Materialistic
challenge 268
In the material world, thought has brought to
light with great rapidity many useful wonders. With like activity have
thought's swift pinions been rising towards the realm of the real, to the
spiritual cause of those lower things which give impulse to inquiry. Belief in
a material basis, from which may be deduced all rationality, is slowly
yielding to the idea of a metaphysical basis, looking away from matter to Mind
as the cause of every effect. Materialistic hypotheses challenge metaphysics
to meet in final combat. In this revolutionary period, like the shepherd-boy -
with his sling, woman goes forth to battle with Goliath.
Confusion
confounded 268
In this final struggle for supremacy,
semi-metaphysical systems afford no substantial aid to scientific metaphysics,
for their arguments are based on the false testimony of the material senses as
well as on the facts of Mind. These semi-metaphysical systems are one and all
pantheistic, and savor of Pandemonium, a house divided against itself.
From first to last the supposed coexistence of
Mind and matter and the mingling of good and evil have resulted from the
philosophy of the serpent. Jesus' demonstrations sift the chaff from the
wheat, and unfold the unity and the reality of good, the unreality, the
nothingness, of evil.
Divine
metaphysics 269
Human philosophy has made God manlike.
Christian Science makes man Godlike. The first is error; the latter is truth.
Metaphysics is above physics, and matter does not enter into metaphysical
premises or conclusions. The categories of metaphysics rest on one basis, the
divine Mind. Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the
objects of sense for the ideas of Soul.
These ideas are perfectly real and tangible to
spiritual consciousness, and they have this advantage over the objects and
thoughts of material sense, - they are good and eternal.
Biblical
foundations 269
The testimony of the material senses is neither
absolute nor divine. I therefore plant myself unreservedly on the teachings of
Jesus, of his apostles, of the prophets, and on the testimony of the Science
of Mind. Other foundations there are none. All other systems - systems based
wholly or partly on knowledge gained through the material senses - are reeds
shaken by the wind, not houses built on the rock.
Rejected
theories 269
The theories I combat are these: (1) that all
is matter; (2) that matter originates in Mind, and is as real as Mind,
possessing intelligence and life. The first theory, that matter is everything,
is quite as reasonable as the second, that Mind and matter coexist and
cooperate. One only of the following statements can be true: (1) that
everything is matter; (2) that everything is Mind. Which one is it?
Matter and Mind are opposites. One is contrary
to the other in its very nature and essence; hence both cannot be real. If one
is real, the other must be unreal. Only by understanding that there is but one
power, - not two powers, matter and Mind, - are scientific and logical
conclusions reached. Few deny the hypothesis that intelligence, apart from man
and matter, governs the universe; and it is generally admitted that this
intelligence is the eternal Mind or divine Principle, Love.
Prophetic
ignorance 270
The prophets of old looked for something higher
than the systems of their times; hence their foresight of the new dispensation
of Truth. But they knew not what would be the precise nature of the teaching
and demonstration of God, divine Mind, in His more infinite meanings, - the
demonstration which was to destroy sin, sickness, and death, establish the
definition of omnipotence, and maintain the Science of Spirit.
The pride of priesthood is the prince of this
world. It has nothing in Christ. Meekness and charity have divine authority.
Mortals think wickedly; consequently they are wicked. They think sickly
thoughts, and so become sick. If sin makes sinners, Truth and Love alone can
unmake them. If a sense of disease produces suffering and a sense of ease
antidotes suffering, disease is mental, not material. Hence the fact that the
human mind alone suffers, is sick, and that the divine Mind alone heals.
The life of Christ Jesus was not miraculous,
but it was indigenous to his spirituality, - the good soil wherein the seed of
Truth springs up and bears much fruit. Christ's Christianity is the chain of
scientific being reappearing in all ages, maintaining its obvious
correspondence with the Scriptures and uniting all periods in the design of
God. Neither emasculation, illusion, nor insubordination exists in divine
Science.
Jesus instructed his disciples whereby to heal
the sick through Mind instead of matter. He knew that the philosophy, Science,
and proof of Christianity were in Truth, casting out all inharmony.
Studious
disciples 271
In Latin the word rendered disciple
signifies student; and the word indicates that the power of healing was not a
supernatural gift to those learners, but the result of their cultivated
spiritual understanding of the divine Science, which their Master demonstrated
by healing the sick and sinning. Hence the universal application of his
saying: "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall
believe on me [understand me] through their word."
New
Testament basis 271
Our Master said, "But the Comforter . . .
shall teach you all things." When the Science of Christianity appears, it
will lead you into all truth. The Sermon on the Mount is the essence of this
Science, and the eternal life, not the death of Jesus, is its outcome.
Modern
evangel 271
Those, who are willing to leave their nets or
to cast them on the right side for Truth, have the opportunity now, as
aforetime, to learn and to practise Christian healing. The Scriptures contain
it. The spiritual import of the Word imparts this power. But, as Paul says,
"How shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach,
except they be sent?" If sent, how shall they preach, convert, and heal
multitudes, except the people hear?
Spirituality
of Scripture 272
The spiritual sense of truth must be gained
before Truth can be understood. This sense is assimilated only as we are
honest, unselfish, loving, and meek. In the soil of an "honest and good
heart" the seed must be sown; else it beareth not much fruit, for the
swinish element in human nature uproots it. Jesus said: "Ye do err, not
knowing the Scriptures." The spiritual sense of the Scriptures brings out
the scientific sense, and is the new tongue referred to in the last chapter of
Mark's Gospel.
Jesus' parable of "the sower" shows
the care our Master took not to impart to dull ears and gross hearts the
spiritual teachings which dulness and grossness could not accept. Reading the
thoughts of the people, he said: "Give not that which is holy unto the
dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine."
Unspiritual
contrasts 272
It is the spiritualization of thought and
Christianization of daily life, in contrast with the results of the ghastly
farce of material existence; it is chastity and purity, in contrast with the
downward tendencies and earthward gravitation of sensualism and impurity,
which really attest the divine origin and operation of Christian Science. The
triumphs of Christian Science are recorded in the destruction of error and
evil, from which are propagated the dismal beliefs of sin, sickness, and
death.
God the
Principle of all 272
The divine Principle of the universe must
interpret the universe. God is the divine Principle of all that represents Him
and of all that really exists. Christian Science, as demonstrated by Jesus,
alone reveals the natural, divine Principle of Science.
Matter and its claims of sin, sickness, and
death are contrary to God, and cannot emanate from Him. There is no material
truth. The physical senses can take no cognizance of God and spiritual Truth.
Human belief has sought out many inventions, but not one of them can solve the
problem of being without the divine Principle of divine Science. Deductions
from material hypotheses are not scientific. They differ from real Science
because they are not based on the divine law.
Science
^versus^ sense 273
Divine Science reverses the false testimony of
the material senses, and thus tears away the foundations of error. Hence the
enmity between Science and the senses, and the impossibility of attaining
perfect understanding till the errors of sense are eliminated.
The so-called laws of matter and of medical
science have never made mortals whole, harmonious, and immortal. Man is
harmonious when governed by Soul. Hence the importance of understanding the
truth of being, which reveals the laws of spiritual existence.
Spiritual
law the only law 273
God never ordained a material law to annul the
spiritual law. If there were such a material law, it would oppose the
supremacy of Spirit, God, and impugn the wisdom of the creator. Jesus walked
on the waves, fed the multitude, healed the sick, and raised the dead in
direct opposition to material laws. His acts were the demonstration of
Science, overcoming the false claims of material sense or law.
Material
knowledge illusive 273
Science shows that material, conflicting mortal
opinions and beliefs emit the effects of error at all times, but this
atmosphere of mortal mind cannot be destructive to morals and health when it
is opposed promptly and persistently by Christian Science. Truth and Love
antidote this mental miasma, and thus invigorate and sustain existence.
Unnecessary knowledge gained from the five senses is only temporal, - the
conception of mortal mind, the offspring of sense, not of Soul, Spirit, - and
symbolizes all that is evil and perishable. Natural
science, as it is commonly called, is not really natural nor
scientific, because it is deduced from the evidence of the material senses.
Ideas, on the contrary, are born of Spirit, and are not mere inferences drawn
from material premises.
Five
senses deceptive 274
The senses of Spirit abide in Love, and they
demonstrate Truth and Life. Hence Christianity and the Science which expounds
it are based on spiritual understanding, and they supersede the so-called laws
of matter. Jesus demonstrated this great verity. When what we erroneously term
the five physical senses are misdirected, they are simply the manifested
beliefs of mortal mind, which affirm that life, substance, and intelligence
are material, instead of spiritual. These false beliefs and their products
constitute the flesh, and the flesh wars against Spirit.
Impossible
partnership 274
Divine Science is absolute, and permits no
half-way position in learning its Principle and rule - establishing it by
demonstration. The conventional firm, called matter and mind, God never
formed. Science and understanding, governed by the unerring and eternal Mind,
destroy the imaginary copartnership, matter and mind, formed only to be
destroyed in a manner and at a period as yet unknown. This suppositional
partnership is already obsolete, for matter, examined in the light of divine
metaphysics, disappears.
Spirit
the starting-point 275
Matter has no life to lose, and Spirit never
dies. A partnership of mind with matter would ignore omnipresent and
omnipotent Mind. This shows that matter did not originate in God, Spirit, and
is not eternal. Therefore matter is neither substantial, living, nor
intelligent. The starting-point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is
All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind, - that God is Love, and
therefore He is divine Principle.
Divine
synonyms 275
To grasp the reality and order of being in its
Science, you must begin by reckoning God as the divine Principle of all that
really is. Spirit, Life, Truth, Love, combine as one, - and are the Scriptural
names for God. All substance, intelligence, wisdom, being, immortality, cause,
and effect belong to God. These are His attributes, the eternal manifestations
of the infinite divine Principle, Love. No wisdom is wise but His wisdom; no
truth is true, no love is lovely, no life is Life but the divine; no good is,
but the good God bestows.
The
divine completeness 275
Divine metaphysics, as revealed to spiritual
understanding, shows clearly that all is Mind, and that Mind is God,
omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, - that is, all power, all presence,
all Science. Hence all is in reality the manifestation of Mind.
Our material human theories are destitute of
Science. The true understanding of God is spiritual. It robs the grave of
victory. It destroys the false evidence that misleads thought and points to
other gods, or other so-called powers, such as matter, disease, sin, and
death, superior or contrary to the one Spirit.
Truth, spiritually discerned, is scientifically
understood. It casts out error and heals the sick.
