Silver and gold

     “SILVER AND GOLD have I none, but such as I have give I thee.  Rise up and walk.”

     A beggar sitting 40 years at the Temple Beautiful asking for silver and gold.  What for?  To consume, and then ask for more. The endless getting, and using, and being obliged to get more. The endless making of demonstrations.  The endless asking for the loaf of bread which is consumed immediately.  The endless looking for symbols, instead of getting back of them.  Why didn’t he go into the Temple Beautiful?

     Picture the cripple at the temple gate.  For years he has been there.  He has long since accepted his infirmity as his natural heritage, so he begs for a bit of silver.  Picture the disciples knowing that if they threw him a handful of gold or silver they were only doing what hundreds of others had done in a more or less degree, that in reality they would not help him.  At best, it would only be a temporary relief.

     “Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I unto you”; and then followed the gift of healing.  How much silver and gold would it have taken to have bought that healing in the marts of the world?  More than likely, from worldly standards, it was beyond price.  More than likely the body of that cripple was in such an emaciated state that if the healing were possible, it would have taken years to have brought the cripple back to normal.  Back to normal by the knife, by food diet, exercise, and long, long months of convalescing. 

  “Silver and gold I have none, but such as I have give I thee, Arise!‑‑‑”

     The bestowal of the gift instantly rehabilitated the disease‑laden body.  Instantly the cripple accepted the priceless gift, leaped up and ran rejoicing and singing.  Picture the same cripple with a handful of gold.  His joy might be increased for a moment, but he would soon return to his former limitation.

     Note that the gift was instantly accepted ‑‑‑ and what was the gift?  It was the full recognition of the presence of the Power of God in the midst of him.  Every man has the gift.  He learns that the gift is beyond the price of fine gold or rubies. Silver and gold and fine rubies become as worthless chattels in

face of the priceless gift that every man has to give to the world ‑‑‑ yea, to give to himself.  Arise!

     Yet the world is full of cripples who sit at the gates of their own temple and beg for silver and gold.  The world passes by and throws them a copper or two; but sooner or later one comes by and says, “Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee,” and it is at that moment that the beggar has within his grasp complete freedom from the beggardom he has so long accepted.  Arise! ‑‑‑

     Unless, however, he accepts his gift, he will remain at the gates of his own temple begging the crowd of human thoughts that go by for enough to live on.

     Always seeking the symbol instead of what is back of it, always looking for the loaves and fishes, makes the eyes more blind and the ears more deaf.

     Looking to outside conditions for help will result in defeat.  After you have consumed the loaf of bread you are hungry again and must get another, and thus goes the game of life; devoid of charm, as crude and misshapen as a statue hacked from a block of wood with a clumsy garden axe.  Hypnotized to the human thinking, man has accepted his state as one which cannot be helped.  He blames his heredity, pre‑natal influence, environment, accident, or disease.  But all or any of these might have entered into the case of the aforementioned cripple, and still they did not act as a wall against the showing forth of the priceless gift of Spirit.  No law that man has made is a law to Spirit, and as soon as man looks away from the symbols he will receive the gift of Spirit and will understand why the priceless gift is not in dollars and cents, but in the substance which lies behind them.

     “When the Son of Man shall come shall he find faith on the earth?”  When the inspiration of the Almighty speaks to you and gives you the priceless gift, can you take it?  Can you take your good in the same degree that the cripple at the temple gate accepted that which was given him?  It was a tremendous gift that he took, from the standpoint of his bodily condition.  It meant that a great physical change had to be made instantly.  It meant that the well‑nigh impossible had to happen.  It meant that he had to let go of a lifetime of hypnotism of human thought.  It meant that it was opposed to every single human law, and was placed in the category of the impossible.  It meant that it was sweeping aside like so many cobwebs laws that were hoary with age and concreted with millions of proofs.  Yes, it meant all these. And it means that the condition that you may be under can be no more difficult than this single instance that is given you, and it also means that the change which is necessary to bring you from the darkness into the light will be no greater, no more difficult or impossible of attainment, than that performed on the cripple at the temple gate.  Arise!

     Even at this instant, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock” ‑‑‑ the very “I” that spoke through the disciples and said, “Silver and gold have I none” ‑‑‑ the very revelation of your perfect health and freedom stands offering you the gift of life and happiness, offering you freedom from the human bondage, no matter how long it has been with you.  “Is anything hard to Me?”  Is there anything that is difficult for the power of the All‑God within you to bring forth into manifestation?  Arise!

     What is this seeming opposition that seems so much more powerful than God?  Awake, awake, awake!  Arise and shine!  The thought that has been trailing its wings in the mud of human existence will scale the heights of interstellar space.

