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Science
and Health Chapter XVI
The
Apocalypse
Blessed
is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of
this prophecy, and keep those things which are
written therein: for the time is at hand.
REVELATION.
Great
is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city
of our God, in the mountain of His holiness.
PSALMS.
St.
John writes, in the tenth chapter of his book of
Revelation:
And
I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven,
clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his
head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his
feet as pillars of fire: and he had in his hand a
little book open: and he set his right foot upon
the sea, and his left foot on the
earth.
This
angel or message which comes from God, clothed with
a cloud, prefigures divine Science. To mortal sense
Science seems at first obscure, abstract, and dark;
but a bright promise crowns its brow. When
understood, it is Truth's prism and praise. When
you look it fairly in the face, you can heal by its
means, and it has for you a light above the sun,
for God "is the light thereof." Its feet are
pillars of fire, foundations of Truth and Love. It
brings the baptism of the Holy Ghost, whose flames
of Truth were prophetically described by John the
Baptist as consuming error.
This
angel had in his hand "a little book," open for all
to read and understand. Did this same book contain
the revelation of divine Science, the "right foot"
or dominant power of which was upon the sea,
upon elementary, latent error, the source of all
error's visible forms? The angel's left foot was
upon the earth; that is, a secondary power was
exercised upon visible error and audible sin. The
"still, small voice" of scientific thought reaches
over continent and ocean to the globe's remotest
bound. The inaudible voice of Truth is, to the
human mind, "as when a lion roareth." It is heard
in the desert and in dark places of fear. It
arouses the "seven thunders" of evil, and stirs
their latent forces to utter the full diapason of
secret tones. Then is the power of Truth
demonstrated, made manifest in the
destruction of error. Then will a voice from
harmony cry: "Go and take the little book. . . .
Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly
bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as
honey." Mortals, obey the heavenly evangel. Take
divine Science. Read this book from beginning to
end. Study it, ponder it. It will be indeed sweet
at its first taste, when it heals you; but murmur
not over Truth, if you find its digestion bitter.
When you approach nearer and nearer to this divine
Principle, when you eat the divine body of this
Principle, thus partaking of the nature, or
primal elements, of Truth and Love, do not
be surprised nor discontented because you must
share the hemlock cup and eat the bitter herbs; for
the Israelites of old at the Paschal meal thus
prefigured this perilous passage out of bondage
into the El Dorado of faith and hope.
The
twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse, or Revelation of
St. John, has a special suggestiveness in
connection with the nineteenth century. In the
opening of the sixth seal, typical of six thousand
years since Adam, the distinctive feature has
reference to the present age.
Revelation
xii. 1. And there appeared a great wonder in
heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon
under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve
stars.
Heaven
represents harmony, and divine Science interprets
the Principle of heavenly harmony. The great
miracle, to human sense, is divine Love, and the
grand necessity of existence is to gain the true
idea of what constitutes the kingdom of heaven in
man. This goal is never reached while we hate our
neighbor or entertain a false estimate of anyone
whom God has appointed to voice His Word. Again,
without a correct sense of its highest visible
idea, we can never understand the divine Principle.
The botanist must know the genus and species of a
plant in order to classify it correctly. As it is
with things, so is it with persons.
Abuse
of the motives and religion of St. Paul hid from
view the apostle's character, which made him equal
to his great mission. Persecution of all who have
spoken something new and better of God has not only
obscured the light of the ages, but has been fatal
to the persecutors. Why? Because it has hid from
them the true idea which has been presented. To
misunderstand Paul, was to be ignorant of the
divine idea he taught. Ignorance of the divine idea
betrays at once a greater ignorance of the divine
Principle of the idea ignorance of Truth and
Love. The understanding of Truth and Love, the
Principle which works out the ends of eternal good
and destroys both faith in evil and the practice of
evil, leads to the discernment of the divine
idea.
