Trustees under the Will of Mary Baker G. Eddy
Boston, U.S.A.
| 1 |
PERHAPS no doctrine of Christian Science rouses so
much
natural doubt and questioning as this, that |
| 3 |
God knows no such thing as sin. Indeed, this may be set
down as one of the "things hard to be understood," such
as the apostle
Peter declared were taught by his fellow- |
| 6 |
apostle Paul, "which they that are unlearned and unstable
wrest . . . unto their own destruction." (2 Peter iii. 16.)
Let us then reason together on this
important subject, |
| 9 |
whose statement in Christian Science may justly be char-
acterized as wonderful.
Does God know or behold sin,
sickness, and death? |
| 12 |
The nature and character of God is so little appre-
hended and demonstrated by mortals, that I counsel my
students to defer
this infinite inquiry, in their discussions |
| 15 |
of Christian Science. In fact, they had better leave the
subject untouched, until they draw nearer to the divine
character, and are
practically able to testify, by their lives, |
| 18 |
that as they come closer to the true understanding of God
they lose all sense of error.
Page 2 |
| 1 |
The Scriptures declare that God is too pure to behold
iniquity (Habakkuk i. 13); but they also declare that |
| 3 |
God pitieth them who fear Him; that there is no place
where His voice is not heard; that He is "a very present
help in
trouble." |
| 6 |
The sinner has no refuge from sin, except in God, who
is
his salvation. We must, however, realize God's pres-
ence, power, and love,
in order to be saved from sin. This |
| 9 |
realization takes away man's fondness for sin and his
pleasure in it; and, lastly, it removes the pain which
accrues to him from
it. Then follows this, as the finale in |
| 12 |
Science: The sinner loses his sense of sin, and gains a
higher sense of God, in whom there is no sin.
The true man, really saved, is
ready to testify of God |
| 15 |
in the infinite penetration of Truth, and can affirm
that
the Mind which is good, or God, has no knowledge of sin.
In the same manner the sick lose their
sense of sickness, |
| 18 |
and gain that spiritual sense of harmony which contains
neither discord nor disease.
According to this same rule, in divine
Science, the |
| 21 |
dying - if they die in the Lord - awake from a sense of
death to a sense of Life in Christ, with a knowledge of
Truth and Love
beyond what they possessed before; be- |
| 24 |
cause their lives have grown so far toward the stature of
manhood in Christ Jesus, that they are ready for a spirit-
ual
transfiguration, through their affections and under- |
| 27 |
standing.
Those who reach this transition,
called death, without
Page 3 |
| 1 |
having rightly improved the lessons of this primary
school
of mortal existence, - and still believe in matter's reality, |
| 3 |
pleasure, and pain, - are not ready to understand im-
mortality. Hence they awake only to another sphere of
experience, and must
pass through another probationary |
| 6 |
state before it can be truly said of them: "Blessed are the
dead which die in the Lord."
They upon whom the second death, of
which we read |
| 9 |
in the Apocalypse (Revelation xx. 6), hath no power, are
those who have obeyed God's commands, and have
washed their robes white
through the sufferings of the |
| 12 |
flesh and the triumphs of Spirit. Thus they have reached
the goal in divine Science, by knowing Him in whom they
have believed. This
knowledge is not the forbidden fruit |
| 15 |
of sin, sickness, and death, but it is the fruit which
grows
on the "tree of life." This is the understanding of God,
whereby
man is found in the image and likeness of |
| 18 |
good, not of evil; of health, not of sickness; of Life, not
of death.
God is All-in-all. Hence He is in
Himself only, in His |
| 21 |
own nature and character, and is perfect being, or con-
sciousness. He is all the Life and Mind there is or can be.
Within Himself
is every embodiment of Life and Mind. |
| 24 |
If He is All, He can have no consciousness of anything
unlike Himself; because, if He is omnipresent, there can
be nothing outside
of Himself. |
| 27 |
Now this self-same God is our helper. He pities us.
He
has mercy upon us, and guides every event of our
Page 4 |
| 1 |
careers. He is near to them who adore Him. To under-
stand Him, without a single taint of our mortal, finite sense |
| 3 |
of sin, sickness, or death, is to approach Him and become
like Him.
Truth is God, and in God's law. This law
declares |
| 6 |
that Truth is All, and there is no error. This law of
Truth
destroys every phase of error. To gain a temporary con-
sciousness of God's law is to feel, in a certain finite human |
| 9 |
sense, that God comes to us and pities us; but the
attain-
ment of the understanding of His presence, through the
Science
of God, destroys our sense of imperfection, or |
| 12 |
of His absence, through a diviner sense that God is all
true consciousness; and this convinces us that, as we
get still nearer Him,
we must forever lose our own con- |
| 15 |
sciousness of error.
But how could we lose all
consciousness of error, if God
be conscious of it? God has not forbidden
man to know |
| 18 |
Him; on the contrary, the Father bids man have the
same
Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus," - which
was certainly the divine
Mind; but God does forbid man's |
| 21 |
acquaintance with evil. Why? Because evil is no part
of
the divine knowledge.
John's Gospel declares (xvii. 3) that
"life eternal" con- |
| 24 |
sists in the knowledge of the only true God, and of Jesus
Christ, whom He has sent. Surely from such an under-
standing of Science,
such knowing, the vision of sin is |
| 27 |
wholly excluded.
Nevertheless, at the present crude
hour, no wise men or
Page 5 |
| 1 |
women will rudely or prematurely agitate a theme involv-
ing the All of infinity. |
| 3 |
Rather will they rejoice in the small understanding
they
have already gained of the wholeness of Deity, and
work gradually and
gently up toward the perfect thought |
| 6 |
divine. This meekness will increase their apprehension
of God, because their mental struggles and pride of opin-
ion will
proportionately diminish. |
| 9 |
Every one should be encouraged not to accept any per-
sonal opinion on so great a matter, but to seek the divine
Science of this
question of Truth by following upward indi- |
| 12 |
vidual convictions, undisturbed by the frightened sense of
any need of attempting to solve every Life-problem in a day.
"Great is the mystery of godliness,"
says Paul; and |
| 15 |
mystery involves the unknown. No stubborn purpose to
force conclusions on this subject will unfold in us a higher
sense of
Deity; neither will it promote the Cause of Truth |
| 18 |
or enlighten the individual thought.
Let us respect the rights of
conscience and the liberty
of the sons of God, so letting our "moderation
be known |
| 21 |
to all men." Let no enmity, no untempered controversy,
spring up between Christian Science students and Chris-
tians who wholly or
partially differ from them as to the |
| 24 |
nature of sin and the marvellous unity of man with God
shadowed forth in scientific thought. Rather let the
stately goings of this
wonderful part of Truth be left to |
| 27 |
the supernal guidance.
"These are but parts of Thy ways,"
says Job; and the
Page 6 |
| 1 |
whole is greater than its parts. Our present
understanding
is but "the seed within itself," for it is divine
Science, |
| 3 |
"bearing fruit after its kind."
Sooner or later the whole human race
will learn that, in
proportion as the spotless selfhood of God is
understood, |
| 6 |
human nature will be renovated, and man will receive a
higher selfhood, derived from God, and the redemption
of mortals from sin,
sickness, and death be established on |
| 9 |
everlasting foundations.
The Science of physical harmony, as
now presented to
the people in divine light, is radical enough to
promote |
| 12 |
as forcible collisions of thought as the age has strength
to bear. Until the heavenly law of health, according to
Christian Science,
is firmly grounded, even the thinkers |
| 15 |
are not prepared to answer intelligently leading
questions
about God and sin, and the world is far from ready to
assimilate such a grand and all-absorbing verity concern- |
| 18 |
ing the divine nature and character as is embraced in the
theory of God's blindness to error and ignorance of sin.
No wise mother,
though a graduate of Wellesley College, |
| 21 |
will talk to her babe about the problems of Euclid.
Not much more than a half-century ago
the assertion
of universal salvation provoked discussion and
horror, |
| 24 |
similar to what our declarations about sin and Deity must
arouse, if hastily pushed to the front while the platoons of
Christian
Science are not yet thoroughly drilled in the |
| 27 |
plainer manual of their spiritual armament. "Wait
patiently on the Lord;" and in less than another fifty
Page 7 |
| 1 |
years His name will be magnified in the apprehension of
this new subject, as already He is glorified in the wide |
| 3 |
extension of belief in the impartial grace of God, -
shown by the changes at Andover Seminary and in multi-
tudes of other
religious folds. |
| 6 |
Nevertheless, though I thus speak, and from my heart
of
hearts, it is due both to Christian Science and myself
to make also the
following statement: When I have most |
| 9 |
clearly seen and most sensibly felt that the infinite
recog-
nizes no disease, this has not separated me from God, but
has so
bound me to Him as to enable me instantaneously to |
| 12 |
heal a cancer which had eaten its way to the jugular vein.
In the same spiritual condition I have
been able to re-
place dislocated joints and raise the dying to
instantaneous |
| 15 |
health. People are now living who can bear witness to
these cures. Herein is my evidence, from on high, that
the views here
promulgated on this subject are correct. |
| 18 |
Certain self-proved propositions pour into my waiting
thought in connection with these experiences; and here is
one such
conviction: that an acknowledgment of the per- |
| 21 |
fection of the infinite Unseen confers a power nothing else
can. An incontestable point in divine Science is, that
because God is
All, a realization of this fact dispels even |
| 23 |
the sense or consciousness of sin, and brings us nearer to
God, bringing out the highest phenomena of the All-
Mind.
Page 8
SEEDTIME AND
HARVEST |
| 1 |
LET another query now be considered, which gives
much
trouble to many earnest thinkers before Science |
| 3 |
answers it.
Is anything real of which the
physical senses are cognizant?
Everything is as real as you make it, and no more
so. |
| 6 |
What you see, hear, feel, is a mode of consciousness, and
can have no other reality than the sense you entertain
of it. |
| 9 |
It is dangerous to rest upon the evidence of the senses,
for this evidence is not absolute, and therefore not real,
in our sense of
the word. All that is beautiful and good |
| 12 |
in your individual consciousness is permanent. That
which
is not so is illusive and fading. My insistence upon
a proper understanding
of the unreality of matter and |
| 15 |
evil arises from their deleterious effects, physical, moral,
and intellectual, upon the race.
