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MARY BAKER EDDY
Meekness, moderating human desire, inspires wisdom and procures divine power. Human lives are yet uncarved, — in the rough marble, encumbered with crude, rude fragments, and awaiting the hammering, chiselling, and transfiguration from His hand. Great only as good, because fashioned divinely, were those unpretentious yet colossal characters, Paul and Jesus. Theirs were modes of mind cast in the moulds of Christian Science: Paul's, by the supremely natural transforming power of Truth; and the character of Jesus, by his original scientific sonship with God. Philosophy never has produced, nor can it reproduce, these stars of the first magnitude — fixed stars in the heavens of Soul. When shall earth be crowned with the true knowledge of Christ? When Christian Science has melted away the cloud of false witnesses; and the dews of divine grace, falling upon the blighted flowers of fleeting joys, shall lift every thought-leaflet Spiritward; and "Israel after the flesh," who partaketh of its own altars, shall be no more, — then, "the Israel according to Spirit" shall fill earth with the divine energies, understanding, and ever-flowing tides of spiritual sensation and consciousness. When mortal mind is silenced by the "still, small voice" of Truth that regenerates philosophy and logic; and Jesus, as the true idea of Him, is heard as of yore saying to sensitive ears and dark disciples, "I came from the Father," "Before Abraham was, I am," coexistent and coeternal with God, — and this idea is understood, — then will the earth be filled with the true knowledge of Christ. No advancing modes of human mind made Jesus; rather was it their subjugation, and the pure heart that sees God. When the belief in material origin, mortal mind, sensual conception, dissolves through self-imposed suffering, and its substances are found substanceless, — then its miscalled life ends in death, and death itself is swallowed up in Life, — spiritual Life, whose myriad forms are neither material nor mortal. When every form and mode of evil disappear to human thought, and mollusk and radiate are spiritual concepts testifying to one creator, — then, earth is full of His glory, and Christian Science has overshadowed all human philosophy, and being is understood in startling contradiction of human hypotheses; and Socrates, Plato, Kant, Locke, Berkeley, Tyndall, Darwin, and Spencer sit at the feet of Jesus. To this great end, Paul admonished, "Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith." So shall mortals soar to final freedom, and rest from the subtlety of speculative wisdom and human woe. God is the only Mind, and His manifestation is the spiritual universe, including man and all eternal individuality. God, the only substance and divine Principle of creation, is by no means a creative partner in the firm of error, named matter, or mortal mind. He elucidates His own idea, wherein Principle and idea, God and man, are not one, but are inseparable as cause and effect. If one, who could say which that "one" was? His ways are not as our ways. The divine modes and manifestations are not those of the material senses; for instance, intelligent matter, or mortal mind, material birth, growth, and decay: they are the forever-existing realities of divine Science; wherein God and man are perfect, and man's reason is at rest in God's wisdom, — who comprehends and reflects all real mode, form, individuality, identity. Scholastic dogma has made men blind. Christ's logos gives sight to these blind, ears to these deaf, feet to these lame, — physically, morally, spiritually. Theologians make the mortal mistake of believing that God, having made all, made evil; but the Scriptures declare that all that He made was good. Then, was evil part and parcel of His creation? Philosophy hypothetically regards creation as its own creator, puts cause into effect, and out of nothing would create something, whose noumenon is mortal mind, with its phenomenon matter, — an evil mind already doomed, whose modes are material manifestations of evil, and that continually, until self-extinguished by suffering! Here revelation must come to the rescue of mortals, to remove this mental millstone that is dragging them downward, and refute erring reason with the spiritual cosmos and Science of Soul. We all must find shelter from the storm and tempest in the tabernacle of Spirit. Truth is won through Science or suffering: O vain mortals! which shall it be? And suffering has no reward, except when it is necessary to prevent sin or reform the sinner. And pleasure is no crime except when it strengthens the influence of bad inclinations or lessens the activities of virtue. The more nearly an erring so-called mind approaches purity, the more conscious it becomes of its own unreality, and of the great reality of divine Mind and true happiness. The "ego" that claims selfhood in error, and passes from molecule and monkey up to man, is no ego, but is simply the supposition that the absence of good is mind and makes men, — when its greatest flatterer, identification, is piqued by Him who compensateth vanity with nothingness, dust with dust! The mythology of evil and mortality is but the material mode of a suppositional mind; while the immortal modes of Mind are spiritual, and pass through none of the changes of matter, or evil. Truth said, and said from the beginning, "Let us [Spirit] make man perfect;" and there is no other Maker: a perfect man would not desire to make himself imperfect, and God is not chargeable with imperfection. His modes declare the beauty of holiness, and His manifold wisdom shines through the visible world in glimpses of the eternal verities. Even through the mists of mortality is seen the brightness of His coming. We must avoid the shoals of a sensual religion or philosophy that misguides reason and affection, and hold fast to the Principle of Christian Science as the Word that is God, Spirit, and Truth. This Word corrects the philosopher, confutes the astronomer, exposes the subtle sophist, and drives diviners mad. The Bible is the learned man's masterpiece, the ignorant man's dictionary, the wise man's directory. I foresee and foresay that every advancing epoch of Truth will be characterized by a more spiritual apprehension of the Scriptures, that will show their marked consonance with the textbook of Christian Science Mind-healing, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Interpreting the Word in the "new tongue," whereby the sick are healed, naturally evokes new paraphrase from the world of letters. "Wait patiently on the