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Part II
Atonement and Eucharist:
The story of the Second Coming of
the Christ as Revelation
Mary Baker Eddy tells us that "Atonement and
Eucharist," Chapter II of Science and Health, is her life story
as well as that of Jesus. Nearly 2000 years ago Jesus said, "I am a man who has
told you the truth."
What did he tell us was the truth?
He said, "The kingdom of God is within you," meaning
it is your own Mind, the Mind that is Love and knows only infinite good.
Jesus also said, "I have yet many things to say unto
you, but ye cannot bear them now." Two thousand years ago people were just
coming out of mythology, and were too ignorant to understand Jesus'
meaning--that the kingdom of God is your own real Mind. But Jesus promised and
prophesied that the "Comforter" would come in the Second Coming of the Christ,
and would "tell you all things and be with you forever." This Comforter, this
second coming of the Christ, is the Christian Science brought to us by Mary
Baker Eddy, who can never be separated from her revelation.
We have seen how Isaiah 54 prophesied this momentous
event. However, although we find Mary Baker Eddy prophesied in
Scripture, she has told us that we find her only in her writings.
Those who look for her elsewhere lose her instead of find her.
Let's see how the chapter "Atonement and Eucharist"
heralds forth Mary Baker Eddy's life and teaching as well as that of Jesus. In
the pages that follow all quotes, unless otherwise noted, are drawn from
"Atonement and Eucharist," pages 18-55 in the current (1910) edition of Science
and Health.
At-one-ment Must Be By
Example
"Atonement and Eucharist" begins with an overtone of
Mind, which shows that "At-one-ment" must be by example. Since
"the kingdom of God is within you," our own real Mind must be Love; it must be
the infinite good we call God. Mrs. Eddy, like Jesus, taught and demonstrated
this oneness with Mind, the kingdom of God within our consciousness. For this
we owe them both endless homage.
Mrs. Eddy's work, like that of Jesus, was both
individual and collective. Its purpose was to bless all mankind. Mrs. Eddy,
like Jesus, acted boldly, against the accredited evidence of the senses,
against Pharisaical creeds and practices, against Old Theology. Jesus and Mary
Baker Eddy refuted all opponents with their healing power. In Mary Baker Eddy's
case, by the year 1906 it was estimated that two million cases had been healed
by Mrs. Eddy and her students. Even the prestigious Mayo Medical establishment
was sending their incurable patients to Christian Science practitioners, and
they were healed.
Archivists tell us that in the archives of the Mother
Church 21,000 letters and articles by Mary Baker Eddy are to be found, as well
as records of hundreds of her healings that have never been put into book form.
Of these healings, Mrs. Eddy wrote, "Now as then, signs and wonders are in the
metaphysical healing of physical disease; but these signs are only to
demonstrate its divine origin,to attest the reality of the higher mission of
the Christ-power to take away the sins of the world" (S&H 150:12).
Mrs. Eddy tells us, "It was Christ's purpose to
reconcile man to God"to make all mankind aware that "the kingdom of God within
you" is your real Mind. This was Mary Baker Eddy's purpose as well. She wanted
to awaken us to the spiritual facts of being, to "our present ownership of all
good," to a full understanding of the truth that enabled Jesus to say, "When ye
stand praying, believe that you already have what you are asking for."
Before Mrs. Eddy's time people thought that God was a
man like we seem to be. Why? Because the Bible said that "God made man in His
own image and likeness." Therefore people thought because we seem to be matter
bodies God must be a man having a matter body. Mrs. Eddy's inspired teaching
changed all that.
For nearly forty years Mrs. Eddy worked to perfect her
definition of God"the kingdom of God within" your consciousness, your true
Mind. In Science and Health, p. xii: 20, Mrs. Eddy writes, "Until June, 1907,
she [herself] had never read this book through consecutively in order to
elucidate her idealism." It was in that reading in 1907 that she first saw that
God, the kingdom of God within your consciousness, was correctly defined by
seven instead of eight synonyms as she had previously defined
God, infinite good. "Being" had been the eighth synonym. But she now saw that
"Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love" were our "being."
Mary Baker Eddy's definition of God marks the only
time in human history that God has been defined.
Why was it so important to define God?
Because God is our own real Mind. As Jesus said, "The
kingdom of God is within you," so it would have to be your true consciousness,
your true Mind.
To a student Mrs. Eddy wrote: "To know there is but
one God [infinite good, your own real Mind, "the kingdom of God
within you" as your true consciousness] one Cause, one effect, one Mind, heals
instantly. Have but One God, and your reflection of Him does the healing [since
"Principle and its idea is ONE"].
"Love is the only and all of attainments in spiritual
growth. Without it, healing is not done and cannot be, either morally or
physically. Every advanced step will show you this until the victory is won and
you possess no other consciousness but Love divine."
Jesus and Mrs. Eddy Spoke the Whole
Truth
After taking up the tone of Mind, the chapter
Atonement and Eucharist next takes up a tone of Spirit (S&H 19:12). Jesus
and Mrs. Eddy both brought a sword to material beliefs. They did not hesitate
to speak the whole truth. What does Mrs. Eddy say here that will help us
understand atonement for sin and aid its efficacy? She says, "Every pang of
repentance and suffering, every effort for reform, every good thought and deed,
will help us understand Jesus' atonement for sin, and aid its efficacy." She
spoke from personal experience; her own spiritual understanding, as we have
seen, was won through patient seeking and suffering.