All forms of error are uprooted in Science, on the
same |
| 18 |
basis whereby sickness is healed, - namely, by the es-
tablishment, through reason, revelation, and Science, of
the nothingness of
every claim of error, even the doc- |
| 21 |
trine of heredity and other physical causes. You demon-
strate the process of Science, and it proves my view
Page 9 |
| 1 |
conclusively, that mortal mind is the cause of all
disease.
Destroy the mental sense of the disease, and the disease |
| 3 |
itself disappears. Destroy the sense of sin, and sin itself
disappears.
Material and sensual consciousness are
mortal. Hence |
| 6 |
they must, some time and in some way, be reckoned un-
real. That time has partially come, or my words would
not have been spoken.
Jesus has made the way plain, |
| 9 |
- so plain that all are without excuse who walk not in
it; but this way is not the path of physical science, human
philosophy, or
mystic psychology. |
| 12 |
The talent and genius of the centuries have wrongly
reckoned. They have not based upon revelation their
arguments and
conclusions as to the source and resources |
| 15 |
of being, - its combinations, phenomena, and outcome,
-
but have built instead upon the sand of human reason.
They have not
accepted the simple teaching and life of |
| 18 |
Jesus as the only true solution of the perplexing problem
of human existence.
Sometimes it is said, by those who
fail to understand |
| 21 |
me, that I monopolize; and this is said because
ideas
akin to mine have been held by a few spiritual think-
ers in all
ages. So they have, but in a far different |
| 24 |
form. Healing has gone on continually; yet healing, as
I
teach it, has not been practised since the days of
Christ. |
| 27 |
What is the cardinal point of the difference in my meta-
physical system? This: that by knowing the unreality of
Page 10 |
| 1 |
disease, sin, end death, you demonstrate the allness
of God.
This difference wholly separates my system from all others. |
| 3 |
The reality of these so-called existences I deny, because
they are not to be found in God, and this system is built
on Him as the
sole cause. It would be difficult to name |
| 6 |
any previous teachers, save Jesus and his apostles, who
have thus taught.
If there be any monopoly in my
teaching, it lies in this |
| 9 |
utter reliance upon the one God, to whom belong all
things.
Life is God, or Spirit, the
supersensible eternal. The |
| 12 |
universe and man are the spiritual phenomena of this one
infinite Mind. Spiritual phenomena never converge toward
aught but infinite
Deity. Their gradations are spiritual |
| 15 |
and divine; they cannot collapse, or lapse into their op-
posites, for God is their divine Principle. They live,
because He lives;
and they are eternally perfect, because |
| 18 |
He is perfect, and governs them in the Truth of divine
Science, whereof God is the Alpha and Omega, the centre
and
circumference. |
| 21 |
To attempt the calculation of His mighty ways, from
the
evidence before the material senses, is fatuous. It is
like commencing with
the minus sign, to learn the prin- |
| 24 |
ciple of positive mathematics.
God was not in the whirlwind. He is
not the blind
force of a material universe. Mortals must learn
this; |
| 27 |
unless, pursued by their fears, they would endeavor to
hide from His presence under their own falsities, and call
Page 11 |
| 1 |
in vain for the mountains of unholiness to shield them
from the penalty of error. |
| 3 |
Jesus taught us to walk over, not into or
with, the cur-
rents of matter, or mortal mind. His teachings
beard
the lions in their dens. He turned the water into wine, |
| 6 |
he commanded the winds, he healed the sick, - all in
direct opposition to human philosophy and so-called
natural science. He
annulled the laws of matter, showing |
| 9 |
them to be laws of mortal mind, not of God. He showed
the
need of changing this mind and its abortive laws. He
demanded a change of
consciousness and evidence, and |
| 12 |
effected this change through the higher laws of God.
The
palsied hand moved, despite the boastful sense of
physical law and order.
Jesus stooped not to human |
| 15 |
consciousness, nor to the evidence of the senses. He
heeded not the taunt, "That withered hand looks very
real and feels very
real;" but he cut off this vain boast- |
| 18 |
ing and destroyed human pride by taking away the ma-
terial evidence. If his patient was a theologian of some
bigoted sect, a
physician, or a professor of natural phi- |
| 21 |
losophy, - according to the ruder sort then prevalent, -
he never thanked Jesus for restoring his senseless hand;
but neither red
tape nor indignity hindered the divine |
| 24 |
process. Jesus required neither cycles of time nor thought
in order to mature fitness for perfection and its possibili-
ties. He
said that the kingdom of heaven is here, and |
| 27 |
is included in Mind; that while ye say, There are yet four
months, and then cometh the harvest, I say, Look up,
Page 12 |
| 1 |
not down, for your fields are already white for the
harvest;
and gather the harvest by mental, not material processes. |
| 3 |
The laborers are few in this vineyard of Mind-sowing and
reaping; but let them apply to the waiting grain the curv-
ing sickle of
Mind's eternal circle, and bind it with bands |
| 6 |
of Soul.
Page 13
THE DEEP THINGS OF
GOD |
| 1 |
SCIENCE reverses the evidence of the senses in the-
ology, on the same principle that it does in astronomy. |
| 3 |
Popular theology makes God tributary to man, coming at
human call; whereas the reverse is true in Science. Men
must approach God
reverently, doing their own work in |
| 6 |
obedience to divine law, if they would fulfil the intended
harmony of being.
The principle of music knows nothing
of discord. God |
| 9 |
is harmony's selfhood. His universal laws, His unchange-
ableness, are not infringed in ethics any more than in
music. To Him there
is no moral inharmony; as we shall |
| 12 |
learn, proportionately as we gain the true understanding
of Deity. If God could be conscious of sin, His infinite
power would
straightway reduce the universe to chaos. |
| 15 |
If God has any real knowledge of sin, sickness, and
death, they must be eternal; since He is, in the very
fibre of His being,
"without beginning of years or end of |
| 18 |
days." If God knows that which is not permanent, it
follows that He knows something which He must learn
to unknow, for
the benefit of our race. |
| 21 |
Such a view would bring us upon an outworn theological
Page 14 |
| 1 |
platform, which contains such planks as the divine
repent-
ance, and the belief that God must one day do His |
| 3 |
work over again, because it was not at first done
aright.
Can it be seriously held, by any
thinker, that long after |
| 6 |
God made the universe, - earth, man, animals, plants,
the
sun, the moon, and "the stars also," - He should so
gain wisdom and power
from past experience that He |
| 9 |
could vastly improve upon His own previous work, - as
Burgess, the boatbuilder, remedies in the Volunteer the
shortcomings of the
Puritan's model? |
| 12 |
Christians are commanded to grow in grace. Was it
necessary for God to grow in grace, that He might rectify
His spiritual
universe? |
| 15 |
The Jehovah of limited Hebrew faith might need
repentance, because His created children proved sinful;
but the New
Testament tells us of "the Father of lights, |
| 18 |
with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."
God is not the shifting vane on the spire, but the
corner-stone of living
rock, firmer than everlasting hills. |
| 21 |
As God is Mind, if this Mind is familiar with evil, all
cannot be good therein. Our infinite model would be
taken away. What is in
eternal Mind must be reflected |
| 24 |
in man, Mind's image. How then could man escape, or
hope
to escape, from a knowledge which is everlasting in
his creator? |
| 27 |
God never said that man would become better by learn-
ing to distinguish evil from good, - but the contrary, that
Page 15 |
| 1 |
by this knowledge, by man's first disobedience, came
"death into the world, and all our woe." |
| 3 |
"Shall mortal man be more just than God?" asks the
poet-patriarch. May men rid themselves of an incubus
which God never can
throw off? Do mortals know more |
| 6 |
than God, that they may declare Him absolutely cognizant
of sin?
God created all things, and pronounced
them good. |
| 9 |
Was evil among these good things? Man is God's child
and
image. If God knows evil, so must man, or the like-
ness is incomplete, the
image marred. |
| 12 |
If man must be destroyed by the knowledge of evil,
then
his destruction comes through the very knowledge
caught from God, and the
creature is punished for his |
| 15 |
likeness to his creator.
God is commonly called the
sinless, and man the sinful;
but if the thought of sin could
be possible in Deity, would |
| 18 |
Deity then be sinless? Would God not of necessity take
precedence as the infinite sinner, and human sin become
only an echo of the
divine? |
| 21 |
Such vagaries are to be found in heathen religious his-
tory. There are, or have been, devotees who worship not
the good Deity, who
will not harm them, but the bad |
| 24 |
deity, who seeks to do them mischief, and whom there-
fore they wish to bribe with prayers into quiescence,
as a criminal
appeases, with a money-bag, the venal |
| 27 |
officer.
Surely this is no Christian worship!
In Christianity
Page 16 |
| 1 |
man bows to the infinite perfection which he is bidden to
imitate. In Truth, such terms as divine sin and infinite |
| 3 |
sinner are unheard-of contradictions, - absurdities;
but
would they be sheer nonsense, if God has, or can have,
a
real knowledge of sin?
Page 17
WAYS HIGHER THAN OUR
WAYS |
| 1 |
A LIE has only one chance of successful deception, -
to
be accounted true. Evil seeks to fasten all error |
| 3 |
upon God, and so make the lie seem part of eternal
Truth.
Emerson says, "Hitch your wagon to a
star." I say,
Be allied to the deific power, and all that is good will
aid |
| 6 |
your journey, as the stars in their courses fought against
Sisera. (Judges v. 20.) Hourly, in Christian Science,
man thus weds
himself with God, or rather he ratifies a |
| 9 |
union predestined from all eternity; but evil ties its
wagon-
load of offal to the divine chariots, - or seeks so to do, -
that its vileness may be christened purity, and its darkness |
| 12 |
get consolation from borrowed scintillations.
