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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Miscellaneous Writings," Mary Baker Eddy presents a profound synthesis of her metaphysical insights and spiritual philosophy, encapsulated in a collection of essays, addresses, and articles. Written in a clear yet evocative literary style, the text grapples with themes of healing, divine science, and the nature of existence, all rooted in Eddy's Christian Science beliefs. As a pivotal work in the realm of religious literature, it offers reflections on morality, prayer, and the transformative power of spirituality, contextualizing Eddy's thought within the greater landscape of 19th-century American religious awakening. Mary Baker Eddy was a groundbreaking figure in American religious history, known for founding the Church of Christ, Scientist. Her own experiences with illness and healing profoundly shaped her writing and philosophy, leading her to explore the intersection of mind and body, faith and science. Eddy's deep engagement with Biblical texts and her innovative ideas about the nature of reality laid the groundwork for a movement that would influence countless individuals seeking spiritual answers in an increasingly tumultuous world. "Miscellaneous Writings" is a must-read for anyone intrigued by the synthesis of spirituality and healing or those seeking a deeper understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of Christian Science. Eddy's articulate prose and earnest inquiry invite readers to explore new dimensions of faith, offering timeless wisdom that remains relevant to contemporary spiritual seekers. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - The Author Biography highlights personal milestones and literary influences that shape the entire body of writing. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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Miscellaneous Writings
Table of Contents
Introduction
This volume gathers a broad range of shorter prose by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science and author of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Composed during the formative years of the movement, these pieces illuminate how she addressed readers beyond the scope of her principal textbook. The collection offers concise expositions, timely counsel, and public addresses that trace the contours of her thought in practice. Read together, they present an integrated portrait of a teacher and leader articulating the theological, ethical, and pastoral dimensions of Christian healing within the religious culture of the late nineteenth century.
The scope of this collection is both instructive and clarifying. It consolidates writings that originally appeared in periodicals, as pamphlets, or as occasional addresses, bringing them into a sustained conversation. Without duplicating the comprehensive argument of Science and Health, the pieces here revisit core ideas with a practical emphasis suited to inquirers, students, and church members. They address immediate questions of belief and conduct while situating those questions within a larger spiritual framework. The result is a coherent companion to Eddy’s major works, one that records the ongoing articulation of doctrine, the guidance of a growing community, and the observation of Christian experience.
The texts included span several prose forms characteristic of religious discourse. Readers will encounter essays that define or defend points of doctrine; articles composed for a general readership; sermons and public addresses delivered to audiences at specific occasions; and instructional pieces that answer questions or offer counsel for daily practice. Some sections adopt a catechetical approach, presenting brief queries paired with succinct replies. Others develop extended arguments or pastoral exhortations. Though varied in origin and tone, these forms are consistently shaped to reach readers directly and to be used in study, worship, and practical application.
A unifying thread runs through the book: the conviction that Christianity is demonstrable, and that spiritual understanding bears practical fruit in moral regeneration and healing. Eddy’s writings continually return to the Bible as authoritative, reading Scripture as a living guide rather than a historical artifact. The pieces emphasize God’s nature as wholly good, the primacy of Spirit, and the transformation of thought that follows from those premises. They encourage disciplined prayer, ethical self-examination, and charitable living. Across the collection, the aim is not mere assent to ideas but the cultivation of a way of life that evidences its own spiritual basis.
Stylistically, the writing is lucid, admonitory, and steeped in biblical cadence. Eddy favors compact propositions set within carefully structured arguments, often using contrast to clarify spiritual and material premises. Her vocabulary employs distinctive capitalization to mark central theological categories, a feature familiar to readers of her other works. Rhetorical questions invite reflection, while aphoristic turns crystallize points for ready recall. Yet the tone remains pastoral as much as polemical: the pieces exhort, reassure, and correct, aiming to strengthen conviction while guiding practice. Taken together, the style reflects a teacher attentive to clarity, emphasis, and the moral effects of language.
These writings also document a distinct historical moment. They arise from a period when new religious movements, medical debates, and the expanding periodical press intersected. As Christian Science grew in visibility, Eddy addressed sincere inquiries as well as misunderstandings circulating in the public sphere. The collection registers that engagement without becoming merely reactive: it keeps the focus on first principles and their application. Readers thus gain insight into how a nineteenth‑century American religious leader articulated theology, defended practice, and formed an identity for a community, all while maintaining a constant appeal to the resources of Scripture and prayer.
