0.0 – Christian Science Publication Contents

6	                        SCIENCE AND THE SENSES 

  	Substance of my Address at the National Convention in Chicago,
  	                                  June 13, 1888 

 9	    The National Christian Scientist Association has
  	brought us together to minister and to be ministered
  	unto; mutually to aid one another in finding ways and
12	means for helping the whole human family; to quicken
  	and extend the interest already felt in a higher mode of
  	medicine; to watch with eager joy the individual growth
15	of Christian Scientists, and the progress of our common
  	Cause in Chicago, — the miracle of the Occident. We
  	come to strengthen and perpetuate our organizations
18	and institutions; and to find strength in union, — strength
  	to build up, through God's right hand, that pure and
  	undefiled religion whose Science demonstrates God and
21	the perfectibility of man. This purpose is immense,
  	and it must begin with individual growth, a "consum-
  	mation devoutly to be wished." The lives of all re-
24	formers attest the authenticity of their mission, and call
  	the world to acknowledge its divine Principle. Truly
  	is it written: — 

27	 "Thou must be true thyself, if thou the truth would'st teach;
  	 Thy heart must overflow, if thou another's heart would'st
  	      reach."  

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1	    Science is absolute and final. It is revolutionary in
  	its very nature; for it upsets all ...that is not upright. 
 3	It annuls false evidence, and saith to the five material
  	senses, "Having eyes ye see not, and ears ye hear not;
  	neither can you understand." To weave one thread of
 6	Science through the looms of time, is a miracle in itself. 
  	The risk is stupendous. It cost Galileo, what? This
  	awful price:  the temporary loss of his self-respect. His
 9	fear overcame his loyalty; the courage of his convictions
  	fell before it. Fear is the weapon in the hands of
  	tyrants. 
12	    Men and women of the nineteenth century, are you
  	called to voice a higher order of Science? Then obey
  	this call. Go, if you must, to the dungeon or the scaf-
15	fold, but take not back the words of Truth. How many
  	are there ready to suffer for a righteous cause, to stand
  	a long siege, take the front rank, face the foe, and be
18	in the battle every day? 
  	    In no other one thing seemed Jesus of Nazareth more
  	divine than in his faith in the immortality of his words. 
21	He said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my
  	words shall not pass away;" and they have not. The
  	winds of time sweep clean the centuries, but they can
24	never bear into oblivion his words. They still live, and
  	to-morrow speak louder than to-day. They are to-day
  	as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, "Make
27	straight God's paths; make way for health, holiness,
  	universal harmony, and come up hither." The gran-
  	deur of the word, the power of Truth, is again casting
30	out evils and healing the sick; and it is whispered, "This
  	is Science." 
  	    Jesus taught by the wayside, in humble homes. He
 
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 1	spake of Truth and Love to artless listeners and dull
  	disciples. His immortal words were articulated in a
 3	decaying language, and then left to the providence of
  	God. Christian Science was to interpret them; and
  	woman, "last at the cross," was to awaken the dull senses,
 6	intoxicated with pleasure or pain, to the infinite mean-
  	ing of those words. 
  	    Past, present, future, will show the word and might of
 9	Truth — healing the sick and reclaiming the sinner — 
  	so long as there remains a claim of error for Truth to
  	deny or to destroy. Love's labors are not lost. The
12	five personal senses, that grasp neither the meaning nor
  	the magnitude of self-abnegation, may lose sight thereof;
  	but Science voices unselfish love, unfolds infinite good,
15	leads on irresistible forces, and will finally show the fruits
  	of Love. Human reason is inaccurate; and the scope
  	of the senses is inadequate to grasp the word of Truth,
18	and teach the eternal. 
  	    Science speaks when the senses are silent, and then
  	the evermore of Truth is triumphant. The spiritual mon-
21	itor understood is coincidence of the divine with the
  	human, the acme of Christian Science. Pure humanity,
  	friendship, home, the interchange of love, bring to earth
24	a foretaste of heaven. They unite terrestrial and celes-
  	tial joys, and crown them with blessings infinite. 
  	    The Christian Scientist loves man more because he
27	loves God most. He understands this Principle, — Love. 
  	Who is sufficient for these things? Who remembers that
  	patience, forgiveness, abiding faith, and affection, are
30	the symptoms by which our Father indicates the dif-
  	ferent stages of man's recovery from sin and his en-
  	trance into Science? Who knows how the feeble lips
 
