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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/16591-h.zip b/16591-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f635413 --- /dev/null +++ b/16591-h.zip diff --git a/16591-h/16591-h.htm b/16591-h/16591-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7d228c6 --- /dev/null +++ b/16591-h/16591-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2171 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Unity Of Good, by Mary Baker Eddy. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em; + float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;} + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + .poem span.i8 {display: block; margin-left: 8em;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Unity of Good, by Mary Baker Eddy + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Unity of Good + +Author: Mary Baker Eddy + +Release Date: August 25, 2005 [EBook #16591] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNITY OF GOOD *** + + + + +Produced by Justin Gillbank, Josephine Paolucci and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + +<p><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></a></p> +<h1>UNITY OF GOOD</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>MARY BAKER EDDY</h2> + +<h3>AUTHOR OF SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES</h3> + +<p>Registered U.S. Patent Office</p> + +<p>Published by The Trustees under the Will of Mary Baker G. Eddy</p> + +<p>BOSTON, U.S.A.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2"></a></p><p> +Authorized Literature of<br /> +<span class="smcap">The First Church of Christ, Scientist</span><br /> +in Boston, Massachusetts<br /> +<br /> +<i>Copyright, 1887, 1891, 1908</i><br /> +<span class="smcap">By Mary Baker G. Eddy</span><br /> +<i>Copyright renewed, 1915</i><br /> +<i>Copyright renewed, 1919</i><br /> +<br /> +<i>All rights reserved</i><br /> +<br /> +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3"></a></p> +<h2><a name="Contents" id="Contents"></a>Contents</h2> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='left'>Caution in the Truth</td><td align='left'><a href="#Caution_in_the_Truth"><b>1</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> <i>Does God know or behold sin, sickness, and death?</i></td><td align='left'><a href="#Does_God_know_or_behold_sin_sickness_and_death"><b>1</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Seedtime and Harvest</td><td align='left'><a href="#Seedtime_and_Harvest"><b>8</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> <i>Is anything real of which the physical senses are cognizant?</i></td><td align='left'><a href="#Is_anything_real_of_which_the_physical_senses_are_cognizant"><b>8</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>The Deep Things of God</td><td align='left'><a href="#The_Deep_Things_of_God"><b>13</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Ways Higher than Our Ways</td><td align='left'><a href="#Ways_Higher_than_Our_Ways"><b>17</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Rectifications</td><td align='left'><a href="#Rectifications"><b>20</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>A Colloquy</td><td align='left'><a href="#A_Colloquy"><b>21</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>The Ego</td><td align='left'><a href="#The_Ego"><b>27</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Soul</td><td align='left'><a href="#Soul"><b>28</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>There is no Matter</td><td align='left'><a href="#There_is_no_Matter"><b>31</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> <i>Sight</i></td><td align='left'><a href="#Sight"><b>33</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> <i>Touch</i></td><td align='left'><a href="#Touch"><b>34</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> <i>Taste</i></td><td align='left'><a href="#Taste"><b>35</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> <i>Force</i></td><td align='left'><a href="#Force"><b>35</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Is There no Death?</td><td align='left'><a href="#Is_There_no_Death"><b>37</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Personal Statements</td><td align='left'><a href="#Personal_Statements"><b>44</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Credo</td><td align='left'><a href="#Credo"><b>48</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> <i>Do you believe in God?</i></td><td align='left'><a href="#Do_you_believe_in_God"><b>48</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> <i>Do you believe in man?</i></td><td align='left'><a href="#Do_you_believe_in_man"><b>49</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> <i>Do you believe in matter?</i></td><td align='left'><a href="#Do_you_believe_in_matter"><b>50</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> <i>What say you of woman?</i></td><td align='left'><a href="#What_say_you_of_woman"><b>51</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> <i>What say you of evil?</i></td><td align='left'><a href="#What_say_you_of_evil"><b>52</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Suffering from Others' Thoughts</td><td align='left'><a href="#Suffering_from_Others_Thoughts"><b>55</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>The Saviour's Mission</td><td align='left'><a href="#The_Saviours_Mission"><b>59</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Summary</td><td align='left'><a href="#Summary"><b>64</b></a></td></tr> +</table></div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></a></p> +<h2><a name="Unity_of_Good" id="Unity_of_Good"></a>Unity of Good</h2> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Caution_in_the_Truth" id="Caution_in_the_Truth"></a>Caution in the Truth</h2> + + +<p>Perhaps no doctrine of Christian Science rouses so much natural doubt and +questioning as this, that God knows no such thing as sin. Indeed, this may +be set down as one of the "things hard to be understood," such as the +apostle Peter declared were taught by his fellow-apostle Paul, "which they +that are unlearned and unstable wrest ... unto their own destruction." (2 +Peter iii. 16.)</p> + +<p>Let us then reason together on this important subject, whose statement in +Christian Science may justly be characterized as <i>wonderful</i>.</p> + + +<p><i><a name="Does_God_know_or_behold_sin_sickness_and_death" id="Does_God_know_or_behold_sin_sickness_and_death"></a>Does God know or behold sin, sickness, and death?</i></p> + +<p>The nature and character of God is so little apprehended and demonstrated +by mortals, that I counsel my students to defer this infinite inquiry, in +their discussions of Christian Science. In fact, they had better leave the +subject untouched, until they draw nearer to the divine character, and are +practically able to testify, by their lives, that as they come closer to +the true understanding of God they lose all sense of error.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></a>The Scriptures declare that God is too pure to behold iniquity (Habakkuk +i. 13); but they also declare that God pitieth them who fear Him; that +there is no place where His voice is not heard; that He is "a very present +help in trouble."</p> + +<p>The sinner has no refuge from sin, except in God, who is his salvation. We +must, however, realize God's presence, power, and love, in order to be +saved from sin. This realization takes away man's fondness for sin and his +pleasure in it; and, lastly, it removes the pain which accrues to him from +it. Then follows this, as the <i>finale</i> in Science: The sinner loses his +sense of sin, and gains a higher sense of God, in whom there is no sin.</p> + +<p>The true man, really <i>saved</i>, is ready to testify of God in the infinite +penetration of Truth, and can affirm that the Mind which is good, or God, +has no knowledge of sin.</p> + +<p>In the same manner the sick lose their sense of sickness, and gain that +spiritual sense of harmony which contains neither discord nor disease.</p> + +<p>According to this same rule, in divine Science, the dying—if they die in +the Lord—awake from a sense of death to a sense of Life in Christ, with a +knowledge of Truth and Love beyond what they possessed before; because +their lives have grown so far toward the stature of manhood in Christ +Jesus, that they are ready for a spiritual transfiguration, through their +affections and understanding.</p> + +<p>Those who reach this transition, called <i>death</i>, without <a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></a>having rightly +improved the lessons of this primary school of mortal existence,—and still +believe in matter's reality, pleasure, and pain,—are not ready to +understand immortality. Hence they awake only to another sphere of +experience, and must pass through another probationary state before it can +be truly said of them: "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord."</p> + +<p>They upon whom the second death, of which we read in the Apocalypse +(Revelation xx. 6), hath no power, are those who have obeyed God's +commands, and have washed their robes white through the sufferings of the +flesh and the triumphs of Spirit. Thus they have reached the goal in divine +Science, by knowing Him in whom they have believed. This knowledge is not +the forbidden fruit of sin, sickness, and death, but it is the fruit which +grows on the "tree of life." This is the understanding of God, whereby man +is found in the image and likeness of good, not of evil; of health, not of +sickness; of Life, not of death.</p> + +<p>God is All-in-all. Hence He is in Himself only, in His own nature and +character, and is perfect being, or consciousness. He is all the Life and +Mind there is or can be. Within Himself is every embodiment of Life and +Mind.</p> + +<p>If He is All, He can have no consciousness of anything unlike Himself; +because, if He is omnipresent, there can be nothing outside of Himself.</p> + +<p>Now this self-same God is our helper. He pities us. He has mercy upon us, +and guides every event of our <a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a>careers. He is near to them who adore Him. +To understand Him, without a single taint of our mortal, finite sense of +sin, sickness, or death, is to approach Him and become like Him.</p> + +<p>Truth is God, and in God's law. This law declares that Truth is All, and +there is no error. This law of Truth destroys every phase of error. To gain +a temporary consciousness of God's law is to feel, in a certain finite +human sense, that God comes to us and pities us; but the attainment of the +understanding of His presence, through the Science of God, destroys our +sense of imperfection, or of His absence, through a diviner sense that God +is all true consciousness; and this convinces us that, as we get still +nearer Him, we must forever lose our own consciousness of error.</p> + +<p>But how could we lose all consciousness of error, if God be conscious of +it? God has not forbidden man to know Him; on the contrary, the Father bids +man have the same Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus,"—which was +certainly the divine Mind; but God does forbid man's acquaintance with +evil. Why? Because evil is no part of the divine knowledge.</p> + +<p>John's Gospel declares (xvii. 3) that "life eternal" consists in the +knowledge of the only true God, and of Jesus Christ, whom He has sent. +Surely from such an understanding of Science, such knowing, the vision of +sin is wholly excluded.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, at the present crude hour, no wise men or <a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a>women will rudely +or prematurely agitate a theme involving the All of infinity.</p> + +<p>Rather will they rejoice in the small understanding they have already +gained of the wholeness of Deity, and work gradually and gently up toward +the perfect thought divine. This meekness will increase their apprehension +of God, because their mental struggles and pride of opinion will +proportionately diminish.</p> + +<p>Every one should be encouraged not to accept any personal opinion on so +great a matter, but to seek the divine Science of this question of Truth by +following upward individual convictions, undisturbed by the frightened +sense of any need of attempting to solve every Life-problem in a day.</p> + +<p>"Great is the mystery of godliness," says Paul; and <i>mystery</i> involves the +unknown. No stubborn purpose to force conclusions on this subject will +unfold in us a higher sense of Deity; neither will it promote the Cause of +Truth or enlighten the individual thought.</p> + +<p>Let us respect the rights of conscience and the liberty of the sons of God, +so letting our "moderation be known to all men." Let no enmity, no +untempered controversy, spring up between Christian Science students and +Christians who wholly or partially differ from them as to the nature of sin +and the marvellous unity of man with God shadowed forth in scientific +thought. Rather let the stately goings of this wonderful part of Truth be +left to the supernal guidance.</p> + +<p>"These are but parts of Thy ways," says Job; and the <a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a>whole is greater than +its parts. Our present understanding is but "the seed within itself," for +it is divine Science, "bearing fruit after its kind."</p> + +<p>Sooner or later the whole human race will learn that, in proportion as the +spotless selfhood of God is understood, human nature will be renovated, and +man will receive a higher selfhood, derived from God, and the redemption of +mortals from sin, sickness, and death be established on everlasting +foundations.</p> + +<p>The Science of physical harmony, as now presented to the people in divine +light, is radical enough to promote as forcible collisions of thought as +the age has strength to bear. Until the heavenly law of health, according +to Christian Science, is firmly grounded, even the thinkers are not +prepared to answer intelligently leading questions about God and sin, and +the world is far from ready to assimilate such a grand and all-absorbing +verity concerning the divine nature and character as is embraced in the +theory of God's blindness to error and ignorance of sin. No wise mother, +though a graduate of Wellesley College, will talk to her babe about the +problems of Euclid.</p> + +<p>Not much more than a half-century ago the assertion of universal salvation +provoked discussion and horror, similar to what our declarations about sin +and Deity must arouse, if hastily pushed to the front while the platoons of +Christian Science are not yet thoroughly drilled in the plainer manual of +their spiritual armament. "Wait patiently on the Lord;" and in less than +another fifty <a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a>years His name will be magnified in the apprehension of this +new subject, as already He is glorified in the wide extension of belief in +the impartial grace of God,—shown by the changes at Andover Seminary and +in multitudes of other religious folds.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, though I thus speak, and from my heart of hearts, it is due +both to Christian Science and myself to make also the following statement: +When I have most clearly seen and most sensibly felt that the infinite +recognizes no disease, this has not separated me from God, but has so bound +me to Him as to enable me instantaneously to heal a cancer which had eaten +its way to the jugular vein.</p> + +<p>In the same spiritual condition I have been able to replace dislocated +joints and raise the dying to instantaneous health. People are now living +who can bear witness to these cures. Herein is my evidence, from on high, +that the views here promulgated on this subject are correct.</p> + +<p>Certain self-proved propositions pour into my waiting thought in connection +with these experiences; and here is one such conviction: that an +acknowledgment of the perfection of the infinite Unseen confers a power +nothing else can. An incontestable point in divine Science is, that because +God is All, a realization of this fact dispels even the sense or +consciousness of sin, and brings us nearer to God, bringing out the highest +phenomena of the All-Mind.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a></p> +<h2><a name="Seedtime_and_Harvest" id="Seedtime_and_Harvest"></a>Seedtime and Harvest</h2> + + +<p>Let another query now be considered, which gives much trouble to many +earnest thinkers before Science answers it.</p> + + +<p><i><a name="Is_anything_real_of_which_the_physical_senses_are_cognizant" id="Is_anything_real_of_which_the_physical_senses_are_cognizant"></a>Is anything real of which the physical senses are cognizant?</i></p> + +<p>Everything is as real as you make it, and no more so. What you see, hear, +feel, is a mode of consciousness, and can have no other reality than the +sense you entertain of it.</p> + +<p>It is dangerous to rest upon the evidence of the senses, for this evidence +is not absolute, and therefore not real, in our sense of the word. All that +is beautiful and good in your individual consciousness is permanent. That +which is not so is illusive and fading. My insistence upon a proper +understanding of the unreality of matter and evil arises from their +deleterious effects, physical, moral, and intellectual, upon the race.</p> + +<p>All forms of error are uprooted in Science, on the same basis whereby +sickness is healed,—namely, by the establishment, through reason, +revelation, and Science, of the nothingness of every claim of error, even +the doctrine of heredity and other physical causes. You demonstrate the +process of Science, and it proves my view <a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a>conclusively, that mortal mind +is the cause of all disease. Destroy the mental sense of the disease, and +the disease itself disappears. Destroy the sense of sin, and sin itself +disappears.</p> + +<p>Material and sensual consciousness are mortal. Hence they must, some time +and in some way, be reckoned unreal. That time has partially come, or my +words would not have been spoken. Jesus has made the way plain,—so plain +that all are without excuse who walk not in it; but this way is not the +path of physical science, human philosophy, or mystic psychology.</p> + +<p>The talent and genius of the centuries have wrongly reckoned. They have not +based upon revelation their arguments and conclusions as to the source and +resources of being,—its combinations, phenomena, and outcome,—but have +built instead upon the sand of human reason. They have not accepted the +simple teaching and life of Jesus as the only true solution of the +perplexing problem of human existence.</p> + +<p>Sometimes it is said, by those who fail to understand me, that I +<i>monopolize</i>; and this is said because ideas akin to mine have been held by +a few spiritual thinkers in all ages. So they have, but in a far different +form. Healing has gone on continually; yet healing, as I teach it, has not +been practised since the days of Christ.</p> + +<p>What is the cardinal point of the difference in my metaphysical system? +This: that <i>by knowing the unreality of <a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>disease, sin, and death</i>, you +demonstrate the allness of God. This difference wholly separates my system +from all others. The reality of these so-called existences I deny, because +they are not to be found in God, and this system is built on Him as the +sole cause. It would be difficult to name any previous teachers, save Jesus +and his apostles, who have thus taught.</p> + +<p>If there be any <i>monopoly</i> in my teaching, it lies in this utter reliance +upon the one God, to whom belong all things.</p> + +<p>Life is God, or Spirit, the supersensible eternal. The universe and man are +the spiritual phenomena of this one infinite Mind. Spiritual phenomena +never converge toward aught but infinite Deity. Their gradations are +spiritual and divine; they cannot collapse, or lapse into their opposites, +for God is their divine Principle. They live, because He lives; and they +are eternally perfect, because He is perfect, and governs them in the Truth +of divine Science, whereof God is the Alpha and Omega, the centre and +circumference.</p> + +<p>To attempt the calculation of His mighty ways, from the evidence before the +material senses, is fatuous. It is like commencing with the minus sign, to +learn the principle of positive mathematics.</p> + +<p>God was not in the whirlwind. He is not the blind force of a material +universe. Mortals must learn this; unless, pursued by their fears, they +would endeavor to hide from His presence under their own falsities, and +call <a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a>in vain for the mountains of unholiness to shield them from the +penalty of error.</p> + +<p>Jesus taught us to walk <i>over</i>, not <i>into</i> or <i>with</i>, the currents of +matter, or mortal mind. His teachings beard the lions in their dens. He +turned the water into wine, he commanded the winds, he healed the +sick,—all in direct opposition to human philosophy and so-called natural +science. He annulled the laws of matter, showing them to be laws of mortal +mind, not of God. He showed the need of changing this mind and its abortive +laws. He demanded a change of consciousness and evidence, and effected this +change through the higher laws of God. The palsied hand moved, despite the +boastful sense of physical law and order. Jesus stooped not to human +consciousness, nor to the evidence of the senses. He heeded not the taunt, +"That withered hand looks very real and feels very real;" but he cut off +this vain boasting and destroyed human pride by taking away the material +evidence. If his patient was a theologian of some bigoted sect, a +physician, or a professor of natural philosophy,—according to the ruder +sort then prevalent,—he never thanked Jesus for restoring his senseless +hand; but neither red tape nor indignity hindered the divine process. Jesus +required neither cycles of time nor thought in order to mature fitness for +perfection and its possibilities. He said that the kingdom of heaven is +here, and is included in Mind; that while ye say, There are yet four +months, and <i>then</i> cometh the harvest, I say, Look up, <a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a>not down, for your +fields are already white for the harvest; and gather the harvest by mental, +not material processes. The laborers are few in this vineyard of +Mind-sowing and reaping; but let them apply to the waiting grain the +curving sickle of Mind's eternal circle, and bind it with bands of Soul.