IN THE OLDEN days, when a king took a trip throughout his realm, a herald would be sent in advance of the royal party to advise the nobles and the people of the intended royal visit, so that the roads might be prepared and due arrangements made for the reception and entertainment of his majesty and his retinue. Royalty traveled with quite a train of satellites and “yes men” in those days, and all of them must be provided for. This was no small matter; the royal party could not be put up at a moment’s notice. None of the inns of those days could accommodate the small army; so the herald called upon certain nobles to open their castles to his majesty. Fitting entertainment was thus assured, with the additional advantage that if any man had anything to fear from the approaching visit, he could arrange to have business elsewhere at the time, and thus avoid trouble.
Most of us think that this custom has been entirely discontinued, but such is not the case. The idea is still in use. If you are intending to visit some town where you have friends, you write to these friends of your coming in order that you may be sure to see them. Nor is it unusual for you to write to a hotel to engage rooms in advance. In these cases the written word is the herald that you, a modern king in your own right, send before you. Sometimes you attend to these matters by telephone, telegraph, or radio. Then the courier is the invisible wave that travels so speedily wherever it is sent. Nowadays considerable business is transacted by means of these unseen messengers. But there is an-other form of herald, also invisible, that we must consider.
“Behold, I send my messenger, and he shall pre-pare the way before me.” We have been taught for so long that this was solely a prophecy of the coming of John the Baptist to open the way before Jesus, that we have failed to see that it is a definite statement of Truth. It is a psychological or metaphysical fact that applies to you and to me directly. You are actually sending out messengers at all times, and they do go to prepare the way for you. Some-times you have wondered why the path you travel has seemed so very easy, and why at other times it has been so difficult. It depends upon the kind of couriers you have sent. Each one has done his work, and you have felt the result. There is nothing mysterious about it; it is scientifically true.
These messengers are your thought servants. Thoughts are forces, or at least expressions of force. They radiate from you to immeasurable distances, and they initiate activities of which you never dream. They are very faithful, and they carry out your orders implicitly. But each kind of thought will work in only one way; that is, in accordance with its nature. If you do not like the preparations made for you, it is not the fault of the messenger you have sent, but of your choice of the thought that you dispatched on the errand. You must have chosen one unfitted for the work that you wanted done.
You should be well acquainted with the work of these messengers in order that you may be wise in your choice. Let us put it plainly. Your hopes and your fears are the couriers that go to prepare the way before you, and they do prepare it. They make the rough places smooth, or they erect obstacles where none existed; they make the crooked ways straight or they send you on wide detours, according to the group to which they belong. This is why you should use care at all times. This simply means being careful of your thinking. Remember that you have the privilege of choosing your thoughts.
Every morning you are sending forth these couriers to prepare the way for you during the day. Each evening you send them out to arrange for the next day’s business. Further than this, the messengers you are sending out now may be preparing conditions for you weeks or months ahead. You should be just as careful of the kind of thoughts you send forth as you would be in selecting an assistant in your work, for the outcome of your affairs depends largely upon the kind of work your thoughts do for you. What you think early in the morning has more influence for good or bad upon the affairs of the day than what you eat for break-fast, or whether you eat at all, or what exercise you take, if any.
Suppose that you have some business to which you must give your attention tomorrow or next week, and that to you it seems of great importance. Your mental , attitude while you are considering it determines which messenger is starting on the work. If you are full of doubts concerning your ability to consummate the affair to your satisfaction, and if you are worrying about it, you are sending forth a fear messenger. The harder you worry the more power you give him, and the greater the likelihood that he will make a mess of what may be a very simple matter. If you continue worrying, you are sending more such messengers, and you soon have a regular host misarranging affairs.
Is it not sheer foolishness to do this?
If, however, you take the opposite stand, and assume that you can do it in some way and that there is nothing to worry about because everything is sure to be all right, you are equipping a hope messenger that will go before you and straighten things out. If you fill this courier with your faith in the good and give him plenty of support, you may find later that the business is all arranged with no effort on your part. This has happened many times, for these messengers have great power.
The mental preparation is the most important part of any undertaking. It may be the determining factor in success or failure. The man who scales the Matterhorn fearing that he may fall by that fear increases many times his danger of falling. His fear prepares the place for his slip long before he reaches the spot. But if he has confidence in his ability to attain the summit safely, his faith arranges footholds for him where timid people could find none. Faith that the thing can be done in some way lays out the path toward success, and he who has the most faith will travel that road the most speedily and safely.
Many a person has worried over some affair and when it has turned out badly, has said, “Well, I felt in my bones that it would happen in that way, and I was right.” He did feel it, but it was not a prophetic intuition he had, as he is fain to believe. The outcome was the result of the fear thoughts he sent out. People who send out such thoughts are actually the cause of the results of which they complain. Their mental action is foolish, but neither you nor I can convince them of this. What happens to them is the work of the silent messengers.
A close friend of mine frequently boasted that her intuition of what was about to happen was almost infallible. It is true that she was right in a large number of instances, all of which were prophecies of disagreeable endings. She always feared bad luck, and worried about it. The consequence of this mental attitude was that she met with a great deal of trouble. It was of course her own work. A large amount of fulfilled prophecy, fortunetelling, and the like can be explained in the same manner, the mental impression made by the alleged seer starting the thoughts that cause the result. Very little reliance can be placed on what anybody claims regarding the future. That is in God’s care, but our thought messengers are helping to shape our part in it.
On the other hand, a lady was desirous of settling what seemed like a very difficult situation. Her stand was quite different. She said to me, “I feel so strongly that I shall succeed in this that I am not worrying one bit about it.” She continued sending out these strong messengers of faith, and when the time came for her to act she was met more than halfway, and she received help where she had reason to expect opposition. Thus the affair was settled without any difficulty whatever.