Jesus and Mrs. Eddy bore our infirmities; they knew
the error of mortal belief, and with their stripes--the rejection of
error--we are healed. "Despised and rejected of men, returning blessing
for cursing, Jesus [and Mary Baker Eddy] taught mortals the opposite of
themselves, even the nature of God [infinite good]."
Jesus and Mrs. Eddy urged the commandment, "Thou shalt
have no other gods before me," meaning we must acknowledge the kingdom of God
that is within us as our real and only Mind. This means, as Mrs. Eddy explains,
"Thou shalt have no belief of Life as mortal; thou shalt not know evil, for
there is one Life,even God"the infinite good that is "the kingdom of God
within" your consciousness.
When error felt the power of Truth, hatred and
vengeance awaited Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy. Yet they "swerved not, well
knowing that to obey the divine order and trust God [infinite good], saves
retracing and traversing anew the path from sin to holiness."
Mrs. Eddy quickly learned that "material belief is
slow to acknowledge what the spiritual fact implies. The truth is the centre of
all religion. It commands sure entrance into the realm of Love"our true Mind,
"the kingdom of God within" our consciousness. Therefore "let us put aside
material self and sense, and seek the divine Principle and Science of all
healing" (S&H 20:30).
We must constantly turn away from material sense, and
look toward the imperishable things of Spirit, meaning of true substance,
understanding, reality. "Be not weary in well doing." Mrs. Eddy encourages us,
"If your endeavors are beset by fearful odds, and you receive no present
reward, go not back to error, nor become a sluggard in the race" (S&H
22:14). Because we are so sound asleep in the Adam dream that has hypnotized us
to think we live in a matter body, "wisdom and Love may require many sacrifices
of self to save us from sin."
"The efficacy of the crucifixion lay in the practical
affection and goodness it demonstrated for mankind. The truth had been lived
among men; but until they saw that it enabled their Master to triumph over the
grave, his own disciples could not admit such an event to be possible." Here
let us add that human theories are inadequate to interpret the divine Principle
involved in this divine event, which Mrs. Eddy speaks of as "his mighty,
crowning, unparalleled, and triumphant exit from the flesh" (S&H
117:21).
Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy worked for our guidance,
that we might demonstrate this power as they did and understand its divine
Principle. Mrs. Eddy designed the Mother Church so that healing would permeate
all of its activities. She constantly wanted her students to broaden their
avenues for blessing the people. She said, "Learn to forget what you should not
remember viz. self, and live for the good you do."
We must "go and do likewise," else we are not
improving the great blessing which Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy worked and
suffered to bestow upon us. Mrs. Eddy writes, "The divinity of the Christ was
made manifest in the humanity of Jesus" (S&H 25:31).
We know Mrs. Eddy is also speaking of her experience
when she writes, "While we adore Jesus and the heart overflows with gratitude
for all he did for mortals,treading alone his loving pathway...in speechless
agony exploring the way for us, yet [neither Mrs. Eddy nor] Jesus spares us one
individual experience, if we follow [their] commands faithfully; and all have
the cup of sorrowful effort to drink in proportion to their demonstration of
love, till all are redeemed through divine Love..." Their mission was to reveal
the Science of celestial being, to prove what infinite good, "the kingdom of
God within" your consciousness, your own true Mind, is and does for man. Man is
this true Mind's reflection; therefore "man" is always spiritual and perfect.
Christian Science reveals "the omnipresence of present perfection."
Jesus' and Mary Baker Eddy's teaching and practice
involved such a sacrifice as makes us admit its Principle to be Love. They
"proved by their deeds that Christian Science destroys sickness, sin, and
death." They taught and practiced the divine Principle of all real being. We
must follow their example, and work out the harmony of Life and Love. As we do,
we will find that "the I--the Life, substance and intelligence of the
universe--is not in matter to be destroyed." Jesus and Mrs. Eddy "laid the axe
of Science at the root of material knowledge that it might be ready to cut down
the false doctrine of pantheism,that God, or Life, is in or of matter."
Mrs. Eddy, like Jesus, found that many of her students
stood in her way. "If the Master had not taken a student and taught the unseen
verities of God, he would not have been [thrown into the cauldron of hate; he
would not have been] crucified" (S&H 28:4). Mrs. Eddy had the same
experience. At the end, it was her own students in the highest echelon that
caused her "mental murder"something her enemies had never been able to
accomplish.
At one time Mrs. Eddy said, "My students are doing
more for, and against Christian Science than any others can do. They are the
greatest sinners on earth when they injure it; and doing more
good than any others when they do the best they know how" (A Carpenter
item).
Oh, how much Mrs. Eddy wished that all Christian
Scientists were awake and demonstrating Love and intelligence as they should.
In June, 1901, Mrs. Eddy wrote a student: "Wisdom is one third of Christian
Science, the other two-thirds is Love."
