n the mental action to
consist in Absolute Certainty as to the corresponding response in the
Infinite, which is exactly the condition that the New Thought lays down
for the successful operation of Thought-power.

It may, however, be objected that if men have thus an indiscriminate
power of projecting their thought to the accomplishment of anything they
desire, they can do so for evil as easily as for good. But Jesus fully
recognised this possibility, and worked the only destructive miracle
recorded of him for the express purpose of emphasising the danger. The
reason given by the compilers of the Gospel for the destruction of the
fig-tree is clearly inadequate, for we certainly cannot suppose Jesus so
unreasonable as to curse a tree for not bearing fruit out of season. But
the record itself shows a very different purpose. Jesus answered the
disciples' astonished questioning by telling them that it was in their
own power, not only to do what was done to the fig-tree, but to produce
effects upon a far grander scale; and he concludes the conversation by
laying down the duty of a heart-searching forgiveness as a necessary
preliminary to prayer. Why was this precept so particularly impressed in
this particular connection? Obviously because the demonstration he had
just given of the valency of thought-power in the hands of instructed
persons laid bare the fact that this power can be used destructively as
well as beneficially, and that, therefore, a thorough heart-searching
for the eradication of any lurking ill-feeling became an imperative
preliminary to its safe use; otherwise there was danger of noxious
thought-currents being set in motion to the injury of others. The
miracle of the fig-tree was an object-lesson to exhibit the need for the
careful handling of that limitless power which Jesus assured his
disciples existed as fully in them as in himself. I do not here attempt
to go into this subject in detail, but enough has, I think, been shown
to convince us that Jesus made exactly the same claim for the power of
Thought as that made by the New Thought movement at the present day. It
is a great claim, and it is, therefore, encouraging to find such an
authority committed to the same assertion.

The general principle on which this claim is based by the exponents of
the New Thought is the identity of Spirit in the individual with spirit
in the universal, and we shall find that this, also, is the basis of
Jesus' teaching on the