in the animal world we find wonderful instances of longevity.  If an elephant be not overworked before he is twenty, he is in full working power up to eighty, and will then be capable of light work for another twenty years, after which he may yet enjoy another twenty years of quiet old age as the reward of his labours, while crocodiles and tortoises have been known to live for centuries.  If then such things be possible in the ordinary course of Nature in the animal world, why need we doubt the specializing power of the Word to produce far greater results in the case of man?  It is because we will not accept the maxim, that “Principle is not limited by Precedent” in regard to ourselves, though we see it demonstrated by every new scientific discovery.  We rely more on the past experience of the race, than on the Creative Power of God.  We call Him Almighty, and then say that in His Book He promises things which He is not able to perform.  But the fault is with ourselves.  We limit “the Holy ONE of Israel,” and as a consequence get only so much as by our mental attitude we are able to receive—­again the old maxim that “Power can only work in terms of the instrument it works through.”  I do not say that it is at all easy for us to completely rid ourselves of negative race-thought ingrained into us from childhood, and subtly playing upon that generic impersonal self in us of which I have spoken, and which readily responds to those thought-currents to which we are habitually attuned.  It is a matter of individual growth.  But the promises themselves contain no inherent impossibility, and are logical deductions from the principles of the Creative Law.

If the power of the Spirit over things of the material plane be an impossibility, then by what power did Jesus perform his miracles?  Either you must deny his miracles, or you must admit the power of the Spirit to work on the material plane—­there is no way out of the dilemma.  Perhaps you may say:  “Oh, but He was God in person!” Well, all the promises affirm that it is God who does these things; so what it is possible for God to do at one time, it is equally possible for Him to do at all times.  Or perhaps you hold other theological views, and will say that Jesus was an exception to the rest of the race; but, on the contrary, the whole Bible sets Him forth as the Example—­an exception certainly to men as we now know them, but the Example of what we all have it in us to become—­otherwise what use is He to us?  But apart from all argument on the subject we have his own words, telling us that those who believe in Him, i.e., believe what He said about Himself—­shall be able to do works as great as His own, and even greater (John xiv, 12).  For these reasons it appears to me that on the authority of the Bible itself, and also on metaphysical and scientific grounds we are justified in taking such promises as those I have quoted in a perfectly literal sense.

Then there are promises of the power that will attend our utterance of the Word.  “Thou shalt also decree a thing and it shall be established unto thee” (Job xxii, 28).  “All things are possible unto you” (Mark ix, 23).  “Whosoever ... shall believe that what he sayeth cometh to pass, he shall have whatsover he sayeth” (Mark xi, 23), and so on.