In a meeting with her students in February of 1885
Mrs. Eddy told them:
The grand secret of your success is in your
Christianity. Just in proportion as mortal sense is hushed [in the mind of the
practitioner], just in that proportion will healing be done.
Some say "We are doing all we can." Stop the
utterance. Do more. God is making the extreme trial an
occasion for your good. Such moments are the most glorious of all experiences
because God's hand is stretched out over them.
We have God [infinite good] on our side to meet
all questions, and I have never found an hour when He [infinite
good] would not deliver me.
"The determination to hold Spirit in the grasp of
matter is the persecutor of Truth and Love," Mrs. Eddy says in Atonement and
Eucharist. By understanding more of the Principle of the deathless Christ, we
are enabled to heal the sick and to triumph over sin. This understanding will
come as we persevere in our study of Mary Baker Eddy's teaching.
"Our churches spring up spontaneously from the soil of
healing," Mrs. Eddy wrote a student, "But I know that a healer needs all her
time to do her best in caring for patients. It is an absorbing subject to lift
the mind above pain, disease, and death and when I practiced I could not attend
to aught else."
Mrs. Eddy learned from the Bible how to wear Love's
"wedding garment." What is the "wedding garment" of divine Love?
The "wedding garment," Mrs. Eddy explained to a
student, "is first the desire above all else to be Christ-like, to be tender,
merciful, forgetting self and caring for others' salvation. To be temperate,
pure, whereby appetite and passions cease to claim your attention and you are
not discouraged to wait on God. To wait for the tests of your
sincere longing to be good, and seek, through daily prayer for Divine teaching.
If you continue to ask you will receive,provided you comply with what you must
do for yourself in order to be thus blessed....Be of good cheer, you cannot
seek without finding."
Mrs. Eddy's desire above all else was to heal as Jesus
did.
She wrote to her students, the Millers, "Today it is a
marvel to me that God chose me for this mission, and that my life-work was the
theme of ancient prophecy and I the scribe of His infinite way of salvation! O
may he keep me at the feet of Christ, cleansing the human understanding and
bathing it with my tears; wiping it with the hairs of my head, the shreds of my
understanding that God "numbered" to make men wise unto salvation."
But in the beginning, with her as it was with Jesus,
"neither the origin, the character, nor the work of [Mary Baker Eddy] was
generally understood, not a single component part of [her] nature did the
material world measure aright." They did not see the purity of her thought. "To
suppose that persecution for righteousness' sake belongs to the past, and that
Christianity today is at peace with the world because it is honored by sects
and societies, is to misunderstand the very nature of religion. Error repeats
itself," she wrote.
Surely Mrs. Eddy found that the "trials encountered by
prophet, disciple, and apostle, 'of whom the world was not worthy,' await, in
some form, every pioneer of truth" (S&H 28:29).
How do we finally "have the crown of rejoicing"? Mrs.
Eddy answers, "Christian experience bids us work more earnestly in times of
persecution because then our labor is more needed." "Great is the reward of
self-sacrifice, though we may never receive it in this world."
Born of a Woman
Mrs. Eddy tells us that the Virgin-mother conceived
the idea that God--infinite good, the kingdom of God within our consciousness
as our real Mind--is the only author of man. She "gave to her ideal the name of
Jesus--that is Joshua, or Saviour" (S&H 29:18).
"The illumination of the [Virgin] Mary's spiritual
sense put to silence material law and its order of generation, and brought
forth her child by the revelation of Truth, demonstrating God, Mind, ["the
kingdom of God within" our consciousness] as the Father of men. [Our Mind, our
consciousness, is the only creator. Therefore man is image or idea.] The Holy
Ghost [divine Science] or divine Spirit, overshadowed the pure sense of the
Virgin-mother with the full recognition that being is Spirit. The Christ [the
reflection of God, Mind, "the kingdom of God within you," within your
consciousness] dwelt forever an idea in the bosom of God, the divine Principle
of the man, Jesus, and woman perceived this spiritual idea, though at first
faintly developed." The Virgin Mary glimpsed that man is an idea, manifested by
her Mind, by "the kingdom of God within [her consciousness]." It was this
recognition that "overshadowed the pure sense of the Virgin-mother with the
full recognition that being is Spirit."
Therefore, Mrs. Eddy states, "Jesus was the offspring
of "Mary's self-conscious communion with God [her own real Mind, "the kingdom
of God within" her consciousness]. Hence he could give a more spiritual idea of
life than other men, and could demonstrate the Science of Love,...his divine
Principle," meaning the Mind that was the kingdom of God "within his
consciousness."
Because he was born of a woman Mrs. Eddy said, Jesus'
advent in the flesh partook partly of Mary's earthly condition. Had his origin
and birth been wholly apart from mortal usage, Jesus would not have been
appreciable to mortal mind as "the way." Only after nearly two thousand years
since the time of Jesus, do we have Mary Baker Eddy, born of two
parents, fulfilling the scriptural promise of Jesus to send "another
Comforter," the Second Coming of the Christ, and fulfilling also the promise of
Isaiah's 54th chapter.