Agassiz,
through his microscope, saw the sun in an egg at a
point of so-called embryonic life. Because of his
more spiritual vision, St. John saw an "angel
standing in the sun." The Revelator beheld the
spiritual idea from the mount of vision. Purity was
the symbol of Life and Love. The Revelator saw also
the spiritual ideal as a woman clothed in light, a
bride coming down from heaven, wedded to the Lamb
of Love. To John, "the bride" and "the Lamb"
represented the correlation of divine Principle and
spiritual idea, God and His Christ, bringing
harmony to earth.
John
saw the human and divine coincidence, shown in the
man Jesus, as divinity embracing humanity in Life
and its demonstration, reducing to human
perception and understanding the Life which is God.
In divine revelation, material and corporeal
selfhood disappear, and the spiritual idea is
understood.
The
woman in the Apocalypse symbolizes generic man, the
spiritual idea of God; she illustrates the
coincidence of God and man as the divine Principle
and divine idea. The Revelator symbolizes Spirit by
the sun. The spiritual idea is clad with the
radiance of spiritual Truth, and matter is put
under her feet. The light portrayed is really
neither solar nor lunar, but spiritual Life, which
is "the light of men." In the first chapter of the
Fourth Gospel it is written, "There was a man sent
from God . . . to bear witness of that
Light."
John
the Baptist prophesied the coming of the immaculate
Jesus, and John saw in those days the spiritual
idea as the Messiah, who would baptize with the
Holy Ghost, divine Science. As Elias
presented the idea of the fatherhood of God, which
Jesus afterwards manifested, so the Revelator
completed this figure with woman, typifying the
spiritual idea of God's motherhood. The moon is
under her feet. This idea reveals the universe as
secondary and tributary to Spirit, from which the
universe borrows its reflected light, substance,
life, and intelligence.
The
spiritual idea is crowned with twelve stars. The
twelve tribes of Israel with all mortals,
separated by belief from man's divine origin and
the true idea, will through much tribulation
yield to the activities of the divine Principle of
man in the harmony of Science. These are the stars
in the crown of rejoicing. They are the lamps in
the spiritual heavens of the age, which show the
workings of the spiritual idea by healing the sick
and the sinning, and by manifesting the light which
shines "unto the perfect day" as the night of
materialism wanes.
Revelation
xii. 2. And she being with child cried, travailing
in birth, and pained to be
delivered.
Also
the spiritual idea is typified by a woman in
travail, waiting to be delivered of her sweet
promise, but remembering no more her sorrow for joy
that the birth goes on; for great is the idea, and
the travail portentous.
Revelation
xii. 3. And there appeared another wonder in
heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven
heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his
heads.
Human
sense may well marvel at discord, while, to a
diviner sense, harmony is the real and discord the
unreal. We may well be astonished at sin, sickness,
and death. We may well be perplexed at human fear;
and still more astounded at hatred, which lifts its
hydra head, showing its horns in the many
inventions of evil. But why should we stand aghast
at nothingness? The great red dragon symbolizes a
lie, the belief that substance, life, and
intelligence can be material. This dragon stands
for the sum total of human error. The ten horns of
the dragon typify the belief that matter has power
of its own, and that by means of an evil mind in
matter the Ten Commandments can be
broken.
The
Revelator lifts the veil from this embodiment of
all evil, and beholds its awful character; but he
also sees the nothingness of evil and the allness
of God. The Revelator sees that old serpent, whose
name is devil or evil, holding untiring watch, that
he may bite the heel of truth and seemingly impede
the offspring of the spiritual idea, which is
prolific in health, holiness, and
immortality.
Revelation
xii. 4. And his tail drew the third part of the
stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth:
and the dragon stood before the woman which was
ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as
soon as it was born.
The
serpentine form stands for subtlety, winding its
way amidst all evil, but doing this in the name of
good. Its sting is spoken of by Paul, when he
refers to "spiritual wickedness in high places." It
is the animal instinct in mortals, which would
impel them to devour each other and cast out devils
through Beelzebub.