Because the pieces were originally occasional, their consolidation here serves a curatorial function, revealing continuities that might be missed in scattered publication. Themes recur with fresh angles, and shorter counsels amplify longer discourses. The division into twelve chapters provides a steady rhythm for study, allowing readers to take up groups of related pieces without losing the thread of the whole. Read consecutively, the collection traces an arc from doctrinal exposition through practical instruction to broader reflections on church life and mission—an arc that underscores the interplay of thought, character, and community at the heart of Eddy’s project.
One can approach the collection as both a resource and a record. It functions as a handbook for spiritual practice, offering guidance adaptable to individual and congregational settings. It also preserves a dialogue between author and audience, where questions are met with concise, principled replies. Those unfamiliar with Christian Science will find the premises stated plainly and consistently. Those acquainted with Eddy’s larger works will recognize familiar landmarks expressed with situational specificity. In both cases, careful reading reveals a method: begin from spiritual first causes, reason coherently to practical conclusions, and measure results by moral and healing effects.
Scripture is the chief interlocutor throughout. The essays and addresses assume close engagement with the Bible and invite readers to test conclusions by its witness. Passages are interpreted in light of spiritual law, and doctrinal statements are tested by their capacity to illuminate biblical texts and exemplify Christian living. This scriptural orientation explains the frequent use of typology, moral reasoning from premise to practice, and the call to live in a way that accords with one’s highest understanding. The result is neither mere commentary nor free speculation, but a disciplined reading that seeks demonstration as its confirmation.
Equally notable is the sustained attention to practice. The writings present healing as integral to Christianity rather than as an adjunct, and they treat moral reform, compassion, and self-government as inseparable from spiritual understanding. Counsel on daily conduct is framed not as rule‑making but as alignment with divine principle. Instruction often moves from the inner work of thought—prayer, watchfulness, repentance—to the outward fruits of health, integrity, and service. In this way the collection functions as a manual of discipleship, applying theological claims to the particulars of life and urging consistency between profession and proof.
As a whole, the volume holds continued interest for readers of religion, literature, and history. It records the voice of a prominent American religious author shaping the language and practice of a new denomination. It offers a case study in how theological ideas are communicated in essays, sermons, and public statements outside a formal treatise. For students of rhetoric, the pieces exemplify didactic prose that remains accessible without sacrificing precision. For those examining spiritual movements, the collection provides primary materials that clarify aims, methods, and self-understanding during a crucial period of institutional formation and public engagement.
The enduring value of this collection lies in its coherence amid variety. Essays, addresses, and instructional pieces converge on a consistent vision of Christianity as knowable, practical, and healing. The prose bears a recognizable signature—biblically informed, morally earnest, and exact in its metaphysical claims—while remaining responsive to real questions and needs. Readers will find here both orientation and impetus: orientation in clear first principles, and impetus toward living that confirms them. In gathering these writings, the volume preserves a vital strand of Mary Baker Eddy’s work and invites attentive study of its themes, methods, and aims.
Author Biography
Mary Baker Eddy was an American religious leader and author whose work emerged in the late nineteenth century and continued into the early twentieth. She is best known as the founder of Christian Science and as the author of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, a text she continually revised to clarify her exposition of Christian healing. Working within a New England Protestant milieu yet departing from prevailing theological and medical assumptions, she articulated a biblically oriented metaphysical system that emphasized the healing power of prayer and spiritual understanding. Her influence extended beyond religion into publishing, education, and public debates about health, authority, and modernity.
Eddy grew up in New England, where formal schooling was intermittent, and she developed a sustained engagement with the Bible from an early age. Ill health and the religious ferment of the period shaped her outlook, prompting a search for practical Christianity that could address suffering. She read widely in theology and moral philosophy as available to her, while remaining rooted in scriptural study that would later guide her interpretation of Jesus’ healing works. Her participation in the intellectual currents of the era was informal rather than institutional, but the questions that animated New England reform and revival culture supplied a context for her emerging convictions.