Lord, and He will renew your strength." In return for individual sacrifice, what a recompense to have healed, through Truth, the sick and sinful, made the public your friend, and posterity your familiar! Christian Science refutes everything that is not a postulate of the divine Principle, God. It is the soul of divine philosophy, and there is no other philosophy. It is not a search after wisdom, it is wisdom: it is God's right hand grasping the universe, — all time, space, immortality, thought, extension, cause, and effect; constituting and governing all identity, individuality, law, and power. It stands on this Scriptural platform: that He made all that was made, and it is good, reflects the divine Mind, is governed by it; and that nothing apart from this Mind, one God, is self-created or evolves the universe. Human hypotheses predicate matter of Spirit and evil of good; hence these opposites must either cooperate or quarrel throughout time and eternity, — or until this impossible partnership is dissolved. If Spirit is the lawgiver to matter, and good has the same power or modes as evil, it has the same consciousness, and there is no absolute good. This error, carried to its ultimate, would either extinguish God and His modes, or give reality and power to evil ad infinitum. Christian Science rends this veil of the temple of gods, and reproduces the divine philosophy of Jesus and Paul. This philosophy alone will bear the strain of time and bring out the glories of eternity; for "other foundation can no man lay than that is laid," which is Christ, Truth. Human theories weighed in the balances of God are found wanting; and their highest endeavors are to Science what a child's love of pictures is to art. The school whose schoolmaster is not Christ, gets things wrong, and is ignorant thereof. If Christian Science lacked the proof of its goodness and utility, it would destroy itself; for it rests alone on demonstration. Its genius is right thinking and right acting, physical and moral harmony; and the secret of its success lies in supplying the universal need of better health and better men. Good health and a more spiritual religion form the common want, and this want has worked out a moral result; namely, that mortal mind is calling for what immortal Mind alone can supply. If the uniform moral and spiritual, as well as physical, effects of divine Science were lacking, the demand would diminish; but it continues, and increases, which shows the real value of Christian Science to the race. Even doctors agree that infidelity, bigotry, or sham has never met the growing wants of humanity. As a literature, Christian metaphysics is hampered by lack of proper terms in which to express what it means. As a Science, it is held back by the common ignorance of what it is and of what it does, — and more than all else, by the impostors that come in its name. To be appreciated, it must be conscientiously understood and introduced. If the Bible and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" had in our schools the time or attention that human hypotheses consume, they would advance the world. True, it requires more study to understand and demonstrate what they teach than to learn the doctrine of theology, philosophy, or physics, because they contain and offer Science, with fixed Principle, given rule, and unmistakable proof. The Scriptures give the keynote of Christian Science from Genesis to Revelation, and this is the prolonged tone: "For the Lord He is God, and there is none beside Him." And because He is All-in-all, He is in nothing unlike Himself; and nothing that worketh or maketh a lie is in Him, or can be divine consciousness. At this date, poor jaded humanity needs to get her eyes open to a new style of imposition in the field of medicine and of religion, and to "beware of the leaven of the scribes and Pharisees," the doctrines of men, even as Jesus admonished. From first to last, evil insists on the unity of good and evil as the purpose of God; and on drugs, electricity, and animal magnetism as modes of medicine. To a greater or less extent, all mortal conclusions start from this false premise, and they necessarily culminate in sickness, sin, disease, and death. Erroneous doctrines never have abated and never will abate dishonesty, self-will, envy, and lust. To destroy sin and its sequence, is the office of Christ, Truth, — according to His mode of Christian Science; and this is being done daily. The false theories whose names are legion, gilded with sophistry and what Jesus had not, namely, mere book-learning, — letter without law, gospel, or demonstration, — have no place in Christian Science. This Science requires man to be honest, just, pure; to love his neighbor as himself, and to love God supremely. Matter and evil are subjective states of error or mortal mind. But Mind is immortal; and the fact of there being no mortal mind, exposes the lie of suppositional evil, showing that error is not Mind, substance, or Life. Thus, whatever is wrongfully-minded will disappear in the proportion that Science is understood, and the reality of being — goodness and harmony — is demonstrated. Error says that knowing all things implies the necessity of knowing evil, that it dishonors God to claim that He is ignorant of anything; but God says of this fruit of the tree of knowledge of both good and evil, "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." If God is infinite good, He knows nothing but good; if He did know aught else, He would not be infinite. Infinite Mind knows nothing beyond Himself or Herself. To good, evil is never present; for evil is a different state of consciousness. It was not against evil, but against knowing evil, that God forewarned. He dwelleth in light; and in the light He sees light, and cannot see darkness. The opposite conclusion, that darkness dwelleth in light, has neither precedent nor foundation in nature, in logic, or in the character of Christ. The senses would say that whatever saves from sin, must know sin. Truth replies that God is too pure to behold iniquity; and by virtue of His ignorance of that which is not, He knoweth that which is, and abideth in Himself, the only Life, Truth, and Love, — and is reflected by a universe in His own image and likeness. Even so, Father, let the light that shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not, dispel this illusion of the senses, open the eyes of the blind, and cause the deaf to hear. "Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.
Excerpted from Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 359-368 |
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