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a></p> +<h2><a name="The_Deep_Things_of_God" id="The_Deep_Things_of_God"></a>The Deep Things of God</h2> + + +<p>Science reverses the evidence of the senses in theology, on the same +principle that it does in astronomy. Popular theology makes God tributary +to man, coming at human call; whereas the reverse is true in Science. Men +must approach God reverently, doing their own work in obedience to divine +law, if they would fulfil the intended harmony of being.</p> + +<p>The principle of music knows nothing of discord. God is harmony's selfhood. +His universal laws, His unchangeableness, are not infringed in ethics any +more than in music. To Him there is no moral inharmony; as we shall learn, +proportionately as we gain the true understanding of Deity. If God could be +conscious of sin, His infinite power would straightway reduce the universe +to chaos.</p> + +<p>If God has any real knowledge of sin, sickness, and death, they must be +eternal; since He is, in the very fibre of His being, "without beginning of +years or end of days." If God knows that which is not permanent, it follows +that He knows something which He must learn to <i>unknow</i>, for the benefit of +our race.</p> + +<p>Such a view would bring us upon an outworn theological <a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a>platform, which +contains such planks as the divine repentance, and the belief that God must +one day do His work over again, because it was not at first done aright.</p> + +<p>Can it be seriously held, by any thinker, that long after God made the +universe,—earth, man, animals, plants, the sun, the moon, and "the stars +also,"—He should so gain wisdom and power from past experience that He +could vastly improve upon His own previous work,—as Burgess, the +boatbuilder, remedies in the Volunteer the shortcomings of the Puritan's +model?</p> + +<p>Christians are commanded to <i>grow in grace</i>. Was it necessary for God to +grow in grace, that He might rectify His spiritual universe?</p> + +<p>The Jehovah of limited Hebrew faith might need repentance, because His +created children proved sinful; but the New Testament tells us of "the +Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." +God is not the shifting vane on the spire, but the corner-stone of living +rock, firmer than everlasting hills.</p> + +<p>As God is Mind, if this Mind is familiar with evil, all cannot be good +therein. Our infinite model would be taken away. What is in eternal Mind +must be reflected in man, Mind's image. How then could man escape, or hope +to escape, from a knowledge which is everlasting in his creator?</p> + +<p>God never said that man would become better by learning to distinguish evil +from good,—but the contrary, that <a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a>by this knowledge, by man's first +disobedience, came "death into the world, and all our woe."</p> + +<p>"Shall mortal man be more just than God?" asks the poet-patriarch. May men +rid themselves of an incubus which God never can throw off? Do mortals know +more than God, that they may declare Him absolutely cognizant of sin?</p> + +<p>God created all things, and pronounced them good. Was evil among these good +things? Man is God's child and image. If God knows evil, so must man, or +the likeness is incomplete, the image marred.</p> + +<p>If man must be destroyed by the knowledge of evil, then his destruction +comes through the very knowledge caught from God, and the creature is +punished for his likeness to his creator.</p> + +<p>God is commonly called the <i>sinless</i>, and man the <i>sinful</i>; but if the +thought of sin could be possible in Deity, would Deity then be sinless? +Would God not of necessity take precedence as the infinite sinner, and +human sin become only an echo of the divine?</p> + +<p>Such vagaries are to be found in heathen religious history. There are, or +have been, devotees who worship not the good Deity, who will not harm them, +but the bad deity, who seeks to do them mischief, and whom therefore they +wish to bribe with prayers into quiescence, as a criminal appeases, with a +money-bag, the venal officer.</p> + +<p>Surely this is no Christian worship! In Christianity <a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a>man bows to the +infinite perfection which he is bidden to imitate. In Truth, such terms as +<i>divine sin</i> and <i>infinite sinner</i> are unheard-of +contradictions,—absurdities; but <i>would</i> they be sheer nonsense, if God +has, or can have, a real knowledge of sin?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a></p> +<h2><a name="Ways_Higher_than_Our_Ways" id="Ways_Higher_than_Our_Ways"></a>Ways Higher than Our Ways</h2> + + +<p>A lie has only one chance of successful deception,—to be accounted true. +Evil seeks to fasten all error upon God, and so make the lie seem part of +eternal Truth.</p> + +<p>Emerson says, "Hitch your wagon to a star." I say, Be allied to the deific +power, and all that is good will aid your journey, as the stars in their +courses fought against Sisera. (Judges v. 20.) Hourly, in Christian +Science, man thus weds himself with God, or rather he ratifies a union +predestined from all eternity; but evil ties its wagon-load of offal to the +divine chariots,—or seeks so to do,—that its vileness may be christened +purity, and its darkness get consolation from borrowed scintillations.</p> + +<p>Jesus distinctly taught the arrogant Pharisees that, from the beginning, +their father, the devil, was the would-be murderer of Truth. A right +apprehension of the wonderful utterances of him who "spake as never man +spake," would despoil error of its borrowed plumes, and transform the +universe into a home of marvellous light,—"a consummation devoutly to be +wished."</p> + +<p>Error says God must know evil because He knows all things; but Holy Writ +declares God told our first parents that in the day when they should +partake of the fruit of evil, they must surely die. Would it not absurdly +follow <a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a>that God must perish, if He knows evil and evil necessarily leads +to extinction? Rather let us think of God as saying, I am infinite good; +therefore I know not evil. Dwelling in light, I can see only the brightness +of My own glory.</p> + +<p>Error may say that God can never save man from sin, if He knows and sees it +not; but God says, I am too pure to behold iniquity, and destroy everything +that is unlike Myself.</p> + +<p>Many fancy that our heavenly Father reasons thus: If pain and sorrow were +not in My mind, I could not remedy them, and wipe the tears from the eyes +of My children. Error says you must know grief in order to console it. +Truth, God, says you oftenest console others in troubles that you have not. +Is not our comforter always from outside and above ourselves?</p> + +<p>God says, I show My pity through divine law, not through human. It is My +sympathy with and My knowledge of harmony (not inharmony) which alone +enable Me to rebuke, and eventually destroy, every supposition of discord.</p> + +<p>Error says God must know death in order to strike at its root; but God +saith, I am ever-conscious Life, and thus I conquer death; for to be ever +conscious of Life is to be never conscious of death. I am All. A knowledge +of aught beside Myself is impossible.</p> + +<p>If such knowledge of evil were possible to God, it would lower His rank.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a>With God, <i>knowledge</i> is necessarily <i>foreknowledge</i>; and <i>foreknowledge</i> +and <i>foreordination</i> must be one, in an infinite Being. What Deity +<i>foreknows</i>, Deity must <i>foreordain</i>; else He is not omnipotent, and, like +ourselves, He foresees events which are contrary to His creative will, yet +which He cannot avert.</p> + +<p>If God knows evil at all, He must have had foreknowledge thereof; and if He +foreknew it, He must virtually have intended it, or ordered it +aforetime,—foreordained it; else how could it have come into the world?</p> + +<p>But this we cannot believe of God; for if the supreme good could predestine +or foreknow evil, there would be sin in Deity, and this would be the end of +infinite moral unity. "If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, +how great is that darkness!" On the contrary, evil is only a delusive +deception, without any actuality which Truth can know.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a></p> +<h2><a name="Rectifications" id="Rectifications"></a>Rectifications</h2> + + +<p>How is a mistake to be rectified? By reversal or revision,—by seeing it in +its proper light, and then turning it or turning from it.</p> + +<p>We undo the statements of error by reversing them.</p> + +<p>Through these three statements, or misstatements, evil comes into +authority:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>First:</i> The Lord created it.<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Second:</i> The Lord knows it.<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Third:</i> I am afraid of it.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>By a reverse process of argument evil must be dethroned:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>First:</i> God never made evil.<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Second:</i> He knows it not.<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Third:</i> We therefore need not fear it.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Try this process, dear inquirer, and so reach that perfect Love which +"casteth out fear," and then see if this Love does not destroy in you all +hate and the sense of evil. You will awake to the perception of God as +All-in-all. You will find yourself losing the knowledge and the operation +of sin, proportionably as you realize the divine infinitude and believe +that He can see nothing outside of His own focal distance.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a></p> +<h2><a name="A_Colloquy" id="A_Colloquy"></a>A Colloquy</h2> + + +<p>In Romans (ii. 15) we read the apostle's description of mental processes +wherein human thoughts are "the mean while accusing or else excusing one +another." If we observe our mental processes, we shall find that we are +perpetually arguing with ourselves; yet each mortal is not two +personalities, but one.</p> + +<p>In like manner good and evil talk to one another; yet they are not two but +one, for evil is naught, and good only is reality.</p> + +<p><i>Evil.</i> God hath said, "Ye shall eat of every tree of the garden." If you +do not, your intellect will be circumscribed and the evidence of your +personal senses be denied. This would antagonize individual consciousness +and existence.</p> + +<p><i>Good.</i> The Lord is God. With Him is no consciousness of evil, because +there is nothing beside Him or outside of Him. Individual consciousness in +man is inseparable from good. There is no sensible matter, no sense in +matter; but there is a spiritual sense, a sense of Spirit, and this is the +only consciousness belonging to true individuality, or a divine sense of +being.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a><i>Evil.</i> Why is this so?</p> + +<p><i>Good.</i> Because man is made after God's eternal likeness, and this likeness +consists in a sense of harmony and immortality, in which no evil can +possibly dwell. You may eat of the fruit of Godlikeness, but as to the +fruit of ungodliness, which is opposed to Truth,—ye shall not touch it, +lest ye die.</p> + +<p><i>Evil.</i> But I would taste and know error for myself.</p> + +<p><i>Good.</i> Thou shalt not admit that error is something to know or be known, +to eat or be eaten, to see or be seen, to feel or be felt. To admit the +existence of error would be to admit the truth of a lie.</p> + +<p><i>Evil.</i> But there is something besides good. God knows that a knowledge of +this something is essential to happiness and life. A lie is as genuine as +Truth, though not so legitimate a child of God. Whatever exists must come +from God, and be important to our knowledge. Error, even, is His offspring.</p> + +<p><i>Good.</i> Whatever cometh not from the eternal Spirit, has its origin in the +physical senses and material brains, called <i>human intellect</i> and +<i>will-power</i>,—<i>alias</i> intelligent matter.</p> + +<p>In Shakespeare's tragedy of King Lear, it was the <a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a>traitorous and cruel +treatment received by old Gloster from his bastard son Edmund which makes +true the lines:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Make instruments to scourge us.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>His lawful son, Edgar, was to his father ever loyal. Now God has no +bastards to turn again and rend their Maker. The divine children are born +of law and order, and Truth knows only such.</p> + +<p>How well the Shakespearean tale agrees with the word of Scripture, in +Hebrews xii. 7, 8: "If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with +sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be +without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and +not sons."</p> + +<p>The doubtful or spurious evidence of the senses is not to be +admitted,—especially when they testify concerning Spirit, whereof they are +confessedly incompetent to speak.</p> + +<p><i>Evil.</i> But mortal mind and sin really exist!</p> + +<p><i>Good.</i> How can they exist, unless God has created them? And how can He +create anything so wholly unlike Himself and foreign to His nature? An evil +material mind, so-called, can conceive of God only as like itself, and +knowing both evil and good; but a purely good and spiritual consciousness +has no sense whereby to cognize <a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a>evil. Mortal mind is the opposite of +immortal Mind, and sin the opposite of goodness. I am the infinite All. +From me proceedeth all Mind, all consciousness, all individuality, all +being. My Mind is divine good, and cannot drift into evil. To believe in +minds many is to depart from the supreme sense of harmony. Your assumptions +insist that there is more than the one Mind, more than the one God; but +verily I say unto you, God is All-in-all; and you can never be outside of +His oneness.</p> + +<p><i>Evil.</i> I am a finite consciousness, a material individuality,—a mind in +matter, which is both evil and good.</p> + +<p><i>Good.</i> All consciousness is Mind; and Mind is God,—an infinite, and not a +finite consciousness. This consciousness is reflected in individual +consciousness, or man, whose source is infinite Mind. There is no really +finite mind, no finite consciousness. There is no material substance, for +Spirit is all that endureth, and hence is the only substance. There is, can +be, no evil mind, because Mind is God. God and His ideas—that is, God and +the universe—constitute all that exists. Man, as God's offspring, must be +spiritual, perfect, eternal.</p> + +<p><i>Evil.</i> I am something separate from good or God. I am substance. My mind +is more than matter. In my mortal mind, matter becomes conscious, and is +able to see, taste, hear, feel, smell. Whatever matter thus affirms is +<a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a>mainly correct. If you, O good, deny this, then I deny your truthfulness. +If you say that matter is unconscious, you stultify my intellect, insult my +conscience, and dispute self-evident facts; for nothing can be clearer than +the testimony of the five senses.</p> + +<p><i>Good.</i> Spirit is the only substance. Spirit is God, and God is good; hence +good is the only substance, the only Mind. Mind is not, cannot be, in +matter. It sees, hears, feels, tastes, smells as Mind, and not as matter. +Matter cannot talk; and hence, whatever it appears to say of itself is a +lie. This lie, that Mind can be in matter,—claiming to be something beside +God, denying Truth and its demonstration in Christian Science,—this lie I +declare an illusion. This denial enlarges the human intellect by removing +its evidence from sense to Soul, and from finiteness into infinity. It +honors conscious human individuality by showing God as its source.</p> + +<p><i>Evil.</i> I am a creator,—but upon a material, not a spiritual basis. I give +life, and I can destroy life.</p> + +<p><i>Good.</i> Evil is not a creator. God, good, is the only creator. Evil is not +conscious or conscientious Mind; it is not individual, not actual. Evil is +not spiritual, and therefore has no groundwork in Life, whose only source +is Spirit. The elements which belong to the eternal All,—Life, Truth, +Love,—evil can never take away.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a><i>Evil.</i> I am intelligent matter; and matter is egoistic, having its own +innate selfhood and the capacity to evolve mind. God is in matter, and +matter reproduces God. From Him come my forms, near or remote. This is my +honor, that God is my author, authority, governor, disposer. I am proud to +be in His outstretched hands, and I shirk all responsibility for myself as +evil, and for my varying manifestations.</p> + +<p><i>Good.</i> You mistake, O evil! God is not your authority and law. Neither is +He the author of the material changes, the <i>phantasma</i>, a belief in which +leads to such teaching as we find in the hymn-verse so often sung in +church:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Chance and change are busy ever,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Man decays and ages move;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But His mercy waneth never,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">God is wisdom, God is love.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Now if it be true that God's power <i>never waneth</i>, how can it be also true +that <i>chance</i> and <i>change</i> are universal factors,—that <i>man decays</i>? Many +ordinary Christians protest against this stanza of Bowring's, and its +sentiment is foreign to Christian Science. If God be <i>changeless goodness</i>, +as sings another line of this hymn, what place has <i>chance</i> in the divine +economy? Nay, there is in God naught fantastic. All is real, all is +serious. The phantasmagoria is a product of human dreams.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a></p> +<h2><a name="The_Ego" id="The_Ego"></a>The Ego</h2> + + +<p>From various friends comes inquiry as to the meaning of a word employed in +the foregoing colloquy.</p> + +<p>There are two English words, often used as if they were synonyms, which +really have a shade of difference between them.</p> + +<p>An <i>egotist</i> is one who talks much of himself. <i>Egotism</i> implies vanity and +self-conceit.</p> + +<p><i>Egoism</i> is a more philosophical word, signifying a passionate love of +self, which doubts all existence except its own. An <i>egoist</i>, therefore, is +one uncertain of everything except his own existence.</p> + +<p>Applying these distinctions to evil and God, we shall find that evil is +<i>egotistic</i>,—boastful, but fleeing like a shadow at daybreak; while God is +<i>egoistic</i>, knowing only His own all-presence, all-knowledge, all-power.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a></p> +<h2><a name="Soul" id="Soul"></a>Soul</h2> + + +<p>We read in the Hebrew Scriptures, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die."</p> + +<p>What is Soul? Is it a reality within the mortal body? Who can prove that? +Anatomy has not descried nor described Soul. It was never touched by the +scalpel nor cut with the dissecting-knife. The five physical senses do not +cognize it.</p> + +<p>Who, then, dares define Soul as something within man? As well might you +declare some old castle to be peopled with demons or angels, though never a +light or form was discerned therein, and not a spectre had ever been seen +going in or coming out.</p> + +<p>The common hypotheses about souls are even more vague than ordinary +material conjectures, and have less basis; because material theories are +built on the evidence of the material senses.</p> + +<p>Soul must be God; since we learn Soul only as we learn God, by +spiritualization. As the five senses take no cognizance of Soul, so they +take no cognizance of God. Whatever cannot be taken in by mortal mind—by +human reflection, reason, or belief—must be the unfathomable Mind, which +"eye hath not seen, nor ear heard." Soul <a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a>stands in this relation to every +hypothesis as to its human character.</p> + +<p>If Soul sins, it is a sinner, and Jewish law condemned the sinner to +death,—as does all criminal law, to a certain extent.</p> + +<p>Spirit never sins, because Spirit is God. Hence, as Spirit, Soul is +sinless, and is God. Therefore there is, there can be, no spiritual death.</p> + +<p>Transcending the evidence of the material senses, Science declares God to +be the Soul of all being, the only Mind and intelligence in the universe. +There is but one God, one Soul, or Mind, and that one is infinite, +supplying all that is absolutely immutable and eternal,—Truth, Life, Love.</p> + +<p>Science reveals Soul as that which the senses cannot define from any +standpoint of their own. What the physical senses miscall soul, Christian +Science defines as material sense; and herein lies the discrepancy between +the true Science of Soul and that material sense of a soul which that very +sense declares can never be seen or measured or weighed or touched by +physicality.</p> + +<p>Often we can elucidate the deep meaning of the Scriptures by reading +<i>sense</i> instead of <i>soul</i>, as in the Forty-second Psalm: "Why art thou cast +down, O my soul [sense]?... Hope thou in God [Soul]: for I shall yet praise +Him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God [my Soul, +immortality]."