THINKING AND DESTINY

Harold W. Percival

CHAPTER III

OBJECTIONS TO THE LAW OF THOUGHT

Section 4

The wrath of God. The destiny of humanity. The innate faith in justice.

The thoughts of one life which have not been adjusted are carried over by the doer to the next life, and to the next; and from one civilization to another, until they are adjusted. Families, tribes, cities, nations, civilizations and the whole of humanity have their destiny. The presence of the destiny of humanity is one of the sources from which comes the feeling of assurance that justice rules the world. The other source is the idea of justice. This idea is inherent in the doer of every human; and because of it, man fears the “wrath of God” and asks for “mercy.”

The wrath of God is the accumulation of wrong actions which, like Nemesis, pursues ready to overtake, as soon as the conditions are ripe. This feeling of the destiny of humanity is shared by all its members; it causes mankind to try to propitiate some unseen being, and is made one of the foundations of religion.

The mercy which man seeks is likewise a source of religion; he seeks it that he may have his just deserts removed. Removal is impossible, but the pressure of one’s thoughts towards exteriorization may be held back for a time until the suppliant for mercy is able to meet the exteriorizations of his thoughts. Mercy is asked by those who feel themselves too weak, or who are too fearful or too selfish to let the law be fulfilled.

Besides the fear of the “wrath” or “vengeance” of God, and in addition to the desire for “mercy,” there is in man a faith that somewhere in the world—notwithstanding all the seeming injustice—there is, though unseen and not understood, adjustment and justice. This inherent faith in justice is self-existent in the doer of man. It blossomed when the aia was raised to be a Triune Self. But to evoke this faith it requires some crisis in which man is thrown upon himself by the seeming injustice of others. The faith in justice is part of the intuition of immortality, which persists in the heart of man despite his agnosticism and materialism, and adverse conditions which harden him.

The intuition of immortality is the underlying knowledge that the doer comes into being in the Eternal, not in time; that it has fallen into time; that man is able to live and will live through the seeming injustice that is imposed upon him; and that he will live to right the wrongs which he has done. The idea of justice, innate in the heart of man, is the one thing which saves him from cringing for the favor of a wrathful god. The idea of justice causes a man to look fearlessly into another’s eye, even though he may be conscious that he must suffer for a wrong he has done. The fear of the wrath and vengeance of God, the desire for mercy, faith in the eternal justice of things—these are evidences of the doer’s recognition of the destiny of humanity.