Jesus distinctly taught the arrogant
Pharisees that, from
the beginning, their father, the devil, was the
would-be |
| 15 |
murderer of Truth. A right apprehension of the wonder-
ful utterances of him who "spake as never man spake,"
would despoil error
of its borrowed plumes, and trans- |
| 18 |
form the universe into a home of marvellous light, - "a
consummation devoutly to be wished."
Error says God must know evil because
He knows all |
| 21 |
things; but Holy Writ declares God told our first parents
that in the day when they should partake of the fruit of
evil, they
must surely die. Would it not absurdly follow
Page 18 |
| 1 |
that God must perish, if He knows evil and evil neces-
sarily leads to extinction? Rather let us think of God as |
| 3 |
saying, I am infinite good; therefore I know not evil.
Dwelling in light, I can see only the brightness of My
own glory. |
| 6 |
Error may say that God can never save man from sin,
if He
knows and sees it not; but God says, I am too pure
to behold iniquity, and
destroy everything that is unlike |
| 9 |
Myself.
Many fancy that our heavenly Father
reasons thus:
If pain and sorrow were not in My mind, I could
not |
| 12 |
remedy them, and wipe the tears from the eyes of My chil-
dren. Error says you must know grief in order to console
it. Truth, God,
says you oftenest console others in |
| 15 |
troubles that you have not. Is not our comforter always
from outside and above ourselves?
God says, I show My pity through
divine law, not |
| 18 |
through human. It is My sympathy with and My knowl-
edge
of harmony (not inharmony) which alone enable Me
to rebuke, and eventually
destroy, every supposition of |
| 21 |
discord.
Error says God must know death in
order to strike at
its root; but God saith, I am ever-conscious Life,
and |
| 24 |
thus I conquer death; for to be ever conscious of Life is
to be never conscious of death. I am All. A knowledge
of aught beside
Myself is impossible. |
| 27 |
If such knowledge of evil were possible to God, it would
lower His rank.
Page 19 |
| 1 |
With God, knowledge is necessarily
foreknowledge; and
foreknowledge and foreordination
must be one, in an in- |
| 3 |
finite Being. What Deity foreknows, Deity must fore-
ordain; else He is not omnipotent, and, like ourselves,
He
foresees events which are contrary to His creative will, |
| 6 |
yet which He cannot avert.
If God knows evil at all, He must
have had foreknowl-
edge thereof; and if He foreknew it, He must
virtually
|
| 9 |
have intended it, or ordered it aforetime, -
foreordained
it; else how could it have come into the world?
But this we cannot believe of God; for
if the supreme |
| 12 |
good could predestine or foreknow evil, there would be
sin in Deity, and this would be the end of infinite moral
unity. "If
therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, |
| 15 |
how great is that darkness!" On the contrary, evil is
only a delusive deception, without any actuality which
Truth can know.
Page 20
RECTIFICATIONS |
| 1 |
HOW is a mistake to be rectified? By reversal or re-
vision, - by seeing it in its proper light, and then |
| 3 |
turning it or turning from it.
We undo the statements of error by
reversing them.
Through these three statements, or misstatements,
evil |
| 6 |
comes into authority: -
First: The Lord created it.
Second: The Lord knows
it. |
| 9 |
Third: I am afraid of it.
By a reverse process of argument evil
must be de-
throned: - |
| 12 |
First: God never made evil.
Second: He
knows it not.
Third: We therefore need not fear it. |
| 15 |
Try this process, dear inquirer, and so reach that per-
fect Love which "casteth out fear," and then see if this
Love does not
destroy in you all hate and the sense of evil. |
| 18 |
You will awake to the perception of God as All-in-all.
You will find yourself losing the knowledge and the opera-
tion of sin,
proportionably as you realize the divine in- |
| 21 |
finitude and believe that He can see nothing outside of
His own focal distance.
Page 21
A
COLLOQUY |
| 1 |
IN Romans (ii. 15) we read the apostle's description of
mental processes wherein human thoughts are "the |
| 3 |
mean while accusing or else excusing one another." If we
observe our mental processes, we shall find that we are
perpetually arguing
with ourselves; yet each mortal is |
| 6 |
not two personalities, but one.
In like manner good and evil talk
to one another; yet
they are not two but one, for evil is naught, and good
only
|
| 9 |
is reality.
Evil. God hath said, "Ye shall eat of every tree of the
garden." If you do not, your intellect will be circum- |
| 12 |
scribed and the evidence of your personal senses be de-
nied. This would antagonize individual consciousness
and existence. |
| 15 |
Good. The Lord is God. With Him is no
conscious-
ness of evil, because there is nothing beside Him or
outside of Him. Individual consciousness in man is |
| 18 |
inseparable from good. There is no sensible matter, no
sense in matter; but there is a spiritual sense, a sense of
Spirit, and
this is the only consciousness belonging to true |
| 21 |
individuality, or a divine sense of being.
Page 22 |
| 1 |
Evil. Why is this so?
Good. Because man is made after God's eternal like- |
| 3 |
ness, and this likeness consists in a sense of harmony
and
immortality, in which no evil can possibly dwell. You
may eat of
the fruit of Godlikeness, but as to the fruit of |
| 6 |
ungodliness, which is opposed to Truth, - ye shall not
touch it, lest ye die.
Evil. But I would taste and know error for myself. |
| 9 |
Good. Thou shalt not admit that error is something
to know or be known, to eat or be eaten, to see or be seen,
to feel or be
felt. To admit the existence of error would |
| 12 |
be to admit the truth of a lie.
Evil. But there is something besides good. God
knows that a
knowledge of this something is essential to |
| 15 |
happiness and life. A lie is as genuine as Truth, though
not so legitimate a child of God. Whatever exists must
come from God, and
be important to our knowledge. |
| 18 |
Error, even, is His offspring.
Good. Whatever cometh not from the eternal Spirit,
has its
origin in the physical senses and material brains, |
| 21 |
called human intellect and will-power, -
alias intelligent
matter.
In Shakespeare's tragedy of King Lear,
it was the
Page 23 |
| 1 |
traitorous and cruel treatment received by old Gloster
from his bastard son Edmund which makes true the lines: |
| 3 |
The gods are just, and of
our pleasant vices
Make instruments to scourge us.
His lawful son, Edgar, was to his
father ever loyal. Now |
| 6 |
God has no bastards to turn again and rend their Maker.
The divine children are born of law and order, and Truth
knows only
such. |
| 9 |
How well the Shakespearean tale agrees with the word
of
Scripture, in Hebrews xii. 7, 8: "If ye endure chasten-
ing, God dealeth
with you as with sons; for what son is |
| 12 |
he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be with-
out
chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye
bastards, and not
sons." |
| 15 |
The doubtful or spurious evidence of the senses is not
to
be admitted, - especially when they testify concern-
ing Spirit, whereof
they are confessedly incompetent to |
| 18 |
speak.
Evil. But mortal mind and sin really exist!
Good. How can they exist, unless God has created |
| 21 |
them? And how can He create anything so wholly unlike
Himself and foreign to His nature? An evil material mind,
so-called, can
conceive of God only as like itself, and |
| 24 |
knowing both evil and good; but a purely good and
spiritual consciousness has no sense whereby to cognize
Page 24 |
| 1 |
evil. Mortal mind is the opposite of immortal Mind, and
sin the opposite of goodness. I am the infinite All. From |
| 3 |
me proceedeth all Mind, all consciousness, all individu-
ality, all being. My Mind is divine good, and cannot
drift into evil. To
believe in minds many is to depart |
| 6 |
from the supreme sense of harmony. Your assumptions
insist that there is more than the one Mind, more than the
one God; but
verily I say unto you, God is All-in-all; |
| 9 |
and you can never be outside of His oneness.
Evil. I am a finite consciousness, a material individu-
ality,
- a mind in matter, which is both evil and good. |
| 12 |
Good. All consciousness is Mind; and Mind is God,
-
an infinite, and not a finite consciousness. This conscious-
ness is
reflected in individual consciousness, or man, whose |
| 15 |
source is infinite Mind. There is no really finite mind,
no
finite consciousness. There is no material substance, for
Spirit is
all that endureth, and hence is the only substance. |
| 18 |
There is, can be, no evil mind, because Mind is God.
God
and His ideas - that is, God and the universe -
constitute all that exists.
Man, as God's offspring, must |
| 21 |
be spiritual, perfect, eternal.
Evil. I am something separate from good or God. I
am substance.
My mind is more than matter. In my |
| 24 |
mortal mind, matter becomes conscious, and is able to
see,
taste, hear, feel, smell. Whatever matter thus affirms is
Page 25 |
| 1 |
mainly correct. If you, O good, deny this, then I deny
your truthfulness. If you say that matter is unconscious, |
| 3 |
you stultify my intellect, insult my conscience, and dispute
self-evident facts; for nothing can be clearer than the
testimony of
the five senses. |
| 6 |
Good. Spirit is the only substance. Spirit is God, and
God is good; hence good is the only substance, the only
Mind. Mind is
not, cannot be, in matter. It sees, hears, |
| 9 |
feels, tastes, smells as Mind, and not as matter. Matter
cannot talk; and hence, whatever it appears to say of
itself is a lie. This
lie, that Mind can be in matter, - |
| 12 |
claiming to be something beside God, denying Truth and
its demonstration in Christian Science, - this lie I declare
an illusion.
This denial enlarges the human intellect by |
| 15 |
removing its evidence from sense to Soul, and from
finite-
ness into infinity. It honors conscious human individu-
ality
by showing God as its source. |
| 18 |
Evil. I am a creator, - but upon a material, not a
spiritual basis. I give life, and I can destroy life.
Good. Evil is not a creator. God, good, is the only |
| 21 |
creator. Evil is not conscious or conscientious Mind; it
is not individual, not actual. Evil is not spiritual, and
therefore has no
groundwork in Life, whose only source |
| 24 |
is Spirit. The elements which belong to the eternal All,
-
Life, Truth, Love, - evil can never take away.