No Ties of the Flesh
Why was Mary Baker Eddy chosen for this holy task?
Perhaps because she alone was worthy. Mrs. Eddy tells us (S&H 31:1), "Pride
and fear are unfit to bear the standard of Truth, and God will never place it
in such hands." Mrs. Eddy certainly knew neither pride nor fear, and all her
life she sought after the spiritual as men seek for buried treasure.
Perhaps even more important, Mary Baker Eddy, like
Jesus "acknowledged no ties of the flesh." Because Jesus knew that man is the
reflection of our true and real divine Mind, of "the kingdom of God" within our
consciousness, he was fully aware that the belief in a fleshly mortal was
merely hypnotic suggestion, illusion only, and would disappear when the light
of truth dawned on human consciousness. Therefore, as Mrs. Eddy tells us,
"Jesus acknowledged no ties of the flesh." He, like Mary Baker Eddy, recognized
Spirit, Mind, as the only creator, and therefore as the "Father" of all.
"Referring to the materiality of the age, Jesus said:
'The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the
Father [Mind, the kingdom of God within your consciousness] in spirit and in
truth.' He also saw the persecution that would attend the Science of Spirit,
and said, 'They shall put you out of the synagogues; yea, the time cometh, that
whoso killeth you will think that he doeth God service; and these things will
they do because they have not known thee.'" "They have not known" the truth
about the kingdom of God, infinite good, within their consciousness, which is
the only creator.
Like Jesus, Mary Baker Eddy understood that "All is
infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation." Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy both
taught that human birth is the first death. In the Gospels Jesus said, "Blessed
are the wombs that never bare." This angered the high priests, and caused
Jesus' crucifixion. Mrs. Eddy, too, angered many when she instructed that
bringing a child into the world was murder. Jesus and Mrs. Eddy both knew that
human birth pulls the wool over our eyes, and causes us to "see through a glass
darkly."
The illusion of birth subjects us to the illusion of
death. In notes from Divinity Course and General Collectanea (p. 14),
compiled by Richard Oakes, we find the following:
In a booklet entitled Fragments of a Lost Gospel,
published by the Oxford University Press, giving account of the sayings of
Jesus that are regarded as authentic by scholars, we find the following: "When
Salome asked when those things about which she questioned should be made known,
the Lord said, 'When ye trample upon the garment of shame, when the two become
one and the male with the female, neither male nor female.' The meaning being
that Christ's kingdom on earth would not be manifested until man had returned
to that state of innocence in which sexual ideas and relations had no place.
[This is why Jesus loved little children--they were innocent of sexual notions
and relationships].
When Salome asked how long death would prevail, the
Lord said, "So long as ye women bear children, for I have come to destroy the
works of the female" (Logia of Jesus, Christian Science Journal, Vol.
25). Jesus was asked, "When shall the dominion of death cease?" Jesus saith,
"As long as (material) birth continues, for I am come to destroy the works of
birth." (See Matt. 5:17 and S&H 69).
Is it not true that many so-called Christians secretly
feel "Jesus blasphemeth" when he taught in Luke, "Blessed are the wombs that
never bare," and when he told Salome: "Death will never cease until ye women
cease your child-bearing"?
When Laura Sargent asked Mrs. Eddy, "Mother, what do
you mean by 'sin, sin, sin'?" Mrs. Eddy answered, "I mean the connubial
relationship." When someone wrote, asking Mrs. Eddy to congratulate them over
the birth of a Christian Science baby, Mrs. Eddy read the letter aloud to her
household; "then with apparent indignation uttered: 'A Christian Science baby!
A crime! Just as much a crime as murder would be!'"(Carpenter items).
How many so-called Christian Scientists would, like
the high priests of old, say "within themselves," "this [woman] blasphemeth"?
In Science and Health we read, "The earthly price of spirituality in a material
age and the great moral distance between Christianity and sensualism precludes
Christian Science from finding favor with the worldly minded" (p. 36:14). This
is why Scripture warns us "the remnant shall be few and very feeble." How many
today have the courage to step forward and defend Mary Baker Eddy in her
teaching on this subject? Or to defend her when her God-dictated Manual
is disobeyed and voided by human and materially-minded seekers for temporal
power--who persuaded those who "want a king to rule over them," that Mary Baker
Eddy and her Manual estoppels can't rule from the grave?
Mary Baker Eddy's teaching of man as never born and
never dying is basic to learning our immortality, and our oneness with the
infinite good we call God, namely, "the kingdom of God [of infinite good]
within" our consciousness, our own real divine Mind. "It is the
spiritualization of thought and Christianization of daily life [Mrs. Eddy has
50 references to "daily"], in contrast with the results of the ghastly farce of
material existence; it is chastity and purity in contrast with the downward
tendencies and earthward gravitation of sensualism and impurity, which really
attest the divine operation of Christian Science. The triumphs of Christian
Science are recorded in the destruction of error and evil, from which are
propagated the dismal beliefs of sin, sickness, death" (S&H, p.
272:19).
