Chapter IV. Addresses.Christian Science In Tremont Temple.From the platform of the Monday lectureship in [2]Tremont Temple, on Monday, March 16, 1885, aswill be seen by what follows. Reverend Mary Baker G.Eddy was presented to Mr. Cook's audience, and allowed [5]ten minutes in which to reply to his public letter con-demning her doctrines; which reply was taken in full bya shorthand reporter who was present, and is transcribedbelow.Mrs. Eddy responding, said:— [10]As the time so kindly allotted me is insufficient foreven a synopsis of Christian Science, I shall confine my-self to questions and answers.Am I a spiritualist?I am not, and never was. I understand the impossi- [15]bility of intercommunion between the so-called dead andliving. There have always attended my life phenomenaof an uncommon order, which spiritualists have mis-called mediumship; but I clearly understand that nohuman agencies were employed,—that the divine Mind [20]reveals itself to humanity through spiritual law. Andto such as are“waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemptionof our body,”Christian Science reveals the in-[pg 096]finitude of divinity and the way of man's salvation from [1]sickness and death, as wrought out by Jesus, who robbedthe grave of victory and death of its sting. I understandthat God is an ever-present help in all times of trouble,—have found Him so; and would have no other gods, no [5]remedies in drugs, no material medicine.Do I believe in a personal God?I believe in God as the Supreme Being. I know notwhat the person of omnipotence and omnipresence is,or what the infinite includes; therefore, I worship that [10]of which I can conceive, first, as a loving Father andMother; then, as thought ascends the scale of being todiviner consciousness, God becomes to me, as to theapostle who declared it,“God is Love,”—divine Prin-ciple,—which I worship; and“after the manner of my[15]fathers, so worship I God.”Do I believe in the atonement of Christ?I do; and this atonement becomes more to me sinceit includes man's redemption from sickness as well asfrom sin. I reverence and adore Christ as never before. [20]It brings to my sense, and to the sense of all who enter-tain this understanding of the Science of God, awholesalvation.How is the healing done in Christian Science?This answer includes too much to give you any con- [25]clusive idea in a brief explanation. I can name somemeans by which it is not done.It is not one mind acting upon another mind; it isnot the transference of human images of thought toother minds; it is not supported by the evidence before [30]the personal senses,—Science contradicts this evidence;it is not of the flesh, but of the Spirit. It is Christ come[pg 097]to destroy the power of the flesh; it is Truth over error; [1]that understood, gives man ability to rise above the evi-dence of the senses, take hold of the eternal energies ofTruth, and destroy mortal discord with immortal har-mony,—the grand verities of being. It is not one mortal [5]thought transmitted to another's thought from the humanmind that holds within itself all evil.Our Master said of one of his students,“He is a devil,”and repudiated the idea of casting out devils throughBeelzebub. Erring human mind is by no means a de- [10]sirable or efficacious healer. Such suppositional healingI deprecate. It is in no way allied to divine power. Allhuman control is animal magnetism, more despicablethan all other methods of treating disease.Christian Science is not a remedy of faith alone, but [15]combines faith with understanding, through which wemay touch the hem of His garment; and know that om-nipotence has all power.“I am the Lord, and there isnone else, there is no God beside me.”Is there a personal man? [20]The Scriptures inform us that man was made in theimage and likeness of God. I commend the Icelandictranslation:“He created man in the image and likenessof Mind, in the image and likeness of Mind createdHe him.”To my sense, we have not seen all of man; [25]he is more than personal sense can cognize, who is theimage and likeness of the infinite. I have not seen aperfect man in mind or body,—and such must be thepersonality of him who is the true likeness: the lostimage is not this personality, and corporeal man is this [30]lost image; hence, it doth not appear what is the realpersonality of man. The only cause for making this[pg 098]question of personality a point, or of any importance, is [1]that man's perfect model should be held in mind, wherebyto improve his present condition; that his contemplationregarding himself should turn away from inharmony, sick-ness, and sin, to that which is the image of his Maker. [5]Science And The Senses.Substance of my Address at the National Convention in Chicago,June 13, 1888The National Christian Scientist Association hasbrought us together to minister and to be ministered [10]unto; mutually to aid one another in finding ways andmeans for helping the whole human family; to quickenand extend the interest already felt in a higher mode ofmedicine; to watch with eager joy the individual growthof Christian Scientists, and the progress of our common [15]Cause in Chicago,—the miracle of the Occident. Wecome to strengthen and perpetuate our organizationsand institutions; and to find strength in union,—strengthto build up, through God's right hand, that pure andundefiled religion whose Science demonstrates God and [20]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-formers attest the authenticity of their mission, and callthe world to acknowledge its divine Principle. Truly [25]is it written:—“Thou must be true thyself, if thou the truth would'st teach;Thy heart must overflow, if thou another's heart would'st reach.”[pg 099]Science is absolute and final. It is revolutionary in [1]its very nature; for it upsets all that is not upright.It annuls false evidence, and saith to the five materialsenses,“Having eyes ye see not, and ears ye hear not;neither can you understand.”To weave one thread of [5]Science through the looms of time, is a miracle in itself.The risk is stupendous. It cost Galileo, what? Thisawful price: the temporary loss of his self-respect. Hisfear overcame his loyalty; the courage of his convictionsfell before it. Fear is the weapon in the hands of [10]tyrants.Men and women of the nineteenth century, are youcalled to voice a higher order of Science? Then obeythis call. Go, if you must, to the dungeon or the scaf-fold, but take not back the words of Truth. How many [15]are there ready to suffer for a righteous cause, to standa long siege, take the front rank, face the foe, and bein the battle every day?In no other one thing seemed Jesus of Nazareth moredivine than in his faith in the immortality of his words. [20]He said,“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but mywords shall not pass away;”and they have not. Thewinds of time sweep clean the centuries, but they cannever bear into oblivion his words. They still live, andto-morrow speak louder than to-day. They are to-day [25]as the voice of one crying in the wilderness,“Makestraight 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 castingout evils and healing the sick; and it is whispered,“This[30]is Science.”Jesus taught by the wayside, in humble homes. He[pg 100]spake of Truth and Love to artless listeners and dull [1]disciples. His immortal words were articulated in adecaying language, and then left to the providence ofGod. Christian Science was to interpret them; andwoman,“last at the cross,”was to awaken the dull senses, [5]intoxicated with pleasure or pain, to the infinite meaningof those words.Past, present, future, will show the word and might ofTruth—healing the sick and reclaiming the sinner—so long as there remains a claim of error for Truth to [10]deny or to destroy. Love's labors are not lost. Thefive personal senses, that grasp neither the meaning northe magnitude of self-abnegation, may lose sight thereof;but Science voices unselfish love, unfolds infinite good,leads on irresistible forces, and will finally show the fruits [15]of Love. Human reason is inaccurate; and the scopeof the senses is inadequate to grasp the word of Truth,and teach the eternal.Science speaks when the senses are silent, and thenthe evermore of Truth is triumphant. The spiritual mon- [20]itor understood is coincidence of the divine with thehuman, the acme of Christian Science. Pure humanity,friendship, home, the interchange of love, bring to eartha foretaste of heaven. They unite terrestrial and celes-tial joys, and crown them with blessings infinite. [25]The Christian Scientist loves man more because heloves God most. He understands this Principle,—Love.Who is sufficient for these things? Who remembers thatpatience, forgiveness, abiding faith, and affection, arethe symptoms by which our Father indicates the dif- [30]ferent stages of man's recovery from sin and his en-trance into Science? Who knows how the feeble lips[pg 101]are made eloquent, how hearts are inspired, how heal- [1]ing becomes spontaneous, and how the divine Mind isunderstood and demonstrated? He alone knows thesewonders who is departing from the thraldom of thesenses and accepting spiritual truth,—that which blesses [5]its adoption by the refinement of joy and the dismissal ofsorrow.Christian Science and the senses are at war. It is arevolutionary struggle. We already have had two inthis nation; and they began and ended in a contest for [10]the true idea, for human liberty and rights. Now cometha third struggle; for the freedom of health, holiness, andthe attainment of heaven.The scientific sense of being which establishes har-mony, enters into no compromise with finiteness and [15]feebleness. It undermines the foundations of mortality,of physical law, breaks their chains, and sets the captivefree, 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 saithto man,“God hath all-power.”[20]The Science of omnipotence demonstrates but onepower, and this power is good, not evil; not matter,but Mind. This virtually destroys matter and evil, in-cluding sin and disease. [25]If God is All, and God is good, it follows that allmust be good; and no other power, law, or intelligencecan exist. On this proof rest premise and conclusion inScience, and the facts that disprove the evidence of thesenses. [30]God is individual Mind. This one Mind and Hisindividuality comprise the elements of all forms and[pg 102]individualities, and prophesy the nature and stature of [1]Christ, the ideal man.A corporeal God, as often defined by lexicographersand scholastic theologians, is only an infinite finite being,an unlimited man,—a theory to me inconceivable. If [5]the unlimited and immortal Mind could originate in alimited body, Mind would be chained to finity, and theinfinite forever finite.In this limited and lower sense God is not personal.His infinity precludes the possibility of corporeal person- [10]ality. His being is individual, but not physical.God is like Himself and like nothing else. He is uni-versal and primitive. His character admits of no degreesof comparison. God is not part, but the whole. In Hisindividuality I recognize the loving, divine Father-Mother [15]God. Infinite personality must be incorporeal.God's ways are not ours. His pity is expressed inmodes above the human. His chastisements are themanifestations of Love. The sympathy of His eternalMind is fully expressed in divine Science, which blots [20]out all our iniquities and heals all our diseases. Humanpity often brings pain.Science supports harmony, denies suffering, and de-stroys it with the divinity of Truth. Whatever seems mate-rial, seems thus only to the material senses, and is but the [25]subjective state of mortal and material thought.Science has inaugurated the irrepressible conflict be-tween sense and Soul. Mortal thought wars with thissense as one that beateth the air, but Science outmastersit, and ends the warfare. This proves daily that“one[30]on God's side is a majority.”Science definesomnipresenceas universality, that which[pg 103]precludes the presence of evil. This verity annuls the tes- [1]timony of the senses, which say that sin is an evil power,and substance is perishable. Intelligent Spirit, Soul, issubstance, far more impregnable and solid than matter; forone is temporal, while the other is eternal, the ultimate [5]and predicate of being.Mortality, materiality, and destructive forces, such assin, disease, and death, mortals virtually namesubstance;but these are the substance of thingsnothoped for. Forlack of knowing what substance is, the senses say vaguely: [10]“The substance of life is sorrow and mortality; for whoknoweth the substance of good?”In Science, form andindividuality are never lost, thoughts are outlined, indi-vidualized ideas, which dwell forever in the divine Mindas tangible, true substance, because eternally conscious. [15]Unlike mortal mind, which must be ever in bondage,the eternal Mind is free, unlimited, and knows not thetemporal.Neither does the temporal know the eternal. Mortalman, as mind or matter, is neither the pattern nor Maker [20]of immortal man. Any inference of the divine derivedfrom the human, either as mind or body, hides the actualpower, presence, and individuality of God.Jesus' personality in the flesh, so far as material sensecould discern it, was like that of other men; but Science [25]exchanges this human concept of Jesus for the divineideal, 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, infiniteTruth and Love. The individuality is embraced in Mind, [30]therefore is forever with the Father. Hence the Scrip-ture,“I am a God at hand, saith the Lord.”Even while[pg 104]his personality was on earth and in anguish, his individual [1]being, the Christ, was at rest in the eternal harmony.His unseen individuality, so superior to that which wasseen, was not subject to the temptations of the flesh, tolaws material, to death, or the grave. Formed and gov- [5]erned by God, this individuality was safe in the substanceof Soul, the substance of Spirit,—yea, the substance ofGod, the one inclusive good.In Science all being is individual; for individuality isendless in the calculus of forms and numbers. Herein [10]sin is miraculous and supernatural; for it is not in thenature of God, and good is forever good. Accord-ing to Christian Science, perfection is normal,—notmiraculous. Clothed, and in its right Mind, man'sindividuality is sinless, deathless, harmonious, eternal. [15]His materiality, clad in a false mentality, wages feeblefight with his individuality,—his physical senses withhis spiritual senses. The latter move in God's groovesof Science: the former revolve in their own orbits, andmust stand the friction of false selfhood until self- [20]destroyed.In obedience to the divine nature, man's individualityreflects the divine law and order of being. How shallwe reach our true selves? Through Love. The Prin-ciple of Christian Science is Love, and its idea represents [25]Love. This divine Principle and idea are demonstrated,in healing, to be God and the real man.Who wants to be mortal, or would not gain the trueideal of Life and recover his own individuality? I willlove, if another hates. I will gain a balance on the side of [30]good, my true being. This alone gives me the forces ofGod wherewith to overcome all error. On this rests the[pg 105]implicit faith engendered by Christian Science, which [1]appeals intelligently to the facts of man's spirituality, in-dividuality, to disdain the fears and destroy the discordsof this material personality.On our Master's individual demonstrations over sin, [5]sickness, and death, rested the anathema of priesthoodand the senses; yet this demonstration is the foundationof Christian Science. His physical sufferings, whichcame from the testimony of the senses, were over whenhe resumed his individual spiritual being, after showing [10]us the way to escape from the material body.Science would have no conflict with Life or commonsense, if this sense were consistently sensible. Man's reallife or existence is in harmony with Life and its gloriousphenomena. It upholds being, and destroys the too [15]common sense of its opposites—death, disease, and sin.Christian Science is an everlasting victor, and vanquish-ment is unknown to the omnipresent Truth. I must everfollow this line of light and battle.Christian Science is my only ideal; and the individual [20]and his ideal can never be severed. If either is misunder-stood or maligned, it eclipses the other with the shadowcast by this error.Truth destroys error. Nothing appears to the physi-cal senses but their own subjective state of thought. The [25]senses join issue with error, and pity what has no righteither to be pitied or to exist, and what does not exist inScience. Destroy the thought of sin, sickness, death, andyou destroy their existence.