Page 26 |
| 1 |
Evil. I am intelligent matter; and matter is
egoistic,
having its own innate selfhood and the capacity to evolve |
| 3 |
mind. God is in matter, and matter reproduces God.
From
Him come my forms, near or remote. This is my
honor, that God is my author,
authority, governor, dis- |
| 6 |
poser. I am proud to be in His outstretched hands, and
I
shirk all responsibility for myself as evil, and for my
varying
manifestations. |
| 9 |
Good. You mistake, O evil! God is not your
authority
and law. Neither is He the author of the material changes,
the phantasma, a belief in which leads to such teaching |
| 12 |
as we find in the hymn-verse so often sung in church: -
Chance and change are busy
ever,
Man decays and ages move; |
| 15 |
But His mercy waneth never,
-
God is wisdom, God is love.
Now if it be true that God's power
never waneth, how |
| 18 |
can it be also true that chance and change are
universal
factors, - that man decays? Many ordinary Christians
protest against this stanza of Bowring's, and its sentiment |
| 21 |
is foreign to Christian Science. If God be changeless
good-
ness, as sings another line of this hymn, what place has
chance in the divine economy? Nay, there is in God |
| 24 |
naught fantastic. All is real, all is serious. The phan-
tasmagoria is a product of human dreams.
Page 27
THE
EGO |
| 1 |
FROM various friends comes inquiry as to the meaning
of a
word employed in the foregoing colloquy. |
| 3 |
There are two English words, often used as if they were
synonyms, which really have a shade of difference between
them. |
| 6 |
An egotist is one who talks much of himself.
Egotism
implies vanity and self-conceit.
Egoism is a more philosophical word, signifying a |
| 9 |
passionate love of self, which doubts all existence except
its own. An egoist, therefore, is one uncertain of every-
thing except his own existence. |
| 12 |
Applying these distinctions to evil and God, we shall
find that evil is egotistic, - boastful, but fleeing like a
shadow
at daybreak; while God is egoistic, knowing only |
| 15 |
His own all-presence, all-knowledge, all-power.
Page 28
SOUL |
| 1 |
WE read in the Hebrew Scriptures, "The soul that
sinneth,
it shall die." |
| 3 |
What is Soul? Is it a reality within the mortal body?
Who
can prove that? Anatomy has not descried nor
described Soul. It was never
touched by the scalpel nor |
| 6 |
cut with the dissecting-knife. The five physical senses
do
not cognize it.
Who, then, dares define Soul as
something within man ? |
| 9 |
As well might you declare some old castle to be peopled
with demons or angels, though never a light or form was
discerned therein,
and not a spectre had ever been seen |
| 12 |
going in or coming out.
The common hypotheses about souls are
even more
vague than ordinary material conjectures, and have
less |
| 15 |
basis; because material theories are built on the
evidence
of the material senses.
Soul must be God; since we learn Soul
only as we learn |
| 18 |
God, by spiritualization. As the five senses take no cog-
nizance of Soul, so they take no cognizance of God. What-
ever cannot be
taken in by mortal mind - by human |
| 21 |
reflection, reason, or belief - must be the unfathomable
Mind, which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard." Soul
Page 29 |
| 1 |
stands in this relation to every hypothesis as to its
human
character. |
| 3 |
If Soul sins, it is a sinner, and Jewish law condemned
the sinner to death, - as does all criminal law, to a cer-
tain
extent. |
| 6 |
Spirit never sins, because Spirit is God. Hence, as
Spirit, Soul is sinless, and is God. Therefore there is,
there can be, no
spiritual death. |
| 9 |
Transcending the evidence of the material senses,
Science
declares God to be the Soul of all being, the only
Mind and intelligence in
the universe. There is but one |
| 12 |
God, one Soul, or Mind, and that one is infinite, supplying
all that is absolutely immutable and eternal, - Truth,
Life,
Love. |
| 15 |
Science reveals Soul as that which the senses cannot
define from any standpoint of their own. What the physi-
cal senses miscall
soul, Christian Science defines as mate- |
| 18 |
rial sense; and herein lies the discrepancy between the
true Science of Soul and that material sense of a soul which
that very
sense declares can never be seen or measured or |
| 21 |
weighed or touched by physicality.
Often we can elucidate the deep
meaning of the Scrip-
tures by reading sense instead of soul,
as in the Forty-
|
| 24 |
second Psalm: "Why art thou cast down, O my soul
[sense]
? . . . Hope thou in God [Soul]: for I shall yet
praise Him, who is the
health of my countenance, and |
| 27 |
my God [my Soul, immortality]."
The Virgin-mother's sense being
uplifted to behold
Page 30 |
| 1 |
Spirit as the sole origin of man, she exclaimed, "My soul
[spiritual sense] doth magnify the Lord." |
| 3 |
Human language constantly uses the word soul for
sense. This it does under the delusion that the senses can
reverse
the spiritual facts of Science, whereas Science re- |
| 6 |
verses the testimony of the material senses.
Soul is Life, and being spiritual
Life, never sins. Mate-
rial sense is the so-called material life. Hence
this lower |
| 9 |
sense sins and suffers, according to material belief,
till
divine understanding takes away this belief and restores
Soul, or
spiritual Life. "He restoreth my soul," says |
| 12 |
David.
In his first epistle to the
Corinthians (xv. 45) Paul writes:
"The first man Adam was made a living
soul; the last |
| 15 |
Adam was made a quickening spirit." The apostle re-
fers
to the second Adam as the Messiah, our blessed
Master, whose interpretation
of God and His creation - |
| 18 |
by restoring the spiritual sense of man as immortal
instead
of mortal - made humanity victorious over death and the
grave. |
| 21 |
When I discovered the power of Spirit to break the
cords
of matter, through a change in the mortal sense of
things, then I discerned
the last Adam as a quickening |
| 24 |
Spirit, and understood the meaning of the declaration of
Holy Writ, "The first shall be last," - the living Soul
shall be found a
quickening Spirit; or, rather, shall reflect |
| 27 |
the Life of the divine Arbiter.
Page 31
THERE IS NO
MATTER |
| 1 |
"GOD is a Spirit" (or, more accurately translated,
"God
is Spirit"), declares the Scripture (John iv. |
| 3 |
24), "and they that worship Him must worship Him in
spirit and in truth."
If God is Spirit, and God is All,
surely there can be no |
| 6 |
matter; for the divine All must be Spirit.
The tendency of Christianity is
to spiritualize thought
and action. The demonstrations of Jesus annulled
the
|
| 9 |
claims of matter, and overruled laws material as emphati-
cally as they annihilated sin.
According to Christian Science, the
first idolatrous claim |
| 12 |
of sin is, that matter exists; the second, that matter
is
substance; the third, that matter has intelligence; and
the
fourth, that matter, being so endowed, produces life |
| 15 |
and death.
Hence my conscientious position,
in the denial of matter,
rests on the fact that matter usurps the authority
of God,
|
| 18 |
Spirit; and the nature and character of matter, the anti-
pode of Spirit, include all that denies and defies Spirit, in
quantity or quality. |
| 21 |
This subject can be enlarged. It can be shown, in
detail, that evil does not obtain in Spirit, God; and that
God, or good, is
Spirit alone; whereas, evil does, accord-
Page 32 |
| 1 |
ing to belief, obtain in matter; and that evil is a false
claim, - false to God, false to Truth and Life. Hence |
| 3 |
the claim of matter usurps the prerogative of God,
saying,
"I am a creator. God made me, and I make man and
the material
universe." |
| 6 |
Spirit is the only creator, and man, including the uni-
verse, is His spiritual concept. By matter is commonly
meant mind, - not
the highest Mind, but a false form of |
| 9 |
mind. This so-called mind and matter cannot be sep-
arated in origin and action.
What is this mind? It is not the Mind
of Spirit; for |
| 12 |
spiritualization of thought destroys all sense of matter
as
substance, Life, or intelligence, and enthrones God in
the eternal
qualities of His being. |
| 15 |
This lower, misnamed mind is a false claim, a sup-
positional mind, which I prefer to call mortal mind. True
Mind is
immortal. This mortal mind declares itself ma- |
| 18 |
terial, in sin, sickness, and death, virtually saying, "I
am
the opposite of Spirit, of holiness, harmony, and Life."
To this declaration Christian Science
responds, even |
| 21 |
as did our Master: "You were a murderer from the begin-
ning. The truth abode not in you. You are a liar, and
the father of
it." Here it appears that a liar was in the |
| 24 |
neuter gender, - neither masculine nor feminine. Hence
it
was not man (the image of God) who lied, but the false
claim to
personality, which I call mortal mind; a claim |
| 27 |
which Christian Science uncovers, in order to
demonstrate
the falsity of the claim.
Page 33 |
| 1 |
There are lesser arguments which prove matter to be
identical with mortal mind, and this mind a lie. |
| 3 |
The physical senses (matter really having no sense)
give
the only pretended testimony there can be as to the
existence of a
substance called matter. Now these senses, |
| 6 |
being material, can only testify from their own evidence,
and concerning themselves; yet we have it on divine
authority: "If I
bear witness of myself, my witness is |
| 9 |
not true." (John v. 31.)
In other words: matter testifies
of itself, "I am matter;"
but unless matter is mind, it cannot talk or
testify; and
|
| 12 |
if it is mind, it is certainly not the Mind of Christ, not
the Mind that is identical with Truth.
Brain, thus assuming to testify, is
only matter within |
| 15 |
the skull, and is believed to be mind only through error
and delusion. Examine that form of matter called brains,
and you
find no mind therein. Hence the logical sequence, |
| 18 |
that there is in reality neither matter nor mortal mind,
but that the self-testimony of the physical senses is
false. |
| 21 |
Examine these witnesses for error, or falsity, and
observe the foundations of their testimony, and you will
find them divided
in evidence, mocking the Scripture |
| 24 |
(Matthew xviii. 16), "In the mouth of two or three wit-
nesses every word may be established."
