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Winter: A Type of Life ZOE SEYMOUR LOVELAND
The material luxuriance of summer is the type of death; and winter, wherein materiality sleeps, shows forth Life, spiritual and real. Nature, as seen through the senses, is the reflection of material thought — a belief of life in matter. The falsity of this belief is shown in its speedy dissolution; error dies; Truth is eternal. Every appearance of so-called material life is in reality death. It is a lie of mortal thought whose end is decay. Human passions, emotions, and characteristics are portrayed in what man calls natural phenomena. What is called "natural," is the thought of man — considered collectively — externalized, and expresses the aggregate of material beliefs. One of man's beliefs regarding life is that it begins, grows, ripens into manhood, then declines into old age, and finally dies. These passing shadows of mortal thought are mirrored in the buds of spring that blossom, pass into foliage and fruit, then fade away. The falling leaves of autumn attest the end of this objective drama of material sense as the supposed death of man does the end of the subjective dream. As long as life is believed to be material in expression, cessation of material activity is the necessary type of death; but the understanding of Life as Spirit, Mind, shows that "Spirit appears as matter disappears." (Science and Health) In the material desolation of winter, the lie of life in matter disappears. In the solemn hush of winter the voice of Mind is heard. "Soul is best heard when sense is still." (Science and Health) Winter, which typifies spiritual life, has no appearance of beauty or gladness to mortal man, but appears dark and desolate. To material eyes, there can be nothing beautiful or substantial outside of materiality. The end of matter, and annihilation are synonymous terms to mortal mind. The idea of life must change before the infinite variety and manifold beauties of the spiritual world can be discovered. ... Mentality, which leads man Spiritward, is most active in wintry atmospheres. The materialist explains this phenomenon by a theory regarding the effect of heat upon the nervous system, and a consequent diminution of brain force. From the standpoint, "all is Mind," it is seen that as man is freed from the bonds of sense, the spiritual and perfect shine forth. Give ear to the Hebrew prophet of old as he questions, "Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?" Winter's robe of snow is referred to in the Scriptures as an emblem of the purity of Truth, Spirit. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." Earth, dressed in her snowy robes, represents corruption putting on incorruption. Spiritual growth is the bringing out of man's true being, the putting off of material beliefs, and the putting on of the white robe of spiritual righteousness Summer's luxuriant materiality passes, and when it has gone the silently falling snow arrays the brown earth in its shining garb. Mountain heights that rise above the mists of earth and are clothed with perpetual snow, whose harmonic silence is forever unbroken by discordant notes of human strife, typify spiritual heights, from which God is understood as Good, "whom to know is Life eternal." The intensity of summer heat is considered necessary to the production of the forms of so-called "natural" life, and yet this heat is also declared to have a destructive effect upon these same forms. To affirm that the breath of life is also the agent of death, is an unscientific statement. It is the same as to say that a circle is a square. "The same fountain sendeth not forth sweet and bitter waters." In belief, the effect of summer's heat upon mankind is physical inertia and weakness; nervous diseases are aggravated, and the mortality among infants is appalling. The following quotation, descriptive of the state of society three thousand years ago, shows how the ancients regarded summer: "While the gentle and gracious warmth of the spring sun called forth the happy adoration of the people, the scorching and consuming heat of the mid-summer sun roused the fears of the sufferers for their crops, their cattle, and their very lives. They sought to propitiate this fierce power, which was evidently hostile to man, with offerings of the life it devoured so pitilessly. The choicest lives — the firstborn son, the fairest maiden of the village — were sacrificed to glut its greed of death." ("Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible," Heber Newton.) In summer the pleasures of sense and the means for its gratification are abundant, and are uppermost in the thought of mortal man. When the sensuousness of animal nature is strong, spiritual and mental activities are in abeyance. The general closing of church doors during summer shows that men do not consider its heats favorable to spiritual development. If material sense waxes strong in summer time, why is it that people grow thin in hot