A pivotal episode in the mid-1860s, when she recovered from a debilitating injury while reading the Bible and praying, became central to her understanding of spiritual law. She reported discerning a method grounded in the life and teachings of Christ Jesus, distinct from mesmerism or material remedies. During these years she explored various approaches to healing, including contact with contemporary practitioners, yet insisted that her system derived from Scripture rather than from human theories. She began to teach small classes, articulate rules of practice, and write notes that would evolve into a comprehensive statement of Christian Science, with healing presented as demonstrable proof of doctrine.
Eddy’s career took a decisive turn with the publication of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures in the 1870s, followed by repeated revisions that refined both language and theology. She organized a church to safeguard and disseminate the teaching, culminating in the establishment of The Mother Church in Boston in the 1890s, with branch churches forming elsewhere. She also founded a teaching enterprise in Boston that trained practitioners and teachers under defined standards. Her Church Manual codified governance, discipline, and worship, reflecting an effort to balance centralized guidance with the autonomy of branch organizations as the movement expanded nationally and internationally.
Publishing was central to her strategy. She launched or authorized periodicals to communicate instruction, testimony, and church affairs, including The Christian Science Journal and the Christian Science Sentinel, and supported an international Herald to reach readers beyond English. In the early twentieth century she founded The Christian Science Monitor, a daily newspaper conceived to provide accurate, ethical coverage of world events. Alongside periodicals, she issued additional books and pamphlets—such as Retrospection and Introspection and Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896—that elaborated doctrine, recounted formative experiences, and addressed critics. These publications helped consolidate a shared vocabulary for the movement and fostered a transatlantic readership.
Eddy’s work attracted ardent adherents and vigorous critics. Supporters pointed to reported healings and moral reform; detractors questioned her biblical exegesis and raised concerns about rejecting medical treatment. Public controversies included disputes over intellectual property, journalistic scrutiny, and a widely publicized lawsuit in the early twentieth century that tested her competence and was resolved in her favor. Scholars have examined her thought in relation to American idealism and the broader metaphysical healing milieu. While often linked with New Thought, her writings distinguish Christian Science as a distinct, church-centered system grounded in specific interpretations of Scripture and disciplined practice by authorized practitioners.
In her later years, Eddy oversaw church affairs, continued to revise her primary text, and delegated responsibilities to boards that outlived her. She died in the early twentieth century, leaving a structured organization, a body of writings, and an active publishing arm. Her legacy endures in the ongoing study of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Christian Scientists, in the worldwide network of branch churches and reading rooms, and in the continuing work of The Christian Science Monitor. Today, her oeuvre is read both devotionally within the church and analytically by historians of religion assessing modern responses to suffering and faith.
Historical Context
The career of Mary Baker Eddy (born Mary Morse Baker on July 16, 1821, in Bow, New Hampshire) unfolded within New England’s biblicist culture shaped by the Second Great Awakening. Reared by Mark and Abigail Baker in a Congregationalist milieu that prized Scripture, sermon, and self-scrutiny, she absorbed debates over election, free will, and revival that animated rural churches from Concord to Boston. The post-Revolutionary republic’s voluntary societies, tract publishing, and circulating libraries formed the information economy she later used. Her early education at home and in local academies placed her amid reform discourse on temperance, health, and moral suasion that would reappear, reframed, in her mature writings.
The 1840s and 1850s brought upheaval that intersected with national transformations. She married George Washington Glover in 1843; he died of fever in 1844 in Wilmington, North Carolina, leaving her widowed and expecting a son, George W. Glover II. A second marriage in 1853 to Daniel Patterson ended in divorce in 1873. Amid chronic illness, she encountered competing health systems common in the antebellum North—homeopathy, hydropathy, and mesmerism—while Spiritualism (after 1848 in upstate New York) and mind-cure literature circulated through Boston and Portland, Maine. These currents, alongside Civil War disruptions (1861–1865), set the experiential and intellectual backdrop for her turn to biblical healing.
In February 1866, after a severe fall on the ice in Lynn, Massachusetts, Eddy later said she experienced an abrupt recovery while reading the New Testament, a moment she treated as hermeneutical key and practical proof. The incident, occurring in the charged Reconstruction years, aligned with a broader American search for postwar moral coherence and therapeutic meaning. Her sustained study of Scripture in Lynn and Boston in the late 1860s and early 1870s—against the noise of mesmerism debates and scientific popularization—sought to distill a Christian method of healing anchored in divine law rather than suggestive will, a distinction she reiterated across later essays and responses.