Sight. Mortal mind declares that matter sees through |
| 27 |
the organizations of matter, or that mind sees by means
Page 34 |
| 1 |
of matter. Disorganize the so-called material structure,
and then mortal mind says, "I cannot see;" and declares |
| 3 |
that matter is the master of mind, and that
non-intelligence
governs. Mortal mind admits that it sees only material
images, pictured on the eye's retina. |
| 6 |
What then is the line of the syllogism? It must be this:
That matter is not seen; that mortal mind cannot see
without matter; and
therefore that the whole function |
| 9 |
of material sight is an illusion, a lie.
Here comes in the summary of the whole
matter, where-
with we started: that God is All, and God is Spirit;
there- |
| 12 |
fore there is nothing but Spirit; and consequently there
is no matter.
Touch. Take another train of reasoning. Mortal mind |
| 15 |
says that matter cannot feel matter; yet put your finger
on a burning coal, and the nerves, material nerves, do
feel matter. |
| 18 |
Again I ask: What evidence does mortal mind afford
that
matter is substantial, is hot or cold? Take away
mortal mind, and matter
could not feel what it calls sub- |
| 21 |
stance. Take away matter, and mortal mind could
not
cognize its own so-called substance, and this so-called
mind would
have no identity. Nothing would remain to |
| 24 |
be seen or felt.
What is substance? What is the reality
of God and the
universe? Immortal Mind is the real substance, -
Spirit, |
| 27 |
Life, Truth, and Love.
Page 35 |
| 1 |
Taste. Mortal mind says, "I taste; and this is
sweet,
this is sour." Let mortal mind change, and say that sour |
| 3 |
is sweet, and so it would be. If every mortal mind
believed
sweet to be sour, it would be so; for the qualities of matter
are but qualities of mortal mind. Change the mind, and |
| 6 |
the quality changes. Destroy the belief, and the quality
disappears.
The so-called material senses are
found, upon examina- |
| 9 |
tion, to be mortally mental, instead of material. Reduced
to its proper denomination, matter is mortal mind; yet,
strictly
speaking, there is no mortal mind, for Mind is |
| 12 |
immortal, and is not matter, but Spirit.
Force. What is gravitation? Mortal mind says gravi-
tation is a
material power, or force. I ask, Which was |
| 15 |
first, matter or power? That which was first was God,
immortal Mind, the Parent of all. But God is Truth,
and the forces
of Truth are moral and spiritual, not physi- |
| 18 |
cal. They are not the merciless forces of matter. What
then are the so-called forces of matter? They are the
phenomena
of mortal mind, and matter and mortal |
| 21 |
mind are one; and this one is a misstatement of Mind,
God.
A molecule, as matter, is not formed
by Spirit; for |
| 24 |
Spirit is spiritual consciousness alone. Hence this
spiritual
consciousness can form nothing unlike itself, Spirit, and
Spirit is the only creator. The material atom is an out- |
| 27 |
lined falsity of consciousness, which can gather additional
Page 36 |
| 1 |
evidence of consciousness and life only as it adds lie to
lie.
This process it names material attraction, and endows |
| 3 |
with the double capacity of creator and creation.
From the beginning this lie was the
false witness against
the fact that Spirit is All, beside which there is no
other |
| 6 |
existence. The use of a lie is that it unwittingly
confirms
Truth, when handled by Christian Science, which reverses
false
testimony and gains a knowledge of God from op- |
| 9 |
posite facts, or phenomena.
This whole subject is met and solved
by Christian
Science according to Scripture. Thus we see that
Spirit |
| 12 |
is Truth and eternal reality; that matter is the opposite
of Spirit, - referred to in the New Testament as the flesh
at war with
Spirit; hence, that matter is erroneous, tran- |
| 15 |
sitory, unreal.
A further proof of this is the
demonstration, according
to Christian Science, that by the reduction and
the rejec- |
| 18 |
tion of the claims of matter (instead of acquiescence
therein) man is improved physically, mentally, morally,
spiritually. |
| 21 |
To deny the existence or reality of matter, and yet
admit
the reality of moral evil, sin, or to say that the
divine Mind is conscious
of evil, yet is not conscious of |
| 24 |
matter, is erroneous. This error stultifies the logic of
divine Science, and must interfere with its practical
demonstration.
Page 37
IS THERE NO
DEATH? |
| 1 |
JESUS not only declared himself " the way" and "the
truth," but also "the life." God is Life; and as |
| 3 |
there is but one God, there can be but one Life. Must
man die, then, in order to inherit eternal life and enter
heaven? |
| 6 |
Our Master said, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand."
Then God and heaven, or Life, are present, and death is
not the real
stepping-stone to Life and happiness. They |
| 9 |
are now and here; and a change in human consciousness,
from sin to holiness, would reveal this wonder of being.
Because God is
ever present, no boundary of time can |
| 12 |
separate us from Him and the heaven of His presence;
and because God is Life, all Life is eternal.
Is it unchristian to believe there is
no death? Not |
| 15 |
unless it be a sin to believe that God is Life and
All-in-all.
Evil and disease do not testify of Life and God.
Human beings are physically mortal,
but spiritually |
| 18 |
immortal. The evil accompanying physical personality
is
illusive and mortal; but the good attendant upon spirit-
ual individuality
is immortal. Existing here and now, |
| 21 |
this unseen individuality is real and eternal. The so-
called material senses, and the mortal mind which is mis-
Page 38 |
| 1 |
named man, take no cognizance of spiritual
individuality,
which manifests immortality, whose Principle is God. |
| 3 |
To God alone belong the indisputable realities of being.
Death is a contradiction of Life, or God; therefore it is
not in accordance
with His law, but antagonistic thereto. |
| 6 |
Death, then, is error, opposed to Truth, - even the
unreality of mortal mind, not the reality of that Mind
which is Life. Error
has no life, and is virtually without |
| 9 |
existence. Life is real; and all is real which proceeds
from Life and is inseparable from it.
It is unchristian to believe in the
transition called ma- |
| 12 |
terial death, since matter has no life, and such
misbelief
must enthrone another power, an imaginary life, above
the
living and true God. A material sense of life robs |
| 15 |
God, by declaring that not He alone is Life, but that
some-
thing else also is life, - thus affirming the existence and
rulership of more gods than one. This idolatrous and |
| 18 |
false sense of life is all that dies, or appears to die.
The opposite understanding of God
brings to light
Life and immortality. Death has no quality of Life;
and |
| 21 |
no divine fiat commands us to believe in aught which is
unlike God, or to deny that He is Life eternal.
Life as God, moral and spiritual good,
is not seen in |
| 24 |
the mineral, vegetable, or animal kingdoms. Hence the
inevitable conclusion that Life is not in these kingdoms,
and that the
popular views to this effect are not up to the |
| 27 |
Christian standard of Life, or equal to the reality of
being,
whose Principle is God.
Page 39 |
| 1 |
When "the Word" is "made flesh" among mortals,
the Truth
of Life is rendered practical on the body. |
| 3 |
Eternal Life is partially understood; and sickness, sin,
and death yield to holiness, health, and Life, - that is,
to God. The lust
of the flesh and the pride of physical |
| 6 |
life must be quenched in the divine essence, - that om-
nipotent Love which annihilates hate, that Life which
knows no death. |
| 9 |
"Who hath believed our report?" Who understands
these
sayings? He to whom the arm of the Lord is re-
vealed. He loves them from
whom divine Science removes |
| 12 |
human weakness by divine strength, and who unveil the
Messiah, whose name is Wonderful.
Man has no underived power. That
selfhood is false |
| 15 |
which opposes itself to God, claims another father, and
denies spiritual sonship; but as many as receive the knowl-
edge of God in
Science must reflect, in some degree, the |
| 18 |
power of Him who gave and giveth man dominion over
all
the earth.
As soldiers of the cross we must be
brave, and let Science |
| 21 |
declare the immortal status of man, and deny the evidence
of the material senses, which testify that man dies.
As the image of God, or Life, man
forever reflects and |
| 24 |
embodies Life, not death. The material senses testify
falsely. They presuppose that God is good and that man
is evil, that Deity
is deathless, but that man dies, losing |
| 27 |
the divine likeness.
Science and material sense conflict at
all points, from
Page 40 |
| 1 |
the revolution of the earth to the fall of a sparrow. It
is
mortality only that dies. |
| 3 |
To say that you and I, as mortals, will not enter this
dark shadow of material sense, called death, is to assert
what we
have not proved; but man in Science never dies. |
| 6 |
Material sense, or the belief of life in matter, must
perish,
in order to prove man deathless.
As Truth supersedes error, and bears
the fruits of Love, |
| 9 |
this understanding of Truth subordinates the belief in
death, and demonstrates Life as imperative in the divine
order of
being. |
| 12 |
Jesus declares that they who believe his sayings will
never die; therefore mortals can no more receive ever-
lasting life by
believing in death, than they can become |
| 15 |
perfect by believing in imperfection and living
imperfectly.
Life is God, and God is good. Hence
Life abides in
man, if man abides in good, if he lives in God, who
holds |
| 18 |
Life by a spiritual and not by a material sense of
being.
A sense of death is not requisite to a
proper or true
sense of Life, but beclouds it. Death can never alarm
or |
| 21 |
even appear to him who fully understands Life. The
death-penalty comes through our ignorance of Life, - of
that which is
without beginning and without end, - and |
| 24 |
is the punishment of this ignorance.
Holding a material sense of Life, and
lacking the spirit-
ual sense of it, mortals die, in belief, and regard all
things |
| 27 |
as temporal. A sense material apprehends nothing
strictly
belonging to the nature and office of Life. It conceives
Page 41 |
| 1 |
and beholds nothing but mortality, and has but a feeble
concept of immortality. |
| 3 |
In order to reach the true knowledge and consciousness
of Life, we must learn it of good. Of evil we can never
learn it, because
sin shuts out the real sense of Life, and |
| 6 |
brings in an unreal sense of suffering and death.
Knowledge of evil, or belief in it,
involves a loss of the
true sense of good, God; and to know death, or to
believe |
| 9 |
in it, involves a temporary loss of God, the infinite and
only Life.
