LETTER XV
THE WEAKEST LINK
June 2, 1917.
There
are in the archives of the Masters of Wisdom certain data relative to the
past and future of this country which would make interesting reading could
they be published in the newspapers at this time of national crisis.
America is aware of her mission of democracy; but she is not
aware of another mission equally potent—that of making the world safe for
spiritual culture. I do not mean religion, as the word is ordinarily used;
but I mean the culture of the spirit of love—such ideas of love as the world
has inadequately grasped from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, grasped
and let fall again because those ideas were too warm to be comfortably held
by hands cooled in the material labors of selfishness.
America has laid up for herself in the
regions beyond the physical a debt—an obligation that is not by any means a
treasure in heaven, but which, when the debt is paid, may be a real
spiritual treasure. I refer to the armies of souls who once occupied this
land as free owners, and who were expelled and disinherited by the expanding
civilization which grew up in the place of wigwam and hunting-ground.
Those souls, many of them, desire to
return. Many have already returned, and unless some way is open to them to
live again the free life to which they were accustomed in the past, they
will tend to become a destructive force. They cannot be eliminated so easily
now, when they wear white bodies and claim citizenship with you. They are
scattered from shore to shore of this wide land. You can tell them by their
eagle eyes and their high cheek bones, by their free gait and love of
freedom. They are hard to restrain in factory and counting-house. They are
clerks with a difference and laborers with a dream. Many of them have found
entrance into the sun-lighted world as the children of European immigrants,
for they find it easier to enter the blood of certain other races than the
blood of the Anglo-Saxon, for all the Anglo-Saxon love of freedom.
A time may come when these now
foreign-blooded primitive Americans will instinctively rebel against the
restraining influences that have held them, when they will seek to live over
again the old life of nature, even though they have to take it as the
kingdom of heaven is said to have been taken.
There is coming a time when love will be needed in this land as
it has never been needed before, when “live and let live” must become a law
as well as a phrase. Those who long for freedom with Nature can be given
that freedom. Conditions may be hard in the great cities.
I am not trying to instill fear into the American heart. On the
contrary, I am trying to insure you against fear.
Not long could the wheels of civilization stop turning. But they
could stop—for a wink of the Cosmic Eye.
America is going to be saved, and saved in the hour of her
greatest danger. What will her greatest danger be? You must think that out
for yourself.
Learn to see through the eye of the
Planetary Spirit. Your view is too narrow. Where your library stands on
shelves is for you the centre of things; but the centre of things is in the
heart, and hearts are everywhere. If you think about the race and not about
yourself, your heart will be magnified; you will see with the eyes of the
heart, and he who sees with the eyes of the heart is wiser than historians
or intellectual prophets.
The world must be made safe for love. All men must be provided
for in the scheme of the future, all men and women and little children. It
is not safe to disregard any, for a chain is as strong as its weakest link,
and every link must be made strong. |
