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ARTHUR R. VOSBURGH
"For the law of the spirit
of life in Christ Jesus Romans 8: 2. ...Law signifies...that nothing transpires without a cause, and that a given cause will always produce a given effect. Law means system and order, and the system and order of the whole Creation is maintained in the law of cause and effect. A law then is a mode of action, and so it presupposes some force and activity. The law is not in any sense a force or potency, but only marks a definite order in which a potency will be manifested. ... The spirit of the age is scientific, the need of the age is practical religion. The unrest of our day will find no relief until the intellectual desire and the religious need find common ground in a Religion that is Science, and a Science that is religion. And this common ground of harmony, will be found in one perfect, all-inclusive law. Christian Science comes witnessing to such a law, and supporting its testimony by its demonstrations. This perfect law is the law referred to in the text already quoted. In this thought of Paul three essential points regarding this perfect law are presented. First, where we find its true manifestation, its demonstration, "in Christ Jesus," second, what is its essential Principle,—the "Spirit of Life;" third, what is its practical outcome,—"it makes free." The attitude of thought of our day should find no charity or affiliation for anything that does not appeal to reason and cannot be verified in practical experience. Magic and superstition should find no abiding-place. All honest, thinking people believe in truth, believe that there is abiding truth. And truth means the reality of things, or in Carlyle's terse phrase, "the fact of things." Or yet to give another definition,—"Truth is what is, error is what seems to be." But our thought of truth should be satisfied only when we find it in the understanding of a principle and the law of its operation. The Christian world looks to Jesus of Nazareth as the perfect revealer of truth. In him centers our hope and our faith. Here we shall find reality. All we know of Jesus is what we find in the gospel narratives. These are generally accepted as genuine and authentic. That is, we believe that such a man as they describe lived when they say he lived; that he said the things they report and did the things they describe. And believing this we fitly yield him highest honor and deepest reverence; "that in all things he might have the preeminence." But yet the thought of the day must be true to itself. Accepting the life and character of Jesus as the transcendent fact of all history, still it must see in his words and works the manifestation of law. Still we can be satisfied only in the conception that Jesus reveals to us a Principle and the law of its operation. The gospel records can appeal to the convictions of the thinking ones of our time only when they behold in Jesus' miracles the demonstration of an immanent divine law; when Jesus' works of healing the sick, raising the dead, walking the wave, multiplying the loaves and fishes are no longer regarded as supernatural, but as divinely natural. The whole Bible record appeals at once to men's rational instinct, as well as their sense of need when all that we have called the miracles of the old and new testaments are seen as demonstrations of an ever operative spiritual law, and as revealing man's spiritual dominion over the earth and its elements. That there is a divine law that is just as operative and as demonstrably applicable today, as ever, should be a matter of common experience. That there is a divine thought-force that heals the sick and raises those who are "dead in trespasses and sins," which, in the words of our church tenets is "the resurrection of human faith and understanding to seize the great possibilities and living energies of divine Life," that there is such a divine power demonstrating itself in human experience today, Christian Scientists know. And anyone who cares to know may fairly ascertain. It is manifest, too, that error is counterfeiting the works of Truth; that mortal mind is striving to bring forth the same works as immortal Mind; that erring human will-power is undertaking to show the same signs as divine Principle. And back of these false works there comes a false doctrine that would, if it were possible, deceive the very elect. History is simply repeating itself. The manifestation of the Christ brings forth, as at first, the anti-Christ. Christianity in its early experience found its path of progress swarming about with those who would present a counterfeit gospel. Jesus warned his disciples that this would be so; the epistles bear abundant evidence that the apostles found it so. So in our own generation, as Christian Science is again preaching the Gospel that heals the sick, by revealing the law of Life, there is a pseudo-science that would, if possible, turn aside the feet of truth-seekers from the testimony of God. Now, when men are saying: Lo, here! and Lo, there! when Buddhism, Theosophy, and Spiritualism are presenting their claims and giving their signs, we turn again for our sure criterion of Truth to the words and works of him who spake as never other man spake, and who did the works that no other man has done. Herein Christian Scientists are the orthodox of the orthodox. In the teachings and demonstrations of Jesus we find our only perfect standard of a perfect law. We are learning today of the law of the "Spirit of Life." And it is not the law of the Spirit of Life in Mohammed, Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius ... but it is the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. We believe in this perfect law as real and operative here and now, because we are, to some extent, demonstrating it. We believe in its ultimate possibilities in utterly destroying sin, sickness and death, because Jesus demonstrated it. And we turn to him as our authority and criterion of Truth... Herein, too, is our answer to those who say that Christian Science is not scientific. We do find our premises in facts, in acknowledged phenomena, open to all; the phenomena of the Christ-works being done today, together with those of the New Testament. And from these we clearly deduce a Principle and a law that can be verified in actual experience... Every law is based upon a principle. The law is only the way in which the principle, the force, is manifested. To illustrate,—a common and universal law is the law of gravitation. The principle of the law of gravitation is the seeming attraction of bodies for one another. The principle is the attraction, the law is the way it operates. The law is dependent upon the principle. Our civil law is based upon a principle. The principle of all civil law is the sentiment of order and justice in social relations. Public sentiment is the real power lying back of the civil law. If a law does not express public sentiment it is a dead letter, for it has no principle. Now let us see these illustrations in their metaphysical interpretation. The word Principle always implies causation, and causation is in and of Mind. There can be no use of the term Principle, anywhere, that does not lead us to Mind. Every right thought, every real sentiment is a reflection of the divine. Jesus' clear understanding of this, and his utter refusal to recognize any other Principle than the Father "working within him," enabled him to demonstrate the spiritual law by walking the waves, healing the sick, raising the dead, proving man's freedom from the law of a material belief that bound the thought of the world. There is a law of Life, a law that is and always has been, and forever shall be. This true law maintains the perfection of God's creation. It is the divine order of things; it is the harmonious action of the divine thought-force that sustains the Universe; it is the perfect system and unimpeachable order of spiritual Energy; and it is already "written in our hearts." It is the law of the Spirit of Life. The practical question is, What is the outcome of this law in our experience? The answer of our text is that it makes us free from the law of sin and death. Now in human experience we find an intermediate term between sin and death, and that is sickness. So our text, in its full implication must be, that the true law frees us from the law of sin, sickness, and death. The true law is the law of Good freeing us from the law of evil. One is sustained by the omnipotence of Love, the other by naught but the impotence of a human belief. Understanding born of Spirit destroys this law of belief. The true law is the law of spiritual consciousness annulling the testimony of the carnal consciousness, which is a material sense of existence. The spiritual consciousness is the realization of our true selfhood in God's likeness. The carnal consciousness is the sense of a nature opposed to the spiritual, a nature that God could not have given us, for it is the very opposite of his own. This false nature is no part of us, and is with us only in belief, as a false sense of life. "Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." "The law of the Spirit of Life has made us free." The law of a false sense of things gains its seeming power only by our consent. We gain our freedom by learning that true joy, satisfying and abiding is found only in God and his kingdom of spiritual reality; and that all pains of sense likewise—real only in belief—possess no power in themselves, and vanish before the consciousness of the liberty and harmony of the true law of Life. "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."
The Christian Science Journal, November, 1895 |
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