</p> + +<p>The Virgin-mother's sense being uplifted to behold<a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a> Spirit as the sole +origin of man, she exclaimed, "My soul [spiritual sense] doth magnify the +Lord."</p> + +<p>Human language constantly uses the word <i>soul</i> for <i>sense</i>. This it does +under the delusion that the senses can reverse the spiritual facts of +Science, whereas Science reverses the testimony of the material senses.</p> + +<p>Soul is Life, and being spiritual Life, never sins. Material sense is the +so-called material life. Hence this lower sense sins and suffers, according +to material belief, till divine understanding takes away this belief and +restores Soul, or spiritual Life. "He restoreth my soul," says David.</p> + +<p>In his first epistle to the Corinthians (xv. 45) Paul writes: "The first +man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening +spirit." The apostle refers to the second Adam as the Messiah, our blessed +Master, whose interpretation of God and His creation—by restoring the +spiritual sense of man as immortal instead of mortal—made humanity +victorious over death and the grave.</p> + +<p>When I discovered the power of Spirit to break the cords of matter, through +a change in the mortal sense of things, then I discerned the last Adam as a +quickening Spirit, and understood the meaning of the declaration of Holy +Writ, "The first shall be last,"—the living Soul shall be found a +quickening Spirit; or, rather, shall reflect the Life of the divine +Arbiter.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a></p> +<h2><a name="There_is_no_Matter" id="There_is_no_Matter"></a>There is no Matter</h2> + + +<p>"God is a Spirit" (or, more accurately translated, "God is Spirit"), +declares the Scripture (John iv. 24), "and they that worship Him must +worship Him in spirit and in truth."</p> + +<p>If God is Spirit, and God is All, surely there can be no matter; for the +divine All must be Spirit.</p> + +<p>The tendency of Christianity is to spiritualize thought and action. The +demonstrations of Jesus annulled the claims of matter, and overruled laws +material as emphatically as they annihilated sin.</p> + +<p>According to Christian Science, the <i>first</i> idolatrous claim of sin is, +that matter exists; the <i>second</i>, that matter is substance; the <i>third</i>, +that matter has intelligence; and the <i>fourth</i>, that matter, being so +endowed, produces life and death.</p> + +<p>Hence my conscientious position, in the denial of matter, rests on the fact +that matter usurps the authority of God, Spirit; and the nature and +character of matter, the antipode of Spirit, include all that denies and +defies Spirit, in quantity or quality.</p> + +<p>This subject can be enlarged. It can be shown, in detail, that evil does +not obtain in Spirit, God; and that God, or good, is Spirit alone; whereas, +evil <i>does</i>, according <a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a>to belief, obtain in matter; and that evil is a +false claim,—false to God, false to Truth and Life. Hence the claim of +matter usurps the prerogative of God, saying, "I am a creator. God made me, +and I make man and the material universe."</p> + +<p>Spirit is the only creator, and man, including the universe, is His +spiritual concept. By matter is commonly meant mind,—not the highest Mind, +but a false form of mind. This so-called mind and matter cannot be +separated in origin and action.</p> + +<p>What is this mind? It is not the Mind of Spirit; for spiritualization of +thought destroys all sense of matter as substance, Life, or intelligence, +and enthrones God in the eternal qualities of His being.</p> + +<p>This lower, misnamed mind is a false claim, a suppositional mind, which I +prefer to call <i>mortal mind</i>. True Mind is immortal. This mortal mind +declares itself material, in sin, sickness, and death, virtually saying, "I +am the opposite of Spirit, of holiness, harmony, and Life."</p> + +<p>To this declaration Christian Science responds, even as did our Master: +"You were a murderer from the beginning. The truth abode not in you. You +are a liar, and the father of it." Here it appears that a <i>liar</i> was in the +neuter gender,—neither masculine nor feminine. Hence it was not man (the +image of God) who lied, but the false claim to personality, which I call +<i>mortal mind</i>; a claim which Christian Science uncovers, in order to +demonstrate the falsity of the claim.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a>There are lesser arguments which prove matter to be identical with mortal +mind, and this mind a lie.</p> + +<p>The physical senses (matter really having no sense) give the only pretended +testimony there can be as to the existence of a substance called <i>matter</i>. +Now these senses, being material, can only testify from their own evidence, +and concerning themselves; yet we have it on divine authority: "If I bear +witness of myself, my witness is not true." (John v. 31.)</p> + +<p>In other words: matter testifies of itself, "I am matter;" but unless +matter is mind, it cannot talk or testify; and if it is mind, it is +certainly not the Mind of Christ, not the Mind that is identical with +Truth.</p> + +<p>Brain, thus assuming to testify, is only matter within the skull, and is +believed to be mind only through error and delusion. Examine that form of +matter called <i>brains</i>, and you find no mind therein. Hence the logical +sequence, that there is in reality neither matter nor mortal mind, but that +the self-testimony of the physical senses is false.</p> + +<p>Examine these witnesses for error, or falsity, and observe the foundations +of their testimony, and you will find them divided in evidence, mocking the +Scripture (Matthew xviii. 16), "In the mouth of two or three witnesses +every word may be established."</p> + + +<p><i><a name="Sight" id="Sight"></a>Sight.</i> Mortal mind declares that matter sees through the organizations of +matter, or that mind sees by means <a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a>of matter. Disorganize the so-called +material structure, and then mortal mind says, "I cannot see;" and declares +that matter is the master of mind, and that non-intelligence governs. +Mortal mind admits that it sees only material images, pictured on the eye's +retina.</p> + +<p>What then is the line of the syllogism? It must be this: That matter is not +seen; that mortal mind cannot see without matter; and therefore that the +whole function of material sight is an illusion, a lie.</p> + +<p>Here comes in the summary of the whole matter, wherewith we started: that +God is All, and God is Spirit; therefore there is nothing but Spirit; and +consequently there is no matter.</p> + + +<p><i><a name="Touch" id="Touch"></a>Touch</i>. Take another train of reasoning. Mortal mind says that matter +cannot feel matter; yet put your finger on a burning coal, and the nerves, +material nerves, <i>do</i> feel matter.</p> + +<p>Again I ask: What evidence does mortal mind afford that matter is +substantial, is hot or cold? Take away mortal mind, and matter could not +feel what it calls <i>substance</i>. Take away matter, and mortal mind could not +cognize its own so-called substance, and this so-called mind would have no +identity. Nothing would remain to be seen or felt.</p> + +<p>What is substance? What is the reality of God and the universe? Immortal +Mind is the real substance,—Spirit, Life, Truth, and Love.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a><i><a name="Taste" id="Taste"></a>Taste.</i> Mortal mind says, "I taste; and this is sweet, this is sour." Let +mortal mind change, and say that sour is sweet, and so it would be. If +every mortal mind believed sweet to be sour, it would be so; for the +qualities of matter are but qualities of mortal mind. Change the mind, and +the quality changes. Destroy the belief, and the quality disappears.</p> + +<p>The so-called material senses are found, upon examination, to be mortally +mental, instead of material. Reduced to its proper denomination, matter is +mortal mind; yet, strictly speaking, there is no mortal mind, for Mind is +immortal, and is not matter, but Spirit.</p> + +<p><i><a name="Force" id="Force"></a>Force.</i> What is gravitation? Mortal mind says gravitation is a material +power, or force. I ask, Which was first, matter or power? That which was +first was God, immortal Mind, the Parent of <i>all</i>. But God is Truth, and +the forces of Truth are moral and spiritual, not physical. They are not the +merciless forces of matter. What then <i>are</i> the so-called forces of matter? +They are the phenomena of mortal mind, and matter and mortal mind are one; +and this one is a misstatement of Mind, God.</p> + +<p>A molecule, as matter, is not formed by Spirit; for Spirit is <i>spiritual</i> +consciousness alone. Hence this spiritual consciousness can form nothing +unlike itself, Spirit, and Spirit is the only creator. The material atom is +an outlined falsity of consciousness, which can gather additional <a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a>evidence +of consciousness and life only as it adds lie to lie. This process it names +material attraction, and endows with the double capacity of creator and +creation.</p> + +<p>From the beginning this lie was the false witness against the fact that +Spirit is All, beside which there is no other existence. The use of a lie +is that it unwittingly confirms Truth, when handled by Christian Science, +which reverses false testimony and gains a knowledge of God from opposite +facts, or phenomena.</p> + +<p>This whole subject is met and solved by Christian Science according to +Scripture. Thus we see that Spirit is Truth and eternal reality; that +matter is the opposite of Spirit,—referred to in the New Testament as the +flesh at war with Spirit; hence, that matter is erroneous, transitory, +unreal.</p> + +<p>A further proof of this is the demonstration, according to Christian +Science, that by the reduction and the rejection of the claims of matter +(instead of acquiescence therein) man is improved physically, mentally, +morally, spiritually.</p> + +<p>To deny the existence or reality of matter, and yet admit the reality of +moral evil, sin, or to say that the divine Mind is conscious of evil, yet +is not conscious of matter, is erroneous. This error stultifies the logic +of divine Science, and must interfere with its practical demonstration.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a></p> +<h2><a name="Is_There_no_Death" id="Is_There_no_Death"></a>Is There no Death?</h2> + + +<p>Jesus not only declared himself "the way" and "the truth," but also "the +life." God is Life; and as there is but one God, there can be but one Life. +Must man die, then, in order to inherit eternal life and enter heaven?</p> + +<p>Our Master said, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." Then God and heaven, +or Life, are present, and death is not the real stepping-stone to Life and +happiness. They are now and here; and a change in human consciousness, from +sin to holiness, would reveal this wonder of being. Because God is ever +present, no boundary of time can separate us from Him and the heaven of His +presence; and because God is Life, all Life is eternal.</p> + +<p>Is it unchristian to believe there is no death? Not unless it be a sin to +believe that God is Life and All-in-all. Evil and disease do not testify of +Life and God.</p> + +<p>Human beings are physically mortal, but spiritually immortal. The evil +accompanying physical personality is illusive and mortal; but the good +attendant upon spiritual individuality is immortal. Existing here and now, +this unseen individuality is real and eternal. The so-called material +senses, and the mortal mind which is misnamed<a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a> <i>man</i>, take no cognizance of +spiritual individuality, which manifests immortality, whose Principle is +God.</p> + +<p>To God alone belong the indisputable realities of being. Death is a +contradiction of Life, or God; therefore it is not in accordance with His +law, but antagonistic thereto.</p> + +<p>Death, then, is error, opposed to Truth,—even the unreality of mortal +mind, not the reality of that Mind which is Life. Error has no life, and is +virtually without existence. Life is real; and all is real which proceeds +from Life and is inseparable from it.</p> + +<p>It is unchristian to believe in the transition called <i>material death</i>, +since matter has no life, and such misbelief must enthrone another power, +an imaginary life, above the living and true God. A material sense of life +robs God, by declaring that not He alone is Life, but that something else +also is life,—thus affirming the existence and rulership of more gods than +one. This idolatrous and false sense of life is all that dies, or appears +to die.</p> + +<p>The opposite understanding of God brings to light Life and immortality. +Death has no quality of Life; and no divine fiat commands us to believe in +aught which is unlike God, or to deny that He is Life eternal.</p> + +<p>Life as God, moral and spiritual good, is not seen in the mineral, +vegetable, or animal kingdoms. Hence the inevitable conclusion that Life is +not in these kingdoms, and that the popular views to this effect are not up +to the Christian standard of Life, or equal to the reality of being, whose +Principle is God.</p><p><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a></p> + +<p>When "the Word" is "made flesh" among mortals, the Truth of Life is +rendered practical on the body. Eternal Life is partially understood; and +sickness, sin, and death yield to holiness, health, and Life,—that is, to +God. The lust of the flesh and the pride of physical life must be quenched +in the divine essence,—that omnipotent Love which annihilates hate, that +Life which knows no death.</p> + +<p>"Who hath believed our report?" Who understands these sayings? He to whom +the arm of the Lord is revealed. He loves them from whom divine Science +removes human weakness by divine strength, and who unveil the Messiah, +whose name is Wonderful.</p> + +<p>Man has no underived power. That selfhood is false which opposes itself to +God, claims another father, and denies spiritual sonship; but as many as +receive the knowledge of God in Science must reflect, in some degree, the +power of Him who gave and giveth man dominion over all the earth.</p> + +<p>As soldiers of the cross we must be brave, and let Science declare the +immortal status of man, and deny the evidence of the material senses, which +testify that man dies.</p> + +<p>As the image of God, or Life, man forever reflects and embodies Life, not +death. The material senses testify falsely. They presuppose that God is +good and that man is evil, that Deity is deathless, but that man dies, +losing the divine likeness.</p> + +<p>Science and material sense conflict at all points, from <a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a>the revolution of +the earth to the fall of a sparrow. It is mortality only that dies.</p> + +<p>To say that you and I, as mortals, will not enter this dark shadow of +material sense, called <i>death</i>, is to assert what we have not proved; but +man in Science never dies. Material sense, or the belief of life in matter, +must perish, in order to prove man deathless.</p> + +<p>As Truth supersedes error, and bears the fruits of Love, this understanding +of Truth subordinates the belief in death, and demonstrates Life as +imperative in the divine order of being.</p> + +<p>Jesus declares that they who believe his sayings will never die; therefore +mortals can no more receive everlasting life by believing in death, than +they can become perfect by believing in imperfection and living +imperfectly.</p> + +<p>Life is God, and God is good. Hence Life abides in man, if man abides in +good, if he lives in God, who holds Life by a spiritual and not by a +material sense of being.</p> + +<p>A sense of death is not requisite to a proper or true sense of Life, but +beclouds it. Death can never alarm or even appear to him who fully +understands Life. The death-penalty comes through our ignorance of +Life,—of that which is without beginning and without end,—and is the +punishment of this ignorance.</p> + +<p>Holding a material sense of Life, and lacking the spiritual sense of it, +mortals die, in belief, and regard all things as temporal. A sense material +apprehends nothing strictly belonging to the nature and office of Life. It +conceives <a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a>and beholds nothing but mortality, and has but a feeble concept +of immortality.</p> + +<p>In order to reach the true knowledge and consciousness of Life, we must +learn it of good. Of evil we can never learn it, because sin shuts out the +real sense of Life, and brings in an unreal sense of suffering and death.</p> + +<p>Knowledge of evil, or belief in it, involves a loss of the true sense of +good, God; and to know death, or to believe in it, involves a temporary +loss of God, the infinite and only Life.</p> + +<p>Resurrection from the dead (that is, from the belief in death) must come to +all sooner or later; and they who have part in this resurrection are they +upon whom the second death has no power.</p> + +<p>The sweet and sacred sense of the permanence of man's unity with his Maker +can illumine our present being with a continual presence and power of good, +opening wide the portal from death into Life; and when this Life shall +appear "we shall be like Him," and we shall go to the Father, not through +death, but through Life; not through error, but through Truth.</p> + +<p>All Life is Spirit, and Spirit can never dwell in its antagonist, matter. +Life, therefore, is deathless, because God cannot be the opposite of +Himself. In Christian Science there is no matter; hence matter neither +lives nor dies. To the senses, matter appears to both live and die, and +these phenomena appear to go on <i>ad infinitum</i>; but such a theory implies +perpetual disagreement with Spirit.</p><p><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a></p> + +<p>Life, God, being everywhere, it must follow that death can be nowhere; +because there is no place left for it.</p> + +<p>Soul, Spirit, is deathless. Matter, sin, and death are not the outcome of +Spirit, holiness, and Life. What then are matter, sin, and death? They can +be nothing except the results of material consciousness; but material +consciousness can have no real existence, because it is not a living—that +is to say, a divine and intelligent—reality.</p> + +<p>That man must be vicious before he can be virtuous, dying before he can be +deathless, material before he can be spiritual, is an error of the senses; +for the very opposite of this error is the genuine Science of being.</p> + +<p>Man, in Science, is as perfect and immortal now, as when "the morning stars +sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."</p> + +<p>With Christ, Life was not merely a sense of existence, but a sense of might +and ability to subdue material conditions. No wonder "people were +astonished at his doctrine; for he taught them as one having authority, and +not as the scribes."</p> + +<p>As defined by Jesus, Life had no beginning; nor was it the result of +organization, or of an infusion of power into matter. To him, Life was +Spirit.</p> + +<p>Truth, defiant of error or matter, is Science, dispelling a false sense and +leading man into the true sense of selfhood and Godhood; wherein the mortal +does not develop the immortal, nor the material the spiritual, but wherein +true manhood and womanhood go forth in the radiance <a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a>of eternal being and +its perfections, unchanged and unchangeable.</p> + +<p>This generation seems too material for any strong demonstration over death, +and hence cannot bring out the infinite reality of Life,—namely, that +there is no death, but only Life. The present mortal sense of being is too +finite for anchorage in infinite good, God, because mortals now believe in +the possibility that Life can be evil.</p> + +<p>The achievement of this ultimatum of Science, complete triumph over death, +requires time and immense spiritual growth.</p> + +<p>I have by no means spoken of myself, I <i>cannot</i> speak of myself as +"sufficient for these things." I insist only upon the fact, as it exists in +divine Science, that man dies not, and on the words of the Master in +support of this verity,—words which can never "pass away till all be +fulfilled."</p> + +<p>Because of these profound reasons I urge Christians to have more faith in +living than in dying. I exhort them to accept Christ's promise, and unite +the influence of their own thoughts with the power of his teachings, in the +Science of being. This will interpret the divine power to human capacity, +and enable us to <i>apprehend</i>, or lay hold upon, "that for which," as Paul +says in the third chapter of Philippians, we are also "apprehended of [or +grasped by] Christ Jesus,"—the ever-present Life which knows no death, the +omnipresent Spirit which knows no matter.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a></p> +<h2><a name="Personal_Statements" id="Personal_Statements"></a>Personal Statements</h2> + + +<p>Many misrepresentations are made concerning my doctrines, some of which are +as unkind and unjust as they are untrue; but I can only repeat the Master's +words: "They know not what they do."</p> + +<p>The foundations of these assertions, like the structure raised thereupon, +are vain shadows, repeating—if the popular couplet may be so paraphrased—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">The old, old story,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of <i>Satan</i> and his <i>lie</i>.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In the days of Eden, humanity was misled by a false personality,—a talking +snake,—according to Biblical history. This pretender taught the opposite +of Truth. This abortive ego, this fable of error, is laid bare in Christian +Science.