Again, Mrs. Eddy writes: "The broadcast powers of evil
so conspicuous today show themselves in the materialism and sensualism of the
age, struggling against the advancing spiritual era. Beholding the world's lack
of Christianity, and the powerlessness of vows to make home happy, the human
mind will at length demand a higher affection" (S&H 65:13). "The false
claims of error continue the delusion until the goal of goodness is assiduously
earned and won" (S&H 233:13).
Mary Baker Eddy's purity and spiritual understanding
fitted her to teach the Truth. Through the "Comforter," the Second Coming of
the Christ, promised and prophesied by Jesus, every human being is destined to
learn his oneness with his divine Principle, Love.
"The Cup of Our Lord"
As the Wayshower and Witness to the Truth, Mary Baker
Eddy, like Jesus, found that her path led through suffering. Again in Atonement
and Eucharist (Science and Health, page 32) we read of "the cup of our Lord."
Here Mrs. Eddy writes, "The cup shows forth his bitter experience,the cup which
he prayed might pass from him, though he bowed in holy submission to the divine
decree."
Jesus' last sad supper that he ate with his disciples
was a mournful occasion taken at the close of day with shadows fast falling
around. "This supper closed forever Jesus' ritualism or concessions to matter."
For the truth Jesus had taught he "was about to suffer violence and drain to
the dregs his cup of sorrow....With the great glory of an everlasting victory
overshadowing him, he gave thanks and said, 'Drink ye all of it.'"
"When the human element in him struggled with the
divine, our great Teacher said:....'Let not the flesh, but the Spirit, be
represented in me.' This is the new understanding of spiritual Love. It gives
all for Christ, or Truth." Mrs. Eddy too, like Jesus, took up the cross and
left all for the Christ-principle. For the Christ-principle she gave up family
and friends, endured the world's taunts and slander and the betrayal of trusted
students and finally, like Jesus, knowingly allowed herself to be given into
the hands of her enemies.
Mrs. Eddy's final sacrifice came when she left her
beloved home in Concord, N.H., to return to Boston in 1908. The move from
Boston to Concord, at the dawn of the 1890's had been a significant and welcome
crossroad in Mrs. Eddy's life. In Pleasant View, her new quiet home, more
isolated from society, she devoted herself to writing and study, first bringing
out the 50th edition of Science and Health.
Mrs. Eddy's beloved "Pleasant View"
in Concord, N.H.
Mary Baker Eddy once told a dear student that if she
ever left Pleasant View it would be to be delivered up to her enemies, yet on
January 26, 1908 she left Pleasant View. Why?
In order to bless all mankind.
As early as 1878 Mrs. Eddy had publicly declared an
interest in having a newspaper at her disposal "to right the wrongs and answer
the untruths" (S&H, second edition 1878, p. 166), but she could not oversee
such an undertaking from Pleasant View.
Thus it was that, impelled by divine Love, she left
the home she so dearly loved and moved to Chestnut, a suburb of Boston, to help
establish a daily newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor, which she
hoped would have a healing effect on the world. And, as she had foreseen, two
years later she was mentally murdered by her own power-seeking students.
Under the heading of "Millennial glory," we read: "If
all who ever partook of the sacrament had really commemorated the
sufferings of Jesus and drunk of his cup, they would have revolutionized the
world [and would have brought in the millennium]."
The Joyful Meeting on the Shore of
the Galilean Sea
"In the bright morning hours at the joyful meeting on
the shore of the Galilean Sea" (S&H 34:31), the disciples discerned Christ,
Truth, anew and "were enabled to rise somewhat from mortal sensuousness, or the
burial of mind in matter, into newness of life as Spirit." Mrs.
Eddy teaches us how to overcome all error. She writes that "our baptism is a
purification from all error. [It certainly was for her.] Our church is built on
the divine Principle, Love. We can unite with this church only as we are
new-born of Spirit, as we reach the Life which is Truth and the Truth which is
Life by bringing forth the fruits of Love" as Mrs. Eddy surely did.
It was so important to Mary Baker Eddy that Christian
Science express Love in practical ways. Her last talk to the workers in her
beloved Pleasant View home concerned the importance of healing: "Give all your
time to healing. Perfect yourself in this." This meant, "Physician, heal
thyself"the practitioner is always the patient who must heal himself of
believing any error presented to him is true. "Error comes to [the
practitioner] for life, and [the practitioner] gives it the only life it has,"
said Mrs. Eddy.
Nothing was more important to Mrs. Eddy than that
Christian Scientists devoted themselves to the healing practice--healing
themselves of the belief that error, sin sickness, in--harmony of any kind, is
anything but illusion, hypnotism. For more than forty years Mrs. Eddy had
devoted her life entirely to fulfilling Jesus' prophecy and promise to send
another "Comforter" who would teach mankind to heal as he had healed. She would
bring the Second Coming of the Christ that would teach all humanity that our
own Mind is God--is "the kingdom of God within" our consciousness, that would
be aware of "the omnipresence of present perfection."
"Without the proof of healing, there is no real
Christian Science. When we lean on God [our real, true Mind, "the kingdom of
God within" our consciousness] and deny that which is ungod-like, always
affirming the perfection and omnipresence of the one perfect Principle [that is
our real Mind], we will experience healing. The crown of divine Love comes or
follows in the unselfed living for others."