Universal
brotherhood 276
Having one God, one Mind, unfolds the power
that heals the sick, and fulfils these sayings of Scripture, "I am the
Lord that healeth thee," and "I have found a ransom." When the
divine precepts are understood, they unfold the foundation of fellowship, in
which one mind is not at war with another, but all have one Spirit, God, one
intelligent source, in accordance with the Scriptural command: "Let this
Mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." Man and his Maker are
correlated in divine Science, and real consciousness is cognizant only of the
things of God.
The realization that all inharmony is unreal
brings objects and thoughts into human view in their true light, and presents
them as beautiful and immortal. Harmony in man is as real and immortal as in
music. Discord is unreal and mortal.
Perfection
requisite 276
If God is admitted to be the only Mind and
Life, there ceases to be any opportunity for sin and death. When we learn in
Science how to be perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect, thought is
turned into new and healthy channels, - towards the contemplation of things
immortal and away from materiality to the Principle of the universe, including
harmonious man.
Material beliefs and spiritual understanding
never mingle. The latter destroys the former. Discord is the nothingness
named error. Harmony is the somethingness
named Truth.
Like
evolving like 276
Nature and revelation inform us that like
produces like. Divine Science does not gather grapes from thorns nor figs from
thistles. Intelligence never produces non-intelligence; but matter is ever
non-intelligent and therefore cannot spring from intelligence. To all that is
unlike unerring and eternal Mind, this Mind saith, "Thou shalt surely
die;" and elsewhere the Scripture says that dust returns to dust. The
non-intelligent relapses into its own unreality. Matter never produces mind.
The immortal never produces the mortal. Good cannot result in evil. As God
Himself is good and is Spirit, goodness and spirituality must be immortal.
Their opposites, evil and matter, are mortal error, and error has no creator.
If goodness and spirituality are real, evil and materiality are unreal and
cannot be the outcome of an infinite God, good.
Natural history presents vegetables and animals
as preserving their original species, - like reproducing like. A mineral is
not produced by a vegetable nor the man by the brute. In reproduction, the
order of genus and species is preserved throughout the entire round of nature.
This points to the spiritual truth and Science of being. Error relies upon a
reversal of this order, asserts that Spirit produces matter and matter
produces all the ills of flesh, and therefore that good is the origin of evil.
These suppositions contradict even the order of material so-called science.
Material
error 277
The realm of the real is Spirit. The unlikeness
of Spirit is matter, and the opposite of the real is not divine, - it is a
human concept. Matter is an error of statement. This error in the premise
leads to errors in the conclusion in every statement into which it enters.
Nothing we can say or believe regarding matter is immortal, for matter is
temporal and is therefore a mortal phenomenon, a human concept, sometimes
beautiful, always erroneous.
Substance
^versus^ supposition 278
Is Spirit the source or creator of matter?
Science reveals nothing in Spirit out of which to create matter. Divine
metaphysics explains away matter. Spirit is the only substance and
consciousness recognized by divine Science. The material senses oppose this,
but there are no material senses, for matter has no mind. In Spirit there is
no matter, even as in Truth there is no error, and in good no evil. It is a
false supposition, the notion that there is real substance-matter, the
opposite of Spirit. Spirit, God, is infinite, all. Spirit can have no
opposite.
One
cause supreme 278
That matter is substantial or has life and
sensation, is one of the false beliefs of mortals, and exists only in a
supposititious mortal consciousness. Hence, as we approach Spirit and Truth,
we lose the consciousness of matter. The admission that there can be material
substance requires another admission, - namely, that Spirit is not infinite
and that matter is self-creative, self-existent, and eternal. From this it
would follow that there are two eternal causes, warring forever with each
other; and yet we say that Spirit is supreme and all-presence.
The belief of the eternity of matter
contradicts the demonstration of life as Spirit, and leads to the conclusion
that if man is material, he originated in matter and must return to dust, -
logic which would prove his annihilation.
Substance
is Spirit 278
All that we term sin, sickness, and death is a
mortal belief. We define matter as error, because it is the opposite of life,
substance, and intelligence. Matter, with its mortality, cannot be substantial
if Spirit is substantial and eternal. Which ought to be substance to us, - the
erring, changing, and dying, the mutable and mortal, or the unerring,
immutable, and immortal? A New Testament writer plainly describes faith, a
quality of mind, as "the substance
of things hoped for."
Material
mortality 279
The doom of matter establishes the conclusion
that matter, slime, or protoplasm never originated in the immortal Mind, and
is therefore not eternal. Matter is neither created by Mind nor for the
manifestation and support of Mind.
Spiritual
tangibility 279
Ideas are tangible and real to immortal
consciousness, and they have the advantage of being eternal. Spirit and matter
can neither coexist nor cooperate, and one can no more create the other than
Truth can create error, or vice versa.
In proportion as the belief disappears that
life and intelligence are in or of matter, the immortal facts of being are
seen, and their only idea or intelligence is in God. Spirit is reached only
through the understanding and demonstration of eternal Life and Truth and
Love.
Pantheistic
tendencies 279
Every system of human philosophy, doctrine, and
medicine is more or less infected with the pantheistic belief that there is
mind in matter; but this belief contradicts alike revelation and right
reasoning. A logical and scientific conclusion is reached only through the
knowledge that there are not two bases of being, matter and mind, but one
alone, - Mind.
Pantheism, starting from a material sense of
God, seeks cause in effect, Principle in its idea, and life and intelligence
in matter.
The
things of God are beautiful 280
In the infinitude of Mind, matter must be
unknown. Symbols and elements of discord and decay are not products of the
infinite, perfect, and eternal All.
From Love and from the light and harmony which are the abode of Spirit, only
reflections of good can come. All things beautiful and harmless are ideas of
Mind. Mind creates and multiplies them, and the product must be mental.
Finite belief can never do justice to Truth in
any direction. Finite belief limits all things, and would compress Mind, which
is infinite, beneath a skull bone. Such belief can neither apprehend nor
worship the infinite; and to accommodate its finite sense of the divisibility
of Soul and substance, it seeks to divide the one Spirit into persons and
souls.
Belief
in many gods 280
Through this error, human belief comes to have
"gods many and lords many." Moses declared as Jehovah's first
command of the Ten: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me!" But
behold the zeal of belief to establish the opposite error of many minds. The
argument of the serpent in the allegory, "Ye shall be as gods,"
urges through every avenue the belief that Soul is in body, and that infinite
Spirit, and Life, is in finite forms.
Sensationless
body 280
Rightly understood, instead of possessing a
sentient material form, man has a sensationless body; and God, the Soul of man
and of all existence, being perpetual in His own individuality, harmony, and
immortality, imparts and perpetuates these qualities in man, - through Mind,
not matter. The only excuse for entertaining human opinions and rejecting the
Science of being is our mortal ignorance of Spirit, - ignorance which yields
only to the understanding of divine Science, the understanding by which we
enter into the kingdom of Truth on earth and learn that Spirit is infinite and
supreme. Spirit and matter no more commingle than light and darkness. When one
appears, the other disappears.
God and
His image 281
Error presupposes man to be both mind and
matter. Divine Science contradicts the corporeal senses, rebukes mortal
belief, and asks: What is the Ego, whence its origin and what its destiny? The
Ego-man is the reflection of the Ego-God; the Ego-man is the image and
likeness of perfect Mind, Spirit, divine Principle.
The one Ego, the one Mind or Spirit called God,
is infinite individuality, which supplies all form and comeliness and which
reflects reality and divinity in individual spiritual man and things.
The mind supposed to exist in matter or beneath
a skull bone is a myth, a misconceived sense and false conception as to man
and Mind. When we put off the false sense for the true, and see that sin and
mortality have neither Principle nor permanency, we shall learn that sin and
mortality are without actual origin or rightful existence. They are native
nothingness, out of which error would simulate creation through a man formed
from dust.
The true
new idea 281
Divine Science does not put new wine into old
bottles, Soul into matter, nor the infinite into the finite. Our false views
of matter perish as we grasp the facts of Spirit. The old belief must be cast
out or the new idea will be spilled, and the inspiration, which is to change
our standpoint, will be lost. Now, as of old, Truth casts out evils and heals
the sick.
Figures
of being 282
The real Life, or Mind, and its opposite, the
so-called material life and mind, are figured by two geometrical symbols, a
circle or sphere and a straight line. The circle represents the infinite
without beginning or end; the straight line represents the finite, which has
both beginning and end. The sphere represents good, the self-existent and
eternal individuality or Mind; the straight line represents evil, a belief in
a self-made and temporary material existence. Eternal Mind and temporary
material existence never unite in figure or in fact.
Opposite
symbols 282
A straight line finds no abiding-place in a
curve, and a curve finds no adjustment to a straight line. Similarly, matter
has no place in Spirit, and Spirit has no place in matter. Truth has no home
in error, and error has no foothold in Truth. Mind cannot pass into
non-intelligence and matter, nor can non-intelligence become Soul. At no point
can these opposites mingle or unite. Even though they seem to touch, one is
still a curve and the other a straight line.
There is no inherent power in matter; for all
that is material is a material, human, mortal thought, always governing itself
erroneously.
Truth is the intelligence of immortal Mind.
Error is the so-called intelligence of mortal mind.
Truth is
not inverted 282
Whatever indicates the fall of man or the
opposite of God or God's absence, is the Adam-dream, which is neither Mind nor
man, for it is not begotten of the Father. The rule of inversion infers from
error its opposite, Truth; but Truth is the light which dispels error. As
mortals begin to understand Spirit, they give up the belief that there is any
true existence apart from God.
Source
of all life and action 283
Mind is the source of all movement, and there
is no inertia to retard or check its perpetual and harmonious action. Mind is
the same Life, Love, and wisdom "yesterday, and to-day, and
forever." Matter and its effects - sin, sickness, and death - are states
of mortal mind which act, react, and then come to a stop. They are not facts
of Mind. They are not ideas, but illusions. Principle is absolute. It admits
of no error, but rests upon understanding.
But what say prevalent theories? They insist
that Life, or God, is one and the same with material life so-called. They
speak of both Truth and error as mind,
and of good and evil as spirit.
They claim that to be life which is but the objective state of material sense,
- such as the structural life of the tree and of material man, - and deem this
the manifestation of the one Life, God.
Spiritual
structure 283
This false belief as to what really constitutes
life so detracts from God's character and nature, that the true sense of His
power is lost to all who cling to this falsity. The divine Principle, or Life,
cannot be practically demonstrated in length of days, as it was by the
patriarchs, unless its Science be accurately stated. We must receive the
divine Principle in the understanding, and live it in daily life; and unless
we so do, we can no more demonstrate Science, than we can teach and illustrate
geometry by calling a curve a straight line or a straight line a sphere.
