When the following platform is understood and the letter and the spirit bear witness, the infallibility of divine metaphysics will be demonstrated.


      
      -1- The deific supremacy 330

      I. God is infinite, the only Life, substance, Spirit, or Soul, the only intelligence of the universe, including man. Eye hath neither seen God nor His image and likeness. Neither God nor the perfect man can be discerned by the material senses. The individuality of Spirit, or the infinite, is unknown, and thus a knowledge of it is left either to human conjecture or to the revelation of divine Science.


      
      -2- The deific definitions 330

      II. God is what the Scriptures declare Him to be, - Life, Truth, Love. Spirit is divine Principle, and divine Principle is Love, and Love is Mind, and Mind is not both good and bad, for God is Mind; therefore there is in reality one Mind only, because there is one God.


      
      -3- Evil obsolete 330

      III. The notion that both evil and good are real is a delusion of material sense, which Science annihilates. Evil is nothing, no thing, mind, nor power. As manifested by mankind it stands for a lie, nothing claiming to be something, - for lust, dishonesty, selfishness, envy, hypocrisy, slander, hate, theft, adultery, murder, dementia, insanity, inanity, devil, hell, with all the etceteras that word includes.


     
      -4- Life the creator 331

      IV. God is divine Life, and Life is no more confined to the forms which reflect it than substance is in its shadow. If life were in mortal man or material things, it would be subject to their limitations and would end in death. Life is Mind, the creator reflected in His creations. If He dwelt within what He creates, God would not be reflected but absorbed, and the Science of being would be forever lost through a mortal sense, which falsely testifies to a beginning and an end.


      
      -5- Allness of Spirit 331

      V. The Scriptures imply that God is All-in-all. From this it follows that nothing possesses reality nor existence except the divine Mind and His ideas. The Scriptures also declare that God is Spirit. Therefore in Spirit all is harmony, and there can be no discord; all is Life, and there is no death. Everything in God's universe expresses Him.


     
      -6- The universal cause 331

      VI. God is individual, incorporeal. He is divine Principle, Love, the universal cause, the only creator, and there is no other self-existence. He is all-inclusive, and is reflected by all that is real and eternal and by nothing else. He fills all space, and it is impossible to conceive of such omnipresence and individuality except as infinite Spirit or Mind. Hence all is Spirit and spiritual.


     
      -7- Divine trinity 331

      VII. Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune Person called God, - that is, the triply divine Principle, Love. They represent a trinity in unity, three in one, - the same in essence, though multiform in office: God the Father-Mother; Christ the spiritual idea of sonship; divine Science or the Holy Comforter. These three express in divine Science the threefold, essential nature of the infinite. They also indicate the divine Principle of scientific being, the intelligent relation of God to man and the universe.


      (CHURCH MANUAL: Meetings)
      -8- Father-Mother 332

      VIII. Father-Mother is the name for Deity, which indicates His tender relationship to His spiritual creation. As the apostle expressed it in words which he quoted with approbation from a classic poet: "For we are also His offspring."


      
      -9- The Son of God 332

      IX. Jesus was born of Mary. Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness. The Christ is incorporeal, spiritual, - yea, the divine image and likeness, dispelling the illusions of the senses; the Way, the Truth, and the Life, healing the sick and casting out evils, destroying sin, disease, and death. As Paul says: "There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." The corporeal man Jesus was human.


      
      -10- Holy Ghost or Comforter 332

      X. Jesus demonstrated Christ; he proved that Christ is the divine idea of God - the Holy Ghost, or Comforter, revealing the divine Principle, Love, and leading into all truth.


      
      -11- Christ Jesus 332

      XI. Jesus was the son of a virgin. He was appointed to speak God's word and to appear to mortals in such a form of humanity as they could understand as well as perceive. Mary's conception of him was spiritual, for only purity could reflect Truth and Love, which were plainly incarnate in the good and pure Christ Jesus. He expressed the highest type of divinity, which a fleshly form could express in that age. Into the real and ideal man the fleshly element cannot enter. Thus it is that Christ illustrates the coincidence, or spiritual agreement, between God and man in His image.


      
      -12- Messiah or Christ 333

      XII. The word Christ is not properly a synonym for Jesus, though it is commonly so used. Jesus was a human name, which belonged to him in common with other Hebrew boys and men, for it is identical with the name Joshua, the renowned Hebrew leader. On the other hand, Christ is not a name so much as the divine title of Jesus. Christ expresses God's spiritual, eternal nature. The name is synonymous with Messiah, and alludes to the spirituality which is taught, illustrated, and demonstrated in the life of which Christ Jesus was the embodiment. The proper name of our Master in the Greek was Jesus the Christ; but Christ Jesus better signifies the Godlike.