Answering the question of how to heal quickly, Mrs.
Eddy said to her last class, "Just be Love, be it; be nothing but Love."
"The design of Love is to reform the sinner....Divine
Science reveals the necessity of sufficient suffering, either before or after
death, to quench the love of sin....Jesus endured the shame, that he might pour
his dear-bought bounty into barren lives. What was his earthly reward? He was
forsaken by all save John, the beloved disciple, and a few women who bowed in
silent woe beneath the shadow of his cross."
Mrs. Eddy was speaking of her own experience when she
wrote, "The earthly price of spirituality in a material age and the great moral
distance between Christianity and sensualism precludes Christian Science from
finding favor with the worldly-minded....Martyrs are the human links which
connect one stage with another in the history of religion. They are earth's
luminaries, which serve to cleanse and rarefy the atmosphere of material sense
and to permeate humanity with purer ideals" (S&H 36:14 to 37:12).
Too many assume that Jesus' commandments were intended
only for a particular period and for a select number of followers. "This
teaching," Mrs. Eddy says, "is even more pernicious than the old doctrine of
fore--ordination,the election of a few to be saved, while the rest are damned."
This was what the young Mary Baker stood against so stoutly in her childhood.
She firmly believed that Jesus' words were still true: "These signs shall
follow them that believe;...they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall
recover."
Mary understood that the word hands is
used metaphorically, as in the text, "The right hand of the Lord is exalted."
She saw the significance of the fact that while Jesus was addressing his
disciples, yet he did not say, "These signs shall follow
you," but "These signs shall follow them."
She understood that this meant not just his disciples but all "them that
believe" in all time to come.
The cause needs healers more than it needs teachers.
Mrs. Eddy wrote to the Editor of the Journal: "I started this great work and
woke the people by demonstration, not by words, but by
works. Our periodicals must have more testimonials....The sinner and the sick
healed are our best witnesses." Wherever Mrs. Eddy lectured, or spoke in
sermons, wonderful healings followed.
All that error threw at Mary Baker Eddy--disease,
insanity, death, legal attacks that threatened everything she had worked to
establish--error in every form, was treated as an occasion to heal, just an
opportunity to show the world that God is an ever-present help in trouble.
Mind, not matter, is our Life, and we can rejoice in
knowing that Mind never dies. Sin and a false sense of life is all that dies.
Immortality and blessedness never die, hence we should banish the false sense;
it is not real.
When the editor of the Minneapolis Daily News
asked for a statement of what Christian Science could do for universal
fellowship, Mrs. Eddy replied:
Christian Science can and does produce universal
fellowship as a sequence of divine Love. It explains Love, it lives Love, it
demonstrates Love. The human material so-called senses do not perceive this
fact until they are controlled by divine Love, hence the Scripture: "Be still
and know that I am God." [This means, "know that I am Mind, Spirit, Soul,
Principle, Life, Truth, Love."] (My. 275:3.)
To a student she wrote: "Faith in and the spiritual
understanding of the allness of divine Love, heals. Work and wait, watch and
pray, till you know the allness of God [infinite good, your own right Mind,
"the kingdom of God within" your consciousness] and in that understanding you
will gain the desired result, the 'secret place,' then you can abide under the
assurance spiritual of his support." Healing the sick and the sinner with
truth, demonstrates what we affirm of Christian Science, and nothing can
substitute this demonstration.
Let us all, as Christian Scientists, address ourselves
to becoming better healers. Watch, pray, labor and have faith. Know that you
can be what God, your real, true Mind, "the kingdom of God within" your
consciousness, demands you to be and now are.
Her Healing Ability Remained
Undiminished
Mrs. Eddy's desire to be Christ-like was constant. Her
healing ability remained constant too. Because Mrs. Eddy found Calvin Frye of
great help to her, it seemed error wanted to deprive her of that help. She
raised Mr. Frye from death several times, because she needed him in her daily
work for the world. George Kinter, a worker in Mrs. Eddy's home, tells of one
of the times that Mrs. Eddy raised Calvin after he had been dead for some time.
Mr. Kinter says Mrs. Eddy called him late one night in February, 1905, and
asked him to find out why Mr. Frye had not answered her call.
When Mr. Kinter entered Calvin's bedroom, he found him
slumped in a chair. He had passed on. He was as cold and rigid as stone; he had
no pulse. When Kinter reported this to Mrs. Eddy she went at once to Calvin's
side and began treatment--denying the error and declaring the truth. Mr. Kinter
says, and other members of the household also attest, that these denials of
error and declarations of truth were uttered with such dominion and
eloquence--for a full hour--as they had never heard before.
Mr. Kinter says that our beloved Leader called Calvin
Frye with the following words:
"Calvin, wake up and be the man God made! You are not
dead and you know it! Calvin, all is Life! How often have you proved there is
no death. [Mrs. Eddy had raised Calvin from death several times before.]
Calvin, all is Life! Life! Undying Life. Say, 'God is my Life'....Declare: 'I
can help myself'....Rouse yourself. Shake off this nightmare of false, human
belief and of fear. Don't let error mesmerize you into a state of believing
Satan's lies about man made in God's image and likeness! Your lifework is not
done. I need you. Our great blessed Cause needs you."