Are mentality, immortality, consciousness,
resident in matter? It is not rational to say that Mind is infinite, but
dwells in finiteness, - in matter, - or that matter is infinite and the medium
of Mind.
Mind
never limited 284
If God were limited to man or matter, or if the
infinite could be circumscribed within the finite, God would be corporeal, and
unlimited Mind would seem to spring from a limited body; but this is an
impossibility. Infinite Mind can have no starting-point, and can return to no
limit. It can never be in bonds, nor be fully manifested through corporeality.
Material
recognition impossible 284
Is God's image or likeness matter, or a mortal,
sin, sickness, and death? Can matter recognize Mind? Can infinite Mind
recognize matter? Can the infinite dwell in the finite or know aught unlike
the infinite? Can Deity be known through the material senses? Can the material
senses, which receive no direct evidence of Spirit, give correct testimony as
to spiritual life, truth, and love?
The answer to all these questions must forever
be in the negative.
Our
physical insensibility to Spirit 284
The physical senses can obtain no proof of God.
They can neither see Spirit through the eye nor hear it through the ear, nor
can they feel, taste, or smell Spirit. Even the more subtile and misnamed
material elements are beyond the cognizance of these senses, and are known
only by the effects commonly attributed to them.
According to Christian Science, the only real
senses of man are spiritual, emanating from divine Mind. Thought passes from
God to man, but neither sensation nor report goes from material body to Mind.
The intercommunication is always from God to His idea, man. Matter is not
sentient and cannot be cognizant of good or of evil, of pleasure or of pain.
Man's individuality is not material. This Science of being obtains not alone
hereafter in what men call Paradise, but here and now; it is the great fact of
being for time and eternity.
The
human counterfeit 285
What, then, is the material personality which
suffers, sins, and dies? It is not man, the image and likeness of God, but
man's counterfeit, the inverted likeness, the unlikeness
called sin, sickness, and death. The unreality of the claim that a mortal is
the true image of God is illustrated by the opposite natures of Spirit and
matter, Mind and body, for one is intelligence while the other is
non-intelligence.
Material
misconceptions 285
Is God a physical personality? Spirit is not
physical. The belief that a material body is man is a false conception of man.
The time has come for a finite conception of the infinite and of a material
body as the seat of Mind to give place to a diviner sense of intelligence and
its manifestations, - to the better understanding that Science gives of the
Supreme Being, or divine Principle, and idea.
Salvation
is through reform 285
By interpreting God as a corporeal Saviour but
not as the saving Principle, or divine Love, we shall continue to seek
salvation through pardon and not through reform, and resort to matter instead
of Spirit for the cure of the sick. As mortals reach, through knowledge of
Christian Science, a higher sense, they will seek to learn, not from matter,
but from the divine Principle, God, how to demonstrate the Christ, Truth, as
the healing and saving power.
It is essential to understand, instead of
believe, what relates most nearly to the happiness of being. To seek Truth
through belief in a human doctrine is not to understand the infinite. We must
not seek the immutable and immortal through the finite, mutable, and mortal,
and so depend upon belief instead of demonstration, for this is fatal to a
knowledge of Science. The understanding of Truth gives full faith in Truth,
and spiritual understanding is better than all burnt offerings.
The Master said, "No man cometh unto the
Father the divine Principle of being] but by me," Christ, Life, Truth,
Love; for Christ says, "I am the way." Physical causation was put
aside from first to last by this original man, Jesus. He knew that the divine
Principle, Love, creates and governs all that is real.
Goodness
a portion of God 286
In the Saxon and twenty other tongues good
is the term for God. The Scriptures declare all that He made to be good, like
Himself, - good in Principle and in idea. Therefore the spiritual universe is
good, and reflects God as He is.
Spiritual
thoughts 286
God's thoughts are perfect and eternal, are
substance and Life. Material and temporal thoughts are human, involving error,
and since God, Spirit, is the only cause, they lack a divine cause. The
temporal and material are not then creations of Spirit. They are but
counterfeits of the spiritual and eternal. Transitory thoughts are the
antipodes of everlasting Truth, though (by the supposition of opposite
qualities) error must also say, "I am true." But by this saying
error, the lie, destroys itself.
Sin, sickness, and death are comprised in human
material belief, and belong not to the divine Mind. They are without a real
origin or existence. They have neither Principle nor permanence, but belong,
with all that is material and temporal, to the nothingness of error, which
simulates the creations of Truth. All creations of Spirit are eternal; but
creations of matter must return to dust. Error supposes man to be both mental
and material. Divine Science contradicts this postulate and maintains man's
spiritual identity.
Divine
allness 287
We call the absence of Truth, error.
Truth and error are unlike. In Science, Truth is divine, and the infinite
God can have no unlikeness. Did God, Truth, create error? No! "Doth a
fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?" God being
everywhere and all-inclusive, how can He be absent or suggest the absence of
omnipresence and omnipotence? How can there be more than all?
Neither understanding nor truth accompanies
error, nor is error the offshoot of Mind. Evil calls itself something, when it
is nothing. It saith, "I am man, but I am not the image and likeness of
God;" whereas the Scriptures declare that man was made in God's likeness.
Error
unveiled 287
Error is false, mortal belief; it is illusion,
without spiritual identity or foundation, and it has no real existence. The
supposition that life, substance, and intelligence are in
matter, or of it, is an
error. Matter is neither a thing nor a person, but merely the objective
supposition of Spirit's opposite. The five material senses testify to truth
and error as united in a mind both good and evil. Their false evidence will
finally yield to Truth, - to the recognition of Spirit and of the spiritual
creation.
Truth cannot be contaminated by error. The
statement that Truth is real
necessarily includes the correlated statement, that error,
Truth's unlikeness, is unreal.
The
great conflict 288
The suppositional warfare between truth and
error is only the mental conflict between the evidence of the spiritual senses
and the testimony of the material senses, and this warfare between the Spirit
and flesh will settle all questions through faith in and the understanding of
divine Love.
Superstition and understanding can never
combine. When the final physical and moral effects of Christian Science are
fully apprehended, the conflict between truth and error, understanding and
belief, Science and material sense, foreshadowed by the prophets and
inaugurated by Jesus, will cease, and spiritual harmony reign. The lightnings
and thunderbolts of error may burst and flash till the cloud is cleared and
the tumult dies away in the distance. Then the raindrops of divinity refresh
the earth. As St. Paul says: "There remaineth therefore a rest to the
people of God" (of Spirit).
The
chief stones in the temple 288
The chief stones in the temple of Christian
Science are to be found in the following postulates: that Life is God, good,
and not evil; that Soul is sinless, not to be found in the body; that Spirit
is not, and cannot be, materialized; that Life is not subject to death; that
the spiritual real man has no birth, no material life, and no death.
The
Christ-element 288
Science reveals the glorious possibilities of
immortal man, forever unlimited by the mortal senses. The Christ-element in
the Messiah made him the Way-shower, Truth and Life.
The eternal Truth destroys what mortals seem to
have learned from error, and man's real existence as a child of God comes to
light. Truth demonstrated is eternal life. Mortal man can never rise from the
temporal debris of
error, belief in sin, sickness, and death, until he learns that God is the
only Life. The belief that life and sensation are in the body should be
overcome by the understanding of what constitutes man as the image of God.
Then Spirit will have overcome the flesh.
Wickedness
is not man 289
A wicked mortal is not the idea of God. He is
little else than the expression of error. To suppose that sin, lust, hatred,
envy, hypocrisy, revenge, have life abiding in them, is a terrible mistake.
Life and Life's idea, Truth and Truth's idea, never make men sick, sinful, or
mortal.
Death
but an illusion 289
The fact that the Christ, or Truth, overcame
and still overcomes death proves the "king of terrors" to be but a
mortal belief, or error, which Truth destroys with the spiritual evidences of
Life; and this shows that what appears to the senses to be death is but a
mortal illusion, for to the real man and the real universe there is no
death-process.
The belief that matter has life results, by the
universal law of mortal mind, in a belief in death. So man, tree, and flower
are supposed to die; but the fact remains, that God's universe is spiritual
and immortal.
Spiritual
offspring 289
The spiritual fact and the material belief of
things are contradictions; but the spiritual is true, and therefore the
material must be untrue. Life is not in matter. Therefore it cannot be said to
pass out of matter. Matter and death are mortal illusions. Spirit and all
things spiritual are the real and eternal.
Man is not the offspring of flesh, but of
Spirit, - of Life, not of matter. Because Life is God, Life must be eternal,
self-existent. Life is the everlasting I AM, the Being who was and is and
shall be, whom nothing can erase.
Death no
advantage 290
If the Principle, rule, and demonstration of
man's being are not in the least understood before what is termed death
overtakes mortals, they will rise no higher spiritually in the scale of
existence on account of that single experience, but will remain as material as
before the transition, still seeking happiness through a material, instead of
through a spiritual sense of life, and from selfish and inferior motives. That
Life or Mind is finite and physical or is manifested through brain and nerves,
is false. Hence Truth comes to destroy this error and its effects, - sickness,
sin, and death. To the spiritual class, relates the Scripture: "On such
the second death hath no power."
Future
purification 290
If the change called death
destroyed the belief in sin, sickness, and death, happiness would be won at
the moment of dissolution, and be forever permanent; but this is not so.
Perfection is gained only by perfection. They who are unrighteous shall be
unrighteous still, until in divine Science Christ, Truth, removes all
ignorance and sin.
Sin is
punished 290
The sin and error which possess us at the
instant of death do not cease at that moment, but endure until the death of
these errors. To be wholly spiritual, man must be sinless, and he becomes thus
only when he reaches perfection. The murderer, though slain in the act, does
not thereby forsake sin. He is no more spiritual for believing that his body
died and learning that his cruel mind died not. His thoughts are no purer
until evil is disarmed by good. His body is as material as his mind, and vice
versa.
The suppositions that sin is pardoned while
unforsaken, that happiness can be genuine in the midst of sin, that the
so-called death of the body frees from sin, and that God's pardon is aught but
the destruction of sin, - these are grave mistakes. We know that all will be
changed "in the twinkling of an eye," when the last trump shall
sound; but this last call of wisdom cannot come till mortals have already
yielded to each lesser call in the growth of Christian character. Mortals need
not fancy that belief in the experience of death will awaken them to glorified
being.
Salvation
and probation 291
Universal salvation rests on progression and
probation, and is unattainable without them. Heaven is not a locality, but a
divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious
and immortal, because sin is not there and man is found having no
righteousness of his own, but in possession of "the mind of the
Lord," as the Scripture says.