</p> + +<p>Human theories call, or miscall, this evil a child of God. Philosophy would +multiply and subdivide personality into everything that exists, whether +expressive or not expressive of the Mind which is God. Human wisdom says of +evil, "The Lord knows it!" thus carrying out the serpent's assurance: "In +the day ye eat thereof [when you, lie, get the floor], then your eyes shall +be opened [you shall be conscious matter], and ye shall be as gods, knowing +good <a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a>and evil [you shall believe a lie, and this lie shall seem truth]."</p> + +<p>Bruise the head of this serpent, as Truth and "the woman" are doing in +Christian Science, and it stings your heel, rears its crest proudly, and +goes on saying, "Am I not myself? Am I not mind and matter, person and +thing?" We should answer: "Yes! you are indeed yourself, and need most of +all to be rid of this self, for it is very far from God's likeness."</p> + +<p>The egotist must come down and learn, in humility, that God never made +evil. An evil ego, and his assumed power, are falsities. These falsities +need a denial. The falsity is the teaching that matter can be conscious; +and conscious matter implies pantheism. This pantheism I unveil. I try to +show its all-pervading presence in certain forms of theology and +philosophy, where it becomes error's affirmative to Truth's negative. +Anatomy and physiology make mind-matter a habitant of the cerebellum, +whence it telegraphs and telephones over its own body, and goes forth into +an imaginary sphere of its own creation and limitation, until it finally +dies in order to better itself. But Truth never dies, and death is not the +goal which Truth seeks.</p> + +<p>The evil ego has but the visionary substance of matter. It lacks the +substance of Spirit,—Mind, Life, Soul. Mortal mind is self-creative and +self-sustained, until it becomes non-existent. It has no origin or +existence in Spirit, immortal Mind, or good. Matter is not truly conscious; +and <a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a>mortal error, called <i>mind</i>, is not Godlike. These are the shadowy and +false, which neither think nor speak.</p> + +<p>All Truth is from inspiration and revelation,—from Spirit, not from flesh.</p> + +<p>We do not see much of the real man here, for he is God's man; while ours is +man's man.</p> + +<p>I do not deny, I maintain, the individuality and reality of man; but I do +so on a divine Principle, not based on a human conception and birth. The +scientific man and his Maker are here; and you would be none other than +this man, if you would subordinate the fleshly perceptions to the spiritual +sense and source of being.</p> + +<p>Jesus said, "I and my Father are one." He taught no selfhood as existent in +matter. In his identity there is no evil. Individuality and Life were real +to him only as spiritual and good, not as material or evil. This incensed +the rabbins against Jesus, because it was an indignity to their +personality; and this personality they regarded as both good and evil, as +is still claimed by the worldly-wise. To them evil was even more the ego +than was the good. Sin, sickness, and death were evil's concomitants. This +evil ego they believed must extend throughout the universe, as being +equally identical and self-conscious with God. This ego was in the +earthquake, thunderbolt, and tempest.</p> + +<p>The Pharisees fought Jesus on this issue. It furnished the battle-ground of +the past, as it does of the present. The fight was an effort to enthrone +evil. Jesus assumed <a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a>the burden of disproof by destroying sin, sickness, +and death, to sight and sense.</p> + +<p>Nowhere in Scripture is evil connected with good, the being of God, and +with every passing hour it is losing its false claim to existence or +consciousness. All that can exist is God and His idea.</p><p><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Credo" id="Credo"></a>Credo</h2> + + +<p>It is fair to ask of every one a reason for the faith within. Though it be +but to repeat my twice-told tale,—nay, the tale already told a hundred +times,—yet ask, and I will answer.</p> + +<p><i><a name="Do_you_believe_in_God" id="Do_you_believe_in_God"></a>Do you believe in God?</i></p> + +<p>I believe more in Him than do most Christians, for I have no faith in any +other thing or being. He sustains my individuality. Nay, more—He <i>is</i> my +individuality and my Life. Because He lives, I live. He heals all my ills, +destroys my iniquities, deprives death of its sting, and robs the grave of +its victory.</p> + +<p>To me God is All. He is best understood as Supreme Being, as infinite and +conscious Life, as the affectionate Father and Mother of all He creates; +but this divine Parent no more enters into His creation than the human +father enters into his child. His creation is not the Ego, but the +reflection of the Ego. The Ego is God Himself, the infinite Soul.</p> + +<p>I believe that of which I am conscious through the understanding, however +faintly able to demonstrate Truth and Love.</p><p><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a></p> + +<p><i><a name="Do_you_believe_in_man" id="Do_you_believe_in_man"></a>Do you believe in man?</i></p> + +<p>I believe in the individual man, for I understand that man is as definite +and eternal as God, and that man is coexistent with God, as being the +eternally divine idea. This is demonstrable by the simple appeal to human +consciousness.</p> + +<p>But I believe less in the sinner, wrongly named <i>man</i>. The more I +understand true humanhood, the more I see it to be sinless,—as ignorant of +sin as is the perfect Maker.</p> + +<p>To me the reality and substance of being are <i>good</i>, and nothing else. +Through the eternal reality of existence I reach, in thought, a glorified +consciousness of the only living God and the genuine man. So long as I hold +evil in consciousness, I cannot be wholly good.</p> + +<p>You cannot simultaneously serve the mammon of materiality and the God of +spirituality. There are not two realities of being, two opposite states of +existence. One should appear real to us, and the other unreal, or we lose +the Science of being. Standing in no basic Truth, we make "the worse appear +the better reason," and the unreal masquerades as the real, in our thought.</p> + +<p>Evil is without Principle. Being destitute of Principle, it is devoid of +Science. Hence it is undemonstrable, without proof. This gives me a clearer +right to call evil a negation, than to affirm it to be something which God +sees and knows, but which He straightway commands mortals to shun or +relinquish, lest it destroy them. This notion of <a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>the destructibility of +Mind implies the possibility of its defilement; but how can infinite Mind +be defiled?</p> + +<p><i><a name="Do_you_believe_in_matter" id="Do_you_believe_in_matter"></a>Do you believe in matter?</i></p> + +<p>I believe in matter only as I believe in evil, that it is something to be +denied and destroyed to human consciousness, and is unknown to the Divine. +We should watch and pray that we enter not into the temptation of +pantheistic belief in matter as sensible mind. We should subjugate it as +Jesus did, by a dominant understanding of Spirit.</p> + +<p>At best, matter is only a phenomenon of mortal mind, of which evil is the +highest degree; but really there is no such thing as <i>mortal mind</i>,—though +we are compelled to use the phrase in the endeavor to express the +underlying thought.</p> + +<p>In reality there are no material states or stages of consciousness, and +matter has neither Mind nor sensation. Like evil, it is destitute of Mind, +for Mind is God.</p> + +<p>The less consciousness of evil or matter mortals have, the easier it is for +them to evade sin, sickness, and death,—which are but states of false +belief,—and awake from the troubled dream, a consciousness which is +without Mind or Maker.</p> + +<p>Matter and evil cannot be conscious, and consciousness should not be evil. +Adopt this rule of Science, and you will discover the material origin, +growth, maturity, and death of sinners, as the history of man, disappears, +and the <a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a>everlasting facts of being appear, wherein man is the reflection +of immutable good.</p> + +<p>Reasoning from false premises,—that Life is material, that immortal Soul +is sinful, and hence that sin is eternal,—the reality of being is neither +seen, felt, heard, nor understood. Human philosophy and human reason can +never make one hair white or black, except in belief; whereas the +demonstration of God, as in Christian Science, is gained through Christ as +perfect manhood.</p> + +<p>In pantheism the world is bereft of its God, whose place is ill supplied by +the pretentious usurpation, by matter, of the heavenly sovereignty.</p> + +<p><i><a name="What_say_you_of_woman" id="What_say_you_of_woman"></a>What say you of woman?</i></p> + +<p>Man is the generic term for all humanity. Woman is the highest species of +man, and this word is the generic term for all women; but not one of all +these individualities is an Eve or an Adam. They have none of them lost +their harmonious state, in the economy of God's wisdom and government.</p> + +<p>The Ego is divine consciousness, eternally radiating throughout all space +in the idea of God, good, and not of His opposite, evil. The Ego is +revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; but the full Truth is found only +in divine Science, where we see God as Life, Truth, and Love. In the +scientific relation of man to God, man is reflected not as human soul, but +as the divine ideal, whose Soul is not in body, but is God,—the divine +Principle of <a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>man. Hence Soul is sinless and immortal, in contradistinction +to the supposition that there can be sinful souls or immortal sinners.</p> + +<p>This Science of God and man is the Holy Ghost, which reveals and sustains +the unbroken and eternal harmony of both God and the universe. It is the +kingdom of heaven, the ever-present reign of harmony, already with us. +Hence the need that human consciousness should become divine, in the +coincidence of God and man, in contradistinction to the false consciousness +of both good and evil, God and devil,—of man separated from his Maker. +This is the precious redemption of soul, as mortal sense, through Christ's +immortal sense of Truth, which presents Truth's spiritual idea, <i>man</i> and +<i>woman</i>.</p> + +<p><i><a name="What_say_you_of_evil" id="What_say_you_of_evil"></a>What say you of evil?</i></p> + +<p>God is not the so-called ego of evil; for evil, as a supposition, is the +father of itself,—of the material world, the flesh, and the devil. From +this falsehood arise the self-destroying elements of this world, its unkind +forces, its tempests, lightnings, earthquakes, poisons, rabid beasts, fatal +reptiles, and mortals.</p> + +<p>Why are earth and mortals so elaborate in beauty, color, and form, if God +has no part in them? By the law of opposites. The most beautiful blossom is +often poisonous, and the most beautiful mansion is sometimes the home of +vice. The senses, not God, Soul, form the condition of beautiful evil, and +the supposed modes of self-conscious <a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a>matter, which make a beautiful lie. +Now a lie takes its pattern from Truth, by reversing Truth. So evil and all +its forms are inverted good. God never made them; but the lie must say He +made them, or it would not be evil. Being a lie, it would be truthful to +call itself a lie; and by calling the knowledge of evil good, and greatly +to be desired, it constitutes the lie an evil.</p> + +<p>The reality and individuality of man are good and God-made, and they are +here to be seen and demonstrated; it is only the evil belief that renders +them obscure.</p> + +<p>Matter and evil are anti-Christian, the antipodes of Science. To say that +Mind is material, or that evil is Mind, is a misapprehension of being,—a +mistake which will die of its own delusion; for being self-contradictory, +it is also self-destructive. The harmony of man's being is not built on +such false foundations, which are no more logical, philosophical, or +scientific than would be the assertion that the rule of addition is the +rule of subtraction, and that sums done under both rules would have one +quotient.</p> + +<p>Man's individuality is not a mortal mind or sinner; or else he has lost his +true individuality as a perfect child of God. Man's Father is not a mortal +mind and a sinner; or else the immortal and unerring Mind, God, is not his +Father; but God <i>is</i> man's origin and loving Father, hence that saying of +Jesus, "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, +which is in heaven."</p><p><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a></p> + +<p>The bright gold of Truth is dimmed by the doctrine of mind in matter.</p> + +<p>To say there <i>is</i> a false claim, called <i>sickness</i>, is to admit all there +is of sickness; for it is nothing but a false claim. To be healed, one must +lose sight of a false claim. If the claim be present to the thought, then +disease becomes as tangible as any reality. To regard sickness as a false +claim, is to abate the fear of it; but this does not destroy the so-called +fact of the <i>claim</i>. In order to be whole, we must be insensible to every +claim of error.</p> + +<p>As with sickness, so is it with sin. To admit that sin has any claim +whatever, just or unjust, is to admit a dangerous fact. Hence the fact must +be denied; for if sin's claim be allowed in any degree, then sin destroys +the <i>at-one-ment</i>, or oneness with God,—a unity which sin recognizes as +its most potent and deadly enemy.</p> + +<p>If God knows sin, even as a false claimant, then acquaintance with that +claimant becomes legitimate to mortals, and this knowledge would not be +forbidden; but God forbade man to know evil at the very beginning, when +Satan held it up before man as something desirable and a distinct addition +to human wisdom, because the knowledge of evil would make man a god,—a +representation that God both knew and admitted the dignity of evil.</p> + +<p>Which is right,—God, who condemned the knowledge of sin and disowned its +acquaintance, or the serpent, who pushed that claim with the glittering +audacity of diabolical and sinuous logic?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a></p> +<h2><a name="Suffering_from_Others_Thoughts" id="Suffering_from_Others_Thoughts"></a>Suffering from Others' Thoughts</h2> + + +<p>Jesus accepted the one fact whereby alone the rule of Life can be +demonstrated,—namely, that there is no death.</p> + +<p>In his real self he bore no infirmities. Though "a man of sorrows, and +acquainted with grief," as Isaiah says of him, he bore not <i>his</i> sins, but +<i>ours</i>, "in his own body on the tree." "He was bruised for <i>our</i> +iniquities; ... and with his stripes we are healed."</p> + +<p>He was the Way-shower; and Christian Scientists who would demonstrate "the +way" must keep close to his path, that they may win the prize. "The way," +in the flesh, is the suffering which leads out of the flesh. "The way," in +Spirit, is "the way" of Life, Truth, and Love, redeeming us from the false +sense of the flesh and the wounds it bears. This threefold Messiah reveals +the self-destroying ways of error and the life-giving way of Truth.</p> + +<p>Job's faith and hope gained him the assurance that the so-called sufferings +of the flesh are unreal. We shall learn how false are the pleasures and +pains of material sense, and behold the truth of being, as expressed in his +conviction, "Yet in my flesh shall I see God;" that is, Now and here shall +I behold God, divine Love.</p><p><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a></p> + +<p>The chaos of mortal mind is made the stepping-stone to the cosmos of +immortal Mind.</p> + +<p>If Jesus suffered, as the Scriptures declare, it must have been from the +mentality of others; since all suffering comes from mind, not from matter, +and there could be no sin or suffering in the Mind which is God. Not his +own sins, but the sins of the world, "crucified the Lord of glory," and +"put him to an open shame."</p> + +<p>Holding a quickened sense of false environment, and suffering from +mentality in opposition to Truth, are significant of that state of mind +which the actual understanding of Christian Science first eliminates and +then destroys.</p> + +<p>In the divine order of Science every follower of Christ shares his cup of +sorrows. He also suffereth in the flesh, and from the mentality which +opposes the law of Spirit; but the divine law is supreme, for it freeth him +from the law of sin and death.</p> + +<p>Prophets and apostles suffered from the thoughts of others. Their conscious +being was not fully exempt from physicality and the sense of sin.</p> + +<p>Until he awakes from his delusion, he suffers least from sin who is a +hardened sinner. The hypocrite's affections must first be made to fret in +their chains; and the pangs of hell must lay hold of him ere he can change +from flesh to Spirit, become acquainted with that Love which is without +dissimulation and endureth all things. Such mental conditions as +ingratitude, lust, malice, hate, constitute the miasma of earth. More +obnoxious than<a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a> Chinese stenchpots are these dispositions which offend the +spiritual sense.</p> + +<p>Anatomically considered, the design of the material senses is to warn +mortals of the approach of danger by the pain they feel and occasion; but +as this sense disappears it foresees the impending doom and foretells the +pain. Man's refuge is in spirituality, "under the shadow of the Almighty."</p> + +<p>The cross is the central emblem of human history. Without it there is +neither temptation nor glory. When Jesus turned and said, "Who hath touched +me?" he must have felt the influence of the woman's thought; for it is +written that he felt that "virtue had gone out of him." His pure +consciousness was discriminating, and rendered this infallible verdict; but +he neither held her error by affinity nor by infirmity, for it was detected +and dismissed.</p> + +<p>This gospel of suffering brought life and bliss. This is earth's Bethel in +stone,—its pillow, supporting the ladder which reaches heaven.</p> + +<p>Suffering was the confirmation of Paul's faith. Through "a thorn in the +flesh" he learned that spiritual grace was sufficient for him.</p> + +<p>Peter rejoiced that he was found worthy to suffer for Christ; because to +suffer with him is to reign with him.</p> + +<p>Sorrow is the harbinger of joy. Mortal throes of anguish forward the birth +of immortal being; but divine Science wipes away all tears.</p> + +<p>The only conscious existence in the flesh is error of some <a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a>sort,—sin, +pain, death,—a false sense of life and happiness. Mortals, if at ease in +so-called existence, are in their native element of error, and must become +<i>dis-eased</i>, dis-quieted, before error is annihilated.</p> + +<p>Jesus walked with bleeding feet the thorny earth-road, treading "the +winepress alone." His persecutors said mockingly, "Save thyself, and come +down from the cross." This was the very thing he <i>was</i> doing, coming down +from the cross, saving himself after the manner that he had taught, by the +law of Spirit's supremacy; and this was done through what is humanly called +<i>agony</i>.</p> + +<p>Even the ice-bound hypocrite melts in fervent heat, before he apprehends +Christ as "the way." The Master's sublime triumph over all mortal mentality +was immortality's goal. He was too wise not to be willing to test the full +compass of human woe, being "in all points tempted like as we are, yet +without sin."</p> + +<p>Thus the absolute unreality of sin, sickness, and death was revealed,—a +revelation that beams on mortal sense as the midnight sun shines over the +Polar Sea.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a></p> +<h2><a name="The_Saviours_Mission" id="The_Saviours_Mission"></a>The Saviour's Mission</h2> + + +<p>If there is no reality in evil, why did the Messiah come to the world, and +from what evils was it his purpose to save humankind? How, indeed, is he a +Saviour, if the evils from which he saves are nonentities?</p> + +<p>Jesus came to earth; but the Christ (that is, the divine idea of the divine +Principle which made heaven and earth) was never absent from the earth and +heaven; hence the phraseology of Jesus, who spoke of the Christ as one who +came down from heaven, yet as "the Son of man <i>which is in heaven</i>." (John +iii. 13.) By this we understand Christ to be the divine idea brought to the +flesh in the son of Mary.</p> + +<p>Salvation is as eternal as God. To mortal thought Jesus appeared as a +child, and grew to manhood, to suffer before Pilate and on Calvary, because +he could reach and teach mankind only through this conformity to mortal +conditions; but Soul never saw the Saviour come and go, because the divine +idea is always present.</p> + +<p>Jesus came to rescue men from these very illusions to which he seemed to +conform: from the illusion which calls sin real, and man a sinner, needing +a Saviour; the illusion which calls sickness real, and man an invalid, +needing a physician; the illusion that death is as real as<a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a> Life. From such +thoughts—mortal inventions, one and all—Christ Jesus came to save men, +through ever-present and eternal good.</p> + +<p>Mortal man is a kingdom divided against itself. With the same breath he +articulates truth and error. We say that God is All, and there is none +beside Him, and then talk of sin and sinners as real. We call God +omnipotent and omnipresent, and then conjure up, from the dark abyss of +nothingness, a powerful presence named <i>evil</i>. We say that harmony is real, +and inharmony is its opposite, and therefore unreal; yet we descant upon +sickness, sin, and death as realities.