      
      -13- The divine Principle and idea 333

      XIII. The advent of Jesus of Nazareth marked the first century of the Christian era, but the Christ is without beginning of years or end of days. Throughout all generations both before and after the Christian era, the Christ, as the spiritual idea, - the reflection of God, - has come with some measure of power and grace to all prepared to receive Christ, Truth. Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and the prophets caught glorious glimpses of the Messiah, or Christ, which baptized these seers in the divine nature, the essence of Love. The divine image, idea, or Christ was, is, and ever will be inseparable from the divine Principle, God. Jesus referred to this unity of his spiritual identity thus: "Before Abraham was, I am;" "I and my Father are one;" "My Father is greater than I." The one Spirit includes all identities.


      
      -14- Spiritual oneness 333

      XIV. By these sayings Jesus meant, not that the human Jesus was or is eternal, but that the divine idea or Christ was and is so and therefore antedated Abraham; not that the corporeal Jesus was one with the Father, but that the spiritual idea, Christ, dwells forever in the bosom of the Father, God, from which it illumines heaven and earth; not that the Father is greater than Spirit, which is God, but greater, infinitely greater, than the fleshly Jesus, whose earthly career was brief.


      
      -15- The Son's duality 334

      XV. The invisible Christ was imperceptible to the so-called personal senses, whereas Jesus appeared as a bodily existence. This dual personality of the unseen and the seen, the spiritual and material, the eternal Christ and the corporeal Jesus manifest in flesh, continued until the Master's ascension, when the human, material concept, or Jesus, disappeared, while the spiritual self, or Christ, continues to exist in the eternal order of divine Science, taking away the sins of the world, as the Christ has always done, even before the human Jesus was incarnate to mortal eyes.


      
      -16- Eternity of the Christ 334

      XVI. This was "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," - slain, that is, according to the testimony of the corporeal senses, but undying in the deific Mind. The Revelator represents the Son of man as saying (Revelation i. 17, 18): "I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead not understood]; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Science has explained me]." This is a mystical statement of the eternity of the Christ, and is also a reference to the human sense of Jesus crucified.


      
      -17- Infinite Spirit 334

      XVII. Spirit being God, there is but one Spirit, for there can be but one infinite and therefore one God. There are neither spirits many nor gods many. There is no evil in Spirit, because God is Spirit. The theory, that Spirit is distinct from matter but must pass through it, or into it, to be individualized, would reduce God to dependency on matter, and establish a basis for pantheism.


      
      -18- The only substance 335

      XVIII. Spirit, God, has created all in and of Himself. Spirit never created matter. There is nothing in Spirit out of which matter could be made, for, as the Bible declares, without the Logos, the Aeon or Word of God, "was not anything made that was made." Spirit is the only substance, the invisible and indivisible infinite God. Things spiritual and eternal are substantial. Things material and temporal are insubstantial.


      
      -19- Soul and Spirit one 335

      XIX. Soul and Spirit being one, God and Soul are one, and this one never included in a limited mind or a limited body. Spirit is eternal, divine. Nothing but Spirit, Soul, can evolve Life, for Spirit is more than all else. Because Soul is immortal, it does not exist in mortality. Soul must be incorporeal to be Spirit, for Spirit is not finite. Only by losing the false sense of Soul can we gain the eternal unfolding of Life as immortality brought to light.


      
      -20- The one divine Mind 335

      XX. Mind is the divine Principle, Love, and can produce nothing unlike the eternal Father-Mother, God. Reality is spiritual, harmonious, immutable, immortal, divine, eternal. Nothing unspiritual can be real, harmonious, or eternal. Sin, sickness, and mortality are the suppositional antipodes of Spirit, and must be contradictions of reality.


     
      -21- The divine Ego 335

      XXI. The Ego is deathless and limitless, for limits would imply and impose ignorance. Mind is the I AM, or infinity. Mind never enters the finite. Intelligence never passes into non-intelligence, or matter. Good never enters into evil, the unlimited into the limited, the eternal into the temporal, nor the immortal into mortality. The divine Ego, or individuality, is reflected in all spiritual individuality from the infinitesimal to the infinite.


      
      -22- The real manhood 336

      XXII. Immortal man was and is God's image or idea, even the infinite expression of infinite Mind, and immortal man is coexistent and coeternal with that Mind. He has been forever in the eternal Mind, God; but infinite Mind can never be in man, but is reflected by man. The spiritual man's consciousness and individuality are reflections of God. They are the emanations of Him who is Life, Truth, and Love. Immortal man is not and never was material, but always spiritual and eternal.


     
      -23- Indivisibility of the infinite 336

      XXIII. God is indivisible. A portion of God could not enter man; neither could God's fulness be reflected by a single man, else God would be manifestly finite, lose the deific character, and become less than God. Allness is the measure of the infinite, and nothing less can express God.


    
      -24- God the parent Mind 336

      XXIV. God, the divine Principle of man, and man in God's likeness are inseparable, harmonious, and eternal. The Science of being furnishes the rule of perfection, and brings immortality to light. God and man are not the same, but in the order of divine Science, God and man coexist and are eternal. God is the parent Mind, and man is God's spiritual offspring.