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 1	are made eloquent, how hearts are inspired, how heal-
  	ing becomes spontaneous, and how the divine Mind is
 3	understood and demonstrated? He alone knows these
  	wonders who is departing from the thraldom of the
  	senses and accepting spiritual truth, — that which blesses
 6	its adoption by the refinement of joy and the dismissal of
  	sorrow. 
  	    Christian Science and the senses are at war. It is a
 9	revolutionary struggle. We already have had two in
  	this nation; and they began and ended in a contest for
  	the true idea, for human liberty and rights. Now cometh
12	a third struggle; for the freedom of health, holiness, and
  	the attainment of heaven. 
  	    The scientific sense of being which establishes har-
15	mony, enters into no compromise with finiteness and
  	feebleness. It undermines the foundations of mortality,
  	of physical law, breaks their chains, and sets the captive
18	free, opening the doors for them that are bound. 
  	    He who turns to the body for evidence, bases his con-
  	clusions on mortality, on imperfection; but Science saith
21	to man, "God hath all-power." 
  	    The Science of omnipotence demonstrates but one
  	power, and this power is good, not evil; not matter,
24	but Mind. This virtually destroys matter and evil, in-
  	cluding sin and disease. 
  	    If God is All, and God is good, it follows that all
27	must be good; and no other power, law, or intelligence
  	can exist. On this proof rest premise and conclusion in
  	Science, and the facts that disprove the evidence of the
30	senses. 
  	    God is individual Mind. This one Mind and His
  	individuality comprise the elements of all forms and
 
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 1	individualities, and prophesy the nature and stature of
  	Christ, the ideal man. 
 3	    A corporeal God, as often defined by lexicographers
  	and scholastic theologians, is only an infinite finite being,
  	an unlimited man, — a theory to me inconceivable. If
 6	the unlimited and immortal Mind could originate in a
  	limited body, Mind would be chained to finity, and the
  	infinite forever finite. 
 9	    In this limited and lower sense God is not personal. 
  	His infinity precludes the possibility of corporeal person-
  	ality. His being is individual, but not physical. 
12	    God is like Himself and like nothing else. He is uni-
  	versal and primitive. His character admits of no degrees
  	of comparison. God is not part, but the whole. In His
15	individuality I recognize the loving, divine Father-Mother
  	God. Infinite personality must be incorporeal. 
  	    God's ways are not ours. His pity is expressed in
18	modes above the human. His chastisements are the
  	manifestations of Love. The sympathy of His eternal
  	Mind is fully expressed in divine Science, which blots
21	out all our iniquities and heals all our diseases. Human
  	pity often brings pain. 
  	    Science supports harmony, denies suffering, and de-
24	stroys it with the divinity of Truth. Whatever seems mate-
  	rial, seems thus only to the material senses, and is but the
  	subjective state of mortal and material thought. 
27	    Science has inaugurated the irrepressible conflict be-
  	tween sense and Soul. Mortal thought wars with this
  	sense as one that beateth the air, but Science outmasters
30	it, and ends the warfare. This proves daily that "one
  	on God's side is a majority." 
  	    Science defines omnipresence as universality, that which
 
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 1	precludes the presence of evil. This verity annuls the tes-
  	timony of the senses, which say that sin is an evil power,
 3	and substance is perishable. Intelligent Spirit, Soul, is
  	substance, far more impregnable and solid than matter; for
  	one is temporal, while the other is eternal, the ultimate
 6	and predicate of being. 
  	    Mortality, materiality, and destructive forces, such as
  	sin, disease, and death, mortals virtually name substance;
 9	but these are the substance of things not hoped for. For
  	lack of knowing what substance is, the senses say vaguely:
  	"The substance of life is sorrow and mortality; for who
12	knoweth the substance of good?" In Science, form and
  	individuality are never lost, thoughts are outlined, indi-
  	vidualized ideas, which dwell forever in the divine Mind
15	as tangible, true substance, because eternally conscious. 
  	Unlike mortal mind, which must be ever in bondage,
  	the eternal Mind is free, unlimited, and knows not the
18	temporal. 
  	    Neither does the temporal know the eternal. Mortal
  	man, as mind or matter, is neither the pattern nor Maker
21	of immortal man. Any inference of the divine derived
  	from the human, either as mind or body, hides the actual
  	power, presence, and individuality of God. 
24	    Jesus' personality in the flesh, so far as material sense
  	could discern it, was like that of other men; but Science
  	exchanges this human concept of Jesus for the divine
27	ideal, his spiritual individuality that reflected the Im-
  	manuel, or "God with us." This God was not outlined. 
  	He was too mighty for that. He was eternal Life, infinite
30	Truth and Love. The individuality is embraced in Mind,
  	therefore is forever with the Father. Hence the Scrip-
  	ture, "I am a God at hand, saith the Lord." Even while
 