"Life is as deathless as God Himself for Life is God.
Calvin, there is no death, for the Christian. Christ Jesus has abolished death,
and this treatment is not reversed by error." (Mary Baker Eddy: Christian
Healer, Yvonne von Fettweis and Robert Warneck, p. 200-1)
Slowly, after about an hour, Calvin moved. Then he
spoke in low tones, just as he had done on two other occasions when Mrs. Eddy
brought him back. He said, "Don't call me back. Let me go. I am so tired." But
Mrs. Eddy needed Calvin Frye, and she answered him that she would persist in
calling him back, for "You have not been away. You have only been dreaming. And
now that you have awakened out of the dream, you are not tired, and you do not
concede any claims of the material senses [because God, infinite good is your
own Mind]." (See ibid. p.201)
Kinter says that in another half hour "Calvin Frye had
completely recovered." The rest of the night, he said, was peaceful, and in the
morning Calvin resumed his regular duties in helping Mrs. Eddy.
Did Mrs. Eddy limit her healing ability to men and
women? No. She said, "Heal the animals as well as mankind. When I was in [the
continual healing] practice I healed them and found them responsive to Truth in
every instance."
Mary Baker Eddy, like Jesus, mapped out the path for
others. Like Jesus, Mrs. Eddy unveiled the Christ, the spiritual idea of divine
Love. Both Jesus and Mrs. Eddy taught that "the material senses shut out Truth
and its healing power" (S&H 38:31). Meekly, they both "met the mockery of
[their] unrecognized grandeur. Such indignities as [they both] received,
[their] followers will endure until Christianity's last triumph."
Both Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy have won eternal
honors. As before stated, "Human theories are inadequate to interpret the
divine Principle involved...in Jesus' mighty, crowning, unparalleled, and
triumphant exit from the flesh" (S&H 117:19). The time will come when Mary
Baker Eddy will have won the esteem she deserves for bringing us the
understanding of that Principle.
Mrs. Eddy knew that if we, as the practitioner, remove
error from our thought error will not appear in effect in the patient. Old
theology is always preparing for a future-world salvation. "The educated belief
that Soul (true identity) is in the body, causes mortals to regard death as a
friend....[but] Jesus overcame death and the grave instead of yielding to them.
He was the way..."he saw the total unreality of matter, saw it as illusion,
hypnotic suggestion.
Mary Baker Eddy knew, like Paul, that "Now
is the accepted time...NOW is the day of salvation."
Jesus and Mrs. Eddy taught that now is the time in which to
experience that salvation by knowing and demonstrating the Truth they brought.
She taught that NOW is the time for material pains and pleasures
to pass away, for both are unreal.
Mary Baker Eddy had also learned that the advance
beyond matter must come through the sorrows and afflictions of the righteous as
well as through their joys and triumphs. Like Jesus and Mrs. Eddy we too must
depart from material sense into the spiritual sense of being.
"Jesus foresaw the reception Christian Science would
have before it was understood," but Jesus, knowing the power of Mind over
matter "met and mastered on the basis of Christian Science, all the claims of
medicine, surgery, and hygiene." Mrs. Eddy did likewise, and taught us how to
do so. The key, she told us, is love.
This is what dominates through all Mary Baker Eddy's
teaching--the great need for loving one another.
To a student she wrote: "You must love
all, even if they persecute you, you must love all. But
you must love especially the brethren. You must meet with them, cheer them in
their labors, point the way of love to them and show them it, by loving first,
and waiting patiently for them to be in this great step by your side, loving
each other and walking together. This is what the world must see before we can
convince the world of the truths of Christian Science."
In writing to another student, Mrs. Eddy told him,
"The healing will grow more easy and be more immediate as you realize that God,
good [your true Mind, "the kingdom of God within" your consciousness] is
all and is Love. You must gain Love, and lose the
false sense called love. [It is all in letting go of the wrong point of view.]
You must feel the Love that never
faileth,that perfect sense of divine Love that makes healing no
longer power but grace. Then you will have the Love that casts out fear, and
when fear is gone doubt is gone and your work is done. Why? Because it never
was undone." (A Carpenter item.)
In her 1896 address to her church in Boston, The First
Church of Christ, Scientist, Mrs. Eddy directed thought away from the
persecution of Jesus to his demonstration of divine, infinite Love, forgiving
his enemies. She pointed out that this was what enabled him to overcome the
cross and the grave. We all must learn to forgive.
Jesus, knowing the kingdom of God was his own divine
consciousness, could demonstrate the power of Spirit to overrule mortal,
material sense. He "vanquished every material obstacle, every law of
matter....[he] fully and finally demonstrated divine Science in his victory
over death and the grave....[his] persecutors had failed to hide immortal Truth
and Love in a sepulchre." The same can be said of the truth Mary Baker Eddy
discovered and taught.
When Jesus presented the same body after his death by
crucifixion, he "glorified the supremacy of Mind over matter" (S&H 45:31).