As
of old, evil still charges the spiritual idea with
error's own nature and methods. This malicious
animal instinct, of which the dragon is the type,
incites mortals to kill morally and physically even
their fellow-mortals, and worse still, to charge
the innocent with the crime. This last infirmity of
sin will sink its perpetrator into a night without
a star.
The
author is convinced that the accusations against
Jesus of Nazareth and even his crucifixion were
instigated by the criminal instinct here described.
The Revelator speaks of Jesus as the Lamb of God
and of the dragon as warring against innocence.
Since Jesus must have been tempted in all points,
he, the immaculate, met and conquered sin in every
form. The brutal barbarity of his foes could
emanate from no source except the highest degree of
human depravity. Jesus "opened not his
mouth." Until the majesty of Truth should be
demonstrated in divine Science, the spiritual idea
was arraigned before the tribunal of so-called
mortal mind, which was unloosed in order that the
false claim of mind in matter might uncover its own
crime of defying immortal Mind.
From
Genesis to the Apocalypse, sin, sickness, and
death, envy, hatred, and revenge, all evil,
are typified by a serpent, or animal
subtlety. Jesus said, quoting a line from the
Psalms, "They hated me without a cause." The
serpent is perpetually close upon the heel of
harmony. From the beginning to the end, the serpent
pursues with hatred the spiritual idea. In Genesis,
this allegorical, talking serpent typifies mortal
mind, "more subtle than any beast of the field." In
the Apocalypse, when nearing its doom, this evil
increases and becomes the great red dragon, swollen
with sin, inflamed with war against spirituality,
and ripe for destruction. It is full of lust and
hate, loathing the brightness of divine
glory.
Revelation
xii. 5. And she brought forth a man child, who was
to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her
child was caught up unto God, and to His
throne.
Led
on by the grossest element of mortal mind, Herod
decreed the death of every male child in order that
the man Jesus, the masculine representative of the
spiritual idea, might never hold sway and deprive
Herod of his crown. The impersonation of the
spiritual idea had a brief history in the earthly
life of our Master; but "of his kingdom there shall
be no end," for Christ, God's idea, will eventually
rule all nations and peoples imperatively,
absolutely, finally with divine Science.
This immaculate idea, represented first by man and,
according to the Revelator, last by woman, will
baptize with fire; and the fiery baptism will burn
up the chaff of error with the fervent heat of
Truth and Love, melting and purifying even the gold
of human character. After the stars sang together
and all was primeval harmony, the material lie made
war upon the spiritual idea; but this only impelled
the idea to rise to the zenith of demonstration,
destroying sin, sickness, and death, and to be
caught up unto God, to be found in its
divine Principle.
Revelation
xii. 6. And the woman fled into the wilderness,
where she hath a place prepared of
God.
As
the children of Israel were guided triumphantly
through the Red Sea, the dark ebbing and flowing
tides of human fear, as they were led
through the wilderness, walking wearily through the
great desert of human hopes, and anticipating the
promised joy, so shall the spiritual idea
guide all right desires in their passage from sense
to Soul, from a material sense of existence to the
spiritual, up to the glory prepared for them who
love God. Stately Science pauses not, but moves
before them, a pillar of cloud by day and of fire
by night, leading to divine heights.
If
we remember the beautiful description which Sir
Walter Scott puts into the mouth of Rebecca the
Jewess in the story of Ivanhoe,
When
Israel, of the Lord beloved,
Out of the land of bondage came,
Her fathers' God before her moved,
An awful guide, in smoke and flame,
we may also offer
the prayer which concludes the same hymn,
And
oh, when stoops on Judah's path
In shade and storm the frequent night,
Be Thou, longsuffering, slow to wrath,
A burning and a shining light!
Revelation
xii. 7, 8. And there was war in heaven: Michael and
his angels fought against the dragon; and the
dragon fought, and his angels, and prevailed not;
neither was their place found any more in
heaven.