By 1875, in Boston’s vibrant print marketplace, she issued the first edition of Science and Health, a work she revised repeatedly to clarify doctrine and practice. The metropolis, hailed as the Athens of America, hosted Unitarians, Transcendentalists, medical reformers, and publishers whose presses—reaching from Cornhill to Cambridge—facilitated serial revision and wide circulation. Reading circles and classes formed in Lynn, Boston, and nearby communities, and correspondence networks widened. The Reconstruction-era appetite for harmonizing faith and reason, and for practical religion addressing illness and moral reform, gave her expository prose an audience that extended well beyond New England.
Institutional consolidation followed. In 1879 she and students organized the Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston; in 1881 Massachusetts chartered her Massachusetts Metaphysical College, where she taught until closing it in 1889. After marrying Asa Gilbert Eddy in Lynn in 1877 and relocating to Boston, she navigated both growth and bereavement when Eddy died in 1882. The Christian Science Journal, founded in 1883, provided a forum for doctrinal exposition, letters, and verified healing testimonies. These venues—church, college, and periodical—supplied the raw material later gathered in a single volume, shaping a corpus that blended pastoral instruction, apologetic argument, and institutional guidance.
The Gilded Age’s periodical culture is essential context for understanding the origins of Miscellaneous Writings (1883–1896). Between improved postal delivery, rail networks, and inexpensive paper, Boston-printed magazines and pamphlets moved quickly to readers in Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, and abroad. The question-and-answer column, open letter, anniversary address, and editorial reply were recognizable genres. Eddy used them to communicate policy, respond to critics, and standardize practice across a dispersed fellowship. Compiling those pieces in Boston in 1897 ensured students and branch churches could consult consistent statements without relying on ephemeral issues of the Journal or privately circulated circulars.
American medicine professionalized rapidly after the Civil War—marked by the American Medical Association’s consolidation, state licensing laws, and rising acceptance of bacteriology in the 1880s and 1890s. Simultaneously, lay healing subcultures thrived: homeopathy, osteopathy, and mind-cure. Eddy’s writings repeatedly differentiate Christian Science from hypnotism and animal magnetism associated with Franz Anton Mesmer and, in New England, with Phineas P. Quimby of Portland, Maine, whom she visited in 1862. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s she framed Christian healing as Christianly scientific obedience to God, not suggestive willpower, a distinction urged in policy statements, doctrinal clarifications, and admonitions addressed to practitioners and the public.
Her leadership unfolded alongside a dramatic expansion of women’s public roles. From Seneca Falls (1848) to Boston clubwomen and suffrage campaigns, women increasingly edited journals, lectured, and headed voluntary societies. Eddy—an American woman founding, organizing, and governing a denomination—was unusual but not alone; contemporaries included Ellen G. White among Adventists and Catherine Booth in the Salvation Army. In her addresses and letters she both asserted ecclesiastical authority and argued that spiritual law, rather than gendered custom, validated ministry and healing. That claim resonated with professional women in cities such as Chicago and New York who staffed committees, edited periodicals, and served as Readers.
Architectural and civic milestones in Boston provided shared memory and identity. In 1892, a deed of trust reorganized the Boston body as The First Church of Christ, Scientist (The Mother Church), establishing a Board of Directors. The original church edifice, completed in 1894 and dedicated on January 6, 1895, stood in the Back Bay’s expanding cultural district near Symphony Hall and the Public Library. Dedication services, public press coverage, and subsequent publications reinforced a self-understanding of order, beauty, and public witness. Writings from this period often memorialize collective progress while warning against triumphalism, urging humility, charity, and disciplined adherence to the Scriptures.
Governance reforms crest in 1895 with the first Church Manual, a compact of by-laws defining membership, discipline, worship, and publishing. Eddy designated the Bible and Science and Health as the impersonal Pastor, replacing personal preaching with Lesson-Sermons read by elected Readers, and she authorized midweek testimony meetings and Sunday Schools. The policies aimed to curb personality cults, ensure doctrinal uniformity, and protect the church’s spiritual aims amid rapid growth. Many pieces later collected in the 1897 volume explain, defend, or implement such measures, offering rationale, historical notes, and pastoral counsel as branch churches multiplied and sought guidance.