Mary Baker Eddy likewise "glorified the supremacy of Mind over matter" when she
explained Jesus' demonstration, in the Second Coming of the Christ, fulfilling
Jesus' prophecy and promise concerning the "Comforter" that would "abide with
you forever."
Of this "Comforter"the Second Coming of the Christ,
which Mary Baker Eddy brought--Jesus said, "the Comforter, which is the Holy
Ghost [divine Science] whom the Father [Mind, infinite good] will send in my
name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance,
whatsoever I have said unto you" (John 14:16). This prophecy Mary Baker Eddy
fulfilled.
Through all Mary Baker Eddy suffered she received the
Holy Ghost, or divine Science. It came after a life of suffering, as Isaiah,
chapter 54, had foretold. Her life, in founding Christian Science, after her
great discovery that "all is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation," was
like that of Jesus, "filled with pangs of neglect [as] the staves of bigoted
ignorance smote [her] sorely."
Mrs. Eddy, like Jesus, suffered from the fear that her
great discovery--divine Science--would be misunderstood and lost to the
centuries, as was Jesus' great teaching a few hundred years after his
crucifixion and ascension. Mrs. Eddy describes this fear that assailed both her
and Jesus when she says "the burden of that hour was terrible beyond human
conception. The distrust of mortal minds, disbelieving the purpose of his
mission, was a million times sharper than the thorns which pierced his side.
[This was equally true of Mary Baker Eddy's burden.] The real cross which Jesus
[and Mary Baker Eddy] bore up the hill of grief, was the world's hatred of
Truth and Love. Not the spear nor the material cross wrung from [Jesus']
faithful lips the plaintive cry, 'Eloi, Eloi, lama
Sabachthani?' [My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?] It
was [as in the case of Mary Baker Eddy too] the possible loss of something more
important than human life that moved Jesus [and Mrs. Eddy]the possible
misapprehension of the sublimest influence of [their] careers. This dread added
the drop of gall to the cup of Jesus [and of Mary Baker Eddy, whom Jesus said
would explain everything that he had demonstrated.]"
Mrs. Eddy's mighty works, her toils, privations,
sacrifices, her divine patience, sublime courage, and unrequited affection,
caused her to see clearly what Jesus endured. She writes of Jesus: "Remembering
the sweat of agony which fell in holy benediction on the grass of Gethsemane,
shall the humblest or mightiest disciple murmur when he drinks from the same
cup, and think, or even wish, to escape the exalting ordeal of sin's revenge on
its destroyer" (S&H 48:10).
Yet how few disciples remain steadfast, even as the
Wayshower suffers all for them! Where, at the crucifixion, were the seventy
whom Jesus had sent forth, and who had come back saying, "Even the devils are
subject unto us through thy name"?
Jesus had been forsaken. His healing demonstration of
the nothingness of matter and the allness of God, infinite good, the "kingdom
of God within" was misunderstood. The world's understanding of the
Science behind his marvelous demonstration would have to wait
almost two thousand years, until Mary Baker Eddy, through her pure Christ Mind,
discovered the Christ Science and brought the Second Coming of the Christ, the
"Comforter" Jesus had promised and prophesied.
This "holy Ghost or divine Science" was the "Spirit of
truth," of which Jesus said, "When he, the Spirit of truth, is come he will
guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he
shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. He shall
glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you....that
the world may know that thou [infinite good] hast sent me."
Yes, nearly two thousand years later this prophecy and
promise of Jesus, which had already been foretold in Isaiah, chapter 54, would
be fulfilled. This would be Mary Baker Eddy's divine work on earth. She would
fulfill Jesus' prophecy to bring forth the "Comforter." The first advent was
ushered in with healing. The Second Coming of the Christ would be ushered in
with millions of healings.
With the advent of Mary Baker Eddy came a mighty
blessing for the human race. Through her the divine Spirit that centuries ago
identified and filled Jesus has today "...spoken through the inspired Word and
will speak through it in every age and clime..." (S&H 46:9).
This blessing, this "Comforter," is not always
welcomed today, any more than Jesus and his message were welcomed in his time.
"Perhaps the early Christian era did Jesus no more injustice than the later
centuries have bestowed upon the healing Christ and spiritual idea of being.
Now that the gospel of healing is again preached by the wayside, does not the
pulpit sometimes scorn it?" (S&H 55:6).
Nevertheless, as Mary Baker Eddy tells us at the end
of Chapter II, Atonement and Eucharist, "Truth's immortal idea
IS sweeping down the centuries, gathering beneath its wings the
sick and sinning. My weary hope tries to realize that happy day, when man shall
recognize the Science of Christ and love his neighbor as himself,when he shall
realize God's omnipotence [infinite good's, "the kingdom of God within" his own
consciousness, as his own Mind] and realize the healing power of the divine
Love in what it has done and is doing for mankind." The promises will be
fulfilled as "mankind awakens to its present ownership of all good" (My.
356:1).
Star of Boston book sections
Introduction | Part 1a |
Part 1b | Part 2 |
Part 3
Christ & Christmas
Pictures
1 |
2 | 3 |
4 | 5 |
6 | 7 |
8 | 9 |
10 | 11
Summary |
Conclusion |
