0.0 – Christian Science Publication Contents

  	COMMUNION ADDRESS, JANUARY, 1896 

27	    Friends and Brethren: — The Biblical record of the
  	great Nazarene, whose character we to-day commemorate,
  	is scanty; but what is given, puts to flight every doubt as
30	to the immortality of his words and works. Though

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 1	written in a decaying language, his words can never pass
  	away:  they are inscribed upon the hearts of men:  they
 3	are engraved upon eternity's tablets. 
  	    Undoubtedly our Master partook of the Jews' feast
  	of the Passover, and drank from their festal wine-cup. 
 6	This, however, is not the cup to which I call your at-
  	tention, — even the cup of martyrdom:  wherein Spirit
  	and matter, good and evil, seem to grapple, and the
 9	human struggles against the divine, up to a point of
  	discovery; namely, the impotence of evil, and the om-
  	nipotence of good, as divinely attested. Anciently, the
12	blood of martyrs was believed to be the seed of the Church. 
  	Stalled theocracy would make this fatal doctrine just
  	and sovereign, even a divine decree, a law of Love! That
15	the innocent shall suffer for the guilty, is inhuman. The
  	prophet declared, "Thou shalt put away the guilt of
  	innocent blood from Israel." This is plain:  that what-
18	ever belittles, befogs, or belies the nature and essence of
  	Deity, is not divine. Who, then, shall father or favor
  	this sentence passed upon innocence? thereby givin...g the
21	signet of God to the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of His
  	beloved Son, the righteous Nazarene, — christened by
  	John the Baptist, "the Lamb of God." 
24	    Oh! shameless insult to divine royalty, that drew
  	from the great Master this answer to the questions of the
  	rabbinical rabble: "If I tell you, ye will not believe; and
27	if I also ask you, ye will not answer me, nor let me go." 
  	    Infinitely greater than human pity, is divine Love, — 
  	that cannot be unmerciful. Human tribunals, if just,
30	borrow their sense of justice from the divine Principle
  	thereof, which punishes the guilty, not the innocent. The
  	Teacher of both law and gospel construed the substitution

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1	of a good man to suffer for evil-doers — a crime! When
  	foretelling his own crucifixion, he said, "Woe unto the
 3	world because of offenses! for it must needs be that
  	offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense
  	cometh!" 
 6	    Would Jesus thus have spoken of what was indis-
  	pensable for the salvation of a world of sinners, or of the
  	individual instrument in this holy (?) alliance for accom-
 9	plishing such a monstrous work? or have said of him
  	whom God foreordained and predestined to fulfil a divine
  	decree, "It were better for him that a millstone were
12	hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the
  	depth of the sea"? 
  	    The divine order is the acme of mercy:  it is neither
15	questionable nor assailable:  it is not evil producing good,
  	nor good ultimating in evil. Such an inference were
  	impious. Holy Writ denounces him that declares, "Let
18	us do evil, that good may come! whose damnation is
  	just." 
  	    Good is not educed from its opposite: and Love divine
21	spurned, lessens not the hater's hatred nor the criminal's
  	crime; nor reconciles justice to injustice; nor substitutes
  	the suffering of the Godlike for the suffering due to sin. 
24	Neither spiritual bankruptcy nor a religious chancery can
  	win high heaven, or the "Well done, good and faithful
  	servant,...enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." 
27	    Divine Love knows no hate; for hate, or the hater, is
  	nothing:  God never made it, and He made all that was
  	made. The hater's pleasures are unreal; his sufferings,
30	self-imposed; his existence is a parody, and he ends — 
  	with suicide. 
  	    The murder of the just Nazarite was incited by the  

