THE PHARISEE UP-TO-DATE.

As long as you continue to hug the delusion that you are “not to blame” for the unpleasant things in your conditions you might just as well profess the old thought as the new.  The very fundamental principle of mental science is the statement that man is a magnet and able to attract what he will.  To repudiate this statement is to knock the props out from under the whole philosophy.  Better stay an old-thoughter and let Jesus suffer for your sins and those of your relatives and friends.  At least Jesus took the sins of the world to bear, all of his own free will.  There is some comfort in letting Jesus do what he chose to do.

But you have turned away from Jesus as a scapegoat.  You refuse to lay your burdens on him who offered to bear them; and you refuse to bear them yourself.  Instead you distribute them around among your relations and friends and then fret your soul because they won’t accept your distributions.  Of course you excuse yourself by acknowledging “your share of responsibility” for the unpleasantness of conditions, but if you will examine carefully you will find that your portion of the responsibility includes most of the good things in your conditions, whilst you have portioned off almost all the responsibility for the bad things among your protesting—­or indifferent—­relatives.  You always say, “I try so hard,” but you never balance that with, “He tries so hard,”—­“They try so hard.”  You get all the I-try-items in your own pile and the don’t-try-items in other folk’s piles. “If it were not for Tom and Dick and Harry and Fan you would do wonders—­if they’d only treat you with half the consideration other people give you, or half they give other people!—­if!—­if!”

I wonder why they don’t indeed!  It is just because you are you, and you attract your own particular kind of treatment.  To all intents and purposes Tom, Dick, Harry and Fan are a punch and Judy show and you pull the strings.  When other people pull the strings there’s a different sort of show.  YOU are the motive power in all their treatment of you.  Not a tone or look or act of theirs in your direction but you are responsible for; it was you and no other who drew them to you; and it is you and no other who hold them there.

Now don’t say, “I don’t see how!” Of course not—­you haven’t wanted to see how—­you’ve been too intent justifying yourself.  And anyway, it takes an open mind, and some time, and much faith to enable us to see the principles of things.  We have to act as if they were so, a long time before we see that they are.  If you had acted upon the principle that you are a magnet and that all that comes to you comes by your attraction, you’d have long ago had your eyes opened to “see how.”  And you’d have made progress and changed your conditions.