There is not a day in which we are not faced by some problem that we feel we must solve. It may appear trivial, or it may seem to be a most momentous question, but there is a right way and a wrong way of going at it. You can worry over it, and make things worse by sending fear messengers ahead to mix things up for you; or you can attack the problem with faith in a good ending, and thus send out messengers of hope to clear the obstacles away. The choice is yours, and yours alone.
A year ago a friend of mine was faced with extremely adverse conditions. She was not a deep student of Truth, but she had grasped some of the fundamental ideas, and she used them. Instead of spending her time in worrying over the matter, she went on doing her best as she saw it, and saying continually, “There must be a way out. There is a way out, and it will be shown to me in some manner.” This strong mental position brought her right to the door she was seeking, and the adverse conditions cleared away. Her faith messengers did their work perfectly, preparing the way for her good.
Yes, we are sending out couriers before us continually. Why should we not deliberately choose those fitted to carry the message we really wish sent? This would seem to be the logical thing to do: Send out the messenger who will do the job in the right way, then hold that it is done now, until we find the solution we are seeking. This solution may come to us quickly, for these silent messengers frequently report back, and we know in advance how things are working.
It has been said that problems exist only in our own minds. This is true, for God Divine Mind knows the solution to every question; consequently problems do not exist for Him. But they do seem very real to us until we know the answer. When this comes the problem is gone; plus x, the solution, has neutralized minus x, the problem, and the result is zero no doubts, no obstruction, nothing but certainty. In order to find this answer, we must turn to God as infinite wisdom, and let Him show it to us. When my friend insisted that there must be a way out, she was acknowledging this truth, and she was opening her mind to the information. An open mind is a necessity. The fear messengers put up the bars and close the channels, while faith messengers open the doors wide. My friend’s thought messengers cleared the way, and brought her the answer.
If a problem is now facing you, send out your messengers of hope and faith continually. Would you equip them well for the work? Here is where the imagination comes into action. If you can picture yourself doing the thing, bringing it to a successful conclusion, you are sending out strong faith messengers to prepare the way that leads to success. But if you imagine yourself failing, your fear messengers are preparing the pitfalls that will cause the trouble you dread. Columbus would never have crossed the Atlantic if he had not believed the crossing possible and imagined himself doing it. His faith opened the way, although the undertaking seemed very difficult. When you are drawing mental pictures of success or failure, you are giving your hopes or your fears full sway, and you are also giving them more complete instructions in what you wish done.
Send out your messengers before you. You should never undertake to do anything without preparation, and the best form of this is to send forth thoughts of success in your efforts. Consider the question as closely as possible. Perhaps the way seems dark to you, but there is One who knows and who sees the way clearly. A statement such as “Infinite wisdom now reveals to me the way I should go” will help you more than a hundred interviews with friends, well meaning though they may be. It opens the way for the real Friend of all to speak to you and guide you.
Then, when the time is approaching for you to do the thing or attend to the business, clear your mind of all worry, and open the path before you by holding to some such thought as “Divine love goes before me and prepares my way.” This is the best messenger you can send. Love will straighten out more difficulties than any other power that has ever been discovered. If you send this courier be-fore you, the way will be well prepared. Having sent out this thought, put your faith in it and know that all things are being arranged. As you want them to be? Not necessarily, but for your highest good. That should be your goal. The little thing you so much want may not be half so good as what the Father has ready for you. So let Him prepare the way for the best things of all.
Perhaps you are having trouble in letting go of the old fears, and are still inclined to doubt your own powers. Then turn to the highest and best way of all, to your superconscious self, the Christ within you. He is all-powerful, and He is always ready to help you. Let Him do it now.
“Commit thy way unto Jehovah;
Trust also in him, and he will bring it to pass.” Quite definite directions, these; why not follow them? In any matter that is puzzling you, in any question of what to do, just put the affair in the care of Christ, and it will be attended to in the best possible way. When you cast your problems on the Christ within you, the load is taken right away from you. Let it go, and rejoice that the thing is done.
The Christ mind in you never sends out anything but positive thoughts. His messengers are those that smooth the way and make progress easy. He arranges things for the highest good of all. If you put any matter in His care, you must not worry about it. However it comes out, it will be for the best. If the result seems different from that which you hoped for, remember that you were considering it only from the personal point of view, which is limited. He sees it from the unlimited, impersonal stand-point, and works accordingly. When we are too conscious of the personal, our ways may be very far from His ways, but the latter are always the best, and it is these that we wish to see followed out in our lives. Trust Him, and this will be the result.
You are a king in your own right, the son of the Great King; so send your messengers ahead of you, but do it royally. Send out those of hope and faith; faith in divine love, faith in your own ability, and faith in mankind. Fear messengers have no place in the kingdom of which you are a part. Forget them. Let the messengers of good precede you and clear the path for you. Then you will be assured of a royal welcome when you arrive on the scene.
Do not think that there is a special form or some particular secret word that you must use. There is not and never has been. When you are using any strong affirmation of good, you are sending the corresponding thought out before you, and it is doing its work. When you are thinking of yourself as successful in something, you are sending success messengers ahead of you. And when you claim that Christ is revealing the way to you now, His love is opening the doors before you, and you will find all things made ready when the time comes.
The messengers that we send to do our bidding are most important; so let us be very careful to send the right ones. Let us send only those which are expressions of Principle and which go to arrange for our highest good.
“I am master of my thoughts, and I send out only those of faith and love to prepare the way before me. I know that they cannot fail, for I have put all my affairs in the keeping of Christ, and His messengers are my messengers.”