     You will note in the case of the beggar, and in the case of may others instantaneously healed by the Master and His disciples, that the healing took place almost before they had time to think.  A gift is accepted at the instant it is presented.

     When we stop for a moment to reason, “Could this happen to me?” we are lost.  God has power sufficient to instantly off‑set the oldest and most terrible human concept of law.  “Fear not; it is I.”  Arise!   

     Silver and gold have I none” does not in any sense of the word imply poverty or lack on the part of the disciples.  They might have added, “Silver and gold I have none ‑‑‑ for thee” ‑‑‑ knowing that it would not in any way help.  “When they ask for bread, I will not give a stone.”  The glorious help which enables a man to see his true self is more precious than a handful of gold or a world of human sympathy.  Arise!

     Most people are beggars in life.  Not all of them sit at the temple gates asking for gold, but they are begging for other gifts, or the symbols of other gifts, and missing the glorious gifts of Spirit which are poured out upon them.  So hypnotized to the outside manifestation are they that they fail to see or hear the gift that is bestowed upon them.  Symbols, always symbols, until they learn that a symbol without something back of it to animate it is nothing but a puppet, and has no power nor life nor expression.

     Beggar of life, when will you begin to accept the gifts of the Father?  When will you accept your Divine Heritage, and rise from the degrading position and let the light of revelation pour over you in flooding streams?  Arise!

     When will you come out of the old Pauline doctrine of “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” and accept the glorious gift of God, “Fear not . . . it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom of Heaven”?  A gift ‑‑‑ yea, even a gift as large as the Kingdom of Heaven ‑‑‑ must be accepted.  Think of it, beloved ‑‑‑ the trembling and fear, the working out of your own salvation, is suddenly all set aside by the acceptance of the gift of God, i.e., the Kingdom of Heaven. And, just as the cripple at the temple gates ran and leaped for joy into his new state of expression, leaped out of years of belief of sickness, ugliness, and filth, leaped into freedom and left behind him all the things that were true of the crippled beggar, so you, son of the Living God, will make the transformation from the present state of sickness, poverty, and unhappiness, into the perfect heaven of harmony and bliss.  When will you accept your gift?  When will you arise?

     “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.” Where is your Father?  What did Jesus the Master say of this?  “My Father within me, He doeth the works.”  The Father‑ consciousness within you is that which will give you, the human body manifestation, the Kingdom of Heaven here and now.  Do you see that it is not something afar off that is going to grant this favor to you?  “Yet in my flesh shall I see God” ‑‑‑ yet in the present body shall you see the glorious revelation, because soul and body have become one, and “whom the Lord hath joined together let no man put asunder.”

“Stir up the gift of God which is within thee.” ‑‑‑ “Arise.”

     In the midst of your chaotic world is the gift of God ‑‑‑ the gift of Life Eternal, the gift of the Infinite Riches of the Kingdom, the gift of increasing the manifestation.  “Stir up the gift of God which is within thee.”  It is already there ‑‑‑ the gift of beautiful life, glorious life, radiant life.

     And in turn the beggar goes his way rejoicing, and giving in turn the gift.  We are afraid of the gift; we make a sickly attempt at speaking the word.  We wonder if God would want us to assume such authority and such proportions, and at the same time we acknowledge, “I am the son of the Living God.”

“When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?”

     This is addressed directly to you ‑‑‑ you who read this page; if the prayer that you asked this morning suddenly came bounding out into expression, would you be ready and willing to accept it?  If the piece of gold that you had asked for could actually come into manifestation, would you be able to accept it, or would you have to look to see whether it had a serial number, or whether it were in accord with the human intellect?  If you were suddenly to have the gift you were asking for made manifest, could you have faith enough to accept it?  Until the perfect acceptance can come, and the curiosity has been absorbed in the absolute faith that “all things are possible to God,” these things cannot be, no matter what a thousand voices may say pro or con on the subject.  Arise!

     If you should tear the hide from a living body to see how the life was produced underneath, you have no life.  The killing of the goose that laid the golden egg is the result of curiosity. If you are secretly cherishing in your mind such ideas, you will see nothing, for nothing shall be there.  The soul is not of curious, it knows.  “I have a way that you know not of.”  The I AM has its way that no human intellect can see, understand, or believe.  Arise! ‑‑‑

     The whole glorious proposition lies within yourself.  It is asked of you, “When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth (your consciousness)?”  You have to answer that for yourself.  It does not make any difference what the answer be so far as the outside world is concerned; it is, however, tremendously important to you.  What would you think?  If the prayer you have just asked were at this instant to be fulfilled, could you ‑‑‑ you, who read this, accept it?  “Be still and know that I AM God.”

 

Walter C. Lanyon