The
Old Testament assigns to the angels, God's divine
messages, different offices. Michael's
characteristic is spiritual strength. He leads the
hosts of heaven against the power of sin, Satan,
and fights the holy wars. Gabriel has the more
quiet task of imparting a sense of the
ever-presence of ministering Love. These angels
deliver us from the depths. Truth and Love come
nearer in the hour of woe, when strong faith or
spiritual strength wrestles and prevails through
the understanding of God. The Gabriel of His
presence has no contests. To infinite, ever-present
Love, all is Love, and there is no error, no sin,
sickness, nor death. Against Love, the dragon
warreth not long, for he is killed by the divine
Principle. Truth and Love prevail against the
dragon because the dragon cannot war with them.
Thus endeth the conflict between the flesh and
Spirit.
Revelation
xii. 9. And the great dragon was cast out, that old
serpent, called the devil, and Satan, which
deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the
earth, and his angels were cast out with
him.
That
false claim that ancient belief, that old
serpent whose name is devil (evil), claiming that
there is intelligence in matter either to benefit
or to injure men is pure delusion, the red
dragon; and it is cast out by Christ, Truth, the
spiritual idea, and so proved to be powerless. The
words "cast unto the earth" show the dragon to be
nothingness, dust to dust; and therefore, in his
pretence of being a talker, he must be a lie from
the beginning. His angels, or messages, are cast
out with their author. The beast and the false
prophets are lust and hypocrisy. These wolves in
sheep's clothing are detected and killed by
innocence, the Lamb of Love.
Divine
Science shows how the Lamb slays the wolf.
Innocence and Truth overcome guilt and error. Ever
since the foundation of the world, ever since error
would establish material belief, evil has tried to
slay the Lamb; but Science is able to destroy this
lie, called evil. The twelfth chapter of the
Apocalypse typifies the divine method of warfare in
Science, and the glorious results of this warfare.
The following chapters depict the fatal effects of
trying to meet error with error. The narrative
follows the order used in Genesis. In Genesis,
first the true method of creation is set forth and
then the false. Here, also, the Revelator first
exhibits the true warfare and then the
false.
Revelation
xii. 10-12. And I heard a loud voice saying in
heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and
the kingdom of our God, and the power of His
Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast
down, which accused them before our God day and
night. And they overcame him by the blood of the
Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they
loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore
rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe
to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for
the devil is come down unto you, having great
wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short
time.
For
victory over a single sin, we give thanks and
magnify the Lord of Hosts. What shall we say of the
mighty conquest over all sin? A louder song,
sweeter than has ever before reached high heaven,
now rises clearer and nearer to the great heart of
Christ; for the accuser is not there, and Love
sends forth her primal and everlasting strain.
Self-abnegation, by which we lay down all for
Truth, or Christ, in our warfare against error, is
a rule in Christian Science. This rule clearly
interprets God as divine Principle, as Life,
represented by the Father; as Truth, represented by
the Son; as Love, represented by the Mother. Every
mortal at some period, here or hereafter, must
grapple with and overcome the mortal belief in a
power opposed to God.
The
Scripture, "Thou hast been faithful over a few
things, I will make thee ruler over many," is
literally fulfilled, when we are conscious of the
supremacy of Truth, by which the nothingness of
error is seen; and we know that the nothingness of
error is in proportion to its wickedness. He that
touches the hem of Christ's robe and masters his
mortal beliefs, animality, and hate, rejoices in
the proof of healing, in a sweet and certain
sense that God is Love. Alas for those who break
faith with divine Science and fail to strangle the
serpent of sin as well as of sickness! They are
dwellers still in the deep darkness of belief. They
are in the surging sea of error, not struggling to
lift their heads above the drowning
wave.