Resurrection from the dead (that is,
from the belief in |
| 12 |
death) must come to all sooner or later; and they who
have part in this resurrection are they upon whom the
second death has no
power. |
| 15 |
The sweet and sacred sense of the permanence of man's
unity with his Maker can illumine our present being with
a continual
presence and power of good, opening wide |
| 18 |
the portal from death into Life; and when this Life shall
appear "we shall be like Him," and we shall go to the
Father, not
through death, but through Life; not through |
| 21 |
error, but through Truth.
All Life is Spirit, and Spirit
can never dwell in its antag-
onist, matter. Life, therefore, is deathless,
because God
|
| 24 |
cannot be the opposite of Himself. In Christian Science
there is no matter; hence matter neither lives nor dies.
To the senses,
matter appears to both live and die, and |
| 27 |
these phenomena appear to go on ad infinitum; but
such
a theory implies perpetual disagreement with Spirit.
Page 42 |
| 1 |
Life, God, being everywhere, it must follow that death
can be nowhere; because there is no place left for it. |
| 3 |
Soul, Spirit, is deathless. Matter, sin, and death are
not the outcome of Spirit, holiness, and Life. What then
are matter, sin,
and death ? They can be nothing except |
| 6 |
the results of material consciousness; but material con-
sciousness can have no real existence, because it is not a
living - that is
to say, a divine and intelligent - reality. |
| 9 |
That man must be vicious before he can be virtuous,
dying
before he can be deathless, material before he can
be spiritual, is an
error of the senses; for the very opposite |
| 12 |
of this error is the genuine Science of being.
Man, in Science, is as perfect and
immortal now, as
when "the morning stars sang together, and all the
sons |
| 15 |
of God shouted for joy."
With Christ, Life was not merely a
sense of existence,
but a sense of might and ability to subdue material
con- |
| 18 |
ditions. No wonder "people were astonished at his doc-
trine; for he taught them as one having authority, and
not as the
scribes." |
| 21 |
As defined by Jesus, Life had no beginning; nor was
it
the result of organization, or of an infusion of power
into matter. To him,
Life was Spirit. |
| 24 |
Truth, defiant of error or matter, is Science, dispelling
a false sense and leading man into the true sense of self-
hood and
Godhood; wherein the mortal does not develop |
| 27 |
the immortal, nor the material the spiritual, but
wherein
true manhood and womanhood go forth in the radiance
Page 43 |
| 1 |
of eternal being and its perfections, unchanged and
unchangeable. |
| 3 |
This generation seems too material for any strong dem-
onstration over death, and hence cannot bring out the
infinite reality of
Life, - namely, that there is no death, |
| 6 |
but only Life. The present mortal sense of being is too
finite for anchorage in infinite good, God, because mortals
now believe in
the possibility that Life can be evil. |
| 9 |
The achievement of this ultimatum of Science, com-
plete
triumph over death, requires time and immense
spiritual growth. |
| 12 |
I have by no means spoken of myself, I cannot speak
of myself as "sufficient for these things." I insist only
upon the
fact, as it exists in divine Science, that man dies |
| 15 |
not, and on the words of the Master in support of this
verity, - words which can never "pass away till all be
fulfilled." |
| 18 |
Because of these profound reasons I urge Christians
to
have more faith in living than in dying. I exhort them
to accept Christ's
promise, and unite the influence of their |
| 21 |
own thoughts with the power of his teachings, in the
Science of being. This will interpret the divine power to
human capacity,
and enable us to apprehend, or lay hold |
| 24 |
upon, "that for which," as Paul says in the third chapter
of Philippians, we are also "apprehended of [or grasped
by] Christ
Jesus," - the ever-present Life which knows |
| 27 |
no death, the omnipresent Spirit which knows no matter.
Page 44
PERSONAL
STATEMENTS |
| 1 |
MANY misrepresentations are made concerning my
doctrines,
some of which are as unkind and unjust |
| 3 |
as they are untrue; but I can only repeat the Master's
words: "They know not what they do."
The foundations of these assertions,
like the structure |
| 6 |
raised thereupon, are vain shadows, repeating - if the
popular couplet may be so paraphrased -
The old, old
story, |
| 9 |
Of Satan and his
lie.
In the days of Eden, humanity was
misled by a false
personality, - a talking snake, - according to
Biblical |
| 12 |
history. This pretender taught the opposite of Truth.
This abortive ego, this fable of error, is laid bare in
Christian
Science. |
| 15 |
Human theories call, or miscall, this evil a child of
God.
Philosophy would multiply and subdivide personality into
everything that exists, whether expressive or not expressive |
| 18 |
of the Mind which is God. Human wisdom says of evil,
"The
Lord knows it!" thus carrying out the serpent's
assurance: "In the day ye
eat thereof [when you, lie, get |
| 21 |
the floor], then your eyes shall be opened [you shall be
conscious matter], and ye shall be as gods, knowing good
Page 45 |
| 1 |
and evil [you shall believe a lie, and this lie shall
seem
truth] ." |
| 3 |
Bruise the head of this serpent, as Truth and "the
woman"
are doing in Christian Science, and it stings
your heel, rears its crest
proudly, and goes on saying, "Am |
| 6 |
I not myself? Am I not mind and matter, person and
thing?" We should answer: "Yes! you are indeed your-
self, and need most
of all to be rid of this self, for it is |
| 9 |
very far from God's likeness."
The egotist must come down and learn,
in humility,
that God never made evil. An evil ego, and his
assumed |
| 12 |
power, are falsities. These falsities need a denial. The
falsity is the teaching that matter can be conscious; and
conscious matter
implies pantheism. This pantheism I |
| 15 |
unveil. I try to show its all-pervading presence in
certain
forms of theology and philosophy, where it becomes error's
affirmative to Truth's negative. Anatomy and physiology |
| 18 |
make mind-matter a habitant of the cerebellum, whence
it
telegraphs and telephones over its own body, and goes
forth into an
imaginary sphere of its own creation and |
| 21 |
limitation, until it finally dies in order to better
itself.
But Truth never dies, and death is not the goal which
Truth
seeks. |
| 24 |
The evil ego has but the visionary substance of matter.
It lacks the substance of Spirit, - Mind, Life, Soul. Mor-
tal mind is
self-creative and self-sustained, until it becomes |
| 27 |
non-existent. It has no origin or existence in Spirit, im-
mortal Mind, or good. Matter is not truly conscious; and
Page 46 |
| 1 |
mortal error, called mind, is not Godlike. These are
the
shadowy and false, which neither think nor speak. |
| 3 |
All Truth is from inspiration and revelation, - from
Spirit, not from flesh.
We do not see much of the real man
here, for he is |
| 6 |
God's man; while ours is man's man.
I do not deny, I maintain, the
individuality and reality
of man; but I do so on a divine Principle, not
based on a |
| 9 |
human conception and birth. The scientific man and his
Maker are here; and you would be none other than this
man, if you would
subordinate the fleshly perceptions to |
| 12 |
the spiritual sense and source of being.
Jesus said, "I and my Father are one."
He taught no
selfhood as existent in matter. In his identity there is
no |
| 15 |
evil. Individuality and Life were real to him only as
spiritual and good, not as material or evil. This incensed
the rabbins
against Jesus, because it was an indignity to |
| 18 |
their personality; and this personality they regarded as
both good and evil, as is still claimed by the worldly-wise.
To them evil
was even more the ego than was the good. |
| 21 |
Sin, sickness, and death were evil's concomitants. This
evil ego they believed must extend throughout the uni-
verse, as being
equally identical and self-conscious with |
| 24 |
God. This ego was in the earthquake, thunderbolt, and
tempest.
The Pharisees fought Jesus on this
issue. It furnished |
| 27 |
the battle-ground of the past, as it does of the
present.
The fight was an effort to enthrone evil. Jesus assumed
Page 47 |
| 1 |
the burden of disproof by destroying sin, sickness, and
death, to sight and sense. |
| 3 |
Nowhere in Scripture is evil connected with good, the
being of God, and with every passing hour it is losing its
false claim to
existence or consciousness. All that can |
| 6 |
exist is God and His idea.
Page 48
CREDO |
| 1 |
IT is fair to ask of every one a reason for the faith
within.
Though it be but to repeat my twice-told tale, - nay, |
| 3 |
the tale already told a hundred times, - yet ask, and I
will answer.
Do you believe in
God? |
| 6 |
I believe more in Him than do most Christians, for I
have
no faith in any other thing or being. He sustains
my individuality. Nay,
more - He is my individuality |
| 9 |
and my Life. Because He lives, I live. He heals all my
ills, destroys my iniquities, deprives death of its sting, and
robs the
grave of its victory. |
| 12 |
To me God is All. He is best understood as Supreme
Being,
as infinite and conscious Life, as the affectionate
Father and Mother of
all He creates; but this divine |
| 15 |
Parent no more enters into His creation than the human
father enters into his child. His creation is not the Ego,
but the
reflection of the Ego. The Ego is God Himself, |
| 18 |
the infinite Soul.
I believe that of which I am conscious through the
understanding, however faintly able to demonstrate Truth |
| 21 |
and Love.
Page 49
Do you believe in man?
I believe in the individual man, for I understand
that |
| 3 |
man is as definite and eternal as God, and that man is
coexistent with God, as being the eternally divine idea.
This is
demonstrable by the simple appeal to human |
| 6 |
consciousness.
But I believe less in the sinner, wrongly named
man.
The more I understand true humanhood, the more I see
it
|
| 9 |
to be sinless, - as ignorant of sin as is the perfect Maker.
To me the reality and substance of being are good,
and
nothing else. Through the eternal reality of existence I |
| 12 |
reach, in thought, a glorified consciousness of the only
living God and the genuine man. So long as I hold evil
in consciousness, I
cannot be wholly good. |
| 15 |
You cannot simultaneously serve the mammon of
materiality and the God of spirituality. There are not
two realities of
being, two opposite states of existence. |
| 18 |
One should appear real to us, and the other unreal, or we
lose the Science of being. Standing in no basic Truth, we
make "the
worse appear the better reason," and the un- |
| 21 |
real masquerades as the real, in our thought.
