0.0 – Christian Science Publication Contents

  	                FALLIBILITY OF HUMAN CONCEPTS 

  	    Evil counterfeits good:  it says, "I am Truth," though
21	it is a lie; it says, "I am Love," — but Love is spirit-
  	ual, and sensuous love is material, wherefore it is hate
  	instead of Love; for the five senses give to mortals pain,
24	sickness, sin, and death, — pleasure that is false, life that
  	leads unto death, joy that becomes sorrow. Love that is
  	not the procurator of happiness, declares itself the anti-
27	pode of Love; and Love divine punishes the joys of this
  	false sense of love, chastens its affection, purifies it, and
  	turns it into the opposite channels. 
30	    Material life is the antipode of spiritual life; it mocks
 
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 1	the bliss of spiritual being; it is bereft of permanence and
  	peace. 
 3	    When human sense is quickened to behold aright the
  	error, — the error of regarding Life, Truth, Love as
  	material and not spiritual, or as both material and spir-
 6	itual, — it is able for the first time to discern the Science
  	of good. But it must first see the error of its present
  	erroneous course, to be able to behold the facts of Truth
 9	outside of the error; and, vice versa, when it discovers
  	the truth, this uncovers the error and quickens the true
  	consciousness of God, good. May the human shadows of
12	thought lengthen as they approach the light, until they
  	are lost in light and no ...night is there! 
  	    In Science, sickness is healed upon the same Principle
15	and by the same rule that sin is healed. To know the
  	supposed bodily belief of the patient and what has claimed
  	to produce it, enables the practitioner to act more under-
18	standingly in destroying this belief. Thus it is in heal-
  	ing the moral sickness; the malicious mental operation
  	must be understood in order to enable one to destroy
21	it and its effects. There is not sufficient spiritual power
  	in the human thought to heal the sick or the sinful. 
  	Through the divine energies alone one must either get
24	out of himself and into God so far that his consciousness
  	is the reflection of the divine, or he must, through argu-
  	ment and the human consciousness of both evil and good,
27	overcome evil. 
  	    The only difference between the healing of sin and the
  	healing of sickness is, that sin must be uncovered before
30	it can be destroyed, and the moral sense be aroused to
  	reject the sense of error; while sickness must be cov-
  	ered with the veil of harmony, and the consciousness be
 
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 1	allowed to rejoice in the sense that it has nothing to mourn
  	over, but something to forget. 
 3	    Human concepts run in extremes; they are like the
  	action of sickness, which is either an excess of action or
  	not action enough; they are fallible; they are neither
 6	standards nor models. 
  	    If one asks me, Is my concept of you right? I reply, The
  	human concept is always imperfect; relinquish your human
 9	concept of me, or of any one, and find the divine, and you
  	have gained the right one — and never until then. People
  	give me too much attention of the misguided, fallible sort,
12	and this misrepresents one through malice or ignorance. 
  	    My brother was a manufacturer; and one day a work-
  	man in his mills, a practical joker, set a man who applied
15	for work, in the overseer's absence, to pour a bucket of
  	water every ten minutes on the regulator. When my
  	brother returned and saw it, he said to the jester, "You
18	must pay that man." Some people try to tend folks, as
  	if they should steer the regulator of mankind. God makes
  	us pay for tending the action that He adjusts. 
21	    The regulator is governed by the principle that makes
  	the machinery work rightly; and because it is thus gov-
  	erned, the folly of tending it is no mere jest. The divine
24	Principle carries on His harmony. 
  	    Now turn from the metaphor of the mill to the Mother's
  	four thousand children, most of whom, at about three
27	years of scientific age, set up housekeeping alone. Certain
  	students, being too much interested in themselves to think
  	of helping others, go their way. They do not love Mother,
30	but pretend to; they constantly go to her for help, interrupt
  	the home-harmony, criticise and disobey her; then "return
  	to their vomit," — world worship, pleasure seeking, and
 
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 1	sense indulgence, — meantime declaring they "never dis-
  	obey Mother"! It exceeds my conception of human
 3	nature. Sin in its very nature is marvellous! Who but a
  	moral idiot, sanguine of success in sin, can steal, and lie
  	and lie, and lead the innocent to doom? History needs it,
 6	and it has the grandeur of the loyal, self-forgetful, faith-
  	ful Christian Scientists to overbalance this foul stuff. 
  	    When the Mother's love can no longer promote peace
 9	in the family, wisdom is not "justified of her children." 
  	When depraved reason is preferred to revelation, error
  	to Truth, and evil to good, and sense seems sounder than
12	Soul, the children are tending the regulator; they are
  	indeed losing the knowledge of the divine Principle and
  	rules of Christian Science, whose fruits prove the nature
15	of their source. A little more grace, a motive made pure,
  	a few truths tenderly told, a heart softened, a character
  	subdued, a life consecrated, would restore the right action
18	of the mental mechanism, and make manifest the move-
  	ment of body and soul in accord with God. 
  	    Instead of relying on the Principle of all that really
21	exists, — to govern His own creation, — self-conceit, igno-
  	rance, and pride would regulate God's action. Expe-
  	rience shows that humility is the first step in Christian
24	Science, wherein all is controlled, not by man or laws
  	material, but by wisdom, Truth, and Love. 

  	    Go gaze on the eagle, his eye on the sun,
27	    Fast gathering strength for a flight well begun,
  	    As rising he rests in a liberty higher
  	    Than genius inflated with worldly desire. 

30	    No tear dims his eye, nor his pinions lose power
  	    To gaze on the lark in her emerald bower — 
  	    Whenever he soareth to fashion his nest,
33	    No vision more bright than the dream in his breast. 
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