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1	same spirit that in our time massacres our missionaries,
  	butchers the helpless Armenians, slaughters innocents. 
 3	Evil was, and is, the illusion of breaking the First Com-
  	mandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me:"
  	it is either idolizing something and somebody, or hating
 6	them:  it is the spirit of idolatry, envy, jealousy, covet-
  	ousness, superstition, lust, hypocrisy, witchcraft. 
  	    That man can break the forever-law of infinite Love,
 9	was, and is, the serpent's biggest lie! and ultimates in
  	a religion of pagan priests bloated with crime; a religion
  	that demands human victims to be sacrificed to human
12	passions and human gods, or tortured to appease the
  	anger of a so-called god or a miscalled man or woman! 
  	The Assyrian Merodach, or the god of sin, was the "lucky
15	god;" and the Babylonian Yawa, or Jehovah, was the
  	Jewish tribal deity. The Christian's God is neither, and
  	is too pure to behold iniquity. 
18	    Divine Science has rolled away the stone from the sepul-
  	chre of our Lord; and there has risen to the awakened
  	thought the majestic atonement of divine Love. The
21	at-one-ment with Christ has appeared — not through
  	vicarious suffering, whereby the just obtain a pardon for
  	the unjust, — but through the eternal law of justice;
24	wherein sinners suffer for their own sins, repent, forsake
  	sin, love God, and keep His commandments, thence to
  	receive the reward of righteousness:  salvation from sin,
27	not through the death of a man, but through a divine Life,
  	which is our Redeemer. 
  	    Holy Writ declares that God is Love, is Spirit; hence
30	it follows that those who worship Him, must worship
  	Him spiritually, — far apart from physical sensation
  	such as attends eating and drinking corporeally. It is
 
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 1	plain that aught unspiritual, intervening between God
  	and man, would tend to disturb the divine order, and
 3	countermand the Scripture that those who worship the
  	Father must worship Him in spirit. It is also plain,
  	that we should not seek and cannot find God in mat-
 6	ter, or through material methods; neither do we love
  	and obey Him by means of matter, or the flesh, — which
  	warreth against Spirit, and will not be reconciled
 9	thereto. 
  	    We turn, with sickened sense, from a pagan Jew's
  	or Moslem's misconception of Deity, for peace; and find
12	rest in the spiritual ideal, or Christ. For "who is so
  	great a God as our God!" unchangeable, all-wise, all-
  	just, all-merciful; the ever-loving, ever-living Life, Truth,
15	Love:  comforting such as mourn, opening the prison
  	doors to the captive, marking the unwinged bird, pitying
  	with more than a father's pity; healing the sick, cleansing
18	the leper, raising the dead, saving sinners. As we think
  	thereon, man's true sense is filled with peace, and power;
  	and we say, It is well that Christian Science has taken
21	expressive silence wherein to muse His praise, to kiss the
  	feet of Jesus, adore the white Christ, and stretch out our
  	arms to God. 
24	    The last act of the tragedy on Calvary rent the veil
  	of matter, and unveiled Love's great legacy to mortals:
  	Love forgiving its enemies. This grand act crowned
27	and still crowns Christianity:  it manumits mortals; it
  	translates love; it gives to suffering, inspiration; to
  	patience, experience; to experience, hope; to hope, faith;
30	to faith, understanding; and to understanding, Love tri-
  	umphant! 
  	    In proportion to a man's spiritual progress, he will  

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1	indeed drink of our Master's cup, and be baptized with
  	his baptism! be purified as by fire, — the fires of suffering;
 3	then hath he part in Love's atonement, for "whom the
  	Lord loveth He chasteneth." Then shall he also reign
  	with him:  he shall rise to know that there is no sin,
 6	that there is no suffering; since all that is real is right. 
  	This knowledge enables him to overcome the world, the
  	flesh, and all evil, to have dominion over his own sinful
 9	sense and self. Then shall he drink anew Christ's cup,
  	in the kingdom of God — the reign of righteousness — 
  	within him; he shall sit down at the Father's right hand:
12	sit down; not stand waiting and weary; but rest on the
  	bosom of God; rest, in the understanding of divine Love
  	that passeth all understanding; rest, in that which "to
15	know aright is Life eternal," and whom, not having seen,
  	we love. 
  	    Then shall he press on to Life's long lesson, the eternal
18	lore of Love; and learn forever the infinite meanings of
  	these short sentences: "God is Love;" and, All that is
  	real is divine, for God is All-in-all. 
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