Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 Part 3
The falsehood, ingrat.i.tude, misjudgment, and sharp [5]
return of evil for good-yea, the real wrongs (if wrong can be real) which I have long endured at the hands of others-have most happily wrought out for me the law of loving mine enemies. This law I now urge upon the solemn consideration of all Christian Scientists. Jesus [10]
said, "If ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them."
Christian Theism.
Scholastic theology elaborates the proposition that evil is a factor of good, and that to believe in the reality [15]
of evil is essential to a rounded sense of the existence of good.
This frail hypothesis is founded upon the basis of mate- rial and mortal evidence-only upon what the shifting mortal senses confirm and frail human reason accepts. [20]
The Science of Soul reverses this proposition, overturns the testimony of the five erring senses, and reveals in clearer divinity the existence of good only; that is, of G.o.d and His idea.
This postulate of divine Science only needs to be con- [25]
ceded, to afford opportunity for proof of its correctness and the clearer discernment of good.
Seek the Anglo-Saxon term for G.o.d, and you will find it to be good; then define good as G.o.d, and you will find that good is omnipotence, has all power; it fills [30]
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all s.p.a.ce, being omnipresent; hence, there is neither place [1]
nor power left for evil. Divest your thought, then, of the mortal and material view which contradicts the ever- presence and all-power of good; take in only the immor- tal facts which include these, and where will you see or [5]
feel evil, or find its existence necessary either to the origin or ultimate of good?
It is urged that, from his original state of perfec- tion, man has fallen into the imperfection that requires evil through which to develop good. Were we to [10]
admit this vague proposition, the Science of man could never be learned; for in order to learn Science, we begin with the correct statement, with harmony and its Principle; and if man has lost his Principle and its harmony, from evidences before him he is inca- [15]
pable of knowing the facts of existence and its con- comitants: therefore to him evil is as real and eternal as good, G.o.d! This awful deception is evil's umpire and empire, that good, G.o.d, understood, forcibly destroys. [20]
What appears to mortals from their standpoint to be the necessity for evil, is proven by the law of opposites to be without necessity. Good is the primitive Princi- ple of man; and evil, good's opposite, has no Principle, and is not, and cannot be, the derivative of good. [25]
Thus evil is neither a primitive nor a derivative, but is suppositional; in other words, a lie that is incapable of proof-therefore, wholly problematical.
The Science of Truth annihilates error, deprives evil of all power, and thereby destroys all error, sin, sickness, [30]
disease, and death. But the sinner is not sheltered from suffering from sin: he makes a great reality of evil, iden-
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tifies himself with it, fancies he finds pleasure in it, and [1]
will reap what he sows; hence the sinner must endure the effects of his delusion until he awakes from it.
The New Birth.
St. Paul speaks of the new birth as "waiting for the [5]
adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." The great Nazarene Prophet said, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see G.o.d." Nothing aside from the spiritualization-yea, the highest Christianization-of thought and desire, can give the true perception of G.o.d [10]
and divine Science, that results in health, happiness, and holiness.
The new birth is not the work of a moment. It begins with moments, and goes on with years; moments of sur- render to G.o.d, of childlike trust and joyful adoption [15]
of good; moments of self-abnegation, self-consecration, heaven-born hope, and spiritual love.
Time may commence, but it cannot complete, the new birth: eternity does this; for progress is the law of infinity. Only through the sore travail of mortal mind [20]
shall soul as sense be satisfied, and man awake in His likeness. What a faith-lighted thought is this! that mortals can lay off the "old man," until man is found to be the image of the infinite good that we name G.o.d, and the fulness of the stature of man in Christ appears. [25]
In mortal and material man, goodness seems in em- bryo. By suffering for sin, and the gradual fading out of the mortal and material sense of man, thought is de- veloped into an infant Christianity; and, feeding at first on the milk of the Word, it drinks in the sweet revealings [30]
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of a new and more spiritual Life and Love. These nourish [1]
the hungry hope, satisfy more the cravings for immor- tality, and so comfort, cheer, and bless one, that he saith: In mine infancy, this is enough of heaven to come down to earth. [5]
But, as one grows into the manhood or womanhood of Christianity, one finds so much lacking, and so very much requisite to become wholly Christlike, that one saith: The Principle of Christianity is infinite: it is indeed G.o.d; and this infinite Principle hath infinite [10]
claims on man, and these claims are divine, not human; and man's ability to meet them is from G.o.d; for, being His likeness and image, man must reflect the full dominion of Spirit-even its supremacy over sin, sick- ness, and death. [15]
Here, then, is the awakening from the dream of life in matter, to the great fact that _G.o.d is the only Life_; that, therefore, we must entertain a higher sense of both G.o.d and man. We must learn that G.o.d is infinitely more than a person, or finite form, can contain; that [20]
G.o.d is a divine _Whole_, and _All_, an all-pervading in- telligence and Love, a divine, infinite Principle; and that Christianity is a divine Science. This newly awakened consciousness is wholly spiritual; it emanates from Soul instead of body, and is the new birth begun [25]
in Christian Science.
Now, dear reader, pause for a moment with me, earn- estly to contemplate this new-born spiritual alt.i.tude; for this statement demands demonstration.
Here you stand face to face with the laws of infinite [30]
Spirit, and behold for the first time the irresistible con- flict between the flesh and Spirit. You stand before the
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awful detonations of Sinai. You hear and record the [1]
thunderings of the spiritual law of Life, as opposed to the material law of death; the spiritual law of Love, as opposed to the material sense of love; the law of om- nipotent harmony and good, as opposed to any supposi- [5]
t.i.tious law of sin, sickness, or death. And, before the flames have died away on this mount of revelation, like the patriarch of old, you take off your shoes-lay aside your material appendages, human opinions and doc- trines, give up your more material religion with its rites [10]
and ceremonies, put off your _materia medica_ and hygiene as worse than useless-to sit at the feet of Jesus. Then, you meekly bow before the Christ, the spiritual idea that our great Master gave of the power of G.o.d to heal and to save. Then it is that you behold for the first [15]
time the divine Principle that redeems man from under the curse of materialism,-sin, disease, and death.
This spiritual birth opens to the enraptured understand- ing a much higher and holier conception of the supremacy of Spirit, and of man as His likeness, whereby man reflects [20]
the divine power to heal the sick.
A material or human birth is the appearing of a mor- tal, not the immortal man. This birth is more or less prolonged and painful, according to the timely or un- timely circ.u.mstances, the normal or abnormal material [25]
conditions attending it.
With the spiritual birth, man's primitive, sinless, spiritual existence dawns on human thought,-through the travail of mortal mind, hope deferred, the perishing pleasure and acc.u.mulating pains of sense,-by which [30]
one loses himself as matter, and gains a truer sense of Spirit and spiritual man.
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The purification or baptismals that come from Spirit, [1]
develop, step by step, the original likeness of perfect man, and efface the mark of the beast. "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth;" therefore rejoice in tribulation, and wel- [5]
come these spiritual signs of the new birth under the law and gospel of Christ, Truth.
The prominent laws which forward birth in the divine order of Science, are these: "Thou shalt have no other G.o.ds before me;" "Love thy neighbor as thyself," [10]