"Thou shalt also decree a thing and it shall be established unto thee." Job 22:28.
You know, of course, that, reduced to the ultimate, everything in this universe is merely a form of energy so many protons and electrons revolving about each other with the speed of express trains. You and I and the chairs on which we sit, the desks where we work, the trains we ride. on, the houses we live in, are merely so much electrical energy, with varying degrees of density.
All about us, in the air we breathe, in the interstellar spaces, everywhere, is more of this same energy-only in its free state, uncondensed. The process of condensing this infinite supply of energy is going on all the time. So, likewise, is the process of freeing it. Every living growing organism is continually condensing energy. Every living and dying organism is constantly releasing it. Each move you make, each breath you take, releases a' certain amount of energy in the waste matter you throw off through your nostrils and pores.
But and here is something everyone does not know, every thought you think releases or condenses psychic energy, through its action upon your nerve centers.
To get at the principle behind this, let us go back for a moment to the first forms of life upon earth, for while forms keep changing through the ages, principles remain the same. When you want to see how a principle works, study it first in its simplest form, then watch it continue its unvaried way through all the chang- ing forms that follow.
It matters not whether you choose plant or animal life, it is bound to start with the single cell. And the first cell, plant and animal alike, rested upon the waters, where it could ABSORB the nutriment it needed from the waters about it.
Through all the different gradations of vegetable and animal life, thai one basic principle has never changed. Every live cell, no matter whether in man or vegetable, is just as much immersed in water today as was the original cell that rested on the face of the waters millions of years ago. Not only that, but it still depends upon the water around it for all its nourishment. There are differences in the outer form, in the controlling brain, but no difference in the life principle. All life is cell life. And all cell life depends for its nourishment upon the water by which it is surrounded. Hearts, brains, stomachs, limbs-these are mere means .to. an end of keeping every cell in our complicated organisms fully supplied with water containing the elements those cells need for life.
But the farther an organism gets from the single cell resting alone upon. the waters, the more complicated its functioning becomes and the more difficult to maintain life. Yet the life principle is a stubborn principle, and has shown its power-not once or twice, but literally millions of times, to overcome any obstacle, t? draw to itself from the elements around It WHATEVER IT NEEDS FOR SURVIVAL AND GROWTH.
When the different species of animals m- creased and began to prey upon one another, what happened? Did the weak then perish from .the earth? On the contrary! They promptly developed means of escape or defense one species grew a shell, another a sting,. a third greater speed, a fourth secreted an ink-like fluid that so colored the waters about as to make It invisible! Always each form of life showed that it had within itself power to draw to it whatever elements it needed for survival. Why, then, have so many species perished from the earth? What became of the pterodactyl, the tyrannosaurus, the mammoth, the dinosaur, all the other giant monsters of antiquity?.
The same thing that became of Egypt and Persia, Greece and Rome. They perished-not from weakness, but from STRENGTH! They grew so great and powerful that they thought they had all the strength they needed within themselves! They stopped reaching out for new life, new energy, new forms. They stopped stirring up the life in them, and complacently let it settle in the form they thought invincible. Naturally they perished!
hought invincible. Naturally they perished! You see, the whole principle of cell life, from the single cell on the waters to the highest product of creation, man, rests NOT upon storing up energy, but drawing its needs from the waters around it as those needs develop. When you close the openings (pores) in a cell, or wall it round so new elements cannot enter, you kill the cell. So the first essential of cell life is keeping the pores open.
But that would seem to leave the cell without protection from enemies or elements, How did the early forms of cell life get around this, how did they develop their shells, their stings, their scales, their wings? Again by drawing upon-the elements around them, but this time each according to what the center of its nervous organism conceived to be its needs. The same water, the same air, surrounded all, but each drew from them the particular elements it needed for survival, just as the seed' of wheat draws from the soil one element, the cotton seed another, and the seed of the tobacco plant still a third. The point is that in the circle of its drawing power (its magnetic circle, we might call it) lies whatever element each cell, needs for survival and for expression. But it must keep reaching out for .these. It must keep growing. No matter how tight the shell it builds around itself, it must leave openings, for new life to come in. Hit does not, it perishes. The moment a cell, or an animal, or a man, or a nation, becomes so self satisfied or so confident of its own strength that it walls itself in and ceases to draw upon the outside of life, it starts to die.
You find, that thought expressed in the Bible in a dozen places. "Thus saith the Lord," cried the Prophet Jeremiah, "cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh .his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord,. and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall' be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and , shall not be careful in the year 'of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit." And Ezekiel put it "I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that' which was driven away,