and talk to yourself in a firm, decided tone of voice, just as if you were speaking earnestly to some one else whom you wished to impress with the great importance of what you were saying. Addressing yourself by name, say:

“You are a child of God, and the being He made was never intended for the sort of weak, negative life you are leading. God made you for success, not failure. He never made any one to be a failure. You are perverting the great object of your existence by giving way to these miserable doubts of yourself, of your ability to be what you desire with all your heart to be. You should be ashamed to go about among your fellows with a long, sad, dejected face, as though you were a misfit, as though there were not enough force in you, as though you had not the ability to do what the Creator sent you here to do. You were made to express what you long to express. Why not do this; why not stand and walk erect like a conqueror, instead of giving way to discouragement and doubt and carrying yourself like a failure? The image of your Creator is in you; you must bring it out and exhibit it to the world. Don’t disgrace your Maker by violating His image, by being everything but the magnificent success He intended you to be.”

There is a tremendous achievement force, an up building and strengthening power in self-assertion, in the asserting of the “I am.” This is not egotism, not the glorification of the burlesque of the man or woman which wrong thinking or wrong living has made. It is simply the assertion of your kinship with the Father, a strong appeal in the first person to your other self, the ideal self, the self you feel you were intended by the Creator to be and which sometime, somewhere, you shall be.

But, remember, it is not enough to believe in yourself when you feel particularly happy, or when some good fortune has come to you. It is not enough to have faith spasmodically, to get enthusiastic over your prospects, and then undermine all your previous efforts by admitting doubt, fear, and discouragement to your mental kingdom. It won’t do to keep dropping down again and again, like a frog trying to get out of a well, and feeling a little weaker and more discouraged after each fall.

Make it a habit to begin and end the day with a declaration of faith in yourself, faith in your God. Guard this faith continually as your most precious capital. Take no chances that this, your greatest life asset, shall be imperiled by weak, downhearted thoughts.

All doubts and fears, all pessimism and negative thinking poison the very source of life. They sap energy, enthusiasm, ambition, hope, and faith, everything that makes life strong, vital, and creative. Entertain only the mental friends of your ambition, those that will help you realize your ideal, that will help you to make your dreams come true, to match your vision with reality.

If you are grounded in faith, enemy thoughts will have no power over you, because your positive, affirmative mental attitude will bar them from your mind. You will be strong through the consciousness of the God within you, for “hereby we know that He abideth in us, by the Spirit which He hath given us.” When a man realizes his kinship with the great creative Power, that he is in truth a son of God, he cannot be other than positive, forceful, radiant, self-reliant, a conqueror of that which would drag him back or hold him down. All the forces in the universe combine to help him to his goal.

The faith that we are God’s children, gods in the making; the faith that we are a vital part of the great creative force of the universe; that we are a living part of the eternal God Himself will transform our lives.

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