Education policy shifted with the closing of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College in 1889. Teaching continued through classes, authorized teachers, and later, in 1898, through a reconstituted Christian Science Board of Education in Boston. Articles across the 1883–1896 span address pedagogy, the qualifications of practitioners, and the ethics of advertising and fees, reflecting wider Progressive-era concerns about credentialing and professional standards. The interplay of private instruction, public lecture, and printed catechesis formed a layered educational regime. Students from Ohio, Illinois, and California carried instruction home, while Boston remained the doctrinal reference point from which corrective letters and circulars issued.
Geographic expansion is visible in period reports and addresses that speak to branch organizations from New York to Chicago and San Francisco, and to emerging circles in London by the mid-1890s. Public lectures—later formalized by a Board of Lectureship in 1898—already featured prominent figures such as Edward A. Kimball of Chicago, who articulated teachings to large urban audiences. Testimonies and news items in the Journal created a shared transregional narrative of healing and church building. The resulting feedback loop—lecture, report, correspondence—generated the questions, encouragements, and clarifications preserved collectively, so readers far from Boston could consult settled answers.
Eddy’s career intersected with adjacent movements she consistently distinguished from Christian Science. New Thought, systematized by figures like former student Emma Curtis Hopkins after 1885 and by writers such as Warren Felt Evans and the Dressers in Boston, adopted mental-science vocabulary without her biblical premises. Theosophy, founded in 1875 in New York by Helena Blavatsky, offered esoteric synthesis, while the Faith-Cure strand of the Holiness movement and, in the 1890s, John Alexander Dowie’s Chicago-based healing ministry claimed apostolic gifts. Her essays and replies use these contrasts to define terms carefully, caution adherents, and anchor practice within Christian ethics and Scripture.
Legal and journalistic controversy formed a persistent backdrop. As states debated medical licensing and as newspapers sensationalized healing claims and court cases, Eddy’s statements framed Christian Science care as religious exercise protected by conscience and as moral reform, not medical practice. Editors in Boston and beyond—sympathetic and hostile—solicited interviews; she and trusted associates responded through authorized notices, often signed and datelined for transparency. Her insistence on verified testimonies, avoidance of hypnotic technique, and strict pastoral discipline sought to insulate the movement from scandal while engaging the public square with measured argument, a tone preserved in many collected pieces.
After years in Lynn and Boston, Eddy purchased Pleasant View in Concord, New Hampshire, in 1892, from which she directed church affairs through intense correspondence. A small administrative circle—most notably Calvin A. Frye as private secretary—helped manage mail, visitors, and manuscript preparation. In Boston, Joseph Armstrong and other Directors administered church business; Septimus J. Hanna edited the Christian Science Journal beginning in 1892, shaping its blend of instruction and reportage. This Concord-Boston axis explains the datelines, institutional references, and administrative emphases threaded through articles and letters, situating pastoral counsel within concrete decisions about worship, publishing, and discipline.
The volume Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, published in Boston in 1897, gathers editorials, addresses, sermons, answers to correspondents, and selected letters from a formative thirteen-year span. Arranged to serve students and branches, it preserves policy statements about Communion, church organization, and healing ethics alongside devotional and expository pieces. The compilation strategy reflects late nineteenth-century American habits of curating periodical output into durable books for instruction and reference. Issued on the cusp of further institutionalization—the Publishing Society and Board of Lectureship in 1898—the collection functions as a bridge between pioneering years and a codified, teachable system.
Taken together, the writings arose from and address the era’s defining tensions: science and religion after Darwin, authority and charisma in new denominations, women’s leadership in public religion, and the social costs of rapid urban and industrial change. Anchored in New England yet networked by rail, post, and press to the Midwest, West Coast, and Britain, Eddy’s words sought to articulate a practical Christianity of healing and holiness under institutional safeguards. The collection’s historical horizon—1866 to 1897, with roots earlier—thus frames the oeuvre as both theological argument and organizational blueprint, crafted for a transregional community negotiating modernity.