</p> + +<p>With the tongue "bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, +who are made after the similitude [human concept] of God. Out of the same +mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not +so to be." (James iii. 9, 10.) Mortals are free moral agents, to choose +whom they would serve. If God, then let them serve Him, and He will be unto +them All-in-all.</p> + +<p>If God is ever present, He is neither absent from Himself nor from the +universe. Without Him, the universe would disappear, and space, substance, +and immortality be lost. St. Paul says, "And if Christ be not raised, your +faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins." (1 Corinthians xv. 17.) Christ +cannot come to mortal and material sense, which sees not God. This false +sense of substance must yield to His eternal presence, and so dissolve. +Rising <a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a>above the false, to the true evidence of Life, is the resurrection +that takes hold of eternal Truth. Coming and going belong to mortal +consciousness. God is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever."</p> + +<p>To material sense, Jesus first appeared as a helpless human babe; but to +immortal and spiritual vision he was one with the Father, even the eternal +idea of God, that was—and is—neither young nor old, neither dead nor +risen. The mutations of mortal sense are the evening and the morning of +human thought,—the twilight and dawn of earthly vision, which precedeth +the nightless radiance of divine Life. Human perception, advancing toward +the apprehension of its nothingness, halts, retreats, and again goes +forward; but the divine Principle and Spirit and spiritual man are +unchangeable,—neither advancing, retreating, nor halting.</p> + +<p>Our highest sense of infinite good in this mortal sphere is but the sign +and symbol, not the substance of good. Only faith and a feeble +understanding make the earthly acme of human sense. "The life which I now +live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God." (Galatians ii. +20.)</p> + +<p>Christian Science is both demonstration and fruition, but how attenuated +are our demonstration and realization of this Science! Truth, in divine +Science, is the stepping-stone to the understanding of God; but the broken +and contrite heart soonest discerns this truth, even as the helpless sick +are soonest healed by it. Invalids say, "I have <a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a>recovered from sickness;" +when the fact really remains, in divine Science, that they never were sick.</p> + +<p>The Christian saith, "Christ (God) died for me, and came to save me;" yet +God dies not, and is the ever-presence that neither comes nor goes, and man +is forever His image and likeness. "The things which are seen are temporal; +but the things which are not seen are eternal." (2 Corinthians iv. 18.) +This is the mystery of godliness—that God, good, is never absent, and +there is none beside good. Mortals can understand this only as they reach +the Life of good, and learn that there is no Life in evil. Then shall it +appear that the true ideal of omnipotent and ever-present good is an ideal +wherein and wherefor there is no evil. Sin exists only as a sense, and not +as Soul. Destroy this sense of sin, and sin disappears. Sickness, sin, or +death is a false sense of Life and good. Destroy this trinity of error, and +you find Truth.</p> + +<p>In Science, Christ never died. In material sense Jesus died, and lived. The +fleshly Jesus seemed to die, though he did not. The Truth or Life in divine +Science—undisturbed by human error, sin, and death—saith forever, "I am +the living God, and man is My idea, never in matter, nor resurrected from +it." "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen." +(Luke xxiv. 5, 6.) Mortal sense, confining itself to matter, is all that +can be buried or resurrected.</p> + +<p>Mary had risen to discern faintly God's ever-presence, and that of His +idea, man; but her mortal sense, reversing<a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a> Science and spiritual +understanding, interpreted this appearing as a risen Christ. The <span class="smcap">I +am</span> was neither buried nor resurrected. The Way, the Truth, and the +Life were never absent for a moment. This trinity of Love lives and reigns +forever. Its kingdom, not apparent to material sense, never disappeared to +spiritual sense, but remained forever in the Science of being. The +so-called appearing, disappearing, and reappearing of ever-presence, in +whom is no variableness or shadow of turning, is the false human sense of +that light which shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it +not.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a></p> +<h2><a name="Summary" id="Summary"></a>Summary</h2> + + +<p>All that <i>is</i>, God created. If sin has any pretense of existence, God is +responsible therefor; but there is no reality in sin, for God can no more +behold it, or acknowledge it, than the sun can coexist with darkness.</p> + +<p>To build the individual spiritual sense, conscious of only health, +holiness, and heaven, on the foundations of an eternal Mind which is +conscious of sickness, sin, and death, is a moral impossibility; for "other +foundation can no man lay than that is laid." (1 Corinthians iii. 11.) The +nearer we approximate to such a Mind, even if it were (or could be) God, +the more real those mind-pictures would become to us; until the hope of +ever eluding their dread presence must yield to despair, and the haunting +sense of evil forever accompany our being.</p> + +<p>Mortals may climb the smooth glaciers, leap the dark fissures, scale the +treacherous ice, and stand on the summit of Mont Blanc; but they can never +turn back what Deity knoweth, nor escape from identification with what +dwelleth in the eternal Mind.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Unity of Good, by Mary Baker Eddy + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNITY OF GOOD *** + +***** This file should be named 16591-h.htm or 16591-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/5/9/16591/ + +Produced by Justin Gillbank, Josephine Paolucci and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Unity of Good + +Author: Mary Baker Eddy + +Release Date: August 25, 2005 [EBook #16591] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNITY OF GOOD *** + + + + +Produced by Justin Gillbank, Josephine Paolucci and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +UNITY OF GOOD + +BY + +MARY BAKER EDDY + +AUTHOR OF SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES + +Registered U.S. Patent Office + +Published by The Trustees under the Will of Mary Baker G. Eddy + +BOSTON, U.S.A. + +Authorized Literature of +THE FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST +in Boston, Massachusetts + +_Copyright, 1887, 1891, 1908_ +BY MARY BAKER G. EDDY +_Copyright renewed, 1915_ +_Copyright renewed, 1919_ + +_All rights reserved_ + +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + +Contents + + +Caution in the Truth + _Does God know or behold sin, sickness, and death?_ + +Seedtime and Harvest + _Is anything real of which the physical senses are cognizant?_ + +The Deep Things of God + +Ways Higher than Our Ways + +Rectifications + +A Colloquy + +The Ego + +Soul + +There is no Matter + _Sight_ + _Touch_ + _Taste_ + _Force_ + +Is There no Death? + +Personal Statements + +Credo + _Do you believe in God?_ + _Do you believe in man?_ + _Do you believe in matter?_ + _What say you of woman?_ + _What say you of evil?_ + +Suffering from Others' Thoughts + +The Saviour's Mission + +Summary + + + + +Unity of Good + +Caution in the Truth + + +Perhaps no doctrine of Christian Science rouses so much natural doubt and +questioning as this, that God knows no such thing as sin. Indeed, this may +be set down as one of the "things hard to be understood," such as the +apostle Peter declared were taught by his fellow-apostle Paul, "which they +that are unlearned and unstable wrest ... unto their own destruction." (2 +Peter iii. 16.) + +Let us then reason together on this important subject, whose statement in +Christian Science may justly be characterized as _wonderful_. + + +_Does God know or behold sin, sickness, and death?_ + +The nature and character of God is so little apprehended and demonstrated +by mortals, that I counsel my students to defer this infinite inquiry, in +their discussions of Christian Science. In fact, they had better leave the +subject untouched, until they draw nearer to the divine character, and are +practically able to testify, by their lives, that as they come closer to +the true understanding of God they lose all sense of error. + +The Scriptures declare that God is too pure to behold iniquity (Habakkuk +i. 13); but they also declare that God pitieth them who fear Him; that +there is no place where His voice is not heard; that He is "a very present +help in trouble." + +The sinner has no refuge from sin, except in God, who is his salvation. We +must, however, realize God's presence, power, and love, in order to be +saved from sin. This realization takes away man's fondness for sin and his +pleasure in it; and, lastly, it removes the pain which accrues to him from +it. Then follows this, as the _finale_ in Science: The sinner loses his +sense of sin, and gains a higher sense of God, in whom there is no sin. + +The true man, really _saved_, is ready to testify of God in the infinite +penetration of Truth, and can affirm that the Mind which is good, or God, +has no knowledge of sin. + +In the same manner the sick lose their sense of sickness, and gain that +spiritual sense of harmony which contains neither discord nor disease. + +According to this same rule, in divine Science, the dying--if they die in +the Lord--awake from a sense of death to a sense of Life in Christ, with a +knowledge of Truth and Love beyond what they possessed before; because +their lives have grown so far toward the stature of manhood in Christ +Jesus, that they are ready for a spiritual transfiguration, through their +affections and understanding. + +Those who reach this transition, called _death_, without having rightly +improved the lessons of this primary school of mortal existence,--and still +believe in matter's reality, pleasure, and pain,--are not ready to +understand immortality. Hence they awake only to another sphere of +experience, and must pass through another probationary state before it can +be truly said of them: "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord." + +They upon whom the second death, of which we read in the Apocalypse +(Revelation xx. 6), hath no power, are those who have obeyed God's +commands, and have washed their robes white through the sufferings of the +flesh and the triumphs of Spirit. Thus they have reached the goal in divine +Science, by knowing Him in whom they have believed. This knowledge is not +the forbidden fruit of sin, sickness, and death, but it is the fruit which +grows on the "tree of life." This is the understanding of God, whereby man +is found in the image and likeness of good, not of evil; of health, not of +sickness; of Life, not of death. + +God is All-in-all. Hence He is in Himself only, in His own nature and +character, and is perfect being, or consciousness. He is all the Life and +Mind there is or can be. Within Himself is every embodiment of Life and +Mind. + +If He is All, He can have no consciousness of anything unlike Himself; +because, if He is omnipresent, there can be nothing outside of Himself. + +Now this self-same God is our helper. He pities us. He has mercy upon us, +and guides every event of our careers. He is near to them who adore Him. +To understand Him, without a single taint of our mortal, finite sense of +sin, sickness, or death, is to approach Him and become like Him. + +Truth is God, and in God's law. This law declares that Truth is All, and +there is no error. This law of Truth destroys every phase of error. To gain +a temporary consciousness of God's law is to feel, in a certain finite +human sense, that God comes to us and pities us; but the attainment of the +understanding of His presence, through the Science of God, destroys our +sense of imperfection, or of His absence, through a diviner sense that God +is all true consciousness; and this convinces us that, as we get still +nearer Him, we must forever lose our own consciousness of error. + +But how could we lose all consciousness of error, if God be conscious of +it? God has not forbidden man to know Him; on the contrary, the Father bids +man have the same Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus,"--which was +certainly the divine Mind; but God does forbid man's acquaintance with +evil. Why? Because evil is no part of the divine knowledge. + +John's Gospel declares (xvii. 3) that "life eternal" consists in the +knowledge of the only true God, and of Jesus Christ, whom He has sent. +Surely from such an understanding of Science, such knowing, the vision of +sin is wholly excluded. + +Nevertheless, at the present crude hour, no wise men or women will rudely +or prematurely agitate a theme involving the All of infinity. + +Rather will they rejoice in the small understanding they have already +gained of the wholeness of Deity, and work gradually and gently up toward +the perfect thought divine. This meekness will increase their apprehension +of God, because their mental struggles and pride of opinion will +proportionately diminish. + +Every one should be encouraged not to accept any personal opinion on so +great a matter, but to seek the divine Science of this question of Truth by +following upward individual convictions, undisturbed by the frightened +sense of any need of attempting to solve every Life-problem in a day. + +"Great is the mystery of godliness," says Paul; and _mystery_ involves the +unknown. No stubborn purpose to force conclusions on this subject will +unfold in us a higher sense of Deity; neither will it promote the Cause of +Truth or enlighten the individual thought. + +Let us respect the rights of conscience and the liberty of the sons of God, +so letting our "moderation be known to all men." Let no enmity, no +untempered controversy, spring up between Christian Science students and +Christians who wholly or partially differ from them as to the nature of sin +and the marvellous unity of man with God shadowed forth in scientific +thought. Rather let the stately goings of this wonderful part of Truth be +left to the supernal guidance. + +"These are but parts of Thy ways," says Job; and the whole is greater than +its parts. Our present understanding is but "the seed within itself," for +it is divine Science, "bearing fruit after its kind." + +Sooner or later the whole human race will learn that, in proportion as the +spotless selfhood of God is understood, human nature will be renovated, and +man will receive a higher selfhood, derived from God, and the redemption of +mortals from sin, sickness, and death be established on everlasting +foundations. + +The Science of physical harmony, as now presented to the people in divine +light, is radical enough to promote as forcible collisions of thought as +the age has strength to bear. Until the heavenly law of health, according +to Christian Science, is firmly grounded, even the thinkers are not +prepared to answer intelligently leading questions about God and sin, and +the world is far from ready to assimilate such a grand and all-absorbing +verity concerning the divine nature and character as is embraced in the +theory of God's blindness to error and ignorance of sin. No wise mother, +though a graduate of Wellesley College, will talk to her babe about the +problems of Euclid. + +Not much more than a half-century ago the assertion of universal salvation +provoked discussion and horror, similar to what our declarations about sin +and Deity must arouse, if hastily pushed to the front while the platoons of +Christian Science are not yet thoroughly drilled in the plainer manual of +their spiritual armament. "Wait patiently on the Lord;" and in less than +another fifty years His name will be magnified in the apprehension of this +new subject, as already He is glorified in the wide extension of belief in +the impartial grace of God,--shown by the changes at Andover Seminary and +in multitudes of other religious folds. + +Nevertheless, though I thus speak, and from my heart of hearts, it is due +both to Christian Science and myself to make also the following statement: +When I have most clearly seen and most sensibly felt that the infinite +recognizes no disease, this has not separated me from God, but has so bound +me to Him as to enable me instantaneously to heal a cancer which had eaten +its way to the jugular vein. + +In the same spiritual condition I have been able to replace dislocated +joints and raise the dying to instantaneous health. People are now living +who can bear witness to these cures. Herein is my evidence, from on high, +that the views here promulgated on this subject are correct. + +Certain self-proved propositions pour into my waiting thought in connection +with these experiences; and here is one such conviction: that an +acknowledgment of the perfection of the infinite Unseen confers a power +nothing else can. An incontestable point in divine Science is, that because +God is All, a realization of this fact dispels even the sense or +consciousness of sin, and brings us nearer to God, bringing out the highest +phenomena of the All-Mind. + + + + +Seedtime and Harvest + + +Let another query now be considered, which gives much trouble to many +earnest thinkers before Science answers it. + + +_Is anything real of which the physical senses are cognizant?_ + +Everything is as real as you make it, and no more so. What you see, hear, +feel, is a mode of consciousness, and can have no other reality than the +sense you entertain of it. + +It is dangerous to rest upon the evidence of the senses, for this evidence +is not absolute, and therefore not real, in our sense of the word. All that +is beautiful and good in your individual consciousness is permanent. That +which is not so is illusive and fading. My insistence upon a proper +understanding of the unreality of matter and evil arises from their +deleterious effects, physical, moral, and intellectual, upon the race. + +All forms of error are uprooted in Science, on the same basis whereby +sickness is healed,--namely, by the establishment, through reason, +revelation, and Science, of the nothingness of every claim of error, even +the doctrine of heredity and other physical causes. You demonstrate the +process of Science, and it proves my view conclusively, that mortal mind +is the cause of all disease. Destroy the mental sense of the disease, and +the disease itself disappears. Destroy the sense of sin, and sin itself +disappears. + +Material and sensual consciousness are mortal. Hence they must, some time +and in some way, be reckoned unreal. That time has partially come, or my +words would not have been spoken. Jesus has made the way plain,--so plain +that all are without excuse who walk not in it; but this way is not the +path of physical science, human philosophy, or mystic psychology. + +The talent and genius of the centuries have wrongly reckoned. They have not +based upon revelation their arguments and conclusions as to the source and +resources of being,--its combinations, phenomena, and outcome,--but have +built instead upon the sand of human reason. They have not accepted the +simple teaching and life of Jesus as the only true solution of the +perplexing problem of human existence. + +Sometimes it is said, by those who fail to understand me, that I +_monopolize_; and this is said because ideas akin to mine have been held by +a few spiritual thinkers in all ages. So they have, but in a far different +form. Healing has gone on continually; yet healing, as I teach it, has not +been practised since the days of Christ. + +What is the cardinal point of the difference in my metaphysical system? +This: that _by knowing the unreality of disease, sin, and death_, you +demonstrate the allness of God. This difference wholly separates my system +from all others. The reality of these so-called existences I deny, because +they are not to be found in God, and this system is built on Him as the +sole cause. It would be difficult to name any previous teachers, save Jesus +and his apostles, who have thus taught. + +If there be any _monopoly_ in my teaching, it lies in this utter reliance +upon the one God, to whom belong all things. + +Life is God, or Spirit, the supersensible eternal. The universe and man are +the spiritual phenomena of this one infinite Mind. Spiritual phenomena +never converge toward aught but infinite Deity. Their gradations are +spiritual and divine; they cannot collapse, or lapse into their opposites, +for God is their divine Principle. They live, because He lives; and they +are eternally perfect, because He is perfect, and governs them in the Truth +of divine Science, whereof God is the Alpha and Omega, the centre and +circumference. + +To attempt the calculation of His mighty ways, from the evidence before the +material senses, is fatuous. It is like commencing with the minus sign, to +learn the principle of positive mathematics. + +God was not in the whirlwind. He is not the blind force of a material +universe. Mortals must learn this; unless, pursued by their fears, they +would endeavor to hide from His presence under their own falsities, and +call in vain for the mountains of unholiness to shield them from the +penalty of error. + +Jesus taught us to walk _over_, not _into_ or _with_, the currents of +matter, or mortal mind. His teachings beard the lions in their dens. He +turned the water into wine, he commanded the winds, he healed the +sick,--all in direct opposition to human philosophy and so-called natural +science. He annulled the laws of matter, showing them to be laws of mortal +mind, not of God. He showed the need of changing this mind and its abortive +laws. He demanded a change of consciousness and evidence, and effected this +change through the higher laws of God. The palsied hand moved, despite the +boastful sense of physical law and order. Jesus stooped not to human +consciousness, nor to the evidence of