"In the place where the tree falleth,
there it shall be." So we read in Ecclesiastes. This text has been
transformed into the popular proverb, "As the tree falls, so it must
lie." As man falleth asleep, so shall he awake. As death findeth mortal
man, so shall he be after death, until probation and growth shall effect the
needed change. Mind never becomes dust. No resurrection from the grave awaits
Mind or Life, for the grave has no power over either.
Day of
judgment 291
No final judgment awaits mortals, for the
judgment-day of wisdom comes hourly and continually, even the judgment by
which mortal man is divested of all material error. As for spiritual error
there is none.
When the last mortal fault is destroyed, then
the final trump will sound which will end the battle of Truth with error and
mortality; "but of that day and hour, knoweth no man." Here prophecy
pauses. Divine Science alone can compass the heights and depths of being and
reveal the infinite.
Primitive
error 292
Truth will be to us "the resurrection and
the life" only as it destroys all error and the belief that Mind, the
only immortality of man, can be fettered by the body, and Life be controlled
by death. A sinful, sick, and dying mortal is not the likeness of God, the
perfect and eternal.
Matter is the primitive belief of mortal mind,
because this so-called mind has no cognizance of Spirit. To mortal mind,
matter is substantial, and evil is real. The so-called senses of mortals are
material. Hence the so-called life of mortals is dependent on matter.
Explaining the origin of material man and
mortal mind, Jesus said: "Why do ye not understand my speech? Even
because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father, the devil [evil], and
the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and
abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a
lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."
Immortal
man 292
This carnal material mentality, misnamed mind,
is mortal. Therefore man would be annihilated, were it not for the spiritual
real man's indissoluble connection with his God, which Jesus brought to light.
In his resurrection and ascension, Jesus showed that a mortal man is not the
real essence of manhood, and that this unreal material mortality disappears in
presence of the reality.
Elementary
electricity 293
Electricity is not a vital fluid, but the least
material form of illusive consciousness, - the material mindlessness, which
forms no link between matter and Mind, and which destroys itself. Matter and
mortal mind are but different strata of human belief. The grosser substratum
is named matter or body; the more ethereal is called mind. This so-called mind
and body is the illusion called a mortal, a mind in matter. In reality and in
Science, both strata, mortal mind and mortal body, are false representatives
of man.
The material so-called gases and forces are
counterfeits of the spiritual forces of divine Mind, whose potency is Truth,
whose attraction is Love, whose adhesion and cohesion are Life, perpetuating
the eternal facts of being. Electricity is the sharp surplus of materiality
which counterfeits the true essence of spirituality or truth, - the great
difference being that electricity is not intelligent, while spiritual truth is
Mind.
The
counterfeit forces 293
There is no vapid fury of mortal mind-expressed
in earthquake, wind, wave, lightning, fire, bestial ferocity - and this
so-called mind is self-destroyed. The manifestations of evil, which
counterfeit divine justice, are called in the Scriptures, "The anger of
the Lord." In reality, they show the self-destruction of error or matter
and point to matter's opposite, the strength and permanency of Spirit.
Christian Science brings to light Truth and its supremacy, universal harmony,
the entireness of God, good, and the nothingness of evil.
Instruments
of error 293
The five physical senses are the avenues and
instruments of human error, and they correspond with error. These senses
indicate the common human belief, that life, substance, and intelligence are a
unison of matter with Spirit. This is pantheism, and carries within itself the
seeds of all error.
If man is both mind and matter, the loss of one
finger would take away some quality and quantity of the man, for matter and
man would be one.
Mortal
verdict 294
The belief that matter thinks, sees, or feels
is not more real than the belief that matter enjoys and suffers. This mortal
belief, misnamed man,
is error, saying: "Matter has intelligence and sensation. Nerves feel.
Brain thinks and sins. The stomach can make a man cross. Injury can cripple
and matter can kill man." This verdict of the so-called material senses
victimizes mortals, taught, as they are by physiology and pathology, to revere
false testimony, even the errors that are destroyed by Truth through spiritual
sense and Science.
Mythical
pleasure 294
The lines of demarcation between immortal man,
representing Spirit, and mortal man, representing the error that life and
intelligence are in matter, show the pleasures and pains of matter to be
myths, and human belief in them to be the father of mythology, in which matter
is represented as divided into intelligent gods. Man's genuine selfhood is
recognizable only in what is good and true. Man is neither self-made nor made
by mortals. God created man.
The inebriate believes that there is pleasure
in intoxication. The thief believes that he gains something by stealing, and
the hypocrite that he is hiding himself. The Science of Mind corrects such
mistakes, for Truth demonstrates the falsity of error.
Severed
members 295
The belief that a severed limb is aching in the
old location, the sensation seeming to be in nerves which are no longer there,
is an added proof of the unreliability of physical testimony.
Mortals
unlike immortals 295
God creates and governs the universe, including
man. The universe is filled with spiritual ideas, which He evolves, and they
are obedient to the Mind that makes them. Mortal mind would transform the
spiritual into the material, and then recover man's original self in order to
escape from the mortality of this error. Mortals are not like immortals,
created in God's own image; but infinite Spirit being all, mortal
consciousness will at last yield to the scientific fact and disappear, and the
real sense of being, perfect and forever intact, will appear.
Goodness
transparent 295
The manifestation of God through mortals is as
light passing through the window-pane. The light and the glass never mingle,
but as matter, the glass is less opaque than the walls. The mortal mind
through which Truth appears most vividly is that one which has lost much
materiality - much error - in order to become a better transparency for Truth.
Then, like a cloud melting into thin vapor, it no longer hides the sun.
Brainology
a myth 295
All that is called mortal thought is made up of
error. The theoretical mind is matter, named brain,
or material consciousness,
the exact opposite of real Mind, or Spirit. Brainology teaches that mortals
are created to suffer and die. It further teaches that when man is dead, his
immortal soul is resurrected from death and mortality. Thus error theorizes
that spirit is born of matter and returns to matter, and that man has a
resurrection from dust; whereas Science unfolds the eternal verity, that man
is the spiritual, eternal reflection of God.
Scientific
purgation 296
Progress is born of experience. It is the
ripening of mortal man, through which the mortal is dropped for the immortal.
Either here or hereafter, suffering or Science must destroy all illusions
regarding life and mind, and regenerate material sense and self. The old man
with his deeds must be put off. Nothing sensual or sinful is immortal. The
death of a false material sense and of sin, not the death of organic matter,
is what reveals man and Life, harmonious, real, and eternal.
The so-called pleasures and pains of matter
perish, and they must go out under the blaze of Truth, spiritual sense, and
the actuality of being. Mortal belief must lose all satisfaction in error and
sin in order to part with them.
Whether mortals will learn this sooner or
later, and how long they will suffer the pangs of destruction, depends upon
the tenacity of error.
Mixed
testimony 296
The knowledge obtained from the corporeal
senses leads to sin and death. When the evidence of Spirit and matter, Truth
and error, seems to commingle, it rests upon foundations which time is wearing
away. Mortal mind judges by the testimony of the material senses, until
Science obliterates this false testimony. An improved belief is one step out
of error, and aids in taking the next step and in understanding the situation
in Christian Science.
Belief
an autocrat 296
Mortal belief is a liar from the beginning, not
deserving power. It says to mortals, "You are wretched!" and they
think they are so; and nothing can change this state, until the belief
changes. Mortal belief says, "You are happy!" and mortals are so;
and no circumstance can alter the situation, until the belief on this subject
changes. Human belief says to mortals, "You are sick!" and this
testimony manifests itself on the body as sickness. It is as necessary for a
health-illusion, as for an illusion of sickness, to be instructed out of
itself into the understanding of what constitutes health; for a change in
either a health-belief or a belief in sickness affects the physical condition.
Self-improvement
297
Erroneous belief is destroyed by truth. Change
the evidence, and that disappears which before seemed real to this false
belief, and the human consciousness rises higher. Thus the reality of being is
attained and man found to be immortal. The only fact concerning any material
concept is, that it is neither scientific nor eternal, but subject to change
and dissolution.
Faith
higher than belief 297
Faith is higher and more spiritual than belief.
It is a chrysalis state of human thought, in which spiritual evidence,
contradicting the testimony of material sense, begins to appear, and Truth,
the ever-present, is becoming understood. Human thoughts have their degrees of
comparison. Some thoughts are better than others. A belief in Truth is better
than a belief in error, but no mortal testimony is founded on the divine rock.
Mortal testimony can be shaken. Until belief becomes faith, and faith becomes
spiritual understanding, human thought has little relation to the actual or
divine.
A mortal belief fulfils its own conditions.
Sickness, sin, and death are the vague realities of human conclusions. Life,
Truth, and Love are the realities of divine Science. They dawn in faith and
glow full-orbed in spiritual understanding. As a cloud hides the sun it cannot
extinguish, so false belief silences for a while the voice of immutable
harmony, but false belief cannot destroy Science armed with faith, hope, and
fruition.
Truth's
witness 298
What is termed material sense can report only a
mortal temporary sense of things, whereas spiritual sense can bear witness
only to Truth. To material sense, the unreal is the real until this sense is
corrected by Christian Science.
Spiritual sense, contradicting the material
senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality.
Material sense expresses the belief that mind is in matter. This human belief,
alternating between a sense of pleasure and pain, hope and fear, life and
death, never reaches beyond the boundary of the mortal or the unreal. When the
real is attained, which is announced by Science, joy is no longer a trembler,
nor is hope a cheat. Spiritual ideas, like numbers and notes, start from
Principle, and admit no materialistic beliefs. Spiritual ideas lead up to
their divine origin, God, and to the spiritual sense of being.
Thought-angels
298
Angels are not etherealized human beings,
evolving animal qualities in their wings; but they are celestial visitants,
flying on spiritual, not material, pinions. Angels are pure thoughts from God,
winged with Truth and Love, no matter what their individualism may be. Human
conjecture confers upon angels its own forms of thought, marked with
superstitious outlines, making them human creatures with suggestive feathers;
but this is only fancy. It has behind it no more reality than has the
sculptor's thought when he carves his "Statue of Liberty," which
embodies his conception of an unseen quality or condition, but which has no
physical antecedent reality save in the artist's own observation and
"chambers of imagery."
Our
angelic messengers 299
My angels are exalted thoughts, appearing at
the door of some sepulchre, in which human belief has buried its fondest
earthly hopes. With white fingers they point upward to a new and glorified
trust, to higher ideals of life and its joys. Angels are God's
representatives. These upward-soaring beings never lead towards self, sin, or
materiality, but guide to the divine Principle of all good, whither every real
individuality, image, or likeness of God, gathers. By giving earnest heed to
these spiritual guides they tarry with us, and we entertain "angels
unawares."