weather and increase in weight when cold returns? The assertion of physicians that there is in summer a depression of mental force explains the apparent contradiction. Mortal mind is the builder of the mortal body; the physical expresses the thoughts and beliefs of that mind. The universally accepted idea of health is rosy cheeks and rotundity of figure; paleness of visage and an emaciated frame indicate some physical or mental disorder. Remove the disturbing fear and belief of weakness and disease from mortal mind and its tranquility is again restored, and its physical standard of health is expressed upon the body. One of the supposed perils of the heated term is the myriad germs of disease said to be developed by the heat, that permeate air and water and menace health and life. These are images of mortal mind thrown on the camera of materiality. The inflaming fears and warring passions of mortal mind rouse the germs of evil and discord lying in the unconscious stratum of that mind. These subtle beliefs float in the atmosphere of material thought and slay and destroy all who are not protected against them. The safeguard is the understanding of Truth. We read in Science and Health that "error urged to its final limits is self-destroyed"; it becomes more malignant as the end draws near. The height of summer reached, man gathers the material harvest. At the same time there has matured in himself a harvest of beliefs shown in weakened nerves, depressed energies, and lowered vitality. Error at its height, claiming all, is about to reap the fruit of the falsehood it has sown. "The wages of sin is death." Inflamed passions, warring elements of selfishness and hate, the mercilessness of fear, the lightning flash of revenge, are the destructive forces of mortal mind. Their phenomena are reflected in what man calls nature; by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and cyclonic and electric storms. The sly, belittling, and repulsive attributes of the human mind are objectively expressed in the ferocious beasts, poisonous flora, and crawling reptiles of the tropics, the realm of perpetual summer. Hate gleams from the tiger's eye, the slyness of malice is depicted in the stealthy leopard; the venomed bites of serpents reflect the subtlety of trickery and deceit; the stings of insects and noxious vapors are materialized expressions of the evil and malignant atmosphere of mortal mind. Heat pains, inflames, and suffocates. The atmosphere of material sense and the heat of passion obscure the true man and manifest the false. Physical science declares that material life derives its support from the light and heat of the sun; and that the earth is farthest from the sun during the season of greatest heat. It explains the increased heat by saying that the suns rays fall directly upon the earth's surface in summer, but in winter they fall obliquely. .... All of materiality only shadows the course of material thought. The sun symbolizes the supreme and infinite Intelligence, whose radiating Truth is the life of spiritual man. When material sense is strongest in its claims, when man is in the consuming thraldom of this sense, then he is furthest from Spirit and then the action, or motion, of mortal mind generates the heat of error and passion. The curse upon the earth involved heat. The curse pronounced upon Adam was — "Cursed is the ground for thy sake .... in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." Prophecy points to heat as the agent of earth's final destruction. "The elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." Science and Health gives the key to this in the declaration of the hypnotic conflagration in which mortal mind and all its projections will be finally destroyed. Heat must not be confounded with fire. The latter is the symbol of purification by spiritual growth; the former typifies the self-destruction of materiality, which perishes through the pains its errors engender. ... Error must be destroyed at its fountain-head of belief if we would strike the final blow at man's bondage to physical sense. Mortal mind itself must be annihilated before man can be clothed with spiritual righteousness. Then the inflaming sensuousness of belief will be replaced by the clear, cooling atmosphere of Truth. Then the organs that feed the essence of materiality to man will be destroyed. ... The mountain tops, clad in snow that no foot of man sullies, image the altitudes of Truth that no shadow of mortal thought darkens. As the falling flakes of snow silently cover and hide earth's blemishes, so we are clothed upon by Spirit — not unclothed — as materiality is destroyed, and what is mortal is swallowed up of Life. When man shall have put off the error of his beliefs, and shall come into the understanding of Truth, then will he awake in the likeness of Spirit and be called the son of God.
"Winter: A Type of Life" by Zoe Seymour Loveland The Christian Science Journal, July, 1889 |
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