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 1	his personality was on earth and in anguish, his individual
  	being, the Christ, was at rest in the eternal harmony. 
 3	His unseen individuality, so superior to that which was
  	seen, was not subject to the temptations of the flesh, to
  	laws material, to death, or the grave. Formed and gov-
 6	erned by God, this individuality was safe in the substance
  	of Soul, the substance of Spirit, — yea, the substance of
  	God, the one inclusive good. 
 9	    In Science all being is individual; for individuality is
  	endless in the calculus of forms and numbers. Herein
  	sin is miraculous and supernatural; for it is not in the
12	nature of God, and good is forever good. Accord-
  	ing to Christian Science, perfection is normal, — not
  	miraculous. Clothed, and in its right Mind, man's
15	individuality is sinless, deathless, harmonious, eternal. 
  	His materiality, clad in a false mentality, wages feeble
  	fight with his individuality, — his physical senses with
18	his spiritual senses. The latter move in God's grooves
  	of Science:  the former revolve in their own orbits, and
  	must stand the friction of false selfhood until self-
21	destroyed. 
  	    In obedience to the divine nature, man's individuality
  	reflects the divine law and order of being. How shall
24	we reach our true selves? Through Love. The Prin-
  	ciple of Christian Science is Love, and its idea represents
  	Love. This divine Principle and idea are demonstrated,
27	in healing, to be God and the real man. 
  	    Who wants to be mortal, or would not gain the true
  	ideal of Life and recover his own individuality? I will
30	love, if another hates. I will gain a balance on the side of
  	good, my true being. This alone gives me the forces of
  	God wherewith to overcome all error. On this rests the
 
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 1	implicit faith engendered by Christian Science, which
  	appeals intelligently to the facts of man's spirituality, in-
 3	dividuality, to disdain the fears and destroy the discords
  	of this material personality. 
  	    On our Master's individual demonstrations over sin,
 6	sickness, and death, rested the anathema of priesthood
  	and the senses; yet this demonstration is the foundation
  	of Christian Science. His physical sufferings, which
 9	came from the testimony of the senses, were over when
  	he resumed his individual spiritual being, after showing
  	us the way to escape from the material body. 
12	    Science would have no conflict with Life or common
  	sense, if this sense were consistently sensible. Man's real
  	life or existence is in harmony with Life and its glorious
15	phenomena. It upholds being, and destroys the too
  	common sense of its opposites — death, disease, and sin. 
  	Christian Science is an everlasting victor, and vanquish-
18	ment is unknown to the omnipresent Truth. I must ever
  	follow this line of light and battle. 
  	    Christian Science is my only ideal; and the individual
21	and his ideal can never be severed. If either is misunder-
  	stood or maligned, it eclipses the other with the shadow
  	cast by this error. 
24	    Truth destroys error. Nothing appears to the physi-
  	cal senses but their own subjective state of thought. The
  	senses join issue with error, and pity what has no right
27	either to be pitied or to exist, and what does not exist in
  	Science. Destroy the thought of sin, sickness, death, and
  	you destroy their existence. "Whatsoever a man soweth,
30	that shall he also reap." 
  	    Because God is Mind, and this Mind is good, all
  	is good and all is Mind. God is the sum total of the
 
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 1	universe. Then what and where are sin, sickness, and
  	death? 
 3	    Christian Science and Christian Scientists will, must,
  	have a history; and if I could write the history in poor
  	parody on Tennyson's grand verse, it would read
 6	thus: — 

  	                        Traitors to right of them,
  	                        M. D.'s to left of them,
 9	                        Priestcraft in front of them,
  	                           Volleyed and thundered! 
  	                       Into the jaws of hate,
12	                       Out through the door of Love,
  	                       On to the blest above,
  	                          Marched the one hundred. 
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