Synopsis (Selection)
CHAPTER I
Introduces the metaphysical foundation of Christian Science, affirming God as infinite Mind and reality as wholly spiritual, and outlines how Christian healing proceeds from understanding divine law.
CHAPTER II
Explores the spiritual interpretation of the Bible and the example of Christ Jesus, distinguishing material sense from spiritual sense and arguing that genuine Christianity includes present-day healing.
CHAPTER III
Collects replies to common questions and criticisms, clarifying the ethics, methods, and limits of Christian Science practice and its relation to medicine and theology.
CHAPTER IV
Offers counsel to students and church members on character and discipleship, emphasizing purity, humility, moral courage, and obedience to divine Principle in daily life.
CHAPTER V
Presents sermons and public addresses that set forth the mission of Christian Science, calling for moral reformation and demonstrating Christianity through works.
CHAPTER VI
Discusses church polity and worship, including the role of the Bible and Science and Health as pastor, the conduct of services, and the spiritual purpose of The Mother Church and its branches.
CHAPTER VII
Addresses contemporary issues—such as material medicine, skepticism, and religious formalism—through essays that argue for spiritual causation and the supremacy of divine Mind.
CHAPTER VIII
Warns against mesmerism and so-called 'animal magnetism,' denying evil any real power and providing guidance for mental self-defense grounded in the allness of God.
CHAPTER IX
Includes letters, messages, and dedications to individuals and churches, encouraging unity, charity, and steadfastness in building the movement.
CHAPTER X
Records reflections on the progress of Christian Science and notable milestones, attributing growth to divine guidance rather than personal leadership.
CHAPTER XI
Treats practical themes—education, philanthropy, family, and citizenship—from a spiritual standpoint, advocating love's law as the basis for social well-being.
CHAPTER XII
Concludes with summative counsels and appeals for fidelity to Principle, universal love, and the continued proof of Christianity through healing and regeneration.
Miscellaneous Writings
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
Prospectus
THE ancient Greek looked longingly for the Olympiad. The Chaldee watched the appearing of a star; to him, no higher destiny dawned on the dome of being than that foreshadowed by signs in the heavens.The meek Nazarene, the scoffed of all scoffers, said, “Ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?” — for he forefelt and foresaw the ordeal of a perfect Christianity, hated by sinners.
To kindle all minds with a gleam of gratitude, the new idea that comes welling up from infinite Truth needs to be understood. The seer of this age should be a sage.
Humility is the stepping-stone to a higher recognition of Deity.[1q] The mounting sense gathers fresh forms and strange fire from the ashes of dissolving self, and drops the world. Meekness heightens immortal attributes only by removing the dust that dims them. Goodness reveals another scene and another self seemingly rolled up in shades, but brought to light by the evolutions of advancing thought, whereby we discern the power of Truth and Love to heal the sick.
Pride is ignorance; those assume most who have the least wisdom or experience; and they steal from their neighbor, because they have so little of their own.
The signs of these times portend a long and strong determination of mankind to cleave to the world, the flesh, and evil, causing great obscuration of Spirit. When we remember that God is just, and admit the total depravity of mortals, alias mortal mind, — and that this Adam legacy must first be seen, and then must be subdued and recompensed by justice, the eternal attribute of Truth, — the outlook demands labor, and the laborers seem few. To-day we behold but the first faint view of a more spiritual Christianity, that embraces a deeper and broader philosophy and a more rational and divine healing. The time approaches when divine Life, Truth, and Love will be found alone the remedy for sin, sickness, and death; when God, man's saving Principle, and Christ, the spiritual idea of God, will be revealed.
Man's probation after death is the necessity of his immortality; for good dies not and evil is self-destructive, therefore evil must be mortal and self-destroyed. If man should not progress after death, but should remain in error, he would be inevitably self-annihilated. Those upon whom “the second death hath no power” are those who progress here and hereafter out of evil, their mortal element, and into good that is immortal; thus laying off the material beliefs that war against Spirit, and putting on the spiritual elements in divine Science.
While we entertain decided views as to the best method for elevating the race physically, morally, and spiritually, and shall express these views as duty demands, we shall claim no especial gift from our divine origin, no supernatural power. If we regard good as more natural than evil, and spiritual understanding — the true knowledge of God — as imparting the only power to heal the sick and the sinner, we shall demonstrate in our lives the power of Truth and Love.