Knowledge
and Truth 299
Knowledge gained from material sense is
figuratively represented in Scripture as a tree, bearing the fruits of sin,
sickness, and death. Ought we not then to judge the knowledge thus obtained to
be untrue and dangerous, since "the tree is known by his fruit"?
Truth never destroys God's idea. Truth is
spiritual, eternal substance, which cannot destroy the right reflection.
Corporeal sense, or error, may seem to hide Truth, health, harmony, and
Science, as the mist obscures the sun or the mountain; but Science, the
sunshine of Truth, will melt away the shadow and reveal the celestial peaks.
Old and
new man 299
If man were solely a creature of the material
senses, he would have no eternal Principle and would be mutable and mortal.
Human logic is awry when it attempts to draw correct spiritual conclusions
regarding life from matter. Finite sense has no true appreciation of infinite
Principle, God, or of His infinite image or reflection, man. The mirage, which
makes trees and cities seem to be where they are not, illustrates the illusion
of material man, who cannot be the image of God.
So far as the scientific statement as to man is
understood, it can be proved and will bring to light the true reflection of
God - the real man, or the new
man (as St. Paul has it).
The
tares and wheat 300
The temporal and unreal never touch the eternal
and real. The mutable and imperfect never touch the immutable and perfect. The
inharmonious and self-destructive never touch the harmonious and
self-existent. These opposite qualities are the tares and wheat, which never
really mingle, though (to mortal sight) they grow side by side until the
harvest; then, Science separates the wheat from the tares, through the
realization of God as ever present and of man as reflecting the divine
likeness.
The
divine reflection 300
Spirit is God, Soul; therefore Soul is not in
matter. If Spirit were in matter, God would have no representative, and matter
would be identical with God. The theory that soul, spirit, intelligence,
inhabits matter is taught by the schools. This theory is unscientific. The
universe reflects and expresses the divine substance or Mind; therefore God is
seen only in the spiritual universe and spiritual man, as the sun is seen in
the ray of light which goes out from it. God is revealed only in that which
reflects Life, Truth, Love, - yea, which manifests God's attributes and power,
even as the human likeness thrown upon the mirror, repeats the color, form,
and action of the person in front of the mirror.
Few persons comprehend what Christian Science
means by the word reflection.
To himself, mortal and material man seems to be substance, but his sense of
substance involves error and therefore is material, temporal.
On the other hand, the immortal, spiritual man
is really substantial, and reflects the eternal substance, or Spirit, which
mortals hope for. He reflects the divine, which constitutes the only real and
eternal entity. This reflection seems to mortal sense transcendental, because
the spiritual man's substantiality transcends mortal vision and is revealed
only through divine Science.
Inverted
images and ideas 301
As God is substance and man is the divine image
and likeness, man should wish for, and in reality has, only the substance of
good, the substance of Spirit, not matter. The belief that man has any other
substance, or mind, is not spiritual and breaks the First Commandment, Thou
shalt have one God, one Mind. Mortal man seems to himself to be material
substance, while man is "image" (idea). Delusion, sin, disease, and
death arise from the false testimony of material sense, which, from a supposed
standpoint outside the focal distance of infinite Spirit, presents an inverted
image of Mind and substance with everything turned upside down.
This falsity presupposes soul to be an
unsubstantial dweller in material forms, and man to be material instead of
spiritual. Immortality is not bounded by mortality. Soul is not compassed by
finiteness. Principle is not to be found in fragmentary ideas.
Identity
not lost 302
The material body and mind are temporal, but
the real man is spiritual and eternal. The identity of the real man is not
lost, but found through this explanation; for the conscious infinitude of
existence and of all identity is thereby discerned and remains unchanged. It
is impossible that man should lose aught that is real, when God is all and
eternally his. The notion that mind is in matter, and that the so-called
pleasures and pains, the birth, sin, sickness, and death of matter, are real,
is a mortal belief; and this belief is all that will ever be lost.
Definition
of man 302
Continuing our definition of man,
let us remember that harmonious and immortal man has existed forever, and is
always beyond and above the mortal illusion of any life, substance, and
intelligence as existent in matter. This statement is based on fact, not
fable. The Science of being reveals man as perfect, even as the Father is
perfect, because the Soul, or Mind, of the spiritual man is God, the divine
Principle of all being, and because this real man is governed by Soul instead
of sense, by the law of Spirit, not by the so-called laws of matter.
God is Love. He is therefore the divine,
infinite Principle, called Person or God. Man's true consciousness is in the
mental, not in any bodily or personal likeness to Spirit. Indeed, the body
presents no proper likeness of divinity, though mortal sense would fain have
us so believe.
Mental
propagation 302
Even in Christian Science, reproduction by
Spirit's individual ideas is but the reflection of the creative power of the
divine Principle of those ideas. The reflection, through mental manifestation,
of the multitudinous forms of Mind which people the realm of the real is
controlled by Mind, the Principle governing the reflection. Multiplication of
God's children comes from no power of propagation in matter, it is the
reflection of Spirit.
The minutiae of lesser individualities reflect
the one divine individuality and are comprehended in and formed by Spirit, not
by material sensation. Whatever reflects Mind, Life, Truth, and Love, is
spiritually conceived and brought forth; but the statement that man is
conceived and evolved both spiritually and materially, or by both God and man,
contradicts this eternal truth. All the vanity of the ages can never make both
these contraries true. Divine Science lays the axe at the root of the illusion
that life, or mind, is formed by or is in the material body, and Science will
eventually destroy this illusion through the self-destruction of all error and
the beatified understanding of the Science of Life.
Error
defined 303
The belief that pain and pleasure, life and
death, holiness and unholiness, mingle in man, - that mortal, material man is
the likeness of God and is himself a creator, - is a fatal error.
Man's
entity spiritual 303
God, without the image and likeness of Himself,
would be a nonentity, or Mind unexpressed. He would be without a witness or
proof of His own nature. Spiritual man is the image or idea of God, an idea
which cannot be lost nor separated from its divine Principle. When the
evidence before the material senses yielded to spiritual sense, the apostle
declared that nothing could alienate him from God, from the sweet sense and
presence of Life and Truth.
Man
inseparable from Love 304
It is ignorance and false belief, based on a
material sense of things, which hide spiritual beauty and goodness.
Understanding this, Paul said: "Neither death, nor life, . . . nor things
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God." This is the doctrine
of Christian Science: that divine Love cannot be deprived of its
manifestation, or object; that joy cannot be turned into sorrow, for sorrow is
not the master of joy; that good can never produce evil; that matter can never
produce mind nor life result in death. The perfect man - governed by God, his
perfect Principle - is sinless and eternal.
Harmony
natural 304
Harmony is produced by its Principle, is
controlled by it and abides with it. Divine Principle is the Life of man.
Man's happiness is not, therefore, at the disposal of physical sense. Truth is
not contaminated by error. Harmony in man is as beautiful as in music, and
discord is unnatural, unreal.
The science of music governs tones. If mortals
caught harmony through material sense, they would lose harmony, if time or
accident robbed them of material sense. To be master of chords and discords,
the science of music must be understood. Left to the decisions of material
sense, music is liable to be misapprehended and lost in confusion. Controlled
by belief, instead of understanding, music is, must be, imperfectly expressed.
So man, not understanding the Science of being, - thrusting aside his divine
Principle as incomprehensible, - is abandoned to conjectures, left in the
hands of ignorance, placed at the disposal of illusions, subjected to material
sense which is discord. A discontented, discordant mortal is no more a man
than discord is music.
Human
reflection 305
A picture in the camera or a face reflected in
the mirror is not the original, though resembling it. Man, in the likeness of
his Maker, reflects the central light of being, the invisible God. As there is
no corporeality in the mirrored form, which is but a reflection, so man, like
all things real, reflects God, his divine Principle, not in a mortal body.
Gender also is a quality, not of God, but a
characteristic of mortal mind. The verity that God's image is not a creator,
though he reflects the creation of Mind, God, constitutes the underlying
reality of reflection. "Then answered Jesus and said unto them: Verily,
verily I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth
the Father do: for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son
likewise."
Inverted
images 305
The inverted images presented by the senses,
the deflections of matter as opposed to the Science of spiritual reflection,
are all unlike Spirit, God. In the illusion of life that is here to-day and
gone to-morrow, man would be wholly mortal, were it not that Love, the divine
Principle that obtains in divine Science, destroys all error and brings
immortality to light. Because man is the reflection of his Maker, he is not
subject to birth, growth, maturity, decay. These mortal dreams are of human
origin, not divine.
Jewish
traditions 305
The Sadducees reasoned falsely about the
resurrection, but not so blindly as the Pharisees, who believed error to be as
immortal as Truth. The Pharisees thought that they could raise the spiritual
from the material. They would first make life result in death, and then resort
to death to reproduce spiritual life. Jesus taught them how death was to be
overcome by spiritual Life, and demonstrated this beyond cavil.
Divinity
not childless 306
Life demonstrates Life. The immortality of Soul
makes man immortal. If God, who is Life, were parted for a moment from His
reflection, man, during that moment there would be no divinity reflected. The
Ego would be unexpressed, and the Father would be childless, - no Father.
If Life or Soul and its representative, man,
unite for a period and then are separated as by a law of divorce to be brought
together again at some uncertain future time and in a manner unknown, - and
this is the general religious opinion of mankind, - we are left without a
rational proof of immortality. But man cannot be separated for an instant from
God, if man reflects God. Thus Science proves man's existence to be intact.
Thought-forms
306
The myriad forms of mortal thought, made
manifest as matter, are not more distinct nor real to the material senses than
are the Soul-created forms to spiritual sense, which cognizes Life as
permanent. Undisturbed amid the jarring testimony of the material senses,
Science, still enthroned, is unfolding to mortals the immutable, harmonious,
divine Principle, - is unfolding Life and the universe, ever present and
eternal.
God's man, spiritually created, is not material
and mortal.
The
serpent's whisper 306
The parent of all human discord was the
Adam-dream, the deep sleep, in which originated the delusion that life and
intelligence proceeded from and passed into matter. This pantheistic error, or
so-called serpent,
insists still upon the opposite of Truth, saying, "Ye shall be as
gods;" that is, I will make error as real and eternal as Truth.