the senses. He heeded not the taunt, +"That withered hand looks very real and feels very real;" but he cut off +this vain boasting and destroyed human pride by taking away the material +evidence. If his patient was a theologian of some bigoted sect, a +physician, or a professor of natural philosophy,--according to the ruder +sort then prevalent,--he never thanked Jesus for restoring his senseless +hand; but neither red tape nor indignity hindered the divine process. Jesus +required neither cycles of time nor thought in order to mature fitness for +perfection and its possibilities. He said that the kingdom of heaven is +here, and is included in Mind; that while ye say, There are yet four +months, and _then_ cometh the harvest, I say, Look up, not down, for your +fields are already white for the harvest; and gather the harvest by mental, +not material processes. The laborers are few in this vineyard of +Mind-sowing and reaping; but let them apply to the waiting grain the +curving sickle of Mind's eternal circle, and bind it with bands of Soul. + + + + +The Deep Things of God + + +Science reverses the evidence of the senses in theology, on the same +principle that it does in astronomy. Popular theology makes God tributary +to man, coming at human call; whereas the reverse is true in Science. Men +must approach God reverently, doing their own work in obedience to divine +law, if they would fulfil the intended harmony of being. + +The principle of music knows nothing of discord. God is harmony's selfhood. +His universal laws, His unchangeableness, are not infringed in ethics any +more than in music. To Him there is no moral inharmony; as we shall learn, +proportionately as we gain the true understanding of Deity. If God could be +conscious of sin, His infinite power would straightway reduce the universe +to chaos. + +If God has any real knowledge of sin, sickness, and death, they must be +eternal; since He is, in the very fibre of His being, "without beginning of +years or end of days." If God knows that which is not permanent, it follows +that He knows something which He must learn to _unknow_, for the benefit of +our race. + +Such a view would bring us upon an outworn theological platform, which +contains such planks as the divine repentance, and the belief that God must +one day do His work over again, because it was not at first done aright. + +Can it be seriously held, by any thinker, that long after God made the +universe,--earth, man, animals, plants, the sun, the moon, and "the stars +also,"--He should so gain wisdom and power from past experience that He +could vastly improve upon His own previous work,--as Burgess, the +boatbuilder, remedies in the Volunteer the shortcomings of the Puritan's +model? + +Christians are commanded to _grow in grace_. Was it necessary for God to +grow in grace, that He might rectify His spiritual universe? + +The Jehovah of limited Hebrew faith might need repentance, because His +created children proved sinful; but the New Testament tells us of "the +Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." +God is not the shifting vane on the spire, but the corner-stone of living +rock, firmer than everlasting hills. + +As God is Mind, if this Mind is familiar with evil, all cannot be good +therein. Our infinite model would be taken away. What is in eternal Mind +must be reflected in man, Mind's image. How then could man escape, or hope +to escape, from a knowledge which is everlasting in his creator? + +God never said that man would become better by learning to distinguish evil +from good,--but the contrary, that by this knowledge, by man's first +disobedience, came "death into the world, and all our woe." + +"Shall mortal man be more just than God?" asks the poet-patriarch. May men +rid themselves of an incubus which God never can throw off? Do mortals know +more than God, that they may declare Him absolutely cognizant of sin? + +God created all things, and pronounced them good. Was evil among these good +things? Man is God's child and image. If God knows evil, so must man, or +the likeness is incomplete, the image marred. + +If man must be destroyed by the knowledge of evil, then his destruction +comes through the very knowledge caught from God, and the creature is +punished for his likeness to his creator. + +God is commonly called the _sinless_, and man the _sinful_; but if the +thought of sin could be possible in Deity, would Deity then be sinless? +Would God not of necessity take precedence as the infinite sinner, and +human sin become only an echo of the divine? + +Such vagaries are to be found in heathen religious history. There are, or +have been, devotees who worship not the good Deity, who will not harm them, +but the bad deity, who seeks to do them mischief, and whom therefore they +wish to bribe with prayers into quiescence, as a criminal appeases, with a +money-bag, the venal officer. + +Surely this is no Christian worship! In Christianity man bows to the +infinite perfection which he is bidden to imitate. In Truth, such +terms as _divine sin_ and _infinite sinner_ are unheard-of +contradictions,--absurdities; but _would_ they be sheer nonsense, if God +has, or can have, a real knowledge of sin? + + + + +Ways Higher than Our Ways + + +A lie has only one chance of successful deception,--to be accounted true. +Evil seeks to fasten all error upon God, and so make the lie seem part of +eternal Truth. + +Emerson says, "Hitch your wagon to a star." I say, Be allied to the deific +power, and all that is good will aid your journey, as the stars in their +courses fought against Sisera. (Judges v. 20.) Hourly, in Christian +Science, man thus weds himself with God, or rather he ratifies a union +predestined from all eternity; but evil ties its wagon-load of offal to the +divine chariots,--or seeks so to do,--that its vileness may be christened +purity, and its darkness get consolation from borrowed scintillations. + +Jesus distinctly taught the arrogant Pharisees that, from the beginning, +their father, the devil, was the would-be murderer of Truth. A right +apprehension of the wonderful utterances of him who "spake as never man +spake," would despoil error of its borrowed plumes, and transform the +universe into a home of marvellous light,--"a consummation devoutly to be +wished." + +Error says God must know evil because He knows all things; but Holy Writ +declares God told our first parents that in the day when they should +partake of the fruit of evil, they must surely die. Would it not absurdly +follow that God must perish, if He knows evil and evil necessarily leads +to extinction? Rather let us think of God as saying, I am infinite good; +therefore I know not evil. Dwelling in light, I can see only the brightness +of My own glory. + +Error may say that God can never save man from sin, if He knows and sees it +not; but God says, I am too pure to behold iniquity, and destroy everything +that is unlike Myself. + +Many fancy that our heavenly Father reasons thus: If pain and sorrow were +not in My mind, I could not remedy them, and wipe the tears from the eyes +of My children. Error says you must know grief in order to console it. +Truth, God, says you oftenest console others in troubles that you have not. +Is not our comforter always from outside and above ourselves? + +God says, I show My pity through divine law, not through human. It is My +sympathy with and My knowledge of harmony (not inharmony) which alone +enable Me to rebuke, and eventually destroy, every supposition of discord. + +Error says God must know death in order to strike at its root; but God +saith, I am ever-conscious Life, and thus I conquer death; for to be ever +conscious of Life is to be never conscious of death. I am All. A knowledge +of aught beside Myself is impossible. + +If such knowledge of evil were possible to God, it would lower His rank. + +With God, _knowledge_ is necessarily _foreknowledge_; and _foreknowledge_ +and _foreordination_ must be one, in an infinite Being. What Deity +_foreknows_, Deity must _foreordain_; else He is not omnipotent, and, like +ourselves, He foresees events which are contrary to His creative will, yet +which He cannot avert. + +If God knows evil at all, He must have had foreknowledge thereof; and if He +foreknew it, He must virtually have intended it, or ordered it +aforetime,--foreordained it; else how could it have come into the world? + +But this we cannot believe of God; for if the supreme good could predestine +or foreknow evil, there would be sin in Deity, and this would be the end of +infinite moral unity. "If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, +how great is that darkness!" On the contrary, evil is only a delusive +deception, without any actuality which Truth can know. + + + + +Rectifications + + +How is a mistake to be rectified? By reversal or revision,--by seeing it in +its proper light, and then turning it or turning from it. + +We undo the statements of error by reversing them. + +Through these three statements, or misstatements, evil comes into +authority:-- + + _First:_ The Lord created it. + _Second:_ The Lord knows it. + _Third:_ I am afraid of it. + +By a reverse process of argument evil must be dethroned:-- + + _First:_ God never made evil. + _Second:_ He knows it not. + _Third:_ We therefore need not fear it. + +Try this process, dear inquirer, and so reach that perfect Love which +"casteth out fear," and then see if this Love does not destroy in you all +hate and the sense of evil. You will awake to the perception of God as +All-in-all. You will find yourself losing the knowledge and the operation +of sin, proportionably as you realize the divine infinitude and believe +that He can see nothing outside of His own focal distance. + + + + +A Colloquy + + +In Romans (ii. 15) we read the apostle's description of mental processes +wherein human thoughts are "the mean while accusing or else excusing one +another." If we observe our mental processes, we shall find that we are +perpetually arguing with ourselves; yet each mortal is not two +personalities, but one. + +In like manner good and evil talk to one another; yet they are not two but +one, for evil is naught, and good only is reality. + +_Evil._ God hath said, "Ye shall eat of every tree of the garden." If you +do not, your intellect will be circumscribed and the evidence of your +personal senses be denied. This would antagonize individual consciousness +and existence. + +_Good._ The Lord is God. With Him is no consciousness of evil, because +there is nothing beside Him or outside of Him. Individual consciousness in +man is inseparable from good. There is no sensible matter, no sense in +matter; but there is a spiritual sense, a sense of Spirit, and this is the +only consciousness belonging to true individuality, or a divine sense of +being. + +_Evil._ Why is this so? + +_Good._ Because man is made after God's eternal likeness, and this likeness +consists in a sense of harmony and immortality, in which no evil can +possibly dwell. You may eat of the fruit of Godlikeness, but as to the +fruit of ungodliness, which is opposed to Truth,--ye shall not touch it, +lest ye die. + +_Evil._ But I would taste and know error for myself. + +_Good._ Thou shalt not admit that error is something to know or be known, +to eat or be eaten, to see or be seen, to feel or be felt. To admit the +existence of error would be to admit the truth of a lie. + +_Evil._ But there is something besides good. God knows that a knowledge of +this something is essential to happiness and life. A lie is as genuine as +Truth, though not so legitimate a child of God. Whatever exists must come +from God, and be important to our knowledge. Error, even, is His offspring. + +_Good._ Whatever cometh not from the eternal Spirit, has its origin in the +physical senses and material brains, called _human intellect_ and +_will-power_,--_alias_ intelligent matter. + +In Shakespeare's tragedy of King Lear, it was the traitorous and cruel +treatment received by old Gloster from his bastard son Edmund which makes +true the lines: + + The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices + Make instruments to scourge us. + +His lawful son, Edgar, was to his father ever loyal. Now God has no +bastards to turn again and rend their Maker. The divine children are born +of law and order, and Truth knows only such. + +How well the Shakespearean tale agrees with the word of Scripture, in +Hebrews xii. 7, 8: "If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with +sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be +without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and +not sons." + +The doubtful or spurious evidence of the senses is not to be +admitted,--especially when they testify concerning Spirit, whereof they are +confessedly incompetent to speak. + +_Evil._ But mortal mind and sin really exist! + +_Good._ How can they exist, unless God has created them? And how can He +create anything so wholly unlike Himself and foreign to His nature? An evil +material mind, so-called, can conceive of God only as like itself, and +knowing both evil and good; but a purely good and spiritual consciousness +has no sense whereby to cognize evil. Mortal mind is the opposite of +immortal Mind, and sin the opposite of goodness. I am the infinite All. +From me proceedeth all Mind, all consciousness, all individuality, all +being. My Mind is divine good, and cannot drift into evil. To believe in +minds many is to depart from the supreme sense of harmony. Your assumptions +insist that there is more than the one Mind, more than the one God; but +verily I say unto you, God is All-in-all; and you can never be outside of +His oneness. + +_Evil._ I am a finite consciousness, a material individuality,--a mind in +matter, which is both evil and good. + +_Good._ All consciousness is Mind; and Mind is God,--an infinite, and not a +finite consciousness. This consciousness is reflected in individual +consciousness, or man, whose source is infinite Mind. There is no really +finite mind, no finite consciousness. There is no material substance, for +Spirit is all that endureth, and hence is the only substance. There is, can +be, no evil mind, because Mind is God. God and His ideas--that is, God and +the universe--constitute all that exists. Man, as God's offspring, must be +spiritual, perfect, eternal. + +_Evil._ I am something separate from good or God. I am substance. My mind +is more than matter. In my mortal mind, matter becomes conscious, and is +able to see, taste, hear, feel, smell. Whatever matter thus affirms is +mainly correct. If you, O good, deny this, then I deny your truthfulness. +If you say that matter is unconscious, you stultify my intellect, insult my +conscience, and dispute self-evident facts; for nothing can be clearer than +the testimony of the five senses. + +_Good._ Spirit is the only substance. Spirit is God, and God is good; hence +good is the only substance, the only Mind. Mind is not, cannot be, in +matter. It sees, hears, feels, tastes, smells as Mind, and not as matter. +Matter cannot talk; and hence, whatever it appears to say of itself is a +lie. This lie, that Mind can be in matter,--claiming to be something beside +God, denying Truth and its demonstration in Christian Science,--this lie I +declare an illusion. This denial enlarges the human intellect by removing +its evidence from sense to Soul, and from finiteness into infinity. It +honors conscious human individuality by showing God as its source. + +_Evil._ I am a creator,--but upon a material, not a spiritual basis. I give +life, and I can destroy life. + +_Good._ Evil is not a creator. God, good, is the only creator. Evil is not +conscious or conscientious Mind; it is not individual, not actual. Evil is +not spiritual, and therefore has no groundwork in Life, whose only source +is Spirit. The elements which belong to the eternal All,--Life, Truth, +Love,--evil can never take away. + +_Evil._ I am intelligent matter; and matter is egoistic, having its own +innate selfhood and the capacity to evolve mind. God is in matter, and +matter reproduces God. From Him come my forms, near or remote. This is my +honor, that God is my author, authority, governor, disposer. I am proud to +be in His outstretched hands, and I shirk all responsibility for myself as +evil, and for my varying manifestations. + +_Good._ You mistake, O evil! God is not your authority and law. Neither is +He the author of the material changes, the _phantasma_, a belief in which +leads to such teaching as we find in the hymn-verse so often sung in +church:-- + + Chance and change are busy ever, + Man decays and ages move; + But His mercy waneth never,-- + God is wisdom, God is love. + +Now if it be true that God's power _never waneth_, how can it be also true +that _chance_ and _change_ are universal factors,--that _man decays_? Many +ordinary Christians protest against this stanza of Bowring's, and its +sentiment is foreign to Christian Science. If God be _changeless goodness_, +as sings another line of this hymn, what place has _chance_ in the divine +economy? Nay, there is in God naught fantastic. All is real, all is +serious. The phantasmagoria is a product of human dreams. + + + + +The Ego + + +From various friends comes inquiry as to the meaning of a word employed in +the foregoing colloquy. + +There are two English words, often used as if they were synonyms, which +really have a shade of difference between them. + +An _egotist_ is one who talks much of himself. _Egotism_ implies vanity and +self-conceit. + +_Egoism_ is a more philosophical word, signifying a passionate love of +self, which doubts all existence except its own. An _egoist_, therefore, is +one uncertain of everything except his own existence. + +Applying these distinctions to evil and God, we shall find that evil is +_egotistic_,--boastful, but fleeing like a shadow at daybreak; while God is +_egoistic_, knowing only His own all-presence, all-knowledge, all-power. + + + + +Soul + + +We read in the Hebrew Scriptures, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." + +What is Soul? Is it a reality within the mortal body? Who can prove that? +Anatomy has not descried nor described Soul. It was never touched by the +scalpel nor cut with the dissecting-knife. The five physical senses do not +cognize it. + +Who, then, dares define Soul as something within man? As well might you +declare some old castle to be peopled with demons or angels, though never a +light or form was discerned therein, and not a spectre had ever been seen +going in or coming out. + +The common hypotheses about souls are even more vague than ordinary +material conjectures, and have less basis; because material theories are +built on the evidence of the material senses. + +Soul must be God; since we learn Soul only as we learn God, by +spiritualization. As the five senses take no cognizance of Soul, so they +take no cognizance of God. Whatever cannot be taken in by mortal mind--by +human reflection, reason, or belief--must be the unfathomable Mind, which +"eye hath not seen, nor ear heard." Soul stands in this relation to every +hypothesis as to its human character. + +If Soul sins, it is a sinner, and Jewish law condemned the sinner to +death,--as does all criminal law, to a certain extent. + +Spirit never sins, because Spirit is God. Hence, as Spirit, Soul is +sinless, and is God. Therefore there is, there can be, no spiritual death. + +Transcending the evidence of the material senses, Science declares God to +be the Soul of all being, the only Mind and intelligence in the universe. +There is but one God, one Soul, or Mind, and that one is infinite, +supplying all that is absolutely immutable and eternal,--Truth, Life, Love. + +Science reveals Soul as that which the senses cannot define from any +standpoint of their own. What the physical senses miscall soul, Christian +Science defines as material sense; and herein lies the discrepancy between +the true Science of Soul and that material sense of a soul which that very +sense declares can never be seen or measured or weighed or touched by +physicality. + +Often we can elucidate the deep meaning of the Scriptures by reading +_sense_ instead of _soul_, as in the Forty-second Psalm: "Why art thou cast +down, O my soul [sense]?... Hope thou in God [Soul]: for I shall yet praise +Him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God [my Soul, +immortality]." + +The Virgin-mother's sense being uplifted to behold Spirit as the sole +origin of man, she exclaimed, "My soul [spiritual sense] doth magnify the +Lord." + +Human language constantly uses the word _soul_ for _sense_. This it does +under the delusion that the senses can reverse the spiritual facts of +Science, whereas Science reverses the testimony of the material senses. + +Soul is Life, and being spiritual Life, never sins. Material sense is the +so-called material life. Hence this lower sense sins and suffers, according +to material belief, till divine understanding takes away this belief and +restores Soul, or spiritual Life. "He restoreth my soul," says David. + +In his first epistle to the Corinthians (xv. 45) Paul writes: "The first +man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening +spirit." The apostle refers to the second Adam as the Messiah, our blessed +Master, whose interpretation of God and His creation--by restoring the +spiritual sense of man as immortal instead of mortal--made humanity +victorious over death and the grave. + +When I discovered the power of Spirit to break the cords of matter, through +a change in the mortal sense of things, then I discerned the last Adam as a +quickening Spirit, and understood the meaning of the declaration of Holy +Writ, "The first shall be last,"--the living Soul shall be found a +quickening Spirit; or, rather, shall reflect the Life of the divine +Arbiter. + + + + +There is no Matter + + +"God is a Spirit" (or, more accurately translated, "God is Spirit"), +declares the Scripture (John iv. 24), "and they that worship Him must +worship Him in spirit and in truth." + +If God is Spirit, and God is All, surely there can be no matter; for the +divine All must be Spirit. + +The tendency of Christianity is to spiritualize thought and action. The +demonstrations of Jesus annulled the claims of matter, and overruled laws +material as