The lessons we learn in divine Science are applicable to all the needs of man. Jesus taught them for this very purpose; and his demonstration hath taught us that “through his stripes” — his life-experience — and divine Science, brought to the understanding through Christ, the Spirit-revelator, is man healed and saved. No opinions of mortals nor human hypotheses enter this line of thought or action. Drugs, inert matter, never are needed to aid spiritual power. Hygiene, manipulation, and mesmerism are not Mind's medicine. The Principle of all cure is God, unerring and immortal Mind. We have learned that the erring or mortal thought holds in itself all sin, sickness, and death, and imparts these states to the body; while the supreme and perfect Mind, as seen in the truth of being, antidotes and destroys these material elements of sin and death.
Because God is supreme and omnipotent, materiamedica, hygiene, and animal magnetism are impotent; and their only supposed efficacy is in apparently deluding reason, denying revelation, and dethroning Deity. The tendency of mental healing is to uplift mankind; but this method perverted, is “Satan let loose.” Hence the deep demand for the Science of psychology to meet sin, and uncover it; thus to annihilate hallucination.
Thought imbued with purity, Truth, and Love, instructed in the Science of metaphysical healing, is the most potent and desirable remedial agent on the earth. At this period there is a marked tendency of mortal mind to plant mental healing on the basis of hypnotism, calling this method “mental science.” All Science is Christian Science; the Science of the Mind that is God, and of the universe as His idea, and their relation to each other. Its only power to heal is its power to do good, not evil.
A Timely Issue
At this date, 1883, a newspaper edited and published by the Christian Scientists has become a necessity. Many questions important to be disposed of come to the College and to the practising students, yet but little time has been devoted to their answer. Further enlightenment is necessary for the age, and a periodical devoted to this work seems alone adequate to meet the requirement. Much interest is awakened and expressed on the subject of metaphysical healing, but in many minds it is confounded with isms, and even infidelity, so that its religious specialty and the vastness of its worth are not understood.
It is often said, “You must have a very strong will-power to heal,” or, “It must require a great deal of faith to make your demonstrations.” When it is answered that there is no will-power required, and that something more than faith is necessary, we meet with an expression of incredulity. It is not alone the mission of Christian Science to heal the sick, but to destroy sin in mortal thought. This work well done will elevate and purify the race. It cannot fail to do this if we devote our best energies to the work.
Science reveals man as spiritual, harmonious, and eternal. This should be understood. Our College should be crowded with students who are willing to consecrate themselves to this Christian work. Mothers should be able to produce perfect health and perfect morals in their children — and ministers, to heal the sick — by studying this scientific method of practising Christianity. Many say, “I should like to study, but have not sufficient faith that I have the power to heal.” The healing power is Truth and Love, and these do not fail in the greatest emergencies.
Materia medica says, “I can do no more. I have done all that can be done. There is nothing to build upon. There is no longer any reason for hope.” Then metaphysics comes in, armed with the power of Spirit, not matter, takes up the case hopefully and builds on the stone that the builders have rejected, and is successful.
Metaphysical therapeutics can seem a miracle and a mystery to those only who do not understand the grand reality that Mind controls the body. They acknowledge an erring or mortal mind, but believe it to be brain matter. That man is the idea of infinite Mind, always perfect in God, in Truth, Life, and Love, is something not easily accepted, weighed down as is mortal thought with material beliefs. That which never existed, can seem solid substance to this thought. It is much easier for people to believe that the body affects the mind, than that the mind affects the body.
We hear from the pulpits that sickness is sent as a discipline to bring man nearer to God, — even though sickness often leaves mortals but little time free from complaints and fretfulness, and Jesus cast out disease as evil.
The most of our Christian Science practitioners have plenty to do, and many more are needed for the advancement of the age. At present the majority of the acute cases are given to the M. D.'s, and only those cases that are pronounced incurable are passed over to the Scientist. The healing of such cases should certainly prove to all minds the power of metaphysics over physics; and it surely does, to many thinkers, as the rapid growth of the work shows. At no distant day, Christian healing will rank far in advance of allopathy and homœopathy; for Truth must ultimately succeed where error fails.