Evil is without Principle. Being destitute of
Principle,
it is devoid of Science. Hence it is undemonstrable,
with-
|
| 24 |
out proof. This gives me a clearer right to call evil a nega-
tion, than to affirm it to be something which God sees and
knows, but
which He straightway commands mortals to |
| 27 |
shun or relinquish, lest it destroy them. This notion of
Page 50 |
| 1 |
the destructibility of Mind implies the possibility of
its
defilement; but how can infinite Mind be defiled? |
| 3 |
Do you believe in matter?
I believe in matter only as I believe in evil, that it
is
something to be denied and destroyed to human conscious- |
| 6 |
ness, and is unknown to the Divine. We should watch
and
pray that we enter not into the temptation of panthe-
istic belief in
matter as sensible mind. We should sub- |
| 9 |
jugate it as Jesus did, by a dominant understanding of
Spirit.
At best, matter is only a phenomenon of mortal
mind, |
| 12 |
of which evil is the highest degree; but really there is no
such thing as mortal mind, - though we are compelled
to use the
phrase in the endeavor to express the underlying |
| 15 |
thought.
In reality there are no material states or stages of
con-
sciousness, and matter has neither Mind nor sensation. |
| 18 |
Like evil, it is destitute of Mind, for Mind is God.
The less consciousness of evil or matter mortals have,
the easier it is for them to evade sin, sickness, and death, |
| 21 |
- which are but states of false belief, - and awake from
the troubled dream, a consciousness which is without
Mind or Maker. |
| 24 |
Matter and evil cannot be conscious, and consciousness
should not be evil. Adopt this rule of Science, and you
will discover the
material origin, growth, maturity, and |
| 27 |
death of sinners, as the history of man, disappears, and the
Page 51 |
| 1 |
everlasting facts of being appear, wherein man is the re-
flection of immutable good. |
| 3 |
Reasoning from false premises, - that Life is material,
that immortal Soul is sinful, and hence that sin is eternal,
- the reality
of being is neither seen, felt, heard, nor un- |
| 6 |
derstood. Human philosophy and human reason can
never
make one hair white or black, except in belief;
whereas the demonstration
of God, as in Christian Science, |
| 9 |
is gained through Christ as perfect manhood.
In pantheism the world is bereft of
its God, whose
place is ill supplied by the pretentious usurpation,
by |
| 12 |
matter, of the heavenly sovereignty.
What say you of woman?
Man is the generic term for all humanity. Woman is |
| 15 |
the highest species of man, and this word is the generic
term for all women; but not one of all these individualities
is an Eve or
an Adam. They have none of them lost their |
| 18 |
harmonious state, in the economy of God's wisdom and
government.
The Ego is divine consciousness, eternally
radiating |
| 21 |
throughout all space in the idea of God, good, and not of
His opposite, evil. The Ego is revealed as Father, Son,
and Holy
Ghost; but the full Truth is found only in |
| 24 |
divine Science, where we see God as Life, Truth, and
Love. In the scientific relation of man to God, man is
reflected not as
human soul, but as the divine ideal, whose |
| 27 |
Soul is not in body, but is God, - the divine Principle of
Page 52 |
| 1 |
man. Hence Soul is sinless and immortal, in contradis-
tinction to the supposition that there can be sinful souls or |
| 3 |
immortal sinners.
This Science of God and man is the
Holy Ghost, which
reveals and sustains the unbroken and eternal
harmony |
| 6 |
of both God and the universe. It is the kingdom of
heaven,
the ever-present reign of harmony, already with us. Hence
the
need that human consciousness should become divine, |
| 9 |
in the coincidence of God and man, in contradistinction
to the false consciousness of both good and evil, God and
devil, - of man
separated from his Maker. This is the |
| 12 |
precious redemption of soul, as mortal sense, through
Christ's immortal sense of Truth, which presents Truth's
spiritual idea,
man and woman.
What say you of evil?
God is not the so-called ego of evil; for evil, as a
sup-
position, is the father of itself, - of the material world, |
| 18 |
the flesh, and the devil. From this falsehood arise the
self-destroying elements of this world, its unkind forces,
its tempests,
lightnings, earthquakes, poisons, rabid |
| 21 |
beasts, fatal reptiles, and mortals.
Why are earth and mortals so elaborate in beauty, color,
and form, if God has no part in them? By the law of |
| 24 |
opposites. The most beautiful blossom is often poisonous,
and the most beautiful mansion is sometimes the home of
vice. The senses,
not God, Soul, form the condition of |
| 27 |
beautiful evil, and the supposed modes of self-conscious
Page 53 |
| 1 |
matter, which make a beautiful lie. Now a lie takes its
pattern from Truth, by reversing Truth. So evil and all |
| 3 |
its forms are inverted good. God never made them; but
the
lie must say He made them, or it would not be evil.
Being a lie, it would
be truthful to call itself a lie; and by |
| 6 |
calling the knowledge of evil good, and greatly to be de-
sired, it constitutes the lie an evil.
The reality and individuality of man
are good and God- |
| 9 |
made, and they are here to be seen and demonstrated; it
is only the evil belief that renders them obscure.
Matter and evil are anti-Christian,
the antipodes of |
| 12 |
Science. To say that Mind is material, or that evil is
Mind, is a misapprehension of being, - a mistake which
will die of its own
delusion; for being self-contradictory, |
| 15 |
it is also self-destructive. The harmony of man's being is
not built on such false foundations, which are no more
logical,
philosophical, or scientific than would be the as- |
| 18 |
sertion that the rule of addition is the rule of subtraction,
and that sums done under both rules would have one
quotient. |
| 21 |
Man's individuality is not a mortal mind or sinner; or
else he has lost his true individuality as a perfect child of
God. Man's
Father is not a mortal mind and a sinner; |
| 24 |
or else the immortal and unerring Mind, God, is not his
Father; but God is man's origin and loving Father,
hence that saying
of Jesus, "Call no man your father |
| 27 |
upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in
heaven."
Page 54 |
| 1 |
The bright gold of Truth is dimmed by the doctrine of
mind in matter. |
| 3 |
To say there is a false claim, called sickness,
is to admit
all there is of sickness; for it is nothing but a false claim.
To be healed, one must lose sight of a false claim. If the |
| 6 |
claim be present to the thought, then disease becomes as
tangible as any reality. To regard sickness as a false
claim, is to abate
the fear of it; but this does not destroy |
| 9 |
the so-called fact of the claim. In order to be
whole, we
must be insensible to every claim of error.
As with sickness, so is it with sin.
To admit that sin |
| 12 |
has any claim whatever, just or unjust, is to admit a
dan-
gerous fact. Hence the fact must be denied; for if sin's
claim be
allowed in any degree, then sin destroys the |
| 15 |
at-one-ment, or oneness with God, - a unity which
sin
recognizes as its most potent and deadly enemy.
If God knows sin, even as a false
claimant, then ac- |
| 18 |
quaintance with that claimant becomes legitimate to
mortals, and this knowledge would not be forbidden; but
God forbade man to
know evil at the very beginning, |
| 21 |
when Satan held it up before man as something desirable
and a distinct addition to human wisdom, because the
knowledge of evil
would make man a god, - a representa- |
| 24 |
tion that God both knew and admitted the dignity of
evil.
Which is right, - God, who condemned
the knowledge
of sin and disowned its acquaintance, or the serpent,
who |
| 27 |
pushed that claim with the glittering audacity of
diabolical
and sinuous logic?
Page 55
SUFFERING FROM
OTHERS' THOUGHTS |
| 1 |
JESUS accepted the one fact whereby alone the rule of
Life can be demonstrated, - namely, that there is |
| 3 |
no death.
In his real self he bore no
infirmities. Though "a man
of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," as
Isaiah says of |
| 6 |
him, he bore not his sins, but ours, "in his
own body on
the tree." "He was bruised for our iniquities; . . .
and
with his stripes we are healed." |
| 9 |
He was the Way-shower; and Christian Scientists who
would
demonstrate "the way" must keep close to his
path, that they may win the
prize. "The way," in the |
| 12 |
flesh, is the suffering which leads out of the flesh. "The
way," in Spirit, is "the way" of Life, Truth, and Love,
redeeming us
from the false sense of the flesh and the |
| 15 |
wounds it bears. This threefold Messiah reveals the self-
destroying ways of error and the life-giving way of Truth.
Job's faith and hope gained him the
assurance that |
| 19 |
the so-called sufferings of the flesh are unreal. We shall
learn how false are the pleasures and pains of material
sense, and
behold the truth of being, as expressed in his |
| 21 |
conviction, "Yet in my flesh shall I see God;" that is,
Now and here shall I behold God, divine Love.
Page 56 |
| 1 |
The chaos of mortal mind is made the stepping-stone
to
the cosmos of immortal Mind. |
| 3 |
If Jesus suffered, as the Scriptures declare, it must
have
been from the mentality of others; since all suffering
comes from
mind, not from matter, and there could be |
| 6 |
no sin or suffering in the Mind which is God. Not his
own
sins, but the sins of the world, "crucified the Lord
of glory," and "put
him to an open shame." |
| 9 |
Holding a quickened sense of false environment, and
suffering from mentality in opposition to Truth, are signifi-
cant of that
state of mind which the actual understanding |
| 12 |
of Christian Science first eliminates and then destroys.
In the divine order of Science every
follower of Christ
shares his cup of sorrows. He also suffereth in the
flesh, |
| 15 |
and from the mentality which opposes the law of Spirit;
but the divine law is supreme, for it freeth him from the
law of sin and
death. |
| 18 |
Prophets and apostles suffered from the thoughts of
others. Their conscious being was not fully exempt from
physicality and the
sense of sin. |
| 21 |
Until he awakes from his delusion, he suffers least from
sin who is a hardened sinner. The hypocrite's affections
must first be made
to fret in their chains; and the pangs |
| 24 |
of hell must lay hold of him ere he can change from flesh
to Spirit, become acquainted with that Love which is
without dissimulation
and endureth all things. Such |
| 27 |
mental conditions as ingratitude, lust, malice, hate,
con-
stitute the miasma of earth. More obnoxious than
Page 57 |
| 1 |
Chinese stenchpots are these dispositions which offend
the spiritual sense. |
| 3 |
Anatomically considered, the design of the material
senses is to warn mortals of the approach of danger by
the pain they feel
and occasion; but as this sense disap- |
| 6 |
pears it foresees the impending doom and foretells the
pain. Man's refuge is in spirituality, "under the shadow
of the
Almighty." |
| 9 |
The cross is the central emblem of human history.