emphatically as they annihilated sin. + +According to Christian Science, the _first_ idolatrous claim of sin is, +that matter exists; the _second_, that matter is substance; the _third_, +that matter has intelligence; and the _fourth_, that matter, being so +endowed, produces life and death. + +Hence my conscientious position, in the denial of matter, rests on the fact +that matter usurps the authority of God, Spirit; and the nature and +character of matter, the antipode of Spirit, include all that denies and +defies Spirit, in quantity or quality. + +This subject can be enlarged. It can be shown, in detail, that evil does +not obtain in Spirit, God; and that God, or good, is Spirit alone; whereas, +evil _does_, according to belief, obtain in matter; and that evil is a +false claim,--false to God, false to Truth and Life. Hence the claim of +matter usurps the prerogative of God, saying, "I am a creator. God made me, +and I make man and the material universe." + +Spirit is the only creator, and man, including the universe, is His +spiritual concept. By matter is commonly meant mind,--not the highest Mind, +but a false form of mind. This so-called mind and matter cannot be +separated in origin and action. + +What is this mind? It is not the Mind of Spirit; for spiritualization of +thought destroys all sense of matter as substance, Life, or intelligence, +and enthrones God in the eternal qualities of His being. + +This lower, misnamed mind is a false claim, a suppositional mind, which I +prefer to call _mortal mind_. True Mind is immortal. This mortal mind +declares itself material, in sin, sickness, and death, virtually saying, "I +am the opposite of Spirit, of holiness, harmony, and Life." + +To this declaration Christian Science responds, even as did our Master: +"You were a murderer from the beginning. The truth abode not in you. You +are a liar, and the father of it." Here it appears that a _liar_ was in the +neuter gender,--neither masculine nor feminine. Hence it was not man (the +image of God) who lied, but the false claim to personality, which I call +_mortal mind_; a claim which Christian Science uncovers, in order to +demonstrate the falsity of the claim. + +There are lesser arguments which prove matter to be identical with mortal +mind, and this mind a lie. + +The physical senses (matter really having no sense) give the only pretended +testimony there can be as to the existence of a substance called _matter_. +Now these senses, being material, can only testify from their own evidence, +and concerning themselves; yet we have it on divine authority: "If I bear +witness of myself, my witness is not true." (John v. 31.) + +In other words: matter testifies of itself, "I am matter;" but unless +matter is mind, it cannot talk or testify; and if it is mind, it is +certainly not the Mind of Christ, not the Mind that is identical with +Truth. + +Brain, thus assuming to testify, is only matter within the skull, and is +believed to be mind only through error and delusion. Examine that form of +matter called _brains_, and you find no mind therein. Hence the logical +sequence, that there is in reality neither matter nor mortal mind, but that +the self-testimony of the physical senses is false. + +Examine these witnesses for error, or falsity, and observe the foundations +of their testimony, and you will find them divided in evidence, mocking the +Scripture (Matthew xviii. 16), "In the mouth of two or three witnesses +every word may be established." + + +_Sight._ Mortal mind declares that matter sees through the organizations of +matter, or that mind sees by means of matter. Disorganize the so-called +material structure, and then mortal mind says, "I cannot see;" and declares +that matter is the master of mind, and that non-intelligence governs. +Mortal mind admits that it sees only material images, pictured on the eye's +retina. + +What then is the line of the syllogism? It must be this: That matter is not +seen; that mortal mind cannot see without matter; and therefore that the +whole function of material sight is an illusion, a lie. + +Here comes in the summary of the whole matter, wherewith we started: that +God is All, and God is Spirit; therefore there is nothing but Spirit; and +consequently there is no matter. + + +_Touch_. Take another train of reasoning. Mortal mind says that matter +cannot feel matter; yet put your finger on a burning coal, and the nerves, +material nerves, _do_ feel matter. + +Again I ask: What evidence does mortal mind afford that matter is +substantial, is hot or cold? Take away mortal mind, and matter could not +feel what it calls _substance_. Take away matter, and mortal mind could not +cognize its own so-called substance, and this so-called mind would have no +identity. Nothing would remain to be seen or felt. + +What is substance? What is the reality of God and the universe? Immortal +Mind is the real substance,--Spirit, Life, Truth, and Love. + +_Taste._ Mortal mind says, "I taste; and this is sweet, this is sour." Let +mortal mind change, and say that sour is sweet, and so it would be. If +every mortal mind believed sweet to be sour, it would be so; for the +qualities of matter are but qualities of mortal mind. Change the mind, and +the quality changes. Destroy the belief, and the quality disappears. + +The so-called material senses are found, upon examination, to be mortally +mental, instead of material. Reduced to its proper denomination, matter is +mortal mind; yet, strictly speaking, there is no mortal mind, for Mind is +immortal, and is not matter, but Spirit. + +_Force._ What is gravitation? Mortal mind says gravitation is a material +power, or force. I ask, Which was first, matter or power? That which was +first was God, immortal Mind, the Parent of _all_. But God is Truth, and +the forces of Truth are moral and spiritual, not physical. They are not the +merciless forces of matter. What then _are_ the so-called forces of matter? +They are the phenomena of mortal mind, and matter and mortal mind are one; +and this one is a misstatement of Mind, God. + +A molecule, as matter, is not formed by Spirit; for Spirit is _spiritual_ +consciousness alone. Hence this spiritual consciousness can form nothing +unlike itself, Spirit, and Spirit is the only creator. The material atom is +an outlined falsity of consciousness, which can gather additional evidence +of consciousness and life only as it adds lie to lie. This process it names +material attraction, and endows with the double capacity of creator and +creation. + +From the beginning this lie was the false witness against the fact that +Spirit is All, beside which there is no other existence. The use of a lie +is that it unwittingly confirms Truth, when handled by Christian Science, +which reverses false testimony and gains a knowledge of God from opposite +facts, or phenomena. + +This whole subject is met and solved by Christian Science according to +Scripture. Thus we see that Spirit is Truth and eternal reality; that +matter is the opposite of Spirit,--referred to in the New Testament as the +flesh at war with Spirit; hence, that matter is erroneous, transitory, +unreal. + +A further proof of this is the demonstration, according to Christian +Science, that by the reduction and the rejection of the claims of matter +(instead of acquiescence therein) man is improved physically, mentally, +morally, spiritually. + +To deny the existence or reality of matter, and yet admit the reality of +moral evil, sin, or to say that the divine Mind is conscious of evil, yet +is not conscious of matter, is erroneous. This error stultifies the logic +of divine Science, and must interfere with its practical demonstration. + + + + +Is There no Death? + + +Jesus not only declared himself "the way" and "the truth," but also "the +life." God is Life; and as there is but one God, there can be but one Life. +Must man die, then, in order to inherit eternal life and enter heaven? + +Our Master said, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." Then God and heaven, +or Life, are present, and death is not the real stepping-stone to Life and +happiness. They are now and here; and a change in human consciousness, from +sin to holiness, would reveal this wonder of being. Because God is ever +present, no boundary of time can separate us from Him and the heaven of His +presence; and because God is Life, all Life is eternal. + +Is it unchristian to believe there is no death? Not unless it be a sin to +believe that God is Life and All-in-all. Evil and disease do not testify of +Life and God. + +Human beings are physically mortal, but spiritually immortal. The evil +accompanying physical personality is illusive and mortal; but the good +attendant upon spiritual individuality is immortal. Existing here and now, +this unseen individuality is real and eternal. The so-called material +senses, and the mortal mind which is misnamed _man_, take no cognizance of +spiritual individuality, which manifests immortality, whose Principle is +God. + +To God alone belong the indisputable realities of being. Death is a +contradiction of Life, or God; therefore it is not in accordance with His +law, but antagonistic thereto. + +Death, then, is error, opposed to Truth,--even the unreality of mortal +mind, not the reality of that Mind which is Life. Error has no life, and is +virtually without existence. Life is real; and all is real which proceeds +from Life and is inseparable from it. + +It is unchristian to believe in the transition called _material death_, +since matter has no life, and such misbelief must enthrone another power, +an imaginary life, above the living and true God. A material sense of life +robs God, by declaring that not He alone is Life, but that something else +also is life,--thus affirming the existence and rulership of more gods than +one. This idolatrous and false sense of life is all that dies, or appears +to die. + +The opposite understanding of God brings to light Life and immortality. +Death has no quality of Life; and no divine fiat commands us to believe in +aught which is unlike God, or to deny that He is Life eternal. + +Life as God, moral and spiritual good, is not seen in the mineral, +vegetable, or animal kingdoms. Hence the inevitable conclusion that Life is +not in these kingdoms, and that the popular views to this effect are not up +to the Christian standard of Life, or equal to the reality of being, whose +Principle is God. + +When "the Word" is "made flesh" among mortals, the Truth of Life is +rendered practical on the body. Eternal Life is partially understood; and +sickness, sin, and death yield to holiness, health, and Life,--that is, to +God. The lust of the flesh and the pride of physical life must be quenched +in the divine essence,--that omnipotent Love which annihilates hate, that +Life which knows no death. + +"Who hath believed our report?" Who understands these sayings? He to whom +the arm of the Lord is revealed. He loves them from whom divine Science +removes human weakness by divine strength, and who unveil the Messiah, +whose name is Wonderful. + +Man has no underived power. That selfhood is false which opposes itself to +God, claims another father, and denies spiritual sonship; but as many as +receive the knowledge of God in Science must reflect, in some degree, the +power of Him who gave and giveth man dominion over all the earth. + +As soldiers of the cross we must be brave, and let Science declare the +immortal status of man, and deny the evidence of the material senses, which +testify that man dies. + +As the image of God, or Life, man forever reflects and embodies Life, not +death. The material senses testify falsely. They presuppose that God is +good and that man is evil, that Deity is deathless, but that man dies, +losing the divine likeness. + +Science and material sense conflict at all points, from the revolution of +the earth to the fall of a sparrow. It is mortality only that dies. + +To say that you and I, as mortals, will not enter this dark shadow of +material sense, called _death_, is to assert what we have not proved; but +man in Science never dies. Material sense, or the belief of life in matter, +must perish, in order to prove man deathless. + +As Truth supersedes error, and bears the fruits of Love, this understanding +of Truth subordinates the belief in death, and demonstrates Life as +imperative in the divine order of being. + +Jesus declares that they who believe his sayings will never die; therefore +mortals can no more receive everlasting life by believing in death, than +they can become perfect by believing in imperfection and living +imperfectly. + +Life is God, and God is good. Hence Life abides in man, if man abides in +good, if he lives in God, who holds Life by a spiritual and not by a +material sense of being. + +A sense of death is not requisite to a proper or true sense of Life, but +beclouds it. Death can never alarm or even appear to him who fully +understands Life. The death-penalty comes through our ignorance of +Life,--of that which is without beginning and without end,--and is the +punishment of this ignorance. + +Holding a material sense of Life, and lacking the spiritual sense of it, +mortals die, in belief, and regard all things as temporal. A sense material +apprehends nothing strictly belonging to the nature and office of Life. It +conceives and beholds nothing but mortality, and has but a feeble concept +of immortality. + +In order to reach the true knowledge and consciousness of Life, we must +learn it of good. Of evil we can never learn it, because sin shuts out the +real sense of Life, and brings in an unreal sense of suffering and death. + +Knowledge of evil, or belief in it, involves a loss of the true sense of +good, God; and to know death, or to believe in it, involves a temporary +loss of God, the infinite and only Life. + +Resurrection from the dead (that is, from the belief in death) must come to +all sooner or later; and they who have part in this resurrection are they +upon whom the second death has no power. + +The sweet and sacred sense of the permanence of man's unity with his Maker +can illumine our present being with a continual presence and power of good, +opening wide the portal from death into Life; and when this Life shall +appear "we shall be like Him," and we shall go to the Father, not through +death, but through Life; not through error, but through Truth. + +All Life is Spirit, and Spirit can never dwell in its antagonist, matter. +Life, therefore, is deathless, because God cannot be the opposite of +Himself. In Christian Science there is no matter; hence matter neither +lives nor dies. To the senses, matter appears to both live and die, and +these phenomena appear to go on _ad infinitum_; but such a theory implies +perpetual disagreement with Spirit. + +Life, God, being everywhere, it must follow that death can be nowhere; +because there is no place left for it. + +Soul, Spirit, is deathless. Matter, sin, and death are not the outcome of +Spirit, holiness, and Life. What then are matter, sin, and death? They can +be nothing except the results of material consciousness; but material +consciousness can have no real existence, because it is not a living--that +is to say, a divine and intelligent--reality. + +That man must be vicious before he can be virtuous, dying before he can be +deathless, material before he can be spiritual, is an error of the senses; +for the very opposite of this error is the genuine Science of being. + +Man, in Science, is as perfect and immortal now, as when "the morning stars +sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." + +With Christ, Life was not merely a sense of existence, but a sense of might +and ability to subdue material conditions. No wonder "people were +astonished at his doctrine; for he taught them as one having authority, and +not as the scribes." + +As defined by Jesus, Life had no beginning; nor was it the result of +organization, or of an infusion of power into matter. To him, Life was +Spirit. + +Truth, defiant of error or matter, is Science, dispelling a false sense and +leading man into the true sense of selfhood and Godhood; wherein the mortal +does not develop the immortal, nor the material the spiritual, but wherein +true manhood and womanhood go forth in the radiance of eternal being and +its perfections, unchanged and unchangeable. + +This generation seems too material for any strong demonstration over death, +and hence cannot bring out the infinite reality of Life,--namely, that +there is no death, but only Life. The present mortal sense of being is too +finite for anchorage in infinite good, God, because mortals now believe in +the possibility that Life can be evil. + +The achievement of this ultimatum of Science, complete triumph over death, +requires time and immense spiritual growth. + +I have by no means spoken of myself, I _cannot_ speak of myself as +"sufficient for these things." I insist only upon the fact, as it exists in +divine Science, that man dies not, and on the words of the Master in +support of this verity,--words which can never "pass away till all be +fulfilled." + +Because of these profound reasons I urge Christians to have more faith in +living than in dying. I exhort them to accept Christ's promise, and unite +the influence of their own thoughts with the power of his teachings, in the +Science of being. This will interpret the divine power to human capacity, +and enable us to _apprehend_, or lay hold upon, "that for which," as Paul +says in the third chapter of Philippians, we are also "apprehended of [or +grasped by] Christ Jesus,"--the ever-present Life which knows no death, the +omnipresent Spirit which knows no matter. + + + + +Personal Statements + + +Many misrepresentations are made concerning my doctrines, some of which are +as unkind and unjust as they are untrue; but I can only repeat the Master's +words: "They know not what they do." + +The foundations of these assertions, like the structure raised thereupon, +are vain shadows, repeating--if the popular couplet may be so paraphrased-- + + The old, old story, + Of _Satan_ and his _lie_. + +In the days of Eden, humanity was misled by a false personality,--a talking +snake,--according to Biblical history. This pretender taught the opposite +of Truth. This abortive ego, this fable of error, is laid bare in Christian +Science. + +Human theories call, or miscall, this evil a child of God. Philosophy would +multiply and subdivide personality into everything that exists, whether +expressive or not expressive of the Mind which is God. Human wisdom says of +evil, "The Lord knows it!" thus carrying out the serpent's assurance: "In +the day ye eat thereof [when you, lie, get the floor], then your eyes shall +be opened [you shall be conscious matter], and ye shall be as gods, knowing +good and evil [you shall believe a lie, and this lie shall seem truth]." + +Bruise the head of this serpent, as Truth and "the woman" are doing in +Christian Science, and it stings your heel, rears its crest proudly, and +goes on saying, "Am I not myself? Am I not mind and matter, person and +thing?" We should answer: "Yes! you are indeed yourself, and need most of +all to be rid of this self, for it is very far from God's likeness." + +The egotist must come down and learn, in humility, that God never made +evil. An evil ego, and his assumed power, are falsities. These falsities +need a denial. The falsity is the teaching that matter can be conscious; +and conscious matter implies pantheism. This pantheism I unveil. I try to +show its all-pervading presence in certain forms of theology and +philosophy, where it becomes error's affirmative to Truth's negative. +Anatomy and physiology make mind-matter a habitant of the cerebellum, +whence it telegraphs and telephones over its own body, and goes forth into +an imaginary sphere of its own creation and limitation, until it finally +dies in order to better itself. But Truth never dies, and death is not the +goal which Truth seeks. + +The evil ego has but the visionary substance of matter. It lacks the +substance of Spirit,--Mind, Life, Soul. Mortal mind is self-creative and +self-sustained, until it becomes non-existent. It has no origin or +existence in Spirit, immortal Mind, or good. Matter is not truly conscious; +and mortal error, called _mind_, is not Godlike. These are the shadowy and +false, which neither think nor speak. + +All Truth is from inspiration and revelation,--from Spirit, not from flesh. + +We do not see much of the real man here, for he is God's man; while ours is +man's man. + +I do not deny, I maintain, the individuality and reality of man; but I do +so on a divine Principle, not based on a human conception and birth. The +scientific man and his Maker are here; and you would be none other than +this man, if you would subordinate the fleshly perceptions to the spiritual +sense and source of being. + +Jesus said, "I and my Father are one." He taught no selfhood as existent in +matter. In his identity there is no evil. Individuality and Life were real +to him only as spiritual and good, not as material or evil. This incensed +the rabbins against Jesus, because it was an indignity to their +personality; and this personality they regarded as both good and evil, as +is still claimed by the worldly-wise. To them evil was even more the ego +than was the good. Sin, sickness, and death were evil's concomitants. This +evil ego they believed must extend throughout the universe, as being +equally identical and self-conscious with God. This ego was in the +earthquake, thunderbolt, and tempest. + +The Pharisees fought Jesus on this issue. It furnished the battle-ground of +the past, as it does of the present. The fight was an effort to enthrone +evil. Jesus assumed the burden of disproof by destroying sin, sickness, +and death, to sight and sense. + +Nowhere in Scripture is evil connected with good, the being of God, and +with every passing hour it is losing its false claim to existence or +consciousness. All that can exist is God and His idea. + + + + +Credo + + +It is fair to ask of every one a reason for the faith within. Though it be +but to repeat my twice-told tale,--nay, the tale already told a hundred +times,--yet ask, and I will answer. + +_Do you believe in God?