Evil still affirms itself to be mind, and
declares that there is more than one intelligence or God. It says: "There
shall be lords and gods many. I declare that God makes evil minds and evil
spirits, and that I aid Him. Truth shall change sides and be unlike Spirit. I
will put spirit into what I call matter, and matter shall seem to have life as
much as God, Spirit, who is
the only Life."
Bad
results from error 307
This error has proved itself to be error. Its
life is found to be not Life, but only a transient, false sense of an
existence which ends in death. Error charges its lie to Truth and says:
"The Lord knows it. He has made man mortal and material, out of matter
instead of Spirit." Thus error partakes of its own nature and utters its
own falsities. If we regard matter as intelligent, and Mind as both good and
evil, every sin or supposed material pain and pleasure seems normal, a part of
God's creation, and so weighs against our course Spiritward.
Higher
statutes 307
Truth has no beginning. The divine Mind is the
Soul of man, and gives man dominion over all things. Man was not created from
a material basis, nor bidden to obey material laws which Spirit never made;
his province is in spiritual statutes, in the higher law of Mind.
The
great question 307
Above error's awful din, blackness, and chaos,
the voice of Truth still calls: "Adam, where art thou? Consciousness,
where art thou? Art thou dwelling in the belief that mind is in matter, and
that evil is mind, or art thou in the living faith that there is and can be
but one God, and keeping His commandment?" Until the lesson is learned
that God is the only Mind governing man, mortal belief will be afraid as it
was in the beginning, and will hide from the demand, "Where art
thou?" This awful demand, "Adam, where art thou?" is met by the
admission from the head, heart, stomach, blood, nerves, etc.: "Lo, here I
am, looking for happiness and life in the body, but finding only an illusion,
a blending of false claims, false pleasure, pain, sin, sickness, and
death."
The Soul-inspired patriarchs heard the voice of
Truth, and talked with God as consciously as man talks with man.
Wrestling
of Jacob 308
Jacob was alone,
wrestling with error, - struggling with a mortal sense of life, substance, and
intelligence as existent in matter with its false pleasures and pains, - when
an angel, a message from Truth and Love, appeared to him and smote the sinew,
or strength, of his error, till he saw its unreality; and Truth, being thereby
understood, gave him spiritual strength in this Peniel of divine Science. Then
said the spiritual evangel: "Let me go, for the day breaketh;" that
is, the light of Truth and Love dawns upon thee. But the patriarch, perceiving
his error and his need of help, did not loosen his hold upon this glorious
light until his nature was transformed. When Jacob was asked, "What is
thy name?" he straightway answered; and then his name was changed to
Israel, for "as a prince" had he prevailed and had "power with
God and with men." Then Jacob questioned his deliverer, "Tell me, I
pray thee, thy
name;" but this appellation was withheld, for the messenger was not a
corporeal being, but a nameless, incorporeal impartation of divine Love to
man, which, to use the word of the Psalmist, restored
his Soul, - gave him the spiritual sense of being and rebuked his material
sense.
Israel
the new name 309
The result of Jacob's struggle thus appeared.
He had conquered material error with the understanding of Spirit and of
spiritual power. This changed the man. He was no longer called Jacob, but
Israel, - a prince of God, or a soldier of God, who had fought a good fight.
He was to become the father of those, who through earnest striving followed
his demonstration of the power of Spirit over the material senses; and the
children of earth who followed his example were to be called the children of
Israel, until the Messiah should rename them. If these children should go
astray, and forget that Life is God, good, and that good is not in elements
which are not spiritual, - thus losing the divine power which heals the sick
and sinning, - they were to be brought back through great tribulation, to be
renamed in Christian Science and led to deny material sense, or mind in
matter, even as the gospel teaches.
Life
never structural 309
The Science of being shows it to be impossible
for infinite Spirit or Soul to be in a finite body or for man to have an
intelligence separate from his Maker. It is a self-evident error to suppose
that there can be such a reality as organic animal or vegetable life, when
such so-called life always ends in death. Life is never for a moment extinct.
Therefore it is never structural nor organic, and is never absorbed nor
limited by its own formations.
Thought
seen as substance 310
The artist is not in his painting. The picture
is the artist's thought objectified. The human belief fancies that it
delineates thought on matter, but what is matter? Did it exist prior to
thought? Matter is made up of supposititious mortal mind-force; but all might
is divine Mind. Thought will finally be understood and seen in all form,
substance, and color, but without material accompaniments. The potter is not
in the clay; else the clay would have power over the potter. God is His own
infinite Mind, and expresses all.
The
central intelligence 310
Day may decline and shadows fall, but darkness
flees when the earth has again turned upon its axis. The sun is not affected
by the revolution of the earth. So Science reveals Soul as God, untouched by
sin and death, - as the central Life and intelligence around which circle
harmoniously all things in the systems of Mind.
Soul
imperishable 310
Soul changeth not. We are commonly taught that
there is a human soul which sins and is spiritually lost, - that soul may be
lost, and yet be immortal. If Soul could sin, Spirit, Soul, would be flesh
instead of Spirit. It is the belief of the flesh and of material sense which
sins. If Soul sinned, Soul would die. Sin is the element of self-destruction,
and spiritual death is oblivion. If there was sin in Soul, the annihilation of
Spirit would be inevitable. The only Life is Spirit, and if Spirit should lose
Life as God, good, then Spirit, which has no other existence, would be
annihilated.
Mind is God, and God is not seen by material
sense, because Mind is Spirit, which material sense cannot discern. There is
neither growth, maturity, nor decay in Soul. These changes are the mutations
of material sense, the varying clouds of mortal belief, which hide the truth
of being.
What we term mortal mind or carnal mind,
dependent on matter for manifestation, is not Mind. God is Mind: all that
Mind, God, is, or hath made, is good, and He made all. Hence evil is not made
and is not real.
Sin only
of the flesh 311
Soul is immortal because it is Spirit, which
has no element of self-destruction. Is man lost spiritually? No, he can only
lose a sense material. All sin is of the flesh. It cannot be spiritual. Sin
exists here or hereafter only so long as the illusion of mind in matter
remains. It is a sense of sin, and not a sinful soul, which is lost. Evil is
destroyed by the sense of good.
Soul
impeccable 311
Through false estimates of soul as dwelling in
sense and of mind as dwelling in matter, belief strays into a sense of
temporary loss or absence of soul, spiritual truth. This state of error is the
mortal dream of life and substance as existent in matter, and is directly
opposite to the immortal reality of being. So long as we believe that soul can
sin or that immortal Soul is in mortal body, we can never understand the
Science of being. When humanity does understand this Science, it will become
the law of Life to man, - even the higher law of Soul, which prevails over
material sense through harmony and immortality.
The objects cognized by the physical senses
have not the reality of substance. They are only what mortal belief calls
them. Matter, sin, and mortality lose all supposed consciousness or claim to
life or existence, as mortals lay off a false sense of life, substance, and
intelligence. But the spiritual, eternal man is not touched by these phases of
mortality.
Sense-dreams
312
How true it is that whatever is learned through
material sense must be lost because such so-called knowledge is reversed by
the spiritual facts of being in Science. That which material sense calls
intangible, is found to be substance. What to material sense seems substance,
becomes nothingness, as the sense-dream vanishes and reality appears.
The senses regard a corpse, not as man, but
simply as matter. People say, "Man is dead;" but this death is the
departure of a mortal's mind, not of matter. The matter is still there. The
belief of that mortal that he must die occasioned his departure; yet you say
that matter has caused his death.
Vain
ecstasies 312
People go into ecstasies over the sense of a
corporeal Jehovah, though with scarcely a spark of love in their hearts; yet
God is Love, and
without Love, God, immortality cannot appear. Mortals try to believe without
understanding Truth; yet God is
Truth. Mortals claim that death is inevitable; but man's eternal Principle is
ever-present Life. Mortals believe in a finite personal God; while God is
infinite Love, which must be unlimited.
Man-made
theories 312
Our theories are based on finite premises,
which cannot penetrate beyond matter. A personal sense of God and of man's
capabilities necessarily limits faith and hinders spiritual understanding. It
divides faith and understanding between matter and Spirit, the finite and the
infinite, and so turns away from the intelligent and divine healing Principle
to the inanimate drug.
The one
anointed 312
Jesus' spiritual origin and his demonstration
of divine Principle richly endowed him and entitled him to sonship in Science.
He was the son of a virgin. The term Christ Jesus, or Jesus the Christ (to
give the full and proper translation of the Greek), may be rendered
"Jesus the anointed," Jesus the God-crowned or the divinely royal
man, as it is said of him in the first chapter of Hebrews: -
Therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee
With the oil of gladness above thy fellows.
With this agrees another passage in the same
chapter, which refers to the Son as "the brightness of His [God's] glory,
and the express [expressed] image of His person infinite Mind]." It is
noteworthy that the phrase "express image" in the Common Version is,
in the Greek Testament, character.
Using this word in its higher meaning, we may assume that the author of this
remarkable epistle regarded Christ as the Son of God, the royal reflection of
the infinite; and the cause given for the exaltation of Jesus, Mary's son, was
that he "loved righteousness and hated iniquity." The passage is
made even clearer in the translation of the late George R. Noyes, D.D.:
"Who, being a brightness from His glory, and an image of His being."
Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man
that ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material surface of things,
and found the spiritual cause. To accommodate himself to immature ideas of
spiritual power, - for spirituality was possessed only in a limited degree
even by his disciples, - Jesus called the body, which by spiritual power he
raised from the grave, "flesh and bones." To show that the substance
of himself was Spirit and the body no more perfect because of death and no
less material until the ascension (his further spiritual exaltation), Jesus
waited until the mortal or fleshly sense had relinquished the belief of
substance-matter, and spiritual sense had quenched all earthly yearnings. Thus
he found the eternal Ego, and proved that he and the Father were inseparable
as God and His reflection or spiritual man. Our Master gained the solution of
being, demonstrating the existence of but one Mind without a second or equal.
The
bodily resurrection 314
The Jews, who sought to kill this man of God,
showed plainly that their material views were the parents of their wicked
deeds. When Jesus spoke of reproducing his body, - knowing, as he did, that
Mind was the builder, - and said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days
I will raise it up," they thought that he meant their material temple
instead of his body. To such materialists, the real man seemed a spectre,
unseen and unfamiliar, and the body, which they laid in a sepulchre, seemed to
be substance. This materialism lost sight of the true Jesus; but the faithful
Mary saw him, and he presented to her, more than ever before, the true idea of
Life and substance.