What
must the end be? They must eventually expiate their
sin through suffering. The sin, which one has made
his bosom companion, comes back to him at last with
accelerated force, for the devil knoweth his time
is short. Here the Scriptures declare that evil is
temporal, not eternal. The dragon is at last stung
to death by his own malice; but how many periods of
torture it may take to remove all sin, must depend
upon sin's obduracy.
Revelation
xii. 13. And when the dragon saw that he was cast
unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which
brought forth the man child.
The
march of mind and of honest investigation will
bring the hour when the people will chain, with
fetters of some sort, the growing occultism of this
period. The present apathy as to the tendency of
certain active yet unseen mental agencies will
finally be shocked into another extreme mortal
mood, into human indignation; for one
extreme follows another.
Revelation
xii. 15, 16. And the serpent cast out of his mouth
water as a flood, after the woman, that he might
cause her to be carried away of the flood. And the
earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her
mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon
cast out of his mouth.
Millions
of unprejudiced minds simple seekers for
Truth, weary wanderers, athirst in the desert
are waiting and watching for rest and drink.
Give them a cup of cold water in Christ's name, and
never fear the consequences. What if the old dragon
should send forth a new flood to drown the
Christ-idea? He can neither drown your voice with
its roar, nor again sink the world into the deep
waters of chaos and old night. In this age the
earth will help the woman; the spiritual idea will
be understood. Those ready for the blessing you
impart will give thanks. The waters will be
pacified, and Christ will command the
wave.
When
God heals the sick or the sinning, they should know
the great benefit which Mind has wrought. They
should also know the great delusion of mortal mind,
when it makes them sick or sinful. Many are willing
to open the eyes of the people to the power of good
resident in divine Mind, but they are not so
willing to point out the evil in human thought, and
expose evil's hidden mental ways of accomplishing
iniquity.
Why
this backwardness, since exposure is necessary to
ensure the avoidance of the evil? Because people
like you better when you tell them their virtues
than when you tell them their vices. It requires
the spirit of our blessed Master to tell a man his
faults, and so risk human displeasure for the sake
of doing right and benefiting our race. Who is
telling mankind of the foe in ambush? Is the
informer one who sees the foe? If so, listen and be
wise. Escape from evil, and designate those as
unfaithful stewards who have seen the danger and
yet have given no warning.
At
all times and under all circumstances, overcome
evil with good. Know thyself, and God will supply
the wisdom and the occasion for a victory over
evil. Clad in the panoply of Love, human hatred
cannot reach you. The cement of a higher humanity
will unite all interests in the one
divinity.
Through
trope and metaphor, the Revelator, immortal scribe
of Spirit and of a true idealism, furnishes the
mirror in which mortals may see their own image. In
significant figures he depicts the thoughts which
he beholds in mortal mind. Thus he rebukes the
conceit of sin, and foreshadows its doom. With his
spiritual strength, he has opened wide the gates of
glory, and illumined the night of paganism with the
sublime grandeur of divine Science, outshining sin,
sorcery, lust, and hypocrisy. He takes away mitre
and sceptre. He enthrones pure and undefiled
religion, and lifts on high only those who have
washed their robes white in obedience and
suffering.
Thus
we see, in both the first and last books of the
Bible, in Genesis and in the Apocalypse,
that sin is to be Christianly and
scientifically reduced to its native nothingness.
"Love one another" (I John, iii. 23), is the most
simple and profound counsel of the inspired writer.
In Science we are children of God; but whatever is
of material sense, or mortal, belongs not to His
children, for materiality is the inverted image of
spirituality.
Love
fulfils the law of Christian Science, and nothing
short of this divine Principle, understood and
demonstrated, can ever furnish the vision of the
Apocalypse, open the seven seals of error with
Truth, or uncover the myriad illusions of sin,
sickness, and death. Under the supremacy of Spirit,
it will be seen and acknowledged that matter must
disappear.
In
Revelation xxi. 1 we read:
And
I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first
heaven and the first earth were passed away; and
there was no more sea.