“Whatsoever a man soweth,that shall he also reap.”[30]Because God is Mind, and this Mind is good, allis good and all is Mind. God is the sum total of the[pg 106]universe. Then what and where are sin, sickness, and [1]death?Christian Science and Christian Scientists will,must,have a history; and if I could write the history in poorparody on Tennyson's grand verse, it would read [5]thus:—Traitors to right of them,M. D.'s to left of them,Priestcraft in front of them,Volleyed and thundered! [10]Into the jaws of hate,Out through the door of Love,On to the blest above,Marched the one hundred.Extract From My First Address In The Mother Church, May 26, 1895Friends and Brethren:—Your Sunday Lesson, com-posed of Scripture and its correlative in“Science andHealth with Key to the Scriptures,”has fed you. In addi- [20]tion, I can only bring crumbs fallen from this table ofTruth, and gather up the fragments.It has long been a question of earnest import, Howshall mankind worship the most adorable, but mostunadored,—and where shall begin that praise that shallnever end? Beneath, above, beyond, methinks I hear [25]the soft, sweet sigh of angels answering,“So live, thatyour lives attest your sincerity and resound His praise.”Music is the harmony of being; but the music of Soulaffords the only strains that thrill the chords of feelingand awaken the heart's harpstrings. Moved by mind, [30]your many-throated organ, in imitative tones of many[pg 107]instruments, praises Him; but even the sweetness and [1]beauty in and of this temple that praise Him, are earth'saccents, and must not be mistaken for the oracles of God.Art must not prevail over Science. Christianity is notsuperfluous. Its redemptive power is seen in sore trials, [5]self-denials, and crucifixions of the flesh. But these cometo the rescue of mortals, to admonish them, and plantthe feet steadfastly in Christ. As we rise above the seem-ing mists of sense, we behold more clearly that all theheart's homage belongs to God. [10]More love is the great need of mankind. A pure af-fection, concentric, forgetting self, forgiving wrongs andforestalling them, should swell the lyre of human love.Three cardinal points must be gained before poorhumanity is regenerated and Christian Science is dem- [15]onstrated: (1) A proper sense of sin; (2) repentance;(3) the understanding of good. Evil is a negation: itnever started with time, and it cannot keep pace witheternity. Mortals' false senses pass through three statesand stages of human consciousness before yielding error. [20]The deluded sense must first be shown its falsity througha knowledge of evil as evil, so-called. Without a senseof one's oft-repeated violations of divine law, the in-dividual may become morally blind, and this deplorablemental state is moral idiocy. The lack of seeing one's [25]deformed mentality, and ofrepentancetherefor, deep,never to be repented of, is retarding, and in certain mor-bid instances stopping, the growth of Christian Scientists.Without a knowledge of his sins, and repentance so severethat it destroys them, no person is or can be a Christian [30]Scientist.Mankind thinks either too much or too little of sin.[pg 108]The sensitive, sorrowing saint thinks too much of it: the [1]sordid sinner, or the so-called Christian asleep, thinks toolittle of sin.To allow sin of any sort is anomalous in ChristianScientists, claiming, as they do, that good is infinite, All. [5]Our Master, in his definition of Satan as a liar from thebeginning, attested the absolute powerlessness—yea,nothingness—of evil: since a lie, being without founda-tion in fact, is merely a falsity; spiritually, literally, itis nothing. [10]Not to know that a false claim is false, is to be in dangerof believing it; hence the utility of knowing evil aright,then reducing its claim to its proper denominator,—nobody and nothing. Sin should be conceived of onlyas a delusion. This true conception would remove mortals' [15]ignorance and its consequences, and advance the secondstage of human consciousness, repentance. The firststate, namely, the knowledge of one's self, the properknowledge of evil and its subtle workings wherein evilseems as real as good, is indispensable; since that which [20]is truly conceived of, we can handle; but the misconcep-tion of what we need to know of evil,—or the concep-tion of it at all as something real,—costs much. Sinneeds only to be known for what it is not; then we areits master, not servant. Remember, and act on, Jesus' [25]definition of sin as alie. This cognomen makes it lessdangerous; for most of us would not be seen believingin, or adhering to, that which we know to be untrue.What would be thought of a Christian Scientist who be-lieved in the use of drugs, while declaring that they have [30]no intrinsic quality and that there is no matter? Whatshould be thought of an individual believing in that[pg 109]which is untrue, and at the same time declaring the unity [1]of Truth, and its allness? Beware of those who mis-represent facts; or tacitly assent where they should dis-sent; or who take me as authority for what I disapprove,or mayhap never have thought of, and try to reverse, in- [5]vert, or controvert, Truth; for this is a sure pretext ofmoral defilement.Examine yourselves, and see what, and how much, sinclaims of you; and how much of this claim you admitas valid, or comply with. The knowledge of evil that [10]brings on repentance is the most hopeful stage of mortalmentality. Even a mild mistake must be seen as a mis-take, in order to be corrected; how much more, then,should one's sins be seen and repented of, before theycan be reduced to their native nothingness! [15]Ignorance is only blest by reason of its nothingness;for seeing the need of somethingness in its stead, blessesmortals. Ignorance was the first condition of sin in theallegory of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Theirmental state is not desirable, neither is a knowledge of [20]sin and its consequences, repentance,per se; but, ad-mitting the existence of both, mortals must hasten throughthe second to the third stage,—the knowledge of good;for without this the valuable sequence of knowledgewould be lacking,—even the power to escape from the [25]false claims of sin. To understand good, one must discernthe nothingness of evil, and consecrate one's life anew.Beloved brethren, Christ, Truth, saith unto you,“Benot afraid!”—fear not sin, lest thereby it master you;but onlyfear to sin. Watch and pray for self-knowledge; [30]since then, and thus, cometh repentance,—and yoursuperiority to a delusion is won.[pg 110]Repentance is better than sacrifice. The costly balm [1]of Araby, poured on our Master's feet, had not the valueof a singletear.Beloved children, the world has need of you,—andmore as children than as men and women: it needs your [5]innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, uncontami-nated lives. You need also to watch, and pray that youpreserve these virtues unstained, and lose them not throughcontact with the world. What grander ambition is therethan to maintain in yourselves what Jesus loved, and to [10]know that your example, more than words, makes moralsfor mankind!
Chapter IV. Addresses.Christian Science In Tremont Temple.From the platform of the Monday lectureship in [2]Tremont Temple, on Monday, March 16, 1885, aswill be seen by what follows. Reverend Mary Baker G.Eddy was presented to Mr. Cook's audience, and allowed [5]ten minutes in which to reply to his public letter con-demning her doctrines; which reply was taken in full bya shorthand reporter who was present, and is transcribedbelow.Mrs. Eddy responding, said:— [10]As the time so kindly allotted me is insufficient foreven a synopsis of Christian Science, I shall confine my-self to questions and answers.Am I a spiritualist?I am not, and never was. I understand the impossi- [15]bility of intercommunion between the so-called dead andliving. There have always attended my life phenomenaof an uncommon order, which spiritualists have mis-called mediumship; but I clearly understand that nohuman agencies were employed,—that the divine Mind [20]reveals itself to humanity through spiritual law. Andto such as are“waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemptionof our body,”Christian Science reveals the in-[pg 096]finitude of divinity and the way of man's salvation from [1]sickness and death, as wrought out by Jesus, who robbedthe grave of victory and death of its sting. I understandthat God is an ever-present help in all times of trouble,—have found Him so; and would have no other gods, no [5]remedies in drugs, no material medicine.Do I believe in a personal God?I believe in God as the Supreme Being. I know notwhat the person of omnipotence and omnipresence is,or what the infinite includes; therefore, I worship that [10]of which I can conceive, first, as a loving Father andMother; then, as thought ascends the scale of being todiviner consciousness, God becomes to me, as to theapostle who declared it,“God is Love,”—divine Prin-ciple,—which I worship; and“after the manner of my[15]fathers, so worship I God.”Do I believe in the atonement of Christ?I do; and this atonement becomes more to me sinceit includes man's redemption from sickness as well asfrom sin. I reverence and adore Christ as never before. [20]It brings to my sense, and to the sense of all who enter-tain this understanding of the Science of God, awholesalvation.How is the healing done in Christian Science?This answer includes too much to give you any con- [25]clusive idea in a brief explanation. I can name somemeans by which it is not done.It is not one mind acting upon another mind; it isnot the transference of human images of thought toother minds; it is not supported by the evidence before [30]the personal senses,—Science contradicts this evidence;it is not of the flesh, but of the Spirit. It is Christ come[pg 097]to destroy the power of the flesh; it is Truth over error; [1]that understood, gives man ability to rise above the evi-dence of the senses, take hold of the eternal energies ofTruth, and destroy mortal discord with immortal har-mony,—the grand verities of being. It is not one mortal [5]thought transmitted to another's thought from the humanmind that holds within itself all evil.Our Master said of one of his students,“He is a devil,”and repudiated the idea of casting out devils throughBeelzebub. Erring human mind is by no means a de- [10]sirable or efficacious healer. Such suppositional healingI deprecate. It is in no way allied to divine power. Allhuman control is animal magnetism, more despicablethan all other methods of treating disease.Christian Science is not a remedy of faith alone, but [15]combines faith with understanding, through which wemay touch the hem of His garment; and know that om-nipotence has all power.“I am the Lord, and there isnone else, there is no God beside me.”Is there a personal man? [20]The Scriptures inform us that man was made in theimage and likeness of God. I commend the Icelandictranslation:“He created man in the image and likenessof Mind, in the image and likeness of Mind createdHe him.”To my sense, we have not seen all of man; [25]he is more than personal sense can cognize, who is theimage and likeness of the infinite. I have not seen aperfect man in mind or body,—and such must be thepersonality of him who is the true likeness: the lostimage is not this personality, and corporeal man is this [30]lost image; hence, it doth not appear what is the realpersonality of man. The only cause for making this[pg 098]question of personality a point, or of any importance, is [1]that man's perfect model should be held in mind, wherebyto improve his present condition; that his contemplationregarding himself should turn away from inharmony, sick-ness, and sin, to that which is the image of his Maker. [5]Science And The Senses.Substance of my Address at the National Convention in Chicago,June 13, 1888The National Christian Scientist Association hasbrought us together to minister and to be ministered [10]unto; mutually to aid one another in finding ways andmeans for helping the whole human family; to quickenand extend the interest already felt in a higher mode ofmedicine; to watch with eager joy the individual growthof Christian Scientists, and the progress of our common [15]Cause in Chicago,—the miracle of the Occident. Wecome to strengthen and perpetuate our organizationsand institutions; and to find strength in union,—strengthto build up, through God's right hand, that pure andundefiled religion whose Science demonstrates God and [20]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-formers attest the authenticity of their mission, and callthe world to acknowledge its divine Principle. Truly [25]is it written:—“Thou must be true thyself, if thou the truth would'st teach;Thy heart must overflow, if thou another's heart would'st reach.”[pg 099]Science is absolute and final. It is revolutionary in [1]its very nature; for it upsets all that is not upright.It annuls false evidence, and saith to the five materialsenses,“Having eyes ye see not, and ears ye hear not;neither can you understand.”To weave one thread of [5]Science through the looms of time, is a miracle in itself.The risk is stupendous. It cost Galileo, what? Thisawful price: the temporary loss of his self-respect. Hisfear overcame his loyalty; the courage of his convictionsfell before it. Fear is the weapon in the hands of [10]tyrants.Men and women of the nineteenth century, are youcalled to voice a higher order of Science? Then obeythis call. Go, if you must, to the dungeon or the scaf-fold, but take not back the words of Truth. How many [15]are there ready to suffer for a righteous cause, to standa long siege, take the front rank, face the foe, and bein the battle every day?In no other one thing seemed Jesus of Nazareth moredivine than in his faith in the immortality of his words. [20]He said,“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but mywords shall not pass away;”and they have not. Thewinds of time sweep clean the centuries, but they cannever bear into oblivion his words. They still live, andto-morrow speak louder than to-day. They are to-day [25]as the voice of one crying in the wilderness,“Makestraight 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 castingout evils and healing the sick; and it is whispered,“This[30]is Science.”Jesus taught by the wayside, in humble homes. He[pg 100]spake of Truth and Love to artless listeners and dull [1]disciples. His immortal words were articulated in adecaying language, and then left to the providence ofGod. Christian Science was to interpret them; andwoman,“last at the cross,”was to awaken the dull senses, [5]intoxicated with pleasure or pain, to the infinite meaningof those words.Past, present, future, will show the word and might ofTruth—healing the sick and reclaiming the sinner—so long as there remains a claim of error for Truth to [10]deny or to destroy. Love's labors are not lost. Thefive personal senses, that grasp neither the meaning northe magnitude of self-abnegation, may lose sight thereof;but Science voices unselfish love, unfolds infinite good,leads on irresistible forces, and will finally show the fruits [15]of Love. Human reason is inaccurate; and the scopeof the senses is inadequate to grasp the word of Truth,and teach the eternal.Science speaks when the senses are silent, and thenthe evermore of Truth is triumphant. The spiritual mon- [20]itor understood is coincidence of the divine with thehuman, the acme of Christian Science. Pure humanity,friendship, home, the interchange of love, bring to eartha foretaste of heaven. They unite terrestrial and celes-tial joys, and crown them with blessings infinite. [25]The Christian Scientist loves man more because heloves God most. He understands this Principle,—Love.Who is sufficient for these things? Who remembers thatpatience, forgiveness, abiding faith, and affection, arethe symptoms by which our Father indicates the dif- [30]ferent stages of man's recovery from sin and his en-trance into Science? Who knows how the feeble lips[pg 101]are made eloquent, how hearts are inspired, how heal- [1]ing becomes spontaneous, and how the divine Mind isunderstood and demonstrated? He alone knows thesewonders who is departing from the thraldom of thesenses and accepting spiritual truth,—that which blesses [5]its adoption by the refinement of joy and the dismissal ofsorrow.Christian Science and the senses are at war. It is arevolutionary struggle. We already have had two inthis nation; and they began and ended in a contest for [10]the true idea, for human liberty and rights. Now cometha third struggle; for the freedom of health, holiness, andthe attainment of heaven.The scientific sense of being which establishes har-mony, enters into no compromise with finiteness and [15]feebleness. It undermines the foundations of mortality,of physical law, breaks their chains, and sets the captivefree, 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 saithto man,“God hath all-power.”