Opposition
of materialists 314
Because of mortals' material and sinful belief,
the spiritual Jesus was imperceptible to them. The higher his demonstration of
divine Science carried the problem of being, and the more distinctly he
uttered the demands of its divine Principle, Truth and Love, the more odious
he became to sinners and to those who, depending on doctrines and material
laws to save them from sin and sickness, were submissive to death as being in
supposed accord with the inevitable law of life. Jesus proved them wrong by
his resurrection, and said: "Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall
never die."
Hebrew
theology 315
That saying of our Master, "I and my
Father are one," separated him from the scholastic theology of the
rabbis. His better understanding of God was a rebuke to them. He knew of but
one Mind and laid no claim to any other. He knew that the Ego was Mind instead
of body and that matter, sin, and evil were not Mind; and his understanding of
this divine Science brought upon him the anathemas of the age.
The true
sonship 315
The opposite and false views of the people hid
from their sense Christ's sonship with God. They could not discern his
spiritual existence. Their carnal minds were at enmity with it. Their thoughts
were filled with mortal error, instead of with God's spiritual idea as
presented by Christ Jesus. The likeness of God we lose sight of through sin,
which beclouds the spiritual sense of Truth; and we realize this likeness only
when we subdue sin and prove man's heritage, the liberty of the sons of God.
Immaculate
conception 315
Jesus' spiritual origin and understanding
enabled him to demonstrate the facts of being, - to prove irrefutably how
spiritual Truth destroys material error, heals sickness, and overcomes death.
The divine conception of Jesus pointed to this truth and presented an
illustration of creation. The history of Jesus shows him to have been more
spiritual than all other earthly personalities.
Jesus as
mediator 315
Wearing in part a human form (that is, as it
seemed to mortal view), being conceived by a human mother, Jesus was the
mediator between Spirit and the flesh, between Truth and error. Explaining and
demonstrating the way of divine Science, he became the way of salvation to all
who accepted his word. From him mortals may learn how to escape from evil. The
real man being linked by Science to his Maker, mortals need only turn from sin
and lose sight of mortal selfhood to find Christ, the real man and his
relation to God, and to recognize the divine sonship. Christ, Truth, was
demonstrated through Jesus to prove the power of Spirit over the flesh, - to
show that Truth is made manifest by its effects upon the human mind and body,
healing sickness and destroying sin.
Spiritual
government 316
Jesus represented Christ, the true idea of God.
Hence the warfare between this spiritual idea and perfunctory religion,
between spiritual clear-sightedness and the blindness of popular belief, which
led to the conclusion that the spiritual idea could be killed by crucifying
the flesh. The Christ-idea, or the Christ-man, rose higher to human view
because of the crucifixion, and thus proved that Truth was the master of
death. Christ presents the indestructible man, whom Spirit creates,
constitutes, and governs. Christ illustrates that blending with God, his
divine Principle, which gives man dominion over all the earth.
Deadness
in sin 316
The spiritual idea of God, as presented by
Jesus, was scourged in person, and its Principle was rejected. That man was
accounted a criminal who could prove God's divine power by healing the sick,
casting out evils, spiritualizing materialistic beliefs, and raising the dead,
- those dead in trespasses and sins, satisfied with the flesh, resting on the
basis of matter, blind to the possibilities of Spirit and its correlative
truth.
Jesus uttered things which had been
"secret from the foundation of the world," - since material
knowledge usurped the throne of the creative divine Principle, insisted on the
might of matter, the force of falsity, the insignificance of spirit, and
proclaimed an anthropomorphic God.
The cup
of Jesus 317
Whosoever lives most the life of Jesus in this
age and declares best the power of Christian Science, will drink of his
Master's cup. Resistance to Truth will haunt his steps, and he will incur the
hatred of sinners, till "wisdom is justified of her children." These
blessed benedictions rest upon Jesus' followers: "If the world hate you,
ye know that it hated me before it hated you;" "Lo, I am with you
alway," - that is, not only in all time, but in all
ways and conditions.
The individuality of man is no less tangible
because it is spiritual and because his life is not at the mercy of matter.
The understanding of his spiritual individuality makes man more real, more
formidable in truth, and enables him to conquer sin, disease, and death. Our
Lord and Master presented himself to his disciples after his resurrection from
the grave, as the self-same Jesus whom they had loved before the tragedy on
Calvary.
Material
skepticism 317
To the materialistic Thomas, looking for the
ideal Saviour in matter instead of in Spirit and to the testimony of the
material senses and the body, more than to Soul, for an earnest of
immortality, - to him Jesus furnished the proof that he was unchanged by the
crucifixion. To this dull and doubting disciple Jesus remained a fleshly
reality, so long as the Master remained an inhabitant of the earth. Nothing
but a display of matter could make existence real to Thomas. For him to
believe in matter was no task, but for him to conceive of the substantiality
of Spirit - to know that nothing can efface Mind and immortality, in which
Spirit reigns - was more difficult.
What the
senses originate 318
Corporeal senses define diseases as realities;
but the Scriptures declare that God made all, even while the corporeal senses
are saying that matter causes disease and the divine Mind cannot or will not
heal it. The material senses originate and support all that is material,
untrue, selfish, or debased. They would put soul into soil, life into limbo,
and doom all things to decay. We must silence this lie of material sense with
the truth of spiritual sense. We must cause the error to cease that brought
the belief of sin and death and would efface the pure sense of omnipotence.
Sickness
as discord 318
Is the sick man sinful above all others? No!
but so far as he is discordant, he is not the image of God. Weary of their
material beliefs, from which comes so much suffering, invalids grow more
spiritual, as the error - or belief that life is in matter - yields to the
reality of spiritual Life.
The Science of Mind denies the error of
sensation in matter, and heals with Truth. Medical science treats disease as
though disease were real, therefore right, and attempts to heal it with
matter. If disease is right it is wrong to heal it. Material methods are
temporary, and are not adapted to elevate mankind.
The governor is not subjected to the governed.
In Science man is governed by God, divine Principle, as numbers are controlled
and proved by His laws. Intelligence does not originate in numbers, but is
manifested through them. The body does not include soul, but manifests
mortality, a false sense of soul. The delusion that there is life in matter
has no kinship with the Life supernal.
Unscientific
introspection 319
Science depicts disease as error, as matter versus
Mind, and error reversed as subserving the facts of health. To calculate one's
life-prospects from a material basis, would infringe upon spiritual law and
misguide human hope. Having faith in the divine Principle of health and
spiritually understanding God, sustains man under all circumstances; whereas
the lower appeal to the general faith in material means (commonly called
nature) must yield to the all-might of infinite Spirit.
Throughout the infinite cycles of eternal
existence, Spirit and matter neither concur in man nor in the universe.
God the
only Mind 319
The varied doctrines and theories which
presuppose life and intelligence to exist in matter are so many ancient and
modern mythologies. Mystery, miracle, sin, and death will disappear when it
becomes fairly understood that the divine Mind controls man and man has no
Mind but God.
Scriptures
misinterpreted 319
The divine Science taught in the original
language of the Bible came through inspiration, and needs inspiration to be
understood. Hence the misapprehension of the spiritual meaning of the Bible,
and the misinterpretation of the Word in some instances by uninspired writers,
who only wrote down what an inspired teacher had said. A misplaced word
changes the sense and misstates the Science of the Scriptures, as, for
instance, to name Love as merely an attribute of God; but we can by special
and proper capitalization speak of the love of Love, meaning by that what the
beloved disciple meant in one of his epistles, when he said, "God is
love." Likewise we can speak of the truth of Truth and of the life of
Life, for Christ plainly declared, "I am the way, the truth, and the
life."
Interior
meaning 320
Metaphors abound in the Bible, and names are
often expressive of spiritual ideas. The most distinguished theologians in
Europe and America agree that the Scriptures have both a spiritual and literal
meaning. In Smith's Bible Dictionary it is said: "The spiritual
interpretation of Scripture must rest upon both the literal and moral;"
and in the learned article on Noah in the same work, the familiar text,
Genesis vi. 3, "And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with
man, for that he also is flesh," is quoted as follows, from the original
Hebrew: "And Jehovah said, My spirit shall not forever rule [or be
humbled] in men, seeing that they are [or, in their error they are] but
flesh." Here the original text declares plainly the spiritual fact of
being, even man's eternal and harmonious existence as image, idea, instead of
matter (however transcendental such a thought appears), and avers that this
fact is not forever to be humbled by the belief that man is flesh and matter,
for according to that error man is mortal.
Job, on
the resurrection 320
The one important interpretation of Scripture
is the spiritual. For example, the text, "In my flesh shall I see
God," gives a profound idea of the divine power to heal the ills of the
flesh, and encourages mortals to hope in Him who healeth all our diseases;
whereas this passage is continually quoted as if Job intended to declare that
even if disease and worms destroyed his body, yet in the latter days he should
stand in celestial perfection before Elohim, still clad in material flesh, -
an interpretation which is just the opposite of the true, as may be seen by
studying the book of Job. As Paul says, in his first epistle to the
Corinthians, "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God."
Fear of
the serpent overcome 321
The Hebrew Lawgiver, slow of speech, despaired
of making the people understand what should be revealed to him. When, led by
wisdom to cast down his rod, he saw it become a serpent, Moses fled before it;
but wisdom bade him come back and handle the serpent, and then Moses' fear
departed. In this incident was seen the actuality of Science. Matter was shown
to be a belief only. The serpent, evil, under wisdom's bidding, was destroyed
through understanding divine Science, and this proof was a staff upon which to
lean. The illusion of Moses lost its power to alarm him, when he discovered
that what he apparently saw was really but a phase of mortal belief.
Leprosy
healed 321
It was scientifically demonstrated that leprosy
was a creation of mortal mind and not a condition of matter, when Moses first
put his hand into his bosom and drew it forth white as snow with the dread
disease, and presently restored his hand to its natural condition by the same
simple process. God had lessened Moses' fear by this proof in divine Science,
and the inward voice became to him the voice of God, which said: "It
shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the
voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter
sign." And so it was in the coming centuries, when the Science of being
was demonstrated by Jesus, who showed his students the power of Mind by
changing water into wine, and taught them how to handle serpents unharmed, to
heal the sick and cast out evils in proof of the supremacy of Mind.
Standpoints
changed 322
When understanding changes the standpoints of
life and intelligence from a material to a spiritual basis, we shall gain the
reality of Life, the control of Soul over sense, and we shall perceive
Christianity, or Truth, in its divine Principle. This must be the climax
before harmonious and immortal man is obtained and his capabilities revealed.
It is highly important - in view of the immense work to be accomplished before
this recognition of divine Science can come - to turn our thoughts towards
divine Principle, that finite belief may be prepared to relinquish its error.