The
Revelator had not yet passed the transitional stage
in human experience called death, but he already
saw a new heaven and a new earth. Through what
sense came this vision to St. John? Not through the
material visual organs for seeing, for optics are
inadequate to take in so wonderful a scene. Were
this new heaven and new earth terrestrial or
celestial, material or spiritual? They could not be
the former, for the human sense of space is unable
to grasp such a view. The Revelator was on our
plane of existence, while yet beholding what the
eye cannot see, that which is invisible to
the uninspired thought. This testimony of Holy Writ
sustains the fact in Science, that the heavens and
earth to one human consciousness, that
consciousness which God bestows, are spiritual,
while to another, the unillumined human mind, the
vision is material. This shows unmistakably that
what the human mind terms matter and spirit
indicates states and stages of
consciousness.
Accompanying
this scientific consciousness was another
revelation, even the declaration from heaven,
supreme harmony, that God, the divine Principle of
harmony, is ever with men, and they are His people.
Thus man was no longer regarded as a miserable
sinner, but as the blessed child of God. Why?
Because St. John's corporeal sense of the heavens
and earth had vanished, and in place of this false
sense was the spiritual sense, the subjective state
by which he could see the new heaven and new earth,
which involve the spiritual idea and consciousness
of reality. This is Scriptural authority for
concluding that such a recognition of being is, and
has been, possible to men in this present state of
existence, that we can become conscious,
here and now, of a cessation of death, sorrow, and
pain. This is indeed a foretaste of absolute
Christian Science. Take heart, dear sufferer, for
this reality of being will surely appear sometime
and in some way. There will be no more pain, and
all tears will be wiped away. When you read this,
remember Jesus' words, "The kingdom of God is
within you." This spiritual consciousness is
therefore a present possibility.
The
Revelator also takes in another view, adapted to
console the weary pilgrim, journeying "uphill all
the way."
He
writes, in Revelation xxi. 9:
And
there came unto me one of the seven angels which
had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues,
and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will
show thee the bride, the Lamb's
wife.
This
ministry of Truth, this message from divine Love,
carried John away in spirit. It exalted him till he
became conscious of the spiritual facts of being
and the "New Jerusalem, coming down from God, out
of heaven," the spiritual outpouring of
bliss and glory, which he describes as the city
which "lieth foursquare." The beauty of this text
is, that the sum total of human misery, represented
by the seven angelic vials full of seven plagues,
has full compensation in the law of Love. Note
this, that the very message, or swift-winged
thought, which poured forth hatred and torment,
brought also the experience which at last lifted
the seer to behold the great city, the four equal
sides of which were heaven-bestowed and
heaven-bestowing.
Think
of this, dear reader, for it will lift the
sackcloth from your eyes, and you will behold the
soft-winged dove descending upon you. The very
circumstance, which your suffering sense deems
wrathful and afflictive, Love can make an angel
entertained unawares. Then thought gently whispers:
"Come hither! Arise from your false consciousness
into the true sense of Love, and behold the Lamb's
wife, Love wedded to its own spiritual
idea." Then cometh the marriage feast, for this
revelation will destroy forever the physical
plagues imposed by material sense.
This
sacred city, described in the Apocalypse (xxi. 16)
as one that "lieth foursquare" and cometh "down
from God, out of heaven," represents the light and
glory of divine Science. The builder and maker of
this New Jerusalem is God, as we read in the book
of Hebrews; and it is "a city which hath
foundations." The description is metaphoric.
Spiritual teaching must always be by symbols. Did
not Jesus illustrate the truths he taught by the
mustard-seed and the prodigal? Taken in its
allegorical sense, the description of the city as
foursquare has a profound meaning. The four sides
of our city are the Word, Christ, Christianity, and
divine Science; "and the gates of it shall not be
shut at all by day: for there shall be no night
there." This city is wholly spiritual, as its four
sides indicate.