_ + +I believe more in Him than do most Christians, for I have no faith in any +other thing or being. He sustains my individuality. Nay, more--He _is_ my +individuality and my Life. Because He lives, I live. He heals all my ills, +destroys my iniquities, deprives death of its sting, and robs the grave of +its victory. + +To me God is All. He is best understood as Supreme Being, as infinite and +conscious Life, as the affectionate Father and Mother of all He creates; +but this divine Parent no more enters into His creation than the human +father enters into his child. His creation is not the Ego, but the +reflection of the Ego. The Ego is God Himself, the infinite Soul. + +I believe that of which I am conscious through the understanding, however +faintly able to demonstrate Truth and Love. + +_Do you believe in man?_ + +I believe in the individual man, for I understand that man is as definite +and eternal as God, and that man is coexistent with God, as being the +eternally divine idea. This is demonstrable by the simple appeal to human +consciousness. + +But I believe less in the sinner, wrongly named _man_. The more I +understand true humanhood, the more I see it to be sinless,--as ignorant of +sin as is the perfect Maker. + +To me the reality and substance of being are _good_, and nothing else. +Through the eternal reality of existence I reach, in thought, a glorified +consciousness of the only living God and the genuine man. So long as I hold +evil in consciousness, I cannot be wholly good. + +You cannot simultaneously serve the mammon of materiality and the God of +spirituality. There are not two realities of being, two opposite states of +existence. One should appear real to us, and the other unreal, or we lose +the Science of being. Standing in no basic Truth, we make "the worse appear +the better reason," and the unreal masquerades as the real, in our thought. + +Evil is without Principle. Being destitute of Principle, it is devoid of +Science. Hence it is undemonstrable, without proof. This gives me a clearer +right to call evil a negation, than to affirm it to be something which God +sees and knows, but which He straightway commands mortals to shun or +relinquish, lest it destroy them. This notion of the destructibility of +Mind implies the possibility of its defilement; but how can infinite Mind +be defiled? + +_Do you believe in matter_? + +I believe in matter only as I believe in evil, that it is something to be +denied and destroyed to human consciousness, and is unknown to the Divine. +We should watch and pray that we enter not into the temptation of +pantheistic belief in matter as sensible mind. We should subjugate it as +Jesus did, by a dominant understanding of Spirit. + +At best, matter is only a phenomenon of mortal mind, of which evil is the +highest degree; but really there is no such thing as _mortal mind_,--though +we are compelled to use the phrase in the endeavor to express the +underlying thought. + +In reality there are no material states or stages of consciousness, and +matter has neither Mind nor sensation. Like evil, it is destitute of Mind, +for Mind is God. + +The less consciousness of evil or matter mortals have, the easier it is for +them to evade sin, sickness, and death,--which are but states of false +belief,--and awake from the troubled dream, a consciousness which is +without Mind or Maker. + +Matter and evil cannot be conscious, and consciousness should not be evil. +Adopt this rule of Science, and you will discover the material origin, +growth, maturity, and death of sinners, as the history of man, disappears, +and the everlasting facts of being appear, wherein man is the reflection +of immutable good. + +Reasoning from false premises,--that Life is material, that immortal Soul +is sinful, and hence that sin is eternal,--the reality of being is neither +seen, felt, heard, nor understood. Human philosophy and human reason can +never make one hair white or black, except in belief; whereas the +demonstration of God, as in Christian Science, is gained through Christ as +perfect manhood. + +In pantheism the world is bereft of its God, whose place is ill supplied by +the pretentious usurpation, by matter, of the heavenly sovereignty. + +_What say you of woman?_ + +Man is the generic term for all humanity. Woman is the highest species of +man, and this word is the generic term for all women; but not one of all +these individualities is an Eve or an Adam. They have none of them lost +their harmonious state, in the economy of God's wisdom and government. + +The Ego is divine consciousness, eternally radiating throughout all space +in the idea of God, good, and not of His opposite, evil. The Ego is +revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; but the full Truth is found only +in divine Science, where we see God as Life, Truth, and Love. In the +scientific relation of man to God, man is reflected not as human soul, but +as the divine ideal, whose Soul is not in body, but is God,--the divine +Principle of man. Hence Soul is sinless and immortal, in contradistinction +to the supposition that there can be sinful souls or immortal sinners. + +This Science of God and man is the Holy Ghost, which reveals and sustains +the unbroken and eternal harmony of both God and the universe. It is the +kingdom of heaven, the ever-present reign of harmony, already with us. +Hence the need that human consciousness should become divine, in the +coincidence of God and man, in contradistinction to the false consciousness +of both good and evil, God and devil,--of man separated from his Maker. +This is the precious redemption of soul, as mortal sense, through Christ's +immortal sense of Truth, which presents Truth's spiritual idea, _man_ and +_woman_. + +_What say you of evil?_ + +God is not the so-called ego of evil; for evil, as a supposition, is the +father of itself,--of the material world, the flesh, and the devil. From +this falsehood arise the self-destroying elements of this world, its unkind +forces, its tempests, lightnings, earthquakes, poisons, rabid beasts, fatal +reptiles, and mortals. + +Why are earth and mortals so elaborate in beauty, color, and form, if God +has no part in them? By the law of opposites. The most beautiful blossom is +often poisonous, and the most beautiful mansion is sometimes the home of +vice. The senses, not God, Soul, form the condition of beautiful evil, and +the supposed modes of self-conscious matter, which make a beautiful lie. +Now a lie takes its pattern from Truth, by reversing Truth. So evil and all +its forms are inverted good. God never made them; but the lie must say He +made them, or it would not be evil. Being a lie, it would be truthful to +call itself a lie; and by calling the knowledge of evil good, and greatly +to be desired, it constitutes the lie an evil. + +The reality and individuality of man are good and God-made, and they are +here to be seen and demonstrated; it is only the evil belief that renders +them obscure. + +Matter and evil are anti-Christian, the antipodes of Science. To say that +Mind is material, or that evil is Mind, is a misapprehension of being,--a +mistake which will die of its own delusion; for being self-contradictory, +it is also self-destructive. The harmony of man's being is not built on +such false foundations, which are no more logical, philosophical, or +scientific than would be the assertion that the rule of addition is the +rule of subtraction, and that sums done under both rules would have one +quotient. + +Man's individuality is not a mortal mind or sinner; or else he has lost his +true individuality as a perfect child of God. Man's Father is not a mortal +mind and a sinner; or else the immortal and unerring Mind, God, is not his +Father; but God _is_ man's origin and loving Father, hence that saying of +Jesus, "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, +which is in heaven." + +The bright gold of Truth is dimmed by the doctrine of mind in matter. + +To say there _is_ a false claim, called _sickness_, is to admit all there +is of sickness; for it is nothing but a false claim. To be healed, one must +lose sight of a false claim. If the claim be present to the thought, then +disease becomes as tangible as any reality. To regard sickness as a false +claim, is to abate the fear of it; but this does not destroy the so-called +fact of the _claim_. In order to be whole, we must be insensible to every +claim of error. + +As with sickness, so is it with sin. To admit that sin has any claim +whatever, just or unjust, is to admit a dangerous fact. Hence the fact must +be denied; for if sin's claim be allowed in any degree, then sin destroys +the _at-one-ment_, or oneness with God,--a unity which sin recognizes as +its most potent and deadly enemy. + +If God knows sin, even as a false claimant, then acquaintance with that +claimant becomes legitimate to mortals, and this knowledge would not be +forbidden; but God forbade man to know evil at the very beginning, when +Satan held it up before man as something desirable and a distinct addition +to human wisdom, because the knowledge of evil would make man a god,--a +representation that God both knew and admitted the dignity of evil. + +Which is right,--God, who condemned the knowledge of sin and disowned its +acquaintance, or the serpent, who pushed that claim with the glittering +audacity of diabolical and sinuous logic? + + + + +Suffering from Others' Thoughts + + +Jesus accepted the one fact whereby alone the rule of Life can be +demonstrated,--namely, that there is no death. + +In his real self he bore no infirmities. Though "a man of sorrows, and +acquainted with grief," as Isaiah says of him, he bore not _his_ sins, but +_ours_, "in his own body on the tree." "He was bruised for _our_ +iniquities; ... and with his stripes we are healed." + +He was the Way-shower; and Christian Scientists who would demonstrate "the +way" must keep close to his path, that they may win the prize. "The way," +in the flesh, is the suffering which leads out of the flesh. "The way," in +Spirit, is "the way" of Life, Truth, and Love, redeeming us from the false +sense of the flesh and the wounds it bears. This threefold Messiah reveals +the self-destroying ways of error and the life-giving way of Truth. + +Job's faith and hope gained him the assurance that the so-called sufferings +of the flesh are unreal. We shall learn how false are the pleasures and +pains of material sense, and behold the truth of being, as expressed in his +conviction, "Yet in my flesh shall I see God;" that is, Now and here shall +I behold God, divine Love. + +The chaos of mortal mind is made the stepping-stone to the cosmos of +immortal Mind. + +If Jesus suffered, as the Scriptures declare, it must have been from the +mentality of others; since all suffering comes from mind, not from matter, +and there could be no sin or suffering in the Mind which is God. Not his +own sins, but the sins of the world, "crucified the Lord of glory," and +"put him to an open shame." + +Holding a quickened sense of false environment, and suffering from +mentality in opposition to Truth, are significant of that state of mind +which the actual understanding of Christian Science first eliminates and +then destroys. + +In the divine order of Science every follower of Christ shares his cup of +sorrows. He also suffereth in the flesh, and from the mentality which +opposes the law of Spirit; but the divine law is supreme, for it freeth him +from the law of sin and death. + +Prophets and apostles suffered from the thoughts of others. Their conscious +being was not fully exempt from physicality and the sense of sin. + +Until he awakes from his delusion, he suffers least from sin who is a +hardened sinner. The hypocrite's affections must first be made to fret in +their chains; and the pangs of hell must lay hold of him ere he can change +from flesh to Spirit, become acquainted with that Love which is without +dissimulation and endureth all things. Such mental conditions as +ingratitude, lust, malice, hate, constitute the miasma of earth. More +obnoxious than Chinese stenchpots are these dispositions which offend the +spiritual sense. + +Anatomically considered, the design of the material senses is to warn +mortals of the approach of danger by the pain they feel and occasion; but +as this sense disappears it foresees the impending doom and foretells the +pain. Man's refuge is in spirituality, "under the shadow of the Almighty." + +The cross is the central emblem of human history. Without it there is +neither temptation nor glory. When Jesus turned and said, "Who hath touched +me?" he must have felt the influence of the woman's thought; for it is +written that he felt that "virtue had gone out of him." His pure +consciousness was discriminating, and rendered this infallible verdict; but +he neither held her error by affinity nor by infirmity, for it was detected +and dismissed. + +This gospel of suffering brought life and bliss. This is earth's Bethel in +stone,--its pillow, supporting the ladder which reaches heaven. + +Suffering was the confirmation of Paul's faith. Through "a thorn in the +flesh" he learned that spiritual grace was sufficient for him. + +Peter rejoiced that he was found worthy to suffer for Christ; because to +suffer with him is to reign with him. + +Sorrow is the harbinger of joy. Mortal throes of anguish forward the birth +of immortal being; but divine Science wipes away all tears. + +The only conscious existence in the flesh is error of some sort,--sin, +pain, death,--a false sense of life and happiness. Mortals, if at ease in +so-called existence, are in their native element of error, and must become +_dis-eased_, dis-quieted, before error is annihilated. + +Jesus walked with bleeding feet the thorny earth-road, treading "the +winepress alone." His persecutors said mockingly, "Save thyself, and come +down from the cross." This was the very thing he _was_ doing, coming down +from the cross, saving himself after the manner that he had taught, by the +law of Spirit's supremacy; and this was done through what is humanly called +_agony_. + +Even the ice-bound hypocrite melts in fervent heat, before he apprehends +Christ as "the way." The Master's sublime triumph over all mortal mentality +was immortality's goal. He was too wise not to be willing to test the full +compass of human woe, being "in all points tempted like as we are, yet +without sin." + +Thus the absolute unreality of sin, sickness, and death was revealed,--a +revelation that beams on mortal sense as the midnight sun shines over the +Polar Sea. + + + + +The Saviour's Mission + + +If there is no reality in evil, why did the Messiah come to the world, and +from what evils was it his purpose to save humankind? How, indeed, is he a +Saviour, if the evils from which he saves are nonentities? + +Jesus came to earth; but the Christ (that is, the divine idea of the divine +Principle which made heaven and earth) was never absent from the earth and +heaven; hence the phraseology of Jesus, who spoke of the Christ as one who +came down from heaven, yet as "the Son of man _which is in heaven_." (John +iii. 13.) By this we understand Christ to be the divine idea brought to the +flesh in the son of Mary. + +Salvation is as eternal as God. To mortal thought Jesus appeared as a +child, and grew to manhood, to suffer before Pilate and on Calvary, because +he could reach and teach mankind only through this conformity to mortal +conditions; but Soul never saw the Saviour come and go, because the divine +idea is always present. + +Jesus came to rescue men from these very illusions to which he seemed to +conform: from the illusion which calls sin real, and man a sinner, needing +a Saviour; the illusion which calls sickness real, and man an invalid, +needing a physician; the illusion that death is as real as Life. From such +thoughts--mortal inventions, one and all--Christ Jesus came to save men, +through ever-present and eternal good. + +Mortal man is a kingdom divided against itself. With the same breath he +articulates truth and error. We say that God is All, and there is none +beside Him, and then talk of sin and sinners as real. We call God +omnipotent and omnipresent, and then conjure up, from the dark abyss of +nothingness, a powerful presence named _evil_. We say that harmony is real, +and inharmony is its opposite, and therefore unreal; yet we descant upon +sickness, sin, and death as realities. + +With the tongue "bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, +who are made after the similitude [human concept] of God. Out of the same +mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not +so to be." (James iii. 9, 10.) Mortals are free moral agents, to choose +whom they would serve. If God, then let them serve Him, and He will be unto +them All-in-all. + +If God is ever present, He is neither absent from Himself nor from the +universe. Without Him, the universe would disappear, and space, substance, +and immortality be lost. St. Paul says, "And if Christ be not raised, your +faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins." (1 Corinthians xv. 17.) Christ +cannot come to mortal and material sense, which sees not God. This false +sense of substance must yield to His eternal presence, and so dissolve. +Rising above the false, to the true evidence of Life, is the resurrection +that takes hold of eternal Truth. Coming and going belong to mortal +consciousness. God is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever." + +To material sense, Jesus first appeared as a helpless human babe; but to +immortal and spiritual vision he was one with the Father, even the eternal +idea of God, that was--and is--neither young nor old, neither dead nor +risen. The mutations of mortal sense are the evening and the morning of +human thought,--the twilight and dawn of earthly vision, which precedeth +the nightless radiance of divine Life. Human perception, advancing toward +the apprehension of its nothingness, halts, retreats, and again goes +forward; but the divine Principle and Spirit and spiritual man are +unchangeable,--neither advancing, retreating, nor halting. + +Our highest sense of infinite good in this mortal sphere is but the sign +and symbol, not the substance of good. Only faith and a feeble +understanding make the earthly acme of human sense. "The life which I now +live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God." (Galatians ii. +20.) + +Christian Science is both demonstration and fruition, but how attenuated +are our demonstration and realization of this Science! Truth, in divine +Science, is the stepping-stone to the understanding of God; but the broken +and contrite heart soonest discerns this truth, even as the helpless sick +are soonest healed by it. Invalids say, "I have recovered from sickness;" +when the fact really remains, in divine Science, that they never were sick. + +The Christian saith, "Christ (God) died for me, and came to save me;" yet +God dies not, and is the ever-presence that neither comes nor goes, and man +is forever His image and likeness. "The things which are seen are temporal; +but the things which are not seen are eternal." (2 Corinthians iv. 18.) +This is the mystery of godliness--that God, good, is never absent, and +there is none beside good. Mortals can understand this only as they reach +the Life of good, and learn that there is no Life in evil. Then shall it +appear that the true ideal of omnipotent and ever-present good is an ideal +wherein and wherefor there is no evil. Sin exists only as a sense, and not +as Soul. Destroy this sense of sin, and sin disappears. Sickness, sin, or +death is a false sense of Life and good. Destroy this trinity of error, and +you find Truth. + +In Science, Christ never died. In material sense Jesus died, and lived. The +fleshly Jesus seemed to die, though he did not. The Truth or Life in divine +Science--undisturbed by human error, sin, and death--saith forever, "I am +the living God, and man is My idea, never in matter, nor resurrected from +it." "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen." +(Luke xxiv. 5, 6.) Mortal sense, confining itself to matter, is all that +can be buried or resurrected. + +Mary had risen to discern faintly God's ever-presence, and that of His +idea, man; but her mortal sense, reversing Science and spiritual +understanding, interpreted this appearing as a risen Christ. The I +AM was neither buried nor resurrected. The Way, the Truth, and the +Life were never absent for a moment. This trinity of Love lives and reigns +forever. Its kingdom, not apparent to material sense, never disappeared to +spiritual sense, but remained forever in the Science of being. The +so-called appearing, disappearing, and reappearing of ever-presence, in +whom is no variableness or shadow of turning, is the false human sense of +that light which shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it +not. + + + + +Summary + + +All that _is_, God created. If sin has any pretense of existence, God is +responsible therefor; but there is no reality in sin, for God can no more +behold it, or acknowledge it, than the sun can coexist with darkness. + +To build the individual spiritual sense, conscious of only health, +holiness, and heaven, on the foundations of an eternal Mind which is +conscious of sickness, sin, and death, is a moral impossibility; for "other +foundation can no man lay than that is laid." (1 Corinthians iii. 11.) The +nearer we approximate to such a Mind, even if it were (or could be) God, +the more real those mind-pictures would become to us; until the hope of +ever eluding their dread presence must yield to despair, and the haunting +sense of evil forever accompany our being. + +Mortals may climb the smooth glaciers, leap the dark fissures, scale the +treacherous ice, and stand on the summit of Mont Blanc; but they can never +turn back what Deity knoweth, nor escape from identification with what +dwelleth in the eternal Mind. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Unity of Good, by Mary Baker Eddy + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNITY OF GOOD *** + +***** This file should be named 16591.txt or 16591.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/5/9/16591/ + +Produced by Justin Gillbank, Josephine Paolucci and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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