[20]The Science of omnipotence demonstrates but onepower, and this power is good, not evil; not matter,but Mind. This virtually destroys matter and evil, in-cluding sin and disease. [25]If God is All, and God is good, it follows that allmust be good; and no other power, law, or intelligencecan exist. On this proof rest premise and conclusion inScience, and the facts that disprove the evidence of thesenses. [30]God is individual Mind. This one Mind and Hisindividuality comprise the elements of all forms and[pg 102]individualities, and prophesy the nature and stature of [1]Christ, the ideal man.A corporeal God, as often defined by lexicographersand scholastic theologians, is only an infinite finite being,an unlimited man,—a theory to me inconceivable. If [5]the unlimited and immortal Mind could originate in alimited body, Mind would be chained to finity, and theinfinite forever finite.In this limited and lower sense God is not personal.His infinity precludes the possibility of corporeal person- [10]ality. His being is individual, but not physical.God is like Himself and like nothing else. He is uni-versal and primitive. His character admits of no degreesof comparison. God is not part, but the whole. In Hisindividuality I recognize the loving, divine Father-Mother [15]God. Infinite personality must be incorporeal.God's ways are not ours. His pity is expressed inmodes above the human. His chastisements are themanifestations of Love. The sympathy of His eternalMind is fully expressed in divine Science, which blots [20]out all our iniquities and heals all our diseases. Humanpity often brings pain.Science supports harmony, denies suffering, and de-stroys it with the divinity of Truth. Whatever seems mate-rial, seems thus only to the material senses, and is but the [25]subjective state of mortal and material thought.Science has inaugurated the irrepressible conflict be-tween sense and Soul. Mortal thought wars with thissense as one that beateth the air, but Science outmastersit, and ends the warfare. This proves daily that“one[30]on God's side is a majority.”Science definesomnipresenceas universality, that which[pg 103]precludes the presence of evil. This verity annuls the tes- [1]timony of the senses, which say that sin is an evil power,and substance is perishable. Intelligent Spirit, Soul, issubstance, far more impregnable and solid than matter; forone is temporal, while the other is eternal, the ultimate [5]and predicate of being.Mortality, materiality, and destructive forces, such assin, disease, and death, mortals virtually namesubstance;but these are the substance of thingsnothoped for. Forlack of knowing what substance is, the senses say vaguely: [10]“The substance of life is sorrow and mortality; for whoknoweth the substance of good?”In Science, form andindividuality are never lost, thoughts are outlined, indi-vidualized ideas, which dwell forever in the divine Mindas tangible, true substance, because eternally conscious. [15]Unlike mortal mind, which must be ever in bondage,the eternal Mind is free, unlimited, and knows not thetemporal.Neither does the temporal know the eternal. Mortalman, as mind or matter, is neither the pattern nor Maker [20]of immortal man. Any inference of the divine derivedfrom the human, either as mind or body, hides the actualpower, presence, and individuality of God.Jesus' personality in the flesh, so far as material sensecould discern it, was like that of other men; but Science [25]exchanges this human concept of Jesus for the divineideal, 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, infiniteTruth and Love. The individuality is embraced in Mind, [30]therefore is forever with the Father. Hence the Scrip-ture,“I am a God at hand, saith the Lord.”Even while[pg 104]his personality was on earth and in anguish, his individual [1]being, the Christ, was at rest in the eternal harmony.His unseen individuality, so superior to that which wasseen, was not subject to the temptations of the flesh, tolaws material, to death, or the grave. Formed and gov- [5]erned by God, this individuality was safe in the substanceof Soul, the substance of Spirit,—yea, the substance ofGod, the one inclusive good.In Science all being is individual; for individuality isendless in the calculus of forms and numbers. Herein [10]sin is miraculous and supernatural; for it is not in thenature of God, and good is forever good. Accord-ing to Christian Science, perfection is normal,—notmiraculous. Clothed, and in its right Mind, man'sindividuality is sinless, deathless, harmonious, eternal. [15]His materiality, clad in a false mentality, wages feeblefight with his individuality,—his physical senses withhis spiritual senses. The latter move in God's groovesof Science: the former revolve in their own orbits, andmust stand the friction of false selfhood until self- [20]destroyed.In obedience to the divine nature, man's individualityreflects the divine law and order of being. How shallwe reach our true selves? Through Love. The Prin-ciple of Christian Science is Love, and its idea represents [25]Love. This divine Principle and idea are demonstrated,in healing, to be God and the real man.Who wants to be mortal, or would not gain the trueideal of Life and recover his own individuality? I willlove, if another hates. I will gain a balance on the side of [30]good, my true being. This alone gives me the forces ofGod wherewith to overcome all error. On this rests the[pg 105]implicit faith engendered by Christian Science, which [1]appeals intelligently to the facts of man's spirituality, in-dividuality, to disdain the fears and destroy the discordsof this material personality.On our Master's individual demonstrations over sin, [5]sickness, and death, rested the anathema of priesthoodand the senses; yet this demonstration is the foundationof Christian Science. His physical sufferings, whichcame from the testimony of the senses, were over whenhe resumed his individual spiritual being, after showing [10]us the way to escape from the material body.Science would have no conflict with Life or commonsense, if this sense were consistently sensible. Man's reallife or existence is in harmony with Life and its gloriousphenomena. It upholds being, and destroys the too [15]common sense of its opposites—death, disease, and sin.Christian Science is an everlasting victor, and vanquish-ment is unknown to the omnipresent Truth. I must everfollow this line of light and battle.Christian Science is my only ideal; and the individual [20]and his ideal can never be severed. If either is misunder-stood or maligned, it eclipses the other with the shadowcast by this error.Truth destroys error. Nothing appears to the physi-cal senses but their own subjective state of thought. The [25]senses join issue with error, and pity what has no righteither to be pitied or to exist, and what does not exist inScience. Destroy the thought of sin, sickness, death, andyou destroy their existence.“Whatsoever a man soweth,that shall he also reap.”[30]Because God is Mind, and this Mind is good, allis good and all is Mind. God is the sum total of the[pg 106]universe. Then what and where are sin, sickness, and [1]death?Christian Science and Christian Scientists will,must,have a history; and if I could write the history in poorparody on Tennyson's grand verse, it would read [5]thus:—Traitors to right of them,M. D.'s to left of them,Priestcraft in front of them,Volleyed and thundered! [10]Into the jaws of hate,Out through the door of Love,On to the blest above,Marched the one hundred.Extract From My First Address In The Mother Church, May 26, 1895Friends and Brethren:—Your Sunday Lesson, com-posed of Scripture and its correlative in“Science andHealth with Key to the Scriptures,”has fed you. In addi- [20]tion, I can only bring crumbs fallen from this table ofTruth, and gather up the fragments.It has long been a question of earnest import, Howshall mankind worship the most adorable, but mostunadored,—and where shall begin that praise that shallnever end? Beneath, above, beyond, methinks I hear [25]the soft, sweet sigh of angels answering,“So live, thatyour lives attest your sincerity and resound His praise.”Music is the harmony of being; but the music of Soulaffords the only strains that thrill the chords of feelingand awaken the heart's harpstrings. Moved by mind, [30]your many-throated organ, in imitative tones of many[pg 107]instruments, praises Him; but even the sweetness and [1]beauty in and of this temple that praise Him, are earth'saccents, and must not be mistaken for the oracles of God.Art must not prevail over Science. Christianity is notsuperfluous. Its redemptive power is seen in sore trials, [5]self-denials, and crucifixions of the flesh. But these cometo the rescue of mortals, to admonish them, and plantthe feet steadfastly in Christ. As we rise above the seem-ing mists of sense, we behold more clearly that all theheart's homage belongs to God. [10]More love is the great need of mankind. A pure af-fection, concentric, forgetting self, forgiving wrongs andforestalling them, should swell the lyre of human love.Three cardinal points must be gained before poorhumanity is regenerated and Christian Science is dem- [15]onstrated: (1) A proper sense of sin; (2) repentance;(3) the understanding of good. Evil is a negation: itnever started with time, and it cannot keep pace witheternity. Mortals' false senses pass through three statesand stages of human consciousness before yielding error. [20]The deluded sense must first be shown its falsity througha knowledge of evil as evil, so-called. Without a senseof one's oft-repeated violations of divine law, the in-dividual may become morally blind, and this deplorablemental state is moral idiocy. The lack of seeing one's [25]deformed mentality, and ofrepentancetherefor, deep,never to be repented of, is retarding, and in certain mor-bid instances stopping, the growth of Christian Scientists.Without a knowledge of his sins, and repentance so severethat it destroys them, no person is or can be a Christian [30]Scientist.Mankind thinks either too much or too little of sin.[pg 108]The sensitive, sorrowing saint thinks too much of it: the [1]sordid sinner, or the so-called Christian asleep, thinks toolittle of sin.To allow sin of any sort is anomalous in ChristianScientists, claiming, as they do, that good is infinite, All. [5]Our Master, in his definition of Satan as a liar from thebeginning, attested the absolute powerlessness—yea,nothingness—of evil: since a lie, being without founda-tion in fact, is merely a falsity; spiritually, literally, itis nothing. [10]Not to know that a false claim is false, is to be in dangerof believing it; hence the utility of knowing evil aright,then reducing its claim to its proper denominator,—nobody and nothing. Sin should be conceived of onlyas a delusion. This true conception would remove mortals' [15]ignorance and its consequences, and advance the secondstage of human consciousness, repentance. The firststate, namely, the knowledge of one's self, the properknowledge of evil and its subtle workings wherein evilseems as real as good, is indispensable; since that which [20]is truly conceived of, we can handle; but the misconcep-tion of what we need to know of evil,—or the concep-tion of it at all as something real,—costs much. Sinneeds only to be known for what it is not; then we areits master, not servant. Remember, and act on, Jesus' [25]definition of sin as alie. This cognomen makes it lessdangerous; for most of us would not be seen believingin, or adhering to, that which we know to be untrue.What would be thought of a Christian Scientist who be-lieved in the use of drugs, while declaring that they have [30]no intrinsic quality and that there is no matter? Whatshould be thought of an individual believing in that[pg 109]which is untrue, and at the same time declaring the unity [1]of Truth, and its allness? Beware of those who mis-represent facts; or tacitly assent where they should dis-sent; or who take me as authority for what I disapprove,or mayhap never have thought of, and try to reverse, in- [5]vert, or controvert, Truth; for this is a sure pretext ofmoral defilement.Examine yourselves, and see what, and how much, sinclaims of you; and how much of this claim you admitas valid, or comply with. The knowledge of evil that [10]brings on repentance is the most hopeful stage of mortalmentality. Even a mild mistake must be seen as a mis-take, in order to be corrected; how much more, then,should one's sins be seen and repented of, before theycan be reduced to their native nothingness! [15]Ignorance is only blest by reason of its nothingness;for seeing the need of somethingness in its stead, blessesmortals. Ignorance was the first condition of sin in theallegory of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Theirmental state is not desirable, neither is a knowledge of [20]sin and its consequences, repentance,per se; but, ad-mitting the existence of both, mortals must hasten throughthe second to the third stage,—the knowledge of good;for without this the valuable sequence of knowledgewould be lacking,—even the power to escape from the [25]false claims of sin. To understand good, one must discernthe nothingness of evil, and consecrate one's life anew.Beloved brethren, Christ, Truth, saith unto you,“Benot afraid!”—fear not sin, lest thereby it master you;but onlyfear to sin. Watch and pray for self-knowledge; [30]since then, and thus, cometh repentance,—and yoursuperiority to a delusion is won.[pg 110]Repentance is better than sacrifice. The costly balm [1]of Araby, poured on our Master's feet, had not the valueof a singletear.Beloved children, the world has need of you,—andmore as children than as men and women: it needs your [5]innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, uncontami-nated lives. You need also to watch, and pray that youpreserve these virtues unstained, and lose them not throughcontact with the world. What grander ambition is therethan to maintain in yourselves what Jesus loved, and to [10]know that your example, more than words, makes moralsfor mankind!
Chapter IV. Addresses.Christian Science In Tremont Temple.From the platform of the Monday lectureship in [2]Tremont Temple, on Monday, March 16, 1885, aswill be seen by what follows. Reverend Mary Baker G.Eddy was presented to Mr. Cook's audience, and allowed [5]ten minutes in which to reply to his public letter con-demning her doctrines; which reply was taken in full bya shorthand reporter who was present, and is transcribedbelow.Mrs. Eddy responding, said:— [10]As the time so kindly allotted me is insufficient foreven a synopsis of Christian Science, I shall confine my-self to questions and answers.Am I a spiritualist?I am not, and never was. I understand the impossi- [15]bility of intercommunion between the so-called dead andliving. There have always attended my life phenomenaof an uncommon order, which spiritualists have mis-called mediumship; but I clearly understand that nohuman agencies were employed,—that the divine Mind [20]reveals itself to humanity through spiritual law. Andto such as are“waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemptionof our body,”Christian Science reveals the in-[pg 096]finitude of divinity and the way of man's salvation from [1]sickness and death, as wrought out by Jesus, who robbedthe grave of victory and death of its sting. I understandthat God is an ever-present help in all times of trouble,—have found Him so; and would have no other gods, no [5]remedies in drugs, no material medicine.Do I believe in a personal God?I believe in God as the Supreme Being. I know notwhat the person of omnipotence and omnipresence is,or what the infinite includes; therefore, I worship that [10]of which I can conceive, first, as a loving Father andMother; then, as thought ascends the scale of being todiviner consciousness, God becomes to me, as to theapostle who declared it,“God is Love,”—divine Prin-ciple,—which I worship; and“after the manner of my[15]fathers, so worship I God.”Do I believe in the atonement of Christ?I do; and this atonement becomes more to me sinceit includes man's redemption from sickness as well asfrom sin. I reverence and adore Christ as never before. [20]It brings to my sense, and to the sense of all who enter-tain this understanding of the Science of God, awholesalvation.How is the healing done in Christian Science?This answer includes too much to give you any con- [25]clusive idea in a brief explanation. I can name somemeans by which it is not done.It is not one mind acting upon another mind; it isnot the transference of human images of thought toother minds; it is not supported by the evidence before [30]the personal senses,—Science contradicts this evidence;it is not of the flesh, but of the Spirit. It is Christ come[pg 097]to destroy the power of the flesh; it is Truth over error; [1]that understood, gives man ability to rise above the evi-dence of the senses, take hold of the eternal energies ofTruth, and destroy mortal discord with immortal har-mony,—the grand verities of being. It is not one mortal [5]thought transmitted to another's thought from the humanmind that holds within itself all evil.Our Master said of one of his students,“He is a devil,”and repudiated the idea of casting out devils throughBeelzebub. Erring human mind is by no means a de- [10]sirable or efficacious healer. Such suppositional healingI deprecate. It is in no way allied to divine power. Allhuman control is animal magnetism, more despicablethan all other methods of treating disease.Christian Science is not a remedy of faith alone, but [15]combines faith with understanding, through which wemay touch the hem of His garment; and know that om-nipotence has all power.“I am the Lord, and there isnone else, there is no God beside me.”Is there a personal man? [20]The Scriptures inform us that man was made in theimage and likeness of God. I commend the Icelandictranslation:“He created man in the image and likenessof Mind, in the image and likeness of Mind createdHe him.”To my sense, we have not seen all of man; [25]he is more than personal sense can cognize, who is theimage and likeness of the infinite. I have not seen aperfect man in mind or body,—and such must be thepersonality of him who is the true likeness: the lostimage is not this personality, and corporeal man is this [30]lost image; hence, it doth not appear what is the realpersonality of man. The only cause for making this[pg 098]question of personality a point, or of any importance, is [1]that man's perfect model should be held in mind, wherebyto improve his present condition; that his contemplationregarding himself should turn away from inharmony, sick-ness, and sin, to that which is the image of his Maker. [5]Science And The Senses.Substance of my Address at the National Convention in Chicago,June 13, 1888The National Christian Scientist Association hasbrought us together to minister and to be ministered [10]unto; mutually to aid one another in finding ways andmeans for helping the whole human family; to quickenand extend the interest already felt in a higher mode ofmedicine; to watch with eager joy the individual growthof Christian Scientists, and the progress of our common [15]Cause in Chicago,—the miracle of the Occident. Wecome to strengthen and perpetuate our organizationsand institutions; and to find strength in union,—strengthto build up, through God's right hand, that pure andundefiled religion whose Science demonstrates God and [20]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-formers attest the authenticity of their mission, and callthe world to acknowledge its divine Principle. Truly [25]is it written:—“Thou must be true thyself, if thou the truth would'st teach;Thy heart must overflow, if thou another's heart would'st reach.”[pg 099]Science is absolute and final. It is revolutionary in [1]its very nature; for it upsets all that is not upright.It annuls false evidence, and saith to the five materialsenses,“Having eyes ye see not, and ears ye hear not;neither can you understand.”To weave one thread of [5]Science through the looms of time, is a miracle in itself.The risk is stupendous. It cost Galileo, what? Thisawful price: the temporary loss of his self-respect. Hisfear overcame his loyalty; the courage of his convictionsfell before it. Fear is the weapon in the hands of [10]tyrants.Men and women of the nineteenth century, are youcalled to voice a higher order of Science? Then obeythis call. Go, if you must, to the dungeon or the scaf-fold, but take not back the words of Truth. How many [15]are there ready to suffer for a righteous cause, to standa long siege, take the front rank, face the foe, and bein the battle every day?In no other one thing seemed Jesus of Nazareth moredivine than in his faith in the immortality of his words. [20]He said,“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but mywords shall not pass away;”and they have not. Thewinds of time sweep clean the centuries, but they cannever bear into oblivion his words. They still live, andto-morrow speak louder than to-day. They are to-day [25]as the voice of one crying in the wilderness,“Makestraight 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 castingout evils and healing the sick; and it is whispered,“This[30]is Science.”Jesus taught by the wayside, in humble homes. He[pg 100]spake of Truth and Love to artless listeners and dull [1]disciples. His immortal words were articulated in adecaying language, and then left to the providence ofGod. Christian Science was to interpret them; andwoman,“last at the cross,”was to awaken the dull senses, [5]intoxicated with pleasure or pain, to the infinite meaningof those words.Past, present, future, will show the word and might ofTruth—healing the sick and reclaiming the sinner—so long as there remains a claim of error for Truth to [10]deny or to destroy. Love's labors are not lost. Thefive personal senses, that grasp neither the meaning northe magnitude of self-abnegation, may lose sight thereof;but Science voices unselfish love, unfolds infinite good,leads on irresistible forces, and will finally show the fruits [15]of Love. Human reason is inaccurate; and the scopeof the senses is inadequate to grasp the word of Truth,and teach the eternal.Science speaks when the senses are silent, and thenthe evermore of Truth is triumphant. The spiritual mon- [20]itor understood is coincidence of the divine with thehuman, the acme of Christian Science. Pure humanity,friendship, home, the interchange of love, bring to eartha foretaste of heaven. They unite terrestrial and celes-tial joys, and crown them with blessings infinite. [25]The Christian Scientist loves man more because heloves God most. He understands this Principle,—Love.Who is sufficient for these things? Who remembers thatpatience, forgiveness, abiding faith, and affection, arethe symptoms by which our Father indicates the dif- [30]ferent stages of man's recovery from sin and his en-trance into Science? Who knows how the feeble lips[pg 101]are made eloquent, how hearts are inspired, how heal- [1]ing becomes spontaneous, and how the divine Mind isunderstood and demonstrated? He alone knows thesewonders who is departing from the thraldom of thesenses and accepting spiritual truth,—that which blesses [5]its adoption by the refinement of joy and the dismissal ofsorrow.Christian Science and the senses are at war. It is arevolutionary struggle. We already have had two inthis nation; and they began and ended in a contest for [10]the true idea, for human liberty and rights. Now cometha third struggle; for the freedom of health, holiness, andthe attainment of heaven.The scientific sense of being which establishes har-mony, enters into no compromise with finiteness and [15]feebleness. It undermines the foundations of mortality,of physical law, breaks their chains, and sets the captivefree, 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 saithto man,“God hath all-power.”[20]The Science of omnipotence demonstrates but onepower, and this power is good, not evil; not matter,but Mind. This virtually destroys matter and evil, in-cluding sin and disease. [25]If God is All, and God is good, it follows that allmust be good; and no other power, law, or intelligencecan exist. On this proof rest premise and conclusion inScience, and the facts that disprove the evidence of thesenses. [30]God is individual Mind. This one Mind and Hisindividuality comprise the elements of all forms and[pg 102]individualities, and prophesy the nature and stature of [1]Christ, the ideal man.A corporeal God, as often defined by lexicographersand scholastic theologians, is only an infinite finite being,an unlimited man,—a theory to me inconceivable. If [5]the unlimited and immortal Mind could originate in alimited body, Mind would be chained to finity, and theinfinite forever finite.In this limited and lower sense God is not personal.His infinity precludes the possibility of corporeal person- [10]ality. His being is individual, but not physical.God is like Himself and like nothing else. He is uni-versal and primitive. His character admits of no degreesof comparison. God is not part, but the whole. In Hisindividuality I recognize the loving, divine Father-Mother [15]God. Infinite personality must be incorporeal.God's ways are not ours. His pity is expressed inmodes above the human. His chastisements are themanifestations of Love. The sympathy of His eternalMind is fully expressed in divine Science, which blots [20]out all our iniquities and heals all our diseases. Humanpity often brings pain.Science supports harmony, denies suffering, and de-stroys it with the divinity of Truth. Whatever seems mate-rial, seems thus only to the material senses, and is but the [25]subjective state of mortal and material thought.Science has inaugurated the irrepressible conflict be-tween sense and Soul. Mortal thought wars with thissense as one that beateth the air, but Science outmastersit, and ends the warfare. This proves daily that“one[30]on God's side is a majority.”Science definesomnipresenceas universality, that which[pg 103]precludes the presence of evil. This verity annuls the tes- [1]timony of the senses, which say that sin is an evil power,and substance is perishable. Intelligent Spirit, Soul, issubstance, far more impregnable and solid than matter; forone is temporal, while the other is eternal, the ultimate [5]and predicate of being.Mortality, materiality, and destructive forces, such assin, disease, and death, mortals virtually namesubstance;but these are the substance of thingsnothoped for. Forlack of knowing what substance is, the senses say vaguely: [10]“The substance of life is sorrow and mortality; for whoknoweth the substance of good?”In Science, form andindividuality are never lost, thoughts are outlined, indi-vidualized ideas, which dwell forever in the divine Mindas tangible, true substance, because eternally conscious. [15]Unlike mortal mind, which must be ever in bondage,the eternal Mind is free, unlimited, and knows not thetemporal.Neither does the temporal know the eternal. Mortalman, as mind or matter, is neither the pattern nor Maker [20]of immortal man. Any inference of the divine derivedfrom the human, either as mind or body, hides the actualpower, presence, and individuality of God.Jesus' personality in the flesh, so far as material sensecould discern it, was like that of other men; but Science [25]exchanges this human concept of Jesus for the divineideal, 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, infiniteTruth and Love. The individuality is embraced in Mind, [30]therefore is forever with the Father. Hence the Scrip-ture,“I am a God at hand, saith the Lord.”Even while[pg 104]his personality was on earth and in anguish, his individual [1]being, the Christ, was at rest in the eternal harmony.His unseen individuality, so superior to that which wasseen, was not subject to the temptations of the flesh, tolaws material, to death, or the grave. Formed and gov- [5]erned by God, this individuality was safe in the substanceof Soul, the substance of Spirit,—yea, the substance ofGod, the one inclusive good.In Science all being is individual; for individuality isendless in the calculus of forms and numbers. Herein [10]sin is miraculous and supernatural; for it is not in thenature of God, and good is forever good. Accord-ing to Christian Science, perfection is normal,—notmiraculous. Clothed, and in its right Mind, man'sindividuality is sinless, deathless, harmonious, eternal. [15]His materiality, clad in a false mentality, wages feeblefight with his individuality,—his physical senses withhis spiritual senses. The latter move in God's groovesof Science: the former revolve in their own orbits, andmust stand the friction of false selfhood until self- [20]destroyed.In obedience to the divine nature, man's individualityreflects the divine law and order of being. How shallwe reach our true selves? Through Love. The Prin-ciple of Christian Science is Love, and its idea represents [25]Love. This divine Principle and idea are demonstrated,in healing, to be God and the real man.Who wants to be mortal, or would not gain the trueideal of Life and recover his own individuality? I willlove, if another hates. I will gain a balance on the side of [30]good, my true being. This alone gives me the forces ofGod wherewith to overcome all error. On this rests the[pg 105]implicit faith engendered by Christian Science, which [1]appeals intelligently to the facts of man's spirituality, in-dividuality, to disdain the fears and destroy the discordsof this material personality.On our Master's individual demonstrations over sin, [5]sickness, and death, rested the anathema of priesthoodand the senses; yet this demonstration is the foundationof Christian Science. His physical sufferings, whichcame from the testimony of the senses, were over whenhe resumed his individual spiritual being, after showing [10]us the way to escape from the material body.Science would have no conflict with Life or commonsense, if this sense were consistently sensible. Man's reallife or existence is in harmony with Life and its gloriousphenomena. It upholds being, and destroys the too [15]common sense of its opposites—death, disease, and sin.Christian Science is an everlasting victor, and vanquish-ment is unknown to the omnipresent Truth. I must everfollow this line of light and battle.Christian Science is my only ideal; and the individual [20]and his ideal can never be severed. If either is misunder-stood or maligned, it eclipses the other with the shadowcast by this error.Truth destroys error. Nothing appears to the physi-cal senses but their own subjective state of thought. The [25]senses join issue with error, and pity what has no righteither to be pitied or to exist, and what does not exist inScience. Destroy the thought of sin, sickness, death, andyou destroy their existence.“Whatsoever a man soweth,that shall he also reap.”[30]Because God is Mind, and this Mind is good, allis good and all is Mind. God is the sum total of the[pg 106]universe. Then what and where are sin, sickness, and [1]death?Christian Science and Christian Scientists will,must,have a history; and if I could write the history in poorparody on Tennyson's grand verse, it would read [5]thus:—Traitors to right of them,M. D.'s to left of them,Priestcraft in front of them,Volleyed and thundered! [10]Into the jaws of hate,Out through the door of Love,On to the blest above,Marched the one hundred.Extract From My First Address In The Mother Church, May 26, 1895Friends and Brethren:—Your Sunday Lesson, com-posed of Scripture and its correlative in“Science andHealth with Key to the Scriptures,”has fed you. In addi- [20]tion, I can only bring crumbs fallen from this table ofTruth, and gather up the fragments.It has long been a question of earnest import, Howshall mankind worship the most adorable, but mostunadored,—and where shall begin that praise that shallnever end? Beneath, above, beyond, methinks I hear [25]the soft, sweet sigh of angels answering,“So live, thatyour lives attest your sincerity and resound His praise.”Music is the harmony of being; but the music of Soulaffords the only strains that thrill the chords of feelingand awaken the heart's harpstrings. Moved by mind, [30]your many-throated organ, in imitative tones of many[pg 107]instruments, praises Him; but even the sweetness and [1]beauty in and of this temple that praise Him, are earth'saccents, and must not be mistaken for the oracles of God.Art must not prevail over Science. Christianity is notsuperfluous. Its redemptive power is seen in sore trials, [5]self-denials, and crucifixions of the flesh. But these cometo the rescue of mortals, to admonish them, and plantthe feet steadfastly in Christ. As we rise above the seem-ing mists of sense, we behold more clearly that all theheart's homage belongs to God. [10]More love is the great need of mankind. A pure af-fection, concentric, forgetting self, forgiving wrongs andforestalling them, should swell the lyre of human love.Three cardinal points must be gained before poorhumanity is regenerated and Christian Science is dem- [15]onstrated: (1) A proper sense of sin; (2) repentance;(3) the understanding of good. Evil is a negation: itnever started with time, and it cannot keep pace witheternity. Mortals' false senses pass through three statesand stages of human consciousness before yielding error. [20]The deluded sense must first be shown its falsity througha knowledge of evil as evil, so-called. Without a senseof one's oft-repeated violations of divine law, the in-dividual may become morally blind, and this deplorablemental state is moral idiocy. The lack of seeing one's [25]deformed mentality, and ofrepentancetherefor, deep,never to be repented of, is retarding, and in certain mor-bid instances stopping, the growth of Christian Scientists.Without a knowledge of his sins, and repentance so severethat it destroys them, no person is or can be a Christian [30]Scientist.Mankind thinks either too much or too little of sin.[pg 108]The sensitive, sorrowing saint thinks too much of it: the [1]sordid sinner, or the so-called Christian asleep, thinks toolittle of sin.To allow sin of any sort is anomalous in ChristianScientists, claiming, as they do, that good is infinite, All. [5]Our Master, in his definition of Satan as a liar from thebeginning, attested the absolute powerlessness—yea,nothingness—of evil: since a lie, being without founda-tion in fact, is merely a falsity; spiritually, literally, itis nothing. [10]Not to know that a false claim is false, is to be in dangerof believing it; hence the utility of knowing evil aright,then reducing its claim to its proper denominator,—nobody and nothing. Sin should be conceived of onlyas a delusion. This true conception would remove mortals' [15]ignorance and its consequences, and advance the secondstage of human consciousness, repentance. The firststate, namely, the knowledge of one's self, the properknowledge of evil and its subtle workings wherein evilseems as real as good, is indispensable; since that which [20]is truly conceived of, we can handle; but the misconcep-tion of what we need to know of evil,—or the concep-tion of it at all as something real,—costs much. Sinneeds only to be known for what it is not; then we areits master, not servant. Remember, and act on, Jesus' [25]definition of sin as alie. This cognomen makes it lessdangerous; for most of us would not be seen believingin, or adhering to, that which we know to be untrue.What would be thought of a Christian Scientist who be-lieved in the use of drugs, while declaring that they have [30]no intrinsic quality and that there is no matter? Whatshould be thought of an individual believing in that[pg 109]which is untrue, and at the same time declaring the unity [1]of Truth, and its allness? Beware of those who mis-represent facts; or tacitly assent where they should dis-sent; or who take me as authority for what I disapprove,or mayhap never have thought of, and try to reverse, in- [5]vert, or controvert, Truth; for this is a sure pretext ofmoral defilement.Examine yourselves, and see what, and how much, sinclaims of you; and how much of this claim you admitas valid, or comply with. The knowledge of evil that [10]brings on repentance is the most hopeful stage of mortalmentality. Even a mild mistake must be seen as a mis-take, in order to be corrected; how much more, then,should one's sins be seen and repented of, before theycan be reduced to their native nothingness! [15]Ignorance is only blest by reason of its nothingness;for seeing the need of somethingness in its stead, blessesmortals. Ignorance was the first condition of sin in theallegory of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Theirmental state is not desirable, neither is a knowledge of [20]sin and its consequences, repentance,per se; but, ad-mitting the existence of both, mortals must hasten throughthe second to the third stage,—the knowledge of good;for without this the valuable sequence of knowledgewould be lacking,—even the power to escape from the [25]false claims of sin. To understand good, one must discernthe nothingness of evil, and consecrate one's life anew.Beloved brethren, Christ, Truth, saith unto you,“Benot afraid!”—fear not sin, lest thereby it master you;but onlyfear to sin. Watch and pray for self-knowledge; [30]since then, and thus, cometh repentance,—and yoursuperiority to a delusion is won.[pg 110]Repentance is better than sacrifice. The costly balm [1]of Araby, poured on our Master's feet, had not the valueof a singletear.Beloved children, the world has need of you,—andmore as children than as men and women: it needs your [5]innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, uncontami-nated lives. You need also to watch, and pray that youpreserve these virtues unstained, and lose them not throughcontact with the world. What grander ambition is therethan to maintain in yourselves what Jesus loved, and to [10]know that your example, more than words, makes moralsfor mankind!
Christian Science In Tremont Temple.From the platform of the Monday lectureship in [2]Tremont Temple, on Monday, March 16, 1885, aswill be seen by what follows. Reverend Mary Baker G.Eddy was presented to Mr. Cook's audience, and allowed [5]ten minutes in which to reply to his public letter con-demning her doctrines; which reply was taken in full bya shorthand reporter who was present, and is transcribedbelow.Mrs. Eddy responding, said:— [10]As the time so kindly allotted me is insufficient foreven a synopsis of Christian Science, I shall confine my-self to questions and answers.Am I a spiritualist?I am not, and never was. I understand the impossi- [15]bility of intercommunion between the so-called dead andliving. There have always attended my life phenomenaof an uncommon order, which spiritualists have mis-called mediumship; but I clearly understand that nohuman agencies were employed,—that the divine Mind [20]reveals itself to humanity through spiritual law. Andto such as are“waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemptionof our body,”Christian Science reveals the in-[pg 096]finitude of divinity and the way of man's salvation from [1]sickness and death, as wrought out by Jesus, who robbedthe grave of victory and death of its sting. I understandthat God is an ever-present help in all times of trouble,—have found Him so; and would have no other gods, no [5]remedies in drugs, no material medicine.Do I believe in a personal God?I believe in God as the Supreme Being. I know notwhat the person of omnipotence and omnipresence is,or what the infinite includes; therefore, I worship that [10]of which I can conceive, first, as a loving Father andMother; then, as thought ascends the scale of being todiviner consciousness, God becomes to me, as to theapostle who declared it,“God is Love,”—divine Prin-ciple,—which I worship; and“after the manner of my[15]fathers, so worship I God.”Do I believe in the atonement of Christ?I do; and this atonement becomes more to me sinceit includes man's redemption from sickness as well asfrom sin. I reverence and adore Christ as never before. [20]It brings to my sense, and to the sense of all who enter-tain this understanding of the Science of God, awholesalvation.How is the healing done in Christian Science?This answer includes too much to give you any con- [25]clusive idea in a brief explanation. I can name somemeans by which it is not done.It is not one mind acting upon another mind; it isnot the transference of human images of thought toother minds; it is not supported by the evidence before [30]the personal senses,—Science contradicts this evidence;it is not of the flesh, but of the Spirit. It is Christ come[pg 097]to destroy the power of the flesh; it is Truth over error; [1]that understood, gives man ability to rise above the evi-dence of the senses, take hold of the eternal energies ofTruth, and destroy mortal discord with immortal har-mony,—the grand verities of being. It is not one mortal [5]thought transmitted to another's thought from the humanmind that holds within itself all evil.Our Master said of one of his students,“He is a devil,”and repudiated the idea of casting out devils throughBeelzebub. Erring human mind is by no means a de- [10]sirable or efficacious healer. Such suppositional healingI deprecate. It is in no way allied to divine power. Allhuman control is animal magnetism, more despicablethan all other methods of treating disease.Christian Science is not a remedy of faith alone, but [15]combines faith with understanding, through which wemay touch the hem of His garment; and know that om-nipotence has all power.“I am the Lord, and there isnone else, there is no God beside me.”Is there a personal man? [20]The Scriptures inform us that man was made in theimage and likeness of God. I commend the Icelandictranslation:“He created man in the image and likenessof Mind, in the image and likeness of Mind createdHe him.”To my sense, we have not seen all of man; [25]he is more than personal sense can cognize, who is theimage and likeness of the infinite. I have not seen aperfect man in mind or body,—and such must be thepersonality of him who is the true likeness: the lostimage is not this personality, and corporeal man is this [30]lost image; hence, it doth not appear what is the realpersonality of man. The only cause for making this[pg 098]question of personality a point, or of any importance, is [1]that man's perfect model should be held in mind, wherebyto improve his present condition; that his contemplationregarding himself should turn away from inharmony, sick-ness, and sin, to that which is the image of his Maker. [5]
From the platform of the Monday lectureship in [2]Tremont Temple, on Monday, March 16, 1885, aswill be seen by what follows. Reverend Mary Baker G.Eddy was presented to Mr. Cook's audience, and allowed [5]ten minutes in which to reply to his public letter con-demning her doctrines; which reply was taken in full bya shorthand reporter who was present, and is transcribedbelow.
From the platform of the Monday lectureship in [2]
Tremont Temple, on Monday, March 16, 1885, as
will be seen by what follows. Reverend Mary Baker G.
Eddy was presented to Mr. Cook's audience, and allowed [5]
ten minutes in which to reply to his public letter con-
demning her doctrines; which reply was taken in full by
a shorthand reporter who was present, and is transcribed
below.
Mrs. Eddy responding, said:— [10]
Mrs. Eddy responding, said:— [10]
As the time so kindly allotted me is insufficient foreven a synopsis of Christian Science, I shall confine my-self to questions and answers.
As the time so kindly allotted me is insufficient for
even a synopsis of Christian Science, I shall confine my-
self to questions and answers.
Am I a spiritualist?
Am I a spiritualist?
I am not, and never was. I understand the impossi- [15]bility of intercommunion between the so-called dead andliving. There have always attended my life phenomenaof an uncommon order, which spiritualists have mis-called mediumship; but I clearly understand that nohuman agencies were employed,—that the divine Mind [20]reveals itself to humanity through spiritual law. Andto such as are“waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemptionof our body,”Christian Science reveals the in-
I am not, and never was. I understand the impossi- [15]
bility of intercommunion between the so-called dead and
living. There have always attended my life phenomena
of an uncommon order, which spiritualists have mis-
called mediumship; but I clearly understand that no
human agencies were employed,—that the divine Mind [20]
reveals itself to humanity through spiritual law. And
to such as are“waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption
of our body,”Christian Science reveals the in-
finitude of divinity and the way of man's salvation from [1]sickness and death, as wrought out by Jesus, who robbedthe grave of victory and death of its sting. I understandthat God is an ever-present help in all times of trouble,—have found Him so; and would have no other gods, no [5]remedies in drugs, no material medicine.
finitude of divinity and the way of man's salvation from [1]
sickness and death, as wrought out by Jesus, who robbed
the grave of victory and death of its sting. I understand
that God is an ever-present help in all times of trouble,—
have found Him so; and would have no other gods, no [5]
remedies in drugs, no material medicine.
Do I believe in a personal God?
Do I believe in a personal God?
I believe in God as the Supreme Being. I know notwhat the person of omnipotence and omnipresence is,or what the infinite includes; therefore, I worship that [10]of which I can conceive, first, as a loving Father andMother; then, as thought ascends the scale of being todiviner consciousness, God becomes to me, as to theapostle who declared it,“God is Love,”—divine Prin-ciple,—which I worship; and“after the manner of my[15]fathers, so worship I God.”
I believe in God as the Supreme Being. I know not
what the person of omnipotence and omnipresence is,
or what the infinite includes; therefore, I worship that [10]
of which I can conceive, first, as a loving Father and
Mother; then, as thought ascends the scale of being to
diviner consciousness, God becomes to me, as to the
apostle who declared it,“God is Love,”—divine Prin-
ciple,—which I worship; and“after the manner of my[15]
fathers, so worship I God.”
Do I believe in the atonement of Christ?
Do I believe in the atonement of Christ?
I do; and this atonement becomes more to me sinceit includes man's redemption from sickness as well asfrom sin. I reverence and adore Christ as never before. [20]
I do; and this atonement becomes more to me since
it includes man's redemption from sickness as well as
from sin. I reverence and adore Christ as never before. [20]
It brings to my sense, and to the sense of all who enter-tain this understanding of the Science of God, awholesalvation.
It brings to my sense, and to the sense of all who enter-
tain this understanding of the Science of God, awhole
salvation.
How is the healing done in Christian Science?
How is the healing done in Christian Science?
This answer includes too much to give you any con- [25]clusive idea in a brief explanation. I can name somemeans by which it is not done.
This answer includes too much to give you any con- [25]
clusive idea in a brief explanation. I can name some
means by which it is not done.
It is not one mind acting upon another mind; it isnot the transference of human images of thought toother minds; it is not supported by the evidence before [30]the personal senses,—Science contradicts this evidence;it is not of the flesh, but of the Spirit. It is Christ come
It is not one mind acting upon another mind; it is
not the transference of human images of thought to
other minds; it is not supported by the evidence before [30]
the personal senses,—Science contradicts this evidence;
it is not of the flesh, but of the Spirit. It is Christ come
to destroy the power of the flesh; it is Truth over error; [1]that understood, gives man ability to rise above the evi-dence of the senses, take hold of the eternal energies ofTruth, and destroy mortal discord with immortal har-mony,—the grand verities of being. It is not one mortal [5]thought transmitted to another's thought from the humanmind that holds within itself all evil.
to destroy the power of the flesh; it is Truth over error; [1]
that understood, gives man ability to rise above the evi-
dence of the senses, take hold of the eternal energies of
Truth, and destroy mortal discord with immortal har-
mony,—the grand verities of being. It is not one mortal [5]
thought transmitted to another's thought from the human
mind that holds within itself all evil.
Our Master said of one of his students,“He is a devil,”and repudiated the idea of casting out devils throughBeelzebub. Erring human mind is by no means a de- [10]sirable or efficacious healer. Such suppositional healingI deprecate. It is in no way allied to divine power. Allhuman control is animal magnetism, more despicablethan all other methods of treating disease.
Our Master said of one of his students,“He is a devil,”
and repudiated the idea of casting out devils through
Beelzebub. Erring human mind is by no means a de- [10]
sirable or efficacious healer. Such suppositional healing
I deprecate. It is in no way allied to divine power. All
human control is animal magnetism, more despicable
than all other methods of treating disease.
Christian Science is not a remedy of faith alone, but [15]combines faith with understanding, through which wemay touch the hem of His garment; and know that om-nipotence has all power.“I am the Lord, and there isnone else, there is no God beside me.”
Christian Science is not a remedy of faith alone, but [15]
combines faith with understanding, through which we
may touch the hem of His garment; and know that om-
nipotence has all power.“I am the Lord, and there is
none else, there is no God beside me.”
Is there a personal man? [20]
Is there a personal man? [20]
The Scriptures inform us that man was made in theimage and likeness of God. I commend the Icelandictranslation:“He created man in the image and likenessof Mind, in the image and likeness of Mind createdHe him.”To my sense, we have not seen all of man; [25]he is more than personal sense can cognize, who is theimage and likeness of the infinite. I have not seen aperfect man in mind or body,—and such must be thepersonality of him who is the true likeness: the lostimage is not this personality, and corporeal man is this [30]lost image; hence, it doth not appear what is the realpersonality of man. The only cause for making this
The Scriptures inform us that man was made in the
image and likeness of God. I commend the Icelandic
translation:“He created man in the image and likeness
of Mind, in the image and likeness of Mind created
He him.”To my sense, we have not seen all of man; [25]
he is more than personal sense can cognize, who is the
image and likeness of the infinite. I have not seen a
perfect man in mind or body,—and such must be the
personality of him who is the true likeness: the lost
image is not this personality, and corporeal man is this [30]
lost image; hence, it doth not appear what is the real
personality of man. The only cause for making this
question of personality a point, or of any importance, is [1]that man's perfect model should be held in mind, wherebyto improve his present condition; that his contemplationregarding himself should turn away from inharmony, sick-ness, and sin, to that which is the image of his Maker. [5]
question of personality a point, or of any importance, is [1]
that man's perfect model should be held in mind, whereby
to improve his present condition; that his contemplation
regarding himself should turn away from inharmony, sick-
ness, and sin, to that which is the image of his Maker. [5]
Science And The Senses.Substance of my Address at the National Convention in Chicago,June 13, 1888The National Christian Scientist Association hasbrought us together to minister and to be ministered [10]unto; mutually to aid one another in finding ways andmeans for helping the whole human family; to quickenand extend the interest already felt in a higher mode ofmedicine; to watch with eager joy the individual growthof Christian Scientists, and the progress of our common [15]Cause in Chicago,—the miracle of the Occident. Wecome to strengthen and perpetuate our organizationsand institutions; and to find strength in union,—strengthto build up, through God's right hand, that pure andundefiled religion whose Science demonstrates God and [20]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-formers attest the authenticity of their mission, and callthe world to acknowledge its divine Principle. Truly [25]is it written:—“Thou must be true thyself, if thou the truth would'st teach;Thy heart must overflow, if thou another's heart would'st reach.”[pg 099]Science is absolute and final. It is revolutionary in [1]its very nature; for it upsets all that is not upright.It annuls false evidence, and saith to the five materialsenses,“Having eyes ye see not, and ears ye hear not;neither can you understand.”To weave one thread of [5]Science through the looms of time, is a miracle in itself.The risk is stupendous. It cost Galileo, what? Thisawful price: the temporary loss of his self-respect. Hisfear overcame his loyalty; the courage of his convictionsfell before it. Fear is the weapon in the hands of [10]tyrants.Men and women of the nineteenth century, are youcalled to voice a higher order of Science? Then obeythis call. Go, if you must, to the dungeon or the scaf-fold, but take not back the words of Truth. How many [15]are there ready to suffer for a righteous cause, to standa long siege, take the front rank, face the foe, and bein the battle every day?In no other one thing seemed Jesus of Nazareth moredivine than in his faith in the immortality of his words. [20]He said,“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but mywords shall not pass away;”and they have not. Thewinds of time sweep clean the centuries, but they cannever bear into oblivion his words. They still live, andto-morrow speak louder than to-day. They are to-day [25]as the voice of one crying in the wilderness,“Makestraight 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 castingout evils and healing the sick; and it is whispered,“This[30]is Science.”Jesus taught by the wayside, in humble homes. He[pg 100]spake of Truth and Love to artless listeners and dull [1]disciples. His immortal words were articulated in adecaying language, and then left to the providence ofGod. Christian Science was to interpret them; andwoman,“last at the cross,”was to awaken the dull senses, [5]intoxicated with pleasure or pain, to the infinite meaningof those words.Past, present, future, will show the word and might ofTruth—healing the sick and reclaiming the sinner—so long as there remains a claim of error for Truth to [10]deny or to destroy. Love's labors are not lost. Thefive personal senses, that grasp neither the meaning northe magnitude of self-abnegation, may lose sight thereof;but Science voices unselfish love, unfolds infinite good,leads on irresistible forces, and will finally show the fruits [15]of Love. Human reason is inaccurate; and the scopeof the senses is inadequate to grasp the word of Truth,and teach the eternal.Science speaks when the senses are silent, and thenthe evermore of Truth is triumphant. The spiritual mon- [20]itor understood is coincidence of the divine with thehuman, the acme of Christian Science. Pure humanity,friendship, home, the interchange of love, bring to eartha foretaste of heaven. They unite terrestrial and celes-tial joys, and crown them with blessings infinite. [25]The Christian Scientist loves man more because heloves God most. He understands this Principle,—Love.Who is sufficient for these things? Who remembers thatpatience, forgiveness, abiding faith, and affection, arethe symptoms by which our Father indicates the dif- [30]ferent stages of man's recovery from sin and his en-trance into Science? Who knows how the feeble lips[pg 101]are made eloquent, how hearts are inspired, how heal- [1]ing becomes spontaneous, and how the divine Mind isunderstood and demonstrated? He alone knows thesewonders who is departing from the thraldom of thesenses and accepting spiritual truth,—that which blesses [5]its adoption by the refinement of joy and the dismissal ofsorrow.Christian Science and the senses are at war. It is arevolutionary struggle. We already have had two inthis nation; and they began and ended in a contest for [10]the true idea, for human liberty and rights. Now cometha third struggle; for the freedom of health, holiness, andthe attainment of heaven.The scientific sense of being which establishes har-mony, enters into no compromise with finiteness and [15]feebleness. It undermines the foundations of mortality,of physical law, breaks their chains, and sets the captivefree, 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 saithto man,“God hath all-power.”[20]The Science of omnipotence demonstrates but onepower, and this power is good, not evil; not matter,but Mind. This virtually destroys matter and evil, in-cluding sin and disease. [25]If God is All, and God is good, it follows that allmust be good; and no other power, law, or intelligencecan exist. On this proof rest premise and conclusion inScience, and the facts that disprove the evidence of thesenses. [30]God is individual Mind. This one Mind and Hisindividuality comprise the elements of all forms and[pg 102]individualities, and prophesy the nature and stature of [1]Christ, the ideal man.A corporeal God, as often defined by lexicographersand scholastic theologians, is only an infinite finite being,an unlimited man,—a theory to me inconceivable. If [5]the unlimited and immortal Mind could originate in alimited body, Mind would be chained to finity, and theinfinite forever finite.In this limited and lower sense God is not personal.His infinity precludes the possibility of corporeal person- [10]ality. His being is individual, but not physical.God is like Himself and like nothing else. He is uni-versal and primitive. His character admits of no degreesof comparison. God is not part, but the whole. In Hisindividuality I recognize the loving, divine Father-Mother [15]God. Infinite personality must be incorporeal.God's ways are not ours. His pity is expressed inmodes above the human. His chastisements are themanifestations of Love. The sympathy of His eternalMind is fully expressed in divine Science, which blots [20]out all our iniquities and heals all our diseases. Humanpity often brings pain.Science supports harmony, denies suffering, and de-stroys it with the divinity of Truth. Whatever seems mate-rial, seems thus only to the material senses, and is but the [25]subjective state of mortal and material thought.Science has inaugurated the irrepressible conflict be-tween sense and Soul. Mortal thought wars with thissense as one that beateth the air, but Science outmastersit, and ends the warfare. This proves daily that“one[30]on God's side is a majority.”Science definesomnipresenceas universality, that which[pg 103]precludes the presence of evil. This verity annuls the tes- [1]timony of the senses, which say that sin is an evil power,and substance is perishable. Intelligent Spirit, Soul, issubstance, far more impregnable and solid than matter; forone is temporal, while the other is eternal, the ultimate [5]and predicate of being.Mortality, materiality, and destructive forces, such assin, disease, and death, mortals virtually namesubstance;but these are the substance of thingsnothoped for. Forlack of knowing what substance is, the senses say vaguely: [10]“The substance of life is sorrow and mortality; for whoknoweth the substance of good?”In Science, form andindividuality are never lost, thoughts are outlined, indi-vidualized ideas, which dwell forever in the divine Mindas tangible, true substance, because eternally conscious. [15]Unlike mortal mind, which must be ever in bondage,the eternal Mind is free, unlimited, and knows not thetemporal.Neither does the temporal know the eternal. Mortalman, as mind or matter, is neither the pattern nor Maker [20]of immortal man. Any inference of the divine derivedfrom the human, either as mind or body, hides the actualpower, presence, and individuality of God.Jesus' personality in the flesh, so far as material sensecould discern it, was like that of other men; but Science [25]exchanges this human concept of Jesus for the divineideal, 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, infiniteTruth and Love. The individuality is embraced in Mind, [30]therefore is forever with the Father. Hence the Scrip-ture,“I am a God at hand, saith the Lord.”Even while[pg 104]his personality was on earth and in anguish, his individual [1]being, the Christ, was at rest in the eternal harmony.His unseen individuality, so superior to that which wasseen, was not subject to the temptations of the flesh, tolaws material, to death, or the grave. Formed and gov- [5]erned by God, this individuality was safe in the substanceof Soul, the substance of Spirit,—yea, the substance ofGod, the one inclusive good.In Science all being is individual; for individuality isendless in the calculus of forms and numbers. Herein [10]sin is miraculous and supernatural; for it is not in thenature of God, and good is forever good. Accord-ing to Christian Science, perfection is normal,—notmiraculous. Clothed, and in its right Mind, man'sindividuality is sinless, deathless, harmonious, eternal. [15]His materiality, clad in a false mentality, wages feeblefight with his individuality,—his physical senses withhis spiritual senses. The latter move in God's groovesof Science: the former revolve in their own orbits, andmust stand the friction of false selfhood until self- [20]destroyed.In obedience to the divine nature, man's individualityreflects the divine law and order of being. How shallwe reach our true selves? Through Love. The Prin-ciple of Christian Science is Love, and its idea represents [25]Love. This divine Principle and idea are demonstrated,in healing, to be God and the real man.Who wants to be mortal, or would not gain the trueideal of Life and recover his own individuality? I willlove, if another hates. I will gain a balance on the side of [30]good, my true being. This alone gives me the forces ofGod wherewith to overcome all error. On this rests the[pg 105]implicit faith engendered by Christian Science, which [1]appeals intelligently to the facts of man's spirituality, in-dividuality, to disdain the fears and destroy the discordsof this material personality.On our Master's individual demonstrations over sin, [5]sickness, and death, rested the anathema of priesthoodand the senses; yet this demonstration is the foundationof Christian Science. His physical sufferings, whichcame from the testimony of the senses, were over whenhe resumed his individual spiritual being, after showing [10]us the way to escape from the material body.Science would have no conflict with Life or commonsense, if this sense were consistently sensible. Man's reallife or existence is in harmony with Life and its gloriousphenomena. It upholds being, and destroys the too [15]common sense of its opposites—death, disease, and sin.Christian Science is an everlasting victor, and vanquish-ment is unknown to the omnipresent Truth. I must everfollow this line of light and battle.Christian Science is my only ideal; and the individual [20]and his ideal can never be severed. If either is misunder-stood or maligned, it eclipses the other with the shadowcast by this error.Truth destroys error. Nothing appears to the physi-cal senses but their own subjective state of thought. The [25]senses join issue with error, and pity what has no righteither to be pitied or to exist, and what does not exist inScience. Destroy the thought of sin, sickness, death, andyou destroy their existence.“Whatsoever a man soweth,that shall he also reap.”[30]Because God is Mind, and this Mind is good, allis good and all is Mind. God is the sum total of the[pg 106]universe. Then what and where are sin, sickness, and [1]death?Christian Science and Christian Scientists will,must,have a history; and if I could write the history in poorparody on Tennyson's grand verse, it would read [5]thus:—Traitors to right of them,M. D.'s to left of them,Priestcraft in front of them,Volleyed and thundered! [10]Into the jaws of hate,Out through the door of Love,On to the blest above,Marched the one hundred.
Substance of my Address at the National Convention in Chicago,June 13, 1888
Substance of my Address at the National Convention in Chicago,
June 13, 1888
The National Christian Scientist Association hasbrought us together to minister and to be ministered [10]unto; mutually to aid one another in finding ways andmeans for helping the whole human family; to quickenand extend the interest already felt in a higher mode ofmedicine; to watch with eager joy the individual growthof Christian Scientists, and the progress of our common [15]Cause in Chicago,—the miracle of the Occident. Wecome to strengthen and perpetuate our organizationsand institutions; and to find strength in union,—strengthto build up, through God's right hand, that pure andundefiled religion whose Science demonstrates God and [20]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-formers attest the authenticity of their mission, and callthe world to acknowledge its divine Principle. Truly [25]is it written:—
The National Christian Scientist Association has
brought us together to minister and to be ministered [10]
unto; mutually to aid one another in finding ways and
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
of Christian Scientists, and the progress of our common [15]
Cause in Chicago,—the miracle of the Occident. We
come to strengthen and perpetuate our organizations
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 [20]
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-
formers attest the authenticity of their mission, and call
the world to acknowledge its divine Principle. Truly [25]
is it written:—
“Thou must be true thyself, if thou the truth would'st teach;Thy heart must overflow, if thou another's heart would'st reach.”
“Thou must be true thyself, if thou the truth would'st teach;
Thy heart must overflow, if thou another's heart would'st reach.”
Science is absolute and final. It is revolutionary in [1]its very nature; for it upsets all that is not upright.It annuls false evidence, and saith to the five materialsenses,“Having eyes ye see not, and ears ye hear not;neither can you understand.”To weave one thread of [5]Science through the looms of time, is a miracle in itself.The risk is stupendous. It cost Galileo, what? Thisawful price: the temporary loss of his self-respect. Hisfear overcame his loyalty; the courage of his convictionsfell before it. Fear is the weapon in the hands of [10]tyrants.
Science is absolute and final. It is revolutionary in [1]
its very nature; for it upsets all that is not upright.
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 [5]
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
fear overcame his loyalty; the courage of his convictions
fell before it. Fear is the weapon in the hands of [10]
tyrants.
Men and women of the nineteenth century, are youcalled to voice a higher order of Science? Then obeythis call. Go, if you must, to the dungeon or the scaf-fold, but take not back the words of Truth. How many [15]are there ready to suffer for a righteous cause, to standa long siege, take the front rank, face the foe, and bein the battle every day?
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-
fold, but take not back the words of Truth. How many [15]
are there ready to suffer for a righteous cause, to stand
a long siege, take the front rank, face the foe, and be
in the battle every day?
In no other one thing seemed Jesus of Nazareth moredivine than in his faith in the immortality of his words. [20]He said,“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but mywords shall not pass away;”and they have not. Thewinds of time sweep clean the centuries, but they cannever bear into oblivion his words. They still live, andto-morrow speak louder than to-day. They are to-day [25]as the voice of one crying in the wilderness,“Makestraight 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 castingout evils and healing the sick; and it is whispered,“This[30]is Science.”
In no other one thing seemed Jesus of Nazareth more
divine than in his faith in the immortality of his words. [20]
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
never bear into oblivion his words. They still live, and
to-morrow speak louder than to-day. They are to-day [25]
as the voice of one crying in the wilderness,“Make
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
out evils and healing the sick; and it is whispered,“This[30]
is Science.”
Jesus taught by the wayside, in humble homes. He
Jesus taught by the wayside, in humble homes. He
spake of Truth and Love to artless listeners and dull [1]disciples. His immortal words were articulated in adecaying language, and then left to the providence ofGod. Christian Science was to interpret them; andwoman,“last at the cross,”was to awaken the dull senses, [5]intoxicated with pleasure or pain, to the infinite meaningof those words.
spake of Truth and Love to artless listeners and dull [1]
disciples. His immortal words were articulated in a
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, [5]
intoxicated with pleasure or pain, to the infinite meaning
of those words.
Past, present, future, will show the word and might ofTruth—healing the sick and reclaiming the sinner—so long as there remains a claim of error for Truth to [10]deny or to destroy. Love's labors are not lost. Thefive personal senses, that grasp neither the meaning northe magnitude of self-abnegation, may lose sight thereof;but Science voices unselfish love, unfolds infinite good,leads on irresistible forces, and will finally show the fruits [15]of Love. Human reason is inaccurate; and the scopeof the senses is inadequate to grasp the word of Truth,and teach the eternal.
Past, present, future, will show the word and might of
Truth—healing the sick and reclaiming the sinner—
so long as there remains a claim of error for Truth to [10]
deny or to destroy. Love's labors are not lost. The
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,
leads on irresistible forces, and will finally show the fruits [15]
of Love. Human reason is inaccurate; and the scope
of the senses is inadequate to grasp the word of Truth,
and teach the eternal.
Science speaks when the senses are silent, and thenthe evermore of Truth is triumphant. The spiritual mon- [20]itor understood is coincidence of the divine with thehuman, the acme of Christian Science. Pure humanity,friendship, home, the interchange of love, bring to eartha foretaste of heaven. They unite terrestrial and celes-tial joys, and crown them with blessings infinite. [25]
Science speaks when the senses are silent, and then
the evermore of Truth is triumphant. The spiritual mon- [20]
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
a foretaste of heaven. They unite terrestrial and celes-
tial joys, and crown them with blessings infinite. [25]
The Christian Scientist loves man more because heloves God most. He understands this Principle,—Love.Who is sufficient for these things? Who remembers thatpatience, forgiveness, abiding faith, and affection, arethe symptoms by which our Father indicates the dif- [30]ferent stages of man's recovery from sin and his en-trance into Science? Who knows how the feeble lips
The Christian Scientist loves man more because he
loves God most. He understands this Principle,—Love.
Who is sufficient for these things? Who remembers that
patience, forgiveness, abiding faith, and affection, are
the symptoms by which our Father indicates the dif- [30]
ferent stages of man's recovery from sin and his en-
trance into Science? Who knows how the feeble lips
are made eloquent, how hearts are inspired, how heal- [1]ing becomes spontaneous, and how the divine Mind isunderstood and demonstrated? He alone knows thesewonders who is departing from the thraldom of thesenses and accepting spiritual truth,—that which blesses [5]its adoption by the refinement of joy and the dismissal ofsorrow.
are made eloquent, how hearts are inspired, how heal- [1]
ing becomes spontaneous, and how the divine Mind is
understood and demonstrated? He alone knows these
wonders who is departing from the thraldom of the
senses and accepting spiritual truth,—that which blesses [5]
its adoption by the refinement of joy and the dismissal of
sorrow.
Christian Science and the senses are at war. It is arevolutionary struggle. We already have had two inthis nation; and they began and ended in a contest for [10]the true idea, for human liberty and rights. Now cometha third struggle; for the freedom of health, holiness, andthe attainment of heaven.
Christian Science and the senses are at war. It is a
revolutionary struggle. We already have had two in
this nation; and they began and ended in a contest for [10]
the true idea, for human liberty and rights. Now cometh
a third struggle; for the freedom of health, holiness, and
the attainment of heaven.
The scientific sense of being which establishes har-mony, enters into no compromise with finiteness and [15]feebleness. It undermines the foundations of mortality,of physical law, breaks their chains, and sets the captivefree, opening the doors for them that are bound.
The scientific sense of being which establishes har-
mony, enters into no compromise with finiteness and [15]
feebleness. It undermines the foundations of mortality,
of physical law, breaks their chains, and sets the captive
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 saithto man,“God hath all-power.”[20]
He who turns to the body for evidence, bases his con-
clusions on mortality, on imperfection; but Science saith
to man,“God hath all-power.”[20]
The Science of omnipotence demonstrates but onepower, and this power is good, not evil; not matter,but Mind. This virtually destroys matter and evil, in-cluding sin and disease. [25]
The Science of omnipotence demonstrates but one
power, and this power is good, not evil; not matter,
but Mind. This virtually destroys matter and evil, in-
cluding sin and disease. [25]
If God is All, and God is good, it follows that allmust be good; and no other power, law, or intelligencecan exist. On this proof rest premise and conclusion inScience, and the facts that disprove the evidence of thesenses. [30]
If God is All, and God is good, it follows that all
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
senses. [30]
God is individual Mind. This one Mind and Hisindividuality comprise the elements of all forms and
God is individual Mind. This one Mind and His
individuality comprise the elements of all forms and
individualities, and prophesy the nature and stature of [1]Christ, the ideal man.
individualities, and prophesy the nature and stature of [1]
Christ, the ideal man.
A corporeal God, as often defined by lexicographersand scholastic theologians, is only an infinite finite being,an unlimited man,—a theory to me inconceivable. If [5]the unlimited and immortal Mind could originate in alimited body, Mind would be chained to finity, and theinfinite forever finite.
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 [5]
the unlimited and immortal Mind could originate in a
limited body, Mind would be chained to finity, and the
infinite forever finite.
In this limited and lower sense God is not personal.His infinity precludes the possibility of corporeal person- [10]ality. His being is individual, but not physical.
In this limited and lower sense God is not personal.
His infinity precludes the possibility of corporeal person- [10]
ality. His being is individual, but not physical.
God is like Himself and like nothing else. He is uni-versal and primitive. His character admits of no degreesof comparison. God is not part, but the whole. In Hisindividuality I recognize the loving, divine Father-Mother [15]God. Infinite personality must be incorporeal.
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
individuality I recognize the loving, divine Father-Mother [15]
God. Infinite personality must be incorporeal.
God's ways are not ours. His pity is expressed inmodes above the human. His chastisements are themanifestations of Love. The sympathy of His eternalMind is fully expressed in divine Science, which blots [20]out all our iniquities and heals all our diseases. Humanpity often brings pain.
God's ways are not ours. His pity is expressed in
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 [20]
out all our iniquities and heals all our diseases. Human
pity often brings pain.
Science supports harmony, denies suffering, and de-stroys it with the divinity of Truth. Whatever seems mate-rial, seems thus only to the material senses, and is but the [25]subjective state of mortal and material thought.
Science supports harmony, denies suffering, and de-
stroys it with the divinity of Truth. Whatever seems mate-
rial, seems thus only to the material senses, and is but the [25]
subjective state of mortal and material thought.
Science has inaugurated the irrepressible conflict be-tween sense and Soul. Mortal thought wars with thissense as one that beateth the air, but Science outmastersit, and ends the warfare. This proves daily that“one[30]on God's side is a majority.”
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
it, and ends the warfare. This proves daily that“one[30]
on God's side is a majority.”
Science definesomnipresenceas universality, that which
Science definesomnipresenceas universality, that which
precludes the presence of evil. This verity annuls the tes- [1]timony of the senses, which say that sin is an evil power,and substance is perishable. Intelligent Spirit, Soul, issubstance, far more impregnable and solid than matter; forone is temporal, while the other is eternal, the ultimate [5]and predicate of being.
precludes the presence of evil. This verity annuls the tes- [1]
timony of the senses, which say that sin is an evil power,
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 [5]
and predicate of being.
Mortality, materiality, and destructive forces, such assin, disease, and death, mortals virtually namesubstance;but these are the substance of thingsnothoped for. Forlack of knowing what substance is, the senses say vaguely: [10]“The substance of life is sorrow and mortality; for whoknoweth the substance of good?”In Science, form andindividuality are never lost, thoughts are outlined, indi-vidualized ideas, which dwell forever in the divine Mindas tangible, true substance, because eternally conscious. [15]Unlike mortal mind, which must be ever in bondage,the eternal Mind is free, unlimited, and knows not thetemporal.
Mortality, materiality, and destructive forces, such as
sin, disease, and death, mortals virtually namesubstance;
but these are the substance of thingsnothoped for. For
lack of knowing what substance is, the senses say vaguely: [10]
“The substance of life is sorrow and mortality; for who
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
as tangible, true substance, because eternally conscious. [15]
Unlike mortal mind, which must be ever in bondage,
the eternal Mind is free, unlimited, and knows not the
temporal.
Neither does the temporal know the eternal. Mortalman, as mind or matter, is neither the pattern nor Maker [20]of immortal man. Any inference of the divine derivedfrom the human, either as mind or body, hides the actualpower, presence, and individuality of God.
Neither does the temporal know the eternal. Mortal
man, as mind or matter, is neither the pattern nor Maker [20]
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.
Jesus' personality in the flesh, so far as material sensecould discern it, was like that of other men; but Science [25]exchanges this human concept of Jesus for the divineideal, 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, infiniteTruth and Love. The individuality is embraced in Mind, [30]therefore is forever with the Father. Hence the Scrip-ture,“I am a God at hand, saith the Lord.”Even while
Jesus' personality in the flesh, so far as material sense
could discern it, was like that of other men; but Science [25]
exchanges this human concept of Jesus for the divine
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
Truth and Love. The individuality is embraced in Mind, [30]
therefore is forever with the Father. Hence the Scrip-
ture,“I am a God at hand, saith the Lord.”Even while
his personality was on earth and in anguish, his individual [1]being, the Christ, was at rest in the eternal harmony.His unseen individuality, so superior to that which wasseen, was not subject to the temptations of the flesh, tolaws material, to death, or the grave. Formed and gov- [5]erned by God, this individuality was safe in the substanceof Soul, the substance of Spirit,—yea, the substance ofGod, the one inclusive good.
his personality was on earth and in anguish, his individual [1]
being, the Christ, was at rest in the eternal harmony.
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- [5]
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.
In Science all being is individual; for individuality isendless in the calculus of forms and numbers. Herein [10]sin is miraculous and supernatural; for it is not in thenature of God, and good is forever good. Accord-ing to Christian Science, perfection is normal,—notmiraculous. Clothed, and in its right Mind, man'sindividuality is sinless, deathless, harmonious, eternal. [15]His materiality, clad in a false mentality, wages feeblefight with his individuality,—his physical senses withhis spiritual senses. The latter move in God's groovesof Science: the former revolve in their own orbits, andmust stand the friction of false selfhood until self- [20]destroyed.
In Science all being is individual; for individuality is
endless in the calculus of forms and numbers. Herein [10]
sin is miraculous and supernatural; for it is not in the
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
individuality is sinless, deathless, harmonious, eternal. [15]
His materiality, clad in a false mentality, wages feeble
fight with his individuality,—his physical senses with
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- [20]
destroyed.
In obedience to the divine nature, man's individualityreflects the divine law and order of being. How shallwe reach our true selves? Through Love. The Prin-ciple of Christian Science is Love, and its idea represents [25]Love. This divine Principle and idea are demonstrated,in healing, to be God and the real man.
In obedience to the divine nature, man's individuality
reflects the divine law and order of being. How shall
we reach our true selves? Through Love. The Prin-
ciple of Christian Science is Love, and its idea represents [25]
Love. This divine Principle and idea are demonstrated,
in healing, to be God and the real man.
Who wants to be mortal, or would not gain the trueideal of Life and recover his own individuality? I willlove, if another hates. I will gain a balance on the side of [30]good, my true being. This alone gives me the forces ofGod wherewith to overcome all error. On this rests the
Who wants to be mortal, or would not gain the true
ideal of Life and recover his own individuality? I will
love, if another hates. I will gain a balance on the side of [30]
good, my true being. This alone gives me the forces of
God wherewith to overcome all error. On this rests the
implicit faith engendered by Christian Science, which [1]appeals intelligently to the facts of man's spirituality, in-dividuality, to disdain the fears and destroy the discordsof this material personality.
implicit faith engendered by Christian Science, which [1]
appeals intelligently to the facts of man's spirituality, in-
dividuality, to disdain the fears and destroy the discords
of this material personality.
On our Master's individual demonstrations over sin, [5]sickness, and death, rested the anathema of priesthoodand the senses; yet this demonstration is the foundationof Christian Science. His physical sufferings, whichcame from the testimony of the senses, were over whenhe resumed his individual spiritual being, after showing [10]us the way to escape from the material body.
On our Master's individual demonstrations over sin, [5]
sickness, and death, rested the anathema of priesthood
and the senses; yet this demonstration is the foundation
of Christian Science. His physical sufferings, which
came from the testimony of the senses, were over when
he resumed his individual spiritual being, after showing [10]
us the way to escape from the material body.
Science would have no conflict with Life or commonsense, if this sense were consistently sensible. Man's reallife or existence is in harmony with Life and its gloriousphenomena. It upholds being, and destroys the too [15]common sense of its opposites—death, disease, and sin.Christian Science is an everlasting victor, and vanquish-ment is unknown to the omnipresent Truth. I must everfollow this line of light and battle.
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
phenomena. It upholds being, and destroys the too [15]
common sense of its opposites—death, disease, and sin.
Christian Science is an everlasting victor, and vanquish-
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 [20]and his ideal can never be severed. If either is misunder-stood or maligned, it eclipses the other with the shadowcast by this error.
Christian Science is my only ideal; and the individual [20]
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.
Truth destroys error. Nothing appears to the physi-cal senses but their own subjective state of thought. The [25]senses join issue with error, and pity what has no righteither to be pitied or to exist, and what does not exist inScience. Destroy the thought of sin, sickness, death, andyou destroy their existence.“Whatsoever a man soweth,that shall he also reap.”[30]
Truth destroys error. Nothing appears to the physi-
cal senses but their own subjective state of thought. The [25]
senses join issue with error, and pity what has no right
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,
that shall he also reap.”[30]
Because God is Mind, and this Mind is good, allis good and all is Mind. God is the sum total of the
Because God is Mind, and this Mind is good, all
is good and all is Mind. God is the sum total of the
universe. Then what and where are sin, sickness, and [1]death?
universe. Then what and where are sin, sickness, and [1]
death?
Christian Science and Christian Scientists will,must,have a history; and if I could write the history in poorparody on Tennyson's grand verse, it would read [5]thus:—
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 [5]
thus:—
Traitors to right of them,M. D.'s to left of them,Priestcraft in front of them,Volleyed and thundered! [10]Into the jaws of hate,Out through the door of Love,On to the blest above,Marched the one hundred.
Traitors to right of them,M. D.'s to left of them,Priestcraft in front of them,Volleyed and thundered! [10]Into the jaws of hate,Out through the door of Love,On to the blest above,Marched the one hundred.
Traitors to right of them,
M. D.'s to left of them,
Priestcraft in front of them,
Volleyed and thundered! [10]
Into the jaws of hate,
Out through the door of Love,
On to the blest above,
Marched the one hundred.
Extract From My First Address In The Mother Church, May 26, 1895Friends and Brethren:—Your Sunday Lesson, com-posed of Scripture and its correlative in“Science andHealth with Key to the Scriptures,”has fed you. In addi- [20]tion, I can only bring crumbs fallen from this table ofTruth, and gather up the fragments.It has long been a question of earnest import, Howshall mankind worship the most adorable, but mostunadored,—and where shall begin that praise that shallnever end? Beneath, above, beyond, methinks I hear [25]the soft, sweet sigh of angels answering,“So live, thatyour lives attest your sincerity and resound His praise.”Music is the harmony of being; but the music of Soulaffords the only strains that thrill the chords of feelingand awaken the heart's harpstrings. Moved by mind, [30]your many-throated organ, in imitative tones of many[pg 107]instruments, praises Him; but even the sweetness and [1]beauty in and of this temple that praise Him, are earth'saccents, and must not be mistaken for the oracles of God.Art must not prevail over Science. Christianity is notsuperfluous. Its redemptive power is seen in sore trials, [5]self-denials, and crucifixions of the flesh. But these cometo the rescue of mortals, to admonish them, and plantthe feet steadfastly in Christ. As we rise above the seem-ing mists of sense, we behold more clearly that all theheart's homage belongs to God. [10]More love is the great need of mankind. A pure af-fection, concentric, forgetting self, forgiving wrongs andforestalling them, should swell the lyre of human love.Three cardinal points must be gained before poorhumanity is regenerated and Christian Science is dem- [15]onstrated: (1) A proper sense of sin; (2) repentance;(3) the understanding of good. Evil is a negation: itnever started with time, and it cannot keep pace witheternity. Mortals' false senses pass through three statesand stages of human consciousness before yielding error. [20]The deluded sense must first be shown its falsity througha knowledge of evil as evil, so-called. Without a senseof one's oft-repeated violations of divine law, the in-dividual may become morally blind, and this deplorablemental state is moral idiocy. The lack of seeing one's [25]deformed mentality, and ofrepentancetherefor, deep,never to be repented of, is retarding, and in certain mor-bid instances stopping, the growth of Christian Scientists.Without a knowledge of his sins, and repentance so severethat it destroys them, no person is or can be a Christian [30]Scientist.Mankind thinks either too much or too little of sin.[pg 108]The sensitive, sorrowing saint thinks too much of it: the [1]sordid sinner, or the so-called Christian asleep, thinks toolittle of sin.To allow sin of any sort is anomalous in ChristianScientists, claiming, as they do, that good is infinite, All. [5]Our Master, in his definition of Satan as a liar from thebeginning, attested the absolute powerlessness—yea,nothingness—of evil: since a lie, being without founda-tion in fact, is merely a falsity; spiritually, literally, itis nothing. [10]Not to know that a false claim is false, is to be in dangerof believing it; hence the utility of knowing evil aright,then reducing its claim to its proper denominator,—nobody and nothing. Sin should be conceived of onlyas a delusion. This true conception would remove mortals' [15]ignorance and its consequences, and advance the secondstage of human consciousness, repentance. The firststate, namely, the knowledge of one's self, the properknowledge of evil and its subtle workings wherein evilseems as real as good, is indispensable; since that which [20]is truly conceived of, we can handle; but the misconcep-tion of what we need to know of evil,—or the concep-tion of it at all as something real,—costs much. Sinneeds only to be known for what it is not; then we areits master, not servant. Remember, and act on, Jesus' [25]definition of sin as alie. This cognomen makes it lessdangerous; for most of us would not be seen believingin, or adhering to, that which we know to be untrue.What would be thought of a Christian Scientist who be-lieved in the use of drugs, while declaring that they have [30]no intrinsic quality and that there is no matter? Whatshould be thought of an individual believing in that[pg 109]which is untrue, and at the same time declaring the unity [1]of Truth, and its allness? Beware of those who mis-represent facts; or tacitly assent where they should dis-sent; or who take me as authority for what I disapprove,or mayhap never have thought of, and try to reverse, in- [5]vert, or controvert, Truth; for this is a sure pretext ofmoral defilement.Examine yourselves, and see what, and how much, sinclaims of you; and how much of this claim you admitas valid, or comply with. The knowledge of evil that [10]brings on repentance is the most hopeful stage of mortalmentality. Even a mild mistake must be seen as a mis-take, in order to be corrected; how much more, then,should one's sins be seen and repented of, before theycan be reduced to their native nothingness! [15]Ignorance is only blest by reason of its nothingness;for seeing the need of somethingness in its stead, blessesmortals. Ignorance was the first condition of sin in theallegory of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Theirmental state is not desirable, neither is a knowledge of [20]sin and its consequences, repentance,per se; but, ad-mitting the existence of both, mortals must hasten throughthe second to the third stage,—the knowledge of good;for without this the valuable sequence of knowledgewould be lacking,—even the power to escape from the [25]false claims of sin. To understand good, one must discernthe nothingness of evil, and consecrate one's life anew.Beloved brethren, Christ, Truth, saith unto you,“Benot afraid!”—fear not sin, lest thereby it master you;but onlyfear to sin. Watch and pray for self-knowledge; [30]since then, and thus, cometh repentance,—and yoursuperiority to a delusion is won.[pg 110]Repentance is better than sacrifice. The costly balm [1]of Araby, poured on our Master's feet, had not the valueof a singletear.Beloved children, the world has need of you,—andmore as children than as men and women: it needs your [5]innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, uncontami-nated lives. You need also to watch, and pray that youpreserve these virtues unstained, and lose them not throughcontact with the world. What grander ambition is therethan to maintain in yourselves what Jesus loved, and to [10]know that your example, more than words, makes moralsfor mankind!
Friends and Brethren:—Your Sunday Lesson, com-posed of Scripture and its correlative in“Science andHealth with Key to the Scriptures,”has fed you. In addi- [20]tion, I can only bring crumbs fallen from this table ofTruth, and gather up the fragments.
Friends and Brethren:—Your Sunday Lesson, com-
posed of Scripture and its correlative in“Science and
Health with Key to the Scriptures,”has fed you. In addi- [20]
tion, I can only bring crumbs fallen from this table of
Truth, and gather up the fragments.
It has long been a question of earnest import, Howshall mankind worship the most adorable, but mostunadored,—and where shall begin that praise that shallnever end? Beneath, above, beyond, methinks I hear [25]the soft, sweet sigh of angels answering,“So live, thatyour lives attest your sincerity and resound His praise.”
It has long been a question of earnest import, How
shall mankind worship the most adorable, but most
unadored,—and where shall begin that praise that shall
never end? Beneath, above, beyond, methinks I hear [25]
the soft, sweet sigh of angels answering,“So live, that
your lives attest your sincerity and resound His praise.”
Music is the harmony of being; but the music of Soulaffords the only strains that thrill the chords of feelingand awaken the heart's harpstrings. Moved by mind, [30]your many-throated organ, in imitative tones of many
Music is the harmony of being; but the music of Soul
affords the only strains that thrill the chords of feeling
and awaken the heart's harpstrings. Moved by mind, [30]
your many-throated organ, in imitative tones of many
instruments, praises Him; but even the sweetness and [1]beauty in and of this temple that praise Him, are earth'saccents, and must not be mistaken for the oracles of God.Art must not prevail over Science. Christianity is notsuperfluous. Its redemptive power is seen in sore trials, [5]self-denials, and crucifixions of the flesh. But these cometo the rescue of mortals, to admonish them, and plantthe feet steadfastly in Christ. As we rise above the seem-ing mists of sense, we behold more clearly that all theheart's homage belongs to God. [10]
instruments, praises Him; but even the sweetness and [1]
beauty in and of this temple that praise Him, are earth's
accents, and must not be mistaken for the oracles of God.
Art must not prevail over Science. Christianity is not
superfluous. Its redemptive power is seen in sore trials, [5]
self-denials, and crucifixions of the flesh. But these come
to the rescue of mortals, to admonish them, and plant
the feet steadfastly in Christ. As we rise above the seem-
ing mists of sense, we behold more clearly that all the
heart's homage belongs to God. [10]
More love is the great need of mankind. A pure af-fection, concentric, forgetting self, forgiving wrongs andforestalling them, should swell the lyre of human love.
More love is the great need of mankind. A pure af-
fection, concentric, forgetting self, forgiving wrongs and
forestalling them, should swell the lyre of human love.
Three cardinal points must be gained before poorhumanity is regenerated and Christian Science is dem- [15]onstrated: (1) A proper sense of sin; (2) repentance;(3) the understanding of good. Evil is a negation: itnever started with time, and it cannot keep pace witheternity. Mortals' false senses pass through three statesand stages of human consciousness before yielding error. [20]The deluded sense must first be shown its falsity througha knowledge of evil as evil, so-called. Without a senseof one's oft-repeated violations of divine law, the in-dividual may become morally blind, and this deplorablemental state is moral idiocy. The lack of seeing one's [25]deformed mentality, and ofrepentancetherefor, deep,never to be repented of, is retarding, and in certain mor-bid instances stopping, the growth of Christian Scientists.Without a knowledge of his sins, and repentance so severethat it destroys them, no person is or can be a Christian [30]Scientist.
Three cardinal points must be gained before poor
humanity is regenerated and Christian Science is dem- [15]
onstrated: (1) A proper sense of sin; (2) repentance;
(3) the understanding of good. Evil is a negation: it
never started with time, and it cannot keep pace with
eternity. Mortals' false senses pass through three states
and stages of human consciousness before yielding error. [20]
The deluded sense must first be shown its falsity through
a knowledge of evil as evil, so-called. Without a sense
of one's oft-repeated violations of divine law, the in-
dividual may become morally blind, and this deplorable
mental state is moral idiocy. The lack of seeing one's [25]
deformed mentality, and ofrepentancetherefor, deep,
never to be repented of, is retarding, and in certain mor-
bid instances stopping, the growth of Christian Scientists.
Without a knowledge of his sins, and repentance so severe
that it destroys them, no person is or can be a Christian [30]
Scientist.
Mankind thinks either too much or too little of sin.
Mankind thinks either too much or too little of sin.
The sensitive, sorrowing saint thinks too much of it: the [1]sordid sinner, or the so-called Christian asleep, thinks toolittle of sin.
The sensitive, sorrowing saint thinks too much of it: the [1]
sordid sinner, or the so-called Christian asleep, thinks too
little of sin.
To allow sin of any sort is anomalous in ChristianScientists, claiming, as they do, that good is infinite, All. [5]Our Master, in his definition of Satan as a liar from thebeginning, attested the absolute powerlessness—yea,nothingness—of evil: since a lie, being without founda-tion in fact, is merely a falsity; spiritually, literally, itis nothing. [10]
To allow sin of any sort is anomalous in Christian
Scientists, claiming, as they do, that good is infinite, All. [5]
Our Master, in his definition of Satan as a liar from the
beginning, attested the absolute powerlessness—yea,
nothingness—of evil: since a lie, being without founda-
tion in fact, is merely a falsity; spiritually, literally, it
is nothing. [10]
Not to know that a false claim is false, is to be in dangerof believing it; hence the utility of knowing evil aright,then reducing its claim to its proper denominator,—nobody and nothing. Sin should be conceived of onlyas a delusion. This true conception would remove mortals' [15]ignorance and its consequences, and advance the secondstage of human consciousness, repentance. The firststate, namely, the knowledge of one's self, the properknowledge of evil and its subtle workings wherein evilseems as real as good, is indispensable; since that which [20]is truly conceived of, we can handle; but the misconcep-tion of what we need to know of evil,—or the concep-tion of it at all as something real,—costs much. Sinneeds only to be known for what it is not; then we areits master, not servant. Remember, and act on, Jesus' [25]definition of sin as alie. This cognomen makes it lessdangerous; for most of us would not be seen believingin, or adhering to, that which we know to be untrue.What would be thought of a Christian Scientist who be-lieved in the use of drugs, while declaring that they have [30]no intrinsic quality and that there is no matter? Whatshould be thought of an individual believing in that
Not to know that a false claim is false, is to be in danger
of believing it; hence the utility of knowing evil aright,
then reducing its claim to its proper denominator,—
nobody and nothing. Sin should be conceived of only
as a delusion. This true conception would remove mortals' [15]
ignorance and its consequences, and advance the second
stage of human consciousness, repentance. The first
state, namely, the knowledge of one's self, the proper
knowledge of evil and its subtle workings wherein evil
seems as real as good, is indispensable; since that which [20]
is truly conceived of, we can handle; but the misconcep-
tion of what we need to know of evil,—or the concep-
tion of it at all as something real,—costs much. Sin
needs only to be known for what it is not; then we are
its master, not servant. Remember, and act on, Jesus' [25]
definition of sin as alie. This cognomen makes it less
dangerous; for most of us would not be seen believing
in, or adhering to, that which we know to be untrue.
What would be thought of a Christian Scientist who be-
lieved in the use of drugs, while declaring that they have [30]
no intrinsic quality and that there is no matter? What
should be thought of an individual believing in that
which is untrue, and at the same time declaring the unity [1]of Truth, and its allness? Beware of those who mis-represent facts; or tacitly assent where they should dis-sent; or who take me as authority for what I disapprove,or mayhap never have thought of, and try to reverse, in- [5]vert, or controvert, Truth; for this is a sure pretext ofmoral defilement.
which is untrue, and at the same time declaring the unity [1]
of Truth, and its allness? Beware of those who mis-
represent facts; or tacitly assent where they should dis-
sent; or who take me as authority for what I disapprove,
or mayhap never have thought of, and try to reverse, in- [5]
vert, or controvert, Truth; for this is a sure pretext of
moral defilement.
Examine yourselves, and see what, and how much, sinclaims of you; and how much of this claim you admitas valid, or comply with. The knowledge of evil that [10]brings on repentance is the most hopeful stage of mortalmentality. Even a mild mistake must be seen as a mis-take, in order to be corrected; how much more, then,should one's sins be seen and repented of, before theycan be reduced to their native nothingness! [15]
Examine yourselves, and see what, and how much, sin
claims of you; and how much of this claim you admit
as valid, or comply with. The knowledge of evil that [10]
brings on repentance is the most hopeful stage of mortal
mentality. Even a mild mistake must be seen as a mis-
take, in order to be corrected; how much more, then,
should one's sins be seen and repented of, before they
can be reduced to their native nothingness! [15]
Ignorance is only blest by reason of its nothingness;for seeing the need of somethingness in its stead, blessesmortals. Ignorance was the first condition of sin in theallegory of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Theirmental state is not desirable, neither is a knowledge of [20]sin and its consequences, repentance,per se; but, ad-mitting the existence of both, mortals must hasten throughthe second to the third stage,—the knowledge of good;for without this the valuable sequence of knowledgewould be lacking,—even the power to escape from the [25]false claims of sin. To understand good, one must discernthe nothingness of evil, and consecrate one's life anew.
Ignorance is only blest by reason of its nothingness;
for seeing the need of somethingness in its stead, blesses
mortals. Ignorance was the first condition of sin in the
allegory of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Their
mental state is not desirable, neither is a knowledge of [20]
sin and its consequences, repentance,per se; but, ad-
mitting the existence of both, mortals must hasten through
the second to the third stage,—the knowledge of good;
for without this the valuable sequence of knowledge
would be lacking,—even the power to escape from the [25]
false claims of sin. To understand good, one must discern
the nothingness of evil, and consecrate one's life anew.
Beloved brethren, Christ, Truth, saith unto you,“Benot afraid!”—fear not sin, lest thereby it master you;but onlyfear to sin. Watch and pray for self-knowledge; [30]since then, and thus, cometh repentance,—and yoursuperiority to a delusion is won.
Beloved brethren, Christ, Truth, saith unto you,“Be
not afraid!”—fear not sin, lest thereby it master you;
but onlyfear to sin. Watch and pray for self-knowledge; [30]
since then, and thus, cometh repentance,—and your
superiority to a delusion is won.
Repentance is better than sacrifice. The costly balm [1]of Araby, poured on our Master's feet, had not the valueof a singletear.
Repentance is better than sacrifice. The costly balm [1]
of Araby, poured on our Master's feet, had not the value
of a singletear.
Beloved children, the world has need of you,—andmore as children than as men and women: it needs your [5]innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, uncontami-nated lives. You need also to watch, and pray that youpreserve these virtues unstained, and lose them not throughcontact with the world. What grander ambition is therethan to maintain in yourselves what Jesus loved, and to [10]know that your example, more than words, makes moralsfor mankind!
Beloved children, the world has need of you,—and
more as children than as men and women: it needs your [5]
innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, uncontami-
nated lives. You need also to watch, and pray that you
preserve these virtues unstained, and lose them not through
contact with the world. What grander ambition is there
than to maintain in yourselves what Jesus loved, and to [10]
know that your example, more than words, makes morals
for mankind!