As
the Psalmist saith, "Beautiful for situation, the
joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides
of the north, the city of the great King." It is
indeed a city of the Spirit, fair, royal, and
square. Northward, its gates open to the North
Star, the Word, the polar magnet of Revelation;
eastward, to the star seen by the Wisemen of the
Orient, who followed it to the manger of Jesus;
southward, to the genial tropics, with the Southern
Cross in the skies, the Cross of Calvary,
which binds human society into solemn union;
westward, to the grand realization of the Golden
Shore of Love and the Peaceful Sea of
Harmony.
This
heavenly city, lighted by the Sun of Righteousness,
this New Jerusalem, this infinite All, which
to us seems hidden in the mist of remoteness,
reached St. John's vision while yet he
tabernacled with mortals.
In
Revelation xxi. 22, further describing this holy
city, the beloved Disciple writes:
And
I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty
and the Lamb are the temple of it.
There
was no temple, that is, no material
structure in which to worship God, for He must be
worshipped in spirit and in love. The word
temple also means body. The Revelator
was familiar with Jesus' use of this word, as when
Jesus spoke of his material body as the temple to
be temporarily rebuilt (John ii. 21). What further
indication need we of the real man's incorporeality
than this, that John saw heaven and earth with "no
temple [body] therein"? This kingdom of God
"is within you," is within reach of man's
consciousness here, and the spiritual idea reveals
it. In divine Science, man possesses this
recognition of harmony consciously in proportion to
his understanding of God.
The
term Lord, as used in our version of the Old
Testament, is often synonymous with Jehovah, and
expresses the Jewish concept, not yet elevated to
deific apprehension through spiritual
transfiguration. Yet the word gradually approaches
a higher meaning. This human sense of Deity yields
to the divine sense, even as the material sense of
personality yields to the incorporeal sense of God
and man as the infinite Principle and infinite
idea, as one Father with His universal
family, held in the gospel of Love. The Lamb's wife
presents the unity of male and female as no longer
two wedded individuals, but as two individual
natures in one; and this compounded spiritual
individuality reflects God as Father-Mother, not as
a corporeal being. In this divinely united
spiritual consciousness, there is no impediment to
eternal bliss, to the perfectibility of
God's creation.
This
spiritual, holy habitation has no boundary nor
limit, but its four cardinal points are: first, the
Word of Life, Truth, and Love; second, the Christ,
the spiritual idea of God; third, Christianity,
which is the outcome of the divine Principle of the
Christ-idea in Christian history; fourth, Christian
Science, which to-day and forever interprets this
great example and the great Exemplar. This city of
our God has no need of sun or satellite, for Love
is the light of it, and divine Mind is its own
interpreter. All who are saved must walk in this
light. Mighty potentates and dynasties will lay
down their honors within the heavenly city. Its
gates open towards light and glory both within and
without, for all is good, and nothing can enter
that city, which "defileth, . . . or maketh a
lie."
The
writer's present feeble sense of Christian Science
closes with St. John's Revelation as recorded by
the great apostle, for his vision is the acme of
this Science as the Bible reveals it.
In
the following Psalm one word shows, though faintly,
the light which Christian Science throws on the
Scriptures by substituting for the corporeal sense,
the incorporeal or spiritual sense of Deity:
PSALM
XXIII
[DIVINE
LOVE] is my shepherd; I shall not
want.
[LOVE]
maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
[LOVE] leadeth me beside the still
waters.
[LOVE]
restoreth my soul [spiritual sense]:
[LOVE] leadeth me in the paths of
righteousness for His name's sake.
Yea,
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
death, I will fear no evil: for [LOVE] is
with me; [LOVE'S] rod and [LOVE'S]
staff they comfort me.
[LOVE]
prepareth a table before me in the presence of mine
enemies: [LOVE] anointeth my head with oil;
my cup runneth over.
Surely
goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of
my life; and I will dwell in the house [the
consciousness] of [LOVE] for
ever.
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