Without it there is neither temptation nor glory. When
Jesus turned and
said, "Who hath touched me?" he |
| 12 |
must have felt the influence of the woman's thought; for
it is written that he felt that "virtue had gone out of him."
His pure
consciousness was discriminating, and rendered |
| 15 |
this infallible verdict; but he neither held her error by
affinity nor by infirmity, for it was detected and dismissed.
This gospel of suffering brought life
and bliss. This |
| 18 |
is earth's Bethel in stone, - its pillow, supporting the
ladder which reaches heaven.
Suffering was the confirmation of
Paul's faith. Through |
| 21 |
"a thorn in the flesh" he learned that spiritual grace was
sufficient for him.
Peter rejoiced that he was found
worthy to suffer for |
| 24 |
Christ; because to suffer with him is to reign with him.
Sorrow is the harbinger of joy. Mortal
throes of anguish
forward the birth of immortal being; but divine
Science |
| 27 |
wipes away all tears.
The only conscious existence in the
flesh is error of some
Page 58 |
| 1 |
sort, - sin, pain, death, - a false sense of life and
happi-
ness. Mortals, if at ease in so-called existence, are in their |
| 3 |
native element of error, and must become dis-eased,
dis-
quieted, before error is annihilated.
Jesus walked with bleeding feet the
thorny earth-road, |
| 6 |
treading "the winepress alone." His persecutors said
mockingly, "Save thyself, and come down from the cross."
This was the very
thing he was doing, coming down from |
| 9 |
the cross, saving himself after the manner that he had
taught, by the law of Spirit's supremacy; and this was
done through what is
humanly called agony. |
| 12 |
Even the ice-bound hypocrite melts in fervent heat,
before he apprehends Christ as "the way." The Master's
sublime triumph
over all mortal mentality was immortal- |
| 15 |
ity's goal. He was too wise not to be willing to test the
full compass of human woe, being "in all points tempted
like as we are, yet
without sin." |
| 18 |
Thus the absolute unreality of sin, sickness, and death
was revealed, - a revelation that beams on mortal sense
as the midnight sun
shines over the Polar Sea.
Page 59
THE SAVIOUR'S
MISSION |
| 1 |
IF there is no reality in evil, why did the Messiah come
to the world, and from what evils was it his purpose |
| 3 |
to save humankind? How, indeed, is he a Saviour, if
the
evils from which he saves are nonentities?
Jesus came to earth; but the Christ
(that is, the divine |
| 6 |
idea of the divine Principle which made heaven and earth)
was never absent from the earth and heaven; hence the
phraseology of
Jesus, who spoke of the Christ as one who |
| 9 |
came down from heaven, yet as "the Son of man which
is in heaven." (John iii. 13.) By this we understand
Christ to be the
divine idea brought to the flesh in the son |
| 12 |
of Mary.
Salvation is as eternal as God. To
mortal thought
Jesus appeared as a child, and grew to manhood, to
suffer |
| 15 |
before Pilate and on Calvary, because he could reach and
teach mankind only through this conformity to mortal
conditions; but Soul
never saw the Saviour come and go, |
| 18 |
because the divine idea is always present.
Jesus came to rescue men from these
very illusions to
which he seemed to conform: from the illusion
which |
| 21 |
calls sin real, and man a sinner, needing a Saviour; the
illusion which calls sickness real, and man an invalid,
needing a
physician; the illusion that death is as real as
Page 60 |
| 1 |
Life. From such thoughts - mortal inventions, one and
all
- Christ Jesus came to save men, through ever-present |
| 3 |
and eternal good.
Mortal man is a kingdom divided against itself. With
the
same breath he articulates truth and error. We say |
| 6 |
that God is All, and there is none beside Him, and then
talk of sin and sinners as real. We call God omnipotent
and omnipresent,
and then conjure up, from the dark |
| 9 |
abyss of nothingness, a powerful presence named evil.
We
say that harmony is real, and inharmony is its opposite,
and
therefore unreal; yet we descant upon sickness, sin, |
| 12 |
and death as realities.
With the tongue "bless we God, even the Father; and
therewith curse we men, who are made after the simili- |
| 15 |
tude [human concept] of God. Out of the same mouth
proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these
things ought not so to
be." (James iii. 9, 10.) Mortals |
| 18 |
are free moral agents, to choose whom they would serve.
If God, then let them serve Him, and He will be unto them
All-in-all. |
| 21 |
If God is ever present, He is neither absent from Him-
self nor from the universe. Without Him, the universe
would disappear, and
space, substance, and immortality |
| 24 |
be lost. St. Paul says, "And if Christ be not raised,
your
faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. " (1 Corinthians xv.
17.)
Christ cannot come to mortal and material sense, |
| 27 |
which sees not God. This false sense of substance must
yield to His eternal presence, and so dissolve. Rising
Page 61 |
| 1 |
above the false, to the true evidence of Life, is the
resur-
rection that takes hold of eternal Truth. Coming and |
| 3 |
going belong to mortal consciousness. God is "the same
yesterday, and to-day, and forever."
To material sense, Jesus first
appeared as a helpless |
| 6 |
human babe; but to immortal and spiritual vision he was
one with the Father, even the eternal idea of God, that
was - and is -
neither young nor old, neither dead nor |
| 9 |
risen. The mutations of mortal sense are the evening and
the morning of human thought, - the twilight and dawn
of earthly vision,
which precedeth the nightless radiance |
| 12 |
of divine Life. Human perception, advancing toward
the
apprehension of its nothingness, halts, retreats, and
again goes forward;
but the divine Principle and Spirit |
| 15 |
and spiritual man are unchangeable, - neither advancing,
retreating, nor halting.
Our highest sense of infinite good in
this mortal sphere |
| 18 |
is but the sign and symbol, not the substance of good.
Only faith and a feeble understanding make the earthly
acme of human sense.
"The life which I now live in the |
| 21 |
flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God." (Galatians
ii. 20.)
Christian Science is both
demonstration and fruition, |
| 24 |
but how attenuated are our demonstration and realization
of this Science! Truth, in divine Science, is the stepping-
stone to the
understanding of God; but the broken and |
| 27 |
contrite heart soonest discerns this truth, even as the
help-
less sick are soonest healed by it. Invalids say, "I have
Page 62 |
| 1 |
recovered from sickness;" when the fact really remains,
in divine Science, that they never were sick. |
| 3 |
The Christian saith, "Christ (God) died for me, and
came
to save me;" yet God dies not, and is the ever-
presence that neither comes
nor goes, and man is forever |
| 6 |
His image and likeness. "The things which are seen are
temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."
(2 Corinthians
iv. 18.) This is the mystery of godliness |
| 9 |
- that God, good, is never absent, and there is none be-
side good. Mortals can understand this only as they reach
the Life of good,
and learn that there is no Life in evil. |
| 12 |
Then shall it appear that the true ideal of omnipotent
and
ever-present good is an ideal wherein and wherefor there
is no
evil. Sin exists only as a sense, and not as Soul. |
| 15 |
Destroy this sense of sin, and sin disappears. Sickness,
sin, or death is a false sense of Life and good. Destroy
this trinity of
error, and you find Truth. |
| 18 |
In Science, Christ never died. In material sense Jesus
died, and lived. The fleshly Jesus seemed to die, though
he did not. The
Truth or Life in divine Science - un- |
| 21 |
disturbed by human error, sin, and death - saith forever,
"I am the living God, and man is My idea, never in matter,
nor resurrected
from it." "Why seek ye the living among |
| 24 |
the dead? He is not here, but is risen." (Luke xxiv. 5,
6.)
Mortal sense, confining itself to matter, is all that can be
buried
or resurrected. |
| 27 |
Mary had risen to discern faintly God's ever-presence,
and that of His idea, man; but her mortal sense, revers-
Page 63 |
| 1 |
ing Science and spiritual understanding, interpreted this
appearing as a risen Christ. The I AM was neither buried |
| 3 |
nor resurrected. The Way, the Truth, and the Life were
never absent for a moment. This trinity of Love lives
and reigns forever.
Its kingdom, not apparent to material |
| 6 |
sense, never disappeared to spiritual sense, but remained
forever in the Science of being. The so-called appearing,
disappearing, and
reappearing of ever-presence, in whom |
| 9 |
is no variableness or shadow of turning, is the false
human
sense of that light which shineth in darkness, and the
darkness
comprehendeth it not.
Page 64
SUMMARY
|
| 1 |
ALL that is God created. If sin has any pretense
of
existence, God is responsible therefor; but there is |
| 3 |
no reality in sin, for God can no more behold it, or
acknowl-
edge it, than the sun can coexist with darkness.
To build the individual spiritual
sense, conscious of |
| 6 |
only health, holiness, and heaven, on the foundations of
an eternal Mind which is conscious of sickness, sin, and
death, is a moral
impossibility; for "other foundation |
| 9 |
can no man lay than that is laid. " ( 1 Corinthians iii.
11.)
The nearer we approximate to such a Mind, even if it were
(or
could be) God, the more real those mind-pictures would |
| 12 |
become to us; until the hope of ever eluding their dread
presence must yield to despair, and the haunting sense
of evil forever
accompany our being. |
| 15 |
Mortals may climb the smooth glaciers, leap the dark
fissures, scale the treacherous ice, and stand on the sum-
mit of Mont
Blanc; but they can never turn back what |
| 18 |
Deity knoweth, nor escape from identification with what
dwelleth in the eternal Mind. |