      
      -25- Man reflects the perfect God 336

      XXV. God is individual and personal in a scientific sense, but not in any anthropomorphic sense. Therefore man, reflecting God, cannot lose his individuality; but as material sensation, or a soul in the body, blind mortals do lose sight of spiritual individuality. Material personality is not realism; it is not the reflection or likeness of Spirit, the perfect God. Sensualism is not bliss, but bondage. For true happiness, man must harmonize with his Principle, divine Love; the Son must be in accord with the Father, in conformity with Christ. According to divine Science, man is in a degree as perfect as the Mind that forms him. The truth of being makes man harmonious and immortal, while error is mortal and discordant.


      
      -26- Purity the path to perfection 337

      XXVI. Christian Science demonstrates that none but the pure in heart can see God, as the gospel teaches. In proportion to his purity is man perfect; and perfection is the order of celestial being which demonstrates Life in Christ, Life's spiritual ideal.


      
      -27- True idea of man 337

      XXVII. The true idea of man, as the reflection of the invisible God, is as incomprehensible to the limited senses as is man's infinite Principle. The visible universe and material man are the poor counterfeits of the invisible universe and spiritual man. Eternal things (verities) are God's thoughts as they exist in the spiritual realm of the real. Temporal things are the thoughts of mortals and are the unreal, being the opposite of the real or the spiritual and eternal.


     
      -28- Truth demonstrated 337

      XXVIII. Subject sickness, sin, and death to the rule of health and holiness in Christian Science, and you ascertain that this Science is demonstrably true, for it heals the sick and sinning as no other system can. Christian Science, rightly understood, leads to eternal harmony. It brings to light the only living and true God and man as made in His likeness; whereas the opposite belief - that man originates in matter and has beginning and end, that he is both soul and body, both good and evil, both spiritual and material - terminates in discord and mortality, in the error which must be destroyed by Truth. The mortality of material man proves that error has been ingrafted into the premises and conclusions of material and mortal humanity.


     
      -29- Adam not ideal man 338

      XXIX. The word Adam is from the Hebrew adamah, signifying the red color of the ground, dust, nothingness. Divide the name Adam into two syllables, and it reads, a dam, or obstruction. This suggests the thought of something fluid, of mortal mind in solution. It further suggests the thought of that "darkness . . . upon the face of the deep," when matter or dust was deemed the agent of Deity in creating man, - when matter, as that which is accursed, stood opposed to Spirit. Here a dam is not a mere play upon words; it stands for obstruction, error, even the supposed separation of man from God, and the obstacle which the serpent, sin, would impose between man and his creator. The dissection and definition of words, aside from their metaphysical derivation, is not scientific. Jehovah declared the ground was accursed; and from this ground, or matter, sprang Adam, notwithstanding God had blessed the earth "for man's sake." From this it follows that Adam was not the ideal man for whom the earth was blessed. The ideal man was revealed in due time, and was known as Christ Jesus.


     
      -30- Divine pardon 339

      XXX. The destruction of sin is the divine method of pardon. Divine Life destroys death, Truth destroys error, and Love destroys hate. Being destroyed, sin needs no other form of forgiveness. Does not God's pardon, destroying any one sin, prophesy and involve the final destruction of all sin?


     
      -31- Evil not produced by God 339

      XXXI. Since God is All, there is no room for His unlikeness. God, Spirit, alone created all, and called it good. Therefore evil, being contrary to good, is unreal, and cannot be the product of God. A sinner can receive no encouragement from the fact that Science demonstrates the unreality of evil, for the sinner would make a reality of sin, - would make that real which is unreal, and thus heap up "wrath against the day of wrath." He is joining in a conspiracy against himself, - against his own awakening to the awful unreality by which he has been deceived. Only those, who repent of sin and forsake the unreal, can fully understand the unreality of evil.


      
      -32- Basis of health and immortality 339

      XXXII. As the mythology of pagan Rome has yielded to a more spiritual idea of Deity, so will our material theories yield to spiritual ideas, until the finite gives place to the infinite, sickness to health, sin to holiness, and God's kingdom comes "in earth, as it is in heaven." The basis of all health, sinlessness, and immortality is the great fact that God is the only Mind; and this Mind must be not merely believed, but it must be understood. To get rid of sin through Science, is to divest sin of any supposed mind or reality, and never to admit that sin can have intelligence or power, pain or pleasure. You conquer error by denying its verity. Our various theories will never lose their imaginary power for good or evil, until we lose our faith in them and make life its own proof of harmony and God.


      -Platform summation- 340

      This text in the book of Ecclesiastes conveys the Christian Science thought, especially when the word duty, which is not in the original, is omitted: "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man." In other words: Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: love God and keep His commandments: for this is the whole of man in His image and likeness. Divine Love is infinite. Therefore all that really exists is in and of God, and manifests His love.

      "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." (Exodus xx. 3.) The First Commandment is my favorite text. It demonstrates Christian Science. It inculcates the tri-unity of God, Spirit, Mind; it signifies that man shall have no other spirit or mind but God, eternal good, and that all men shall have one Mind. The divine Principle of the First Commandment bases the Science of being, by which man demonstrates health, holiness, and life eternal. One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, "Love thy neighbor as thyself;" annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry, - whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed.