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Chapter twelve is CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PRACTICE.
In answering the objections, by putting everything
back into God and acknowledging that there is a divine plan where everything
relates with everything else, we are in fact practising Christian Science. We
are removing the objections of the human mind by working from the unbroken
wholeness of being, seeing everything slotted back into its proper place and
value in the divine purpose and plan.
"Christian Science Practice" is a long and very
practical healing chapter, finishing with an allegorical account of a law case.
The prisoner on trial is accused of transgressing the laws of matter. He has
watched with and tended a sick friend, but in doing this he has broken the laws
of health that claim to govern the material body. This is his crime and he is
condemned to death. But then permission is obtained for a retrial in the Court
of Spirit. Christian Science, appearing as counsel for the defence, argues for
man's freedom under the law of God. God's law liberates him from the bogus laws
of mortality. The law case finishes with the commanding sentence, "Christian
Scientists, be a law to yourselves that mental malpractice cannot harm you
either when asleep or when awake" (442:30). Be a law to yourselves!
Chapter thirteen, TEACHING CHRISTIAN SCIENCE, tells us
where to turn for our teaching, how to be taught of God and not depend
on man for instruction. It is about the ethics of how we handle each other; we
do not stand as a person telling other people what to know, believe, or do.
Rather we encourage them to be taught of God, by turning to the books. It is a
lovely delicate chapter. Teaching relates to education, and the word education
comes from the Latin educare, meaning to lead out, educe. All good
education is drawing out, or leading out the individuality that God has already
planted. We are therefore concerned with giving birth to ourselves out of the
very nature of God. So it is not surprising to find near the end of the chapter
that wonderful paragraph with the marginal heading, "Scientific
obstetrics."
Chapter fourteen is RECAPITULATION. What is it that is
coming to birth? What is this nature of God? This chapter is a series of
questions and answers. The first is, What is God? The whole chapter is an
elaboration of the answer, because that basically is the first and last and
only real question. So "Recapitulation" is letting God reveal to us what He is.
By the answers to these questions we are being taught of God. The answer to
this first question is: "God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite" and
then come these seven capitalized terms which have dominated the book
throughout, "Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love."
Every idea that we ever need in the whole of being can
be found in those terms. But by having seven capitalized terms, seven names for
God, are we not in danger of having seven gods? Therefore the second question
asks, "Are these terms synonymous?" The answer in part is, "They are. They
refer to one absolute God." (This is why you will notice that so often we refer
to `the synonymous terms for God.') But we must go further. The next question
is, "Is there more than one God or Principle?" And the answer is: "There is
not. Principle and its idea is one, and this one is God, omnipotent,
omniscient, and omnipresent Being, and His reflection is man and the universe."
It is here that we find this statement on which we build our assurance of the
inseparability of God and man as our basis of operation_Principle and its idea
is one.
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