Saving
the inebriate 322
Man's wisdom finds no satisfaction in sin,
since God has sentenced sin to suffer. The necromancy of yesterday
foreshadowed the mesmerism and hypnotism of to-day. The drunkard thinks he
enjoys drunkenness, and you cannot make the inebriate leave his besottedness,
until his physical sense of pleasure yields to a higher sense. Then he turns
from his cups, as the startled dreamer who wakens from an incubus incurred
through the pains of distorted sense. A man who likes to do wrong - finding
pleasure in it and refraining from it only through fear of consequences - is
neither a temperate man nor a reliable religionist.
Uses of
suffering 322
The sharp experiences of belief in the
supposititious life of matter, as well as our disappointments and ceaseless
woes, turn us like tired children to the arms of divine Love. Then we begin to
learn Life in divine Science. Without this process of weaning, "Canst
thou by searching find out God?" It is easier to desire Truth than to rid
one's self of error. Mortals may seek the understanding of Christian Science,
but they will not be able to glean from Christian Science the facts of being
without striving for them. This strife consists in the endeavor to forsake
error of every kind and to possess no other consciousness but good.
A bright
outlook 323
Through the wholesome chastisements of Love, we
are helped onward in the march towards righteousness, peace, and purity, which
are the landmarks of Science. Beholding the infinite tasks of truth, we pause,
- wait on God. Then we push onward, until boundless thought walks enraptured,
and conception unconfined is winged to reach the divine glory.
Need and
supply 323
In order to apprehend more, we must put into
practice what we already know. We must recollect that Truth is demonstrable
when understood, and that good is not understood until demonstrated. If
"faithful over a few things," we shall be made rulers over many; but
the one unused talent decays and is lost. When the sick or the sinning awake
to realize their need of what they have not, they will be receptive of divine
Science, which gravitates towards Soul and away from material sense, removes
thought from the body, and elevates even mortal mind to the contemplation of
something better than disease or sin. The true idea of God gives the true
understanding of Life and Love, robs the grave of victory, takes away all sin
and the delusion that there are other minds, and destroys mortality.
Childlike
receptivity 323
The effects of Christian Science are not so
much seen as felt. It is the "still, small voice" of Truth uttering
itself. We are either turning away from this utterance, or we are listening to
it and going up higher. Willingness to become as a little child and to leave
the old for the new, renders thought receptive of the advanced idea. Gladness
to leave the false landmarks and joy to see them disappear, - this disposition
helps to precipitate the ultimate harmony. The purification of sense and self
is a proof of progress. "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall
see God."
Narrow
pathway 324
Unless the harmony and immortality of man are
becoming more apparent, we are not gaining the true idea of God; and the body
will reflect what governs it, whether it be Truth or error, understanding or
belief, Spirit or matter. Therefore "acquaint now thyself with Him, and
be at peace." Be watchful, sober, and vigilant. The way is straight and
narrow, which leads to the understanding that God is the only Life. It is a
warfare with the flesh, in which we must conquer sin, sickness, and death,
either here or hereafter, - certainly before we can reach the goal of Spirit,
or life in God.
Paul's
enlightenment 324
Paul was not at first a disciple of Jesus but a
persecutor of Jesus' followers. When the truth first appeared to him in
Science, Paul was made blind, and his blindness was felt; but spiritual light
soon enabled him to follow the example and teachings of Jesus, healing the
sick and preaching Christianity throughout Asia Minor, Greece, and even in
imperial Rome.
Paul writes, "If Christ [Truth] be not
risen, then is our preaching vain." That is, if the idea of the supremacy
of Spirit, which is the true conception of being, come not to your thought,
you cannot be benefited by what I say.
Abiding
in Life 324
Jesus said substantially, "He that
believeth in me shall not see death." That is, he who perceives the true
idea of Life loses his belief in death. He who has the true idea of good loses
all sense of evil, and by reason of this is being ushered into the undying
realities of Spirit. Such a one abideth in Life, - life obtained not of the
body incapable of supporting life, but of Truth, unfolding its own immortal
idea. Jesus gave the true idea of being, which results in infinite blessings
to mortals.
Indestructible
being 325
In Colossians (iii. 4) Paul writes: "When
Christ, who is our life, shall appear [be manifested], then shall ye also
appear [be manifested] with him in glory." When spiritual being is
understood in all its perfection, continuity, and might, then shall man be
found in God's image. The absolute meaning of the apostolic words is this:
Then shall man be found, in His likeness, perfect as the Father,
indestructible in Life, "hid with Christ in God," - with Truth in
divine Love, where human sense hath not seen man.
Consecration
required 325
Paul had a clear sense of the demands of Truth
upon mortals physically and spiritually, when he said: "Present your
bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable
service." But he, who is begotten of the beliefs of the flesh and serves
them, can never reach in this world the divine heights of our Lord. The time
cometh when the spiritual origin of man, the divine Science which ushered
Jesus into human presence, will be understood and demonstrated.
When first spoken in any age, Truth, like the
light, "shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not."
A false sense of life, substance, and mind hides the divine possibilities, and
conceals scientific demonstration.
Loving
God supremely 326
If we wish to follow Christ, Truth, it must be
in the way of God's appointing. Jesus said, "He that believeth on me, the
works that I do shall he do also." He, who would reach the source and
find the divine remedy for every ill, must not try to climb the hill of
Science by some other road. All nature teaches God's love to man, but man
cannot love God supremely and set his whole affections on spiritual things,
while loving the material or trusting in it more than in the spiritual.
We must forsake the foundation of material
systems, however time-honored, if we would gain the Christ as our only Saviour.
Not partially, but fully, the great healer of mortal mind is the healer of the
body.
The purpose and motive to live aright can be
gained now. This point won, you have started as you should. You have begun at
the numeration-table of Christian Science, and nothing but wrong intention can
hinder your advancement. Working and praying with true motives, your Father
will open the way. "Who did hinder you, that ye should not obey the
truth?"
Conversion
of Saul 326
Saul of Tarsus beheld the way - the Christ, or
Truth - only when his uncertain sense of right yielded to a spiritual sense,
which is always right. Then the man was changed. Thought assumed a nobler
outlook, and his life became more spiritual. He learned the wrong that he had
done in persecuting Christians, whose religion he had not understood, and in
humility he took the new name of Paul. He beheld for the first time the true
idea of Love, and learned a lesson in divine Science.
Reform comes by understanding that there is no
abiding pleasure in evil, and also by gaining an affection for good according
to Science, which reveals the immortal fact that neither pleasure nor pain,
appetite nor passion, can exist in or of matter, while divine Mind can and
does destroy the false beliefs of pleasure, pain, or fear and all the sinful
appetites of the human mind.
Image of
the beast 327
What a pitiful sight is malice, finding
pleasure in revenge! Evil is sometimes a man's highest conception of right,
until his grasp on good grows stronger. Then he loses pleasure in wickedness,
and it becomes his torment. The way to escape the misery of sin is to cease
sinning. There is no other way. Sin is the image of the beast to be effaced by
the sweat of agony. It is a moral madness which rushes forth to clamor with
midnight and tempest.
Peremptory
demands 327
To the physical senses, the strict demands of
Christian Science seem peremptory; but mortals are hastening to learn that
Life is God, good, and that evil has in reality neither place nor power in the
human or the divine economy.
Moral
courage 327
Fear of punishment never made man truly honest.
Moral courage is requisite to meet the wrong and to proclaim the right. But
how shall we reform the man who has more animal than moral courage, and who
has not the true idea of good? Through human consciousness, convince the
mortal of his mistake in seeking material means for gaining happiness. Reason
is the most active human faculty. Let that inform the sentiments and awaken
the man's dormant sense of moral obligation, and by degrees he will learn the
nothingness of the pleasures of human sense and the grandeur and bliss of a
spiritual sense, which silences the material or corporeal. Then he not only
will be saved, but is
saved.
Final
destruction of error 328
Mortals suppose that they can live without
goodness, when God is good and the only real Life. What is the result?
Understanding little about the divine Principle which saves and heals, mortals
get rid of sin, sickness, and death only in belief. These errors are not thus
really destroyed, and must therefore cling to mortals until, here or
hereafter, they gain the true understanding of God in the Science which
destroys human delusions about Him and reveals the grand realities of His
allness.
Promise
perpetual 328
This understanding of man's power, when he is
equipped by God, has sadly disappeared from Christian history. For centuries
it has been dormant, a lost element of Christianity. Our missionaries carry
the Bible to India, but can it be said that they explain it practically, as
Jesus did, when hundreds of persons die there annually from serpent - bites?
Understanding spiritual law and knowing that there is no material law, Jesus
said: "These signs shall follow them that believe, . . . they shall take
up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They
shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." It were well had
Christendom believed and obeyed this sacred saying.
Jesus' promise is perpetual. Had it been given
only to his immediate disciples, the Scriptural passage would read you,
not they. The purpose
of his great life - work extends through time and includes universal humanity.
Its Principle is infinite, reaching beyond the pale of a single period or of a
limited following. As time moves on, the healing elements of pure Christianity
will be fairly dealt with; they will be sought and taught, and will glow in
all the grandeur of universal goodness.
Imitation
of Jesus 329
A little leaven leavens the whole lump. A
little understanding of Christian Science proves the truth of all that I say
of it. Because you cannot walk on the water and raise the dead, you have no
right to question the great might of divine Science in these directions. Be
thankful that Jesus, who was the true demonstrator of Science, did these
things, and left his example for us. In Science we can use only what we
understand. We must prove our faith by demonstration.
One should not tarry in the storm if the body
is freezing, nor should he remain in the devouring flames. Until one is able
to prevent bad results, he should avoid their occasion. To be discouraged, is
to resemble a pupil in addition, who attempts to solve a problem of Euclid,
and denies the rule of the problem because he fails in his first effort.
Error
destroyed, not pardoned 329
There is no hypocrisy in Science. Principle is
imperative. You cannot mock it by human will. Science is a divine demand, not
a human. Always right, its divine Principle never repents, but maintains the
claim of Truth by quenching error. The pardon of divine mercy is the
destruction of error. If men understood their real spiritual source to be all
blessedness, they would struggle for recourse to the spiritual and be at
peace; but the deeper the error into which mortal mind is plunged, the more
intense the opposition to spirituality, till error yields to Truth.
The
hopeful outlook 329
Human resistance to divine Science weakens in
proportion as mortals give up error for Truth and the understanding of being
supersedes mere belief. Until the author of this book learned the vastness of
Christian Science, the fixedness of mortal illusions, and the human hatred of
Truth, she cherished sanguine hopes that Christian Science would meet with
immediate and universal acceptance.
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