Mind governs all. That we exist in God, perfect, there is no doubt, for the conceptions of Life, Truth, and Love must be perfect; and with that basic truth we conquer sickness, sin, and death. Frequently it requires time to overcome the patient's faith in drugs and material hygiene; but when once convinced of the uselessness of such material methods, the gain is rapid.
It is a noticeable fact, that in families where laws of health are strictly enforced, great caution is observed in regard to diet, and the conversation chiefly confined to the ailments of the body, there is the most sickness. Take a large family of children where the mother has all that she can attend to in keeping them clothed and fed, and health is generally the rule; whereas, in small families of one or two children, sickness is by no means the exception. These children must not be allowed to eat certain food, nor to breathe the cold air, because there is danger in it; when they perspire, they must be loaded down with coverings until their bodies become dry, — and the mother of one child is often busier than the mother of eight.
Great charity and humility is necessary in this work of healing. The loving patience of Jesus, we must strive to emulate. “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” has daily to be exemplified; and, although skepticism and incredulity prevail in places where one would least expect it, it harms not; for if serving Christ, Truth, of what can mortal opinion avail? Cast not your pearls before swine; but if you cannot bring peace to all, you can to many, if faithful laborers in His vineyard.
Looking over the newspapers of the day, one naturally reflects that it is dangerous to live, so loaded with disease seems the very air. These descriptions carry fears to many minds, to be depicted in some future time upon the body. A periodical of our own will counteract to some extent this public nuisance; for through our paper, at the price at which we shall issue it, we shall be able to reach many homes with healing, purifying thought. A great work already has been done, and a greater work yet remains to be done. Oftentimes we are denied the results of our labors because people do not understand the nature and power of metaphysics, and they think that health and strength would have returned naturally without any assistance. This is not so much from a lack of justice, as it is that the mens populi is not sufficiently enlightened on this great subject. More thought is given to material illusions than to spiritual facts. If we can aid in abating suffering and diminishing sin, we shall have accomplished much; but if we can bring to the general thought this great fact that drugs do not, cannot, produce health and harmony, since “in Him [Mind] we live, and move, and have our being,” we shall have done more.
Love Your Enemies
Who is thine enemy that thou shouldst love him? Is it a creature or a thing outside thine own creation?
Can you see an enemy, except you first formulate this enemy and then look upon the object of your own conception? What is it that harms you? Can height, or depth, or any other creature separate you from the Love that is omnipresent good, — that blesses infinitely one and all?
Simply count your enemy to be that which defiles, defaces, and dethrones the Christ-image that you should reflect. Whatever purifies, sanctifies, and consecrates human life, is not an enemy, however much we suffer in the process. Shakespeare writes: “Sweet are the uses of adversity.” Jesus said: “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake; . . . for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”
The Hebrew law with its “Thou shalt not,” its demand and sentence, can only be fulfilled through the gospel's benediction. Then, “Blessed are ye,” insomuch as the consciousness of good, grace, and peace, comes through affliction rightly understood, as sanctified by the purification it brings to the flesh, — to pride, self-ignorance, self-will, self-love, self-justification. Sweet, indeed, are these uses of His rod! Well is it that the Shepherd of Israel passes all His flock under His rod into His fold; thereby numbering them, and giving them refuge at last from the elements of earth.
“Love thine enemies” is identical with “Thou hast no enemies.” Wherein is this conclusion relative to those who have hated thee without a cause? Simply, in that those unfortunate individuals are virtually thy best friends. Primarily and ultimately, they are doing thee good far beyond the present sense which thou canst entertain of good.
Whom we call friends seem to sweeten life's cup and to fill it with the nectar of the gods. We lift this cup to our lips; but it slips from our grasp, to fall in fragments before our eyes. Perchance, having tasted its tempting wine, we become intoxicated; become lethargic, dreamy objects of self-satisfaction; else, the contents of this cup of selfish human enjoyment having lost its flavor, we voluntarily set it aside as tasteless and unworthy of human aims.
And wherefore our failure longer to relish this fleeting sense, with its delicious forms of friendship, wherewith mortals become educated to gratification in personal pleasure and trained in treacherous peace? Because it is the great and only danger in the path that winds upward. A false sense of what constitutes happiness is more disastrous to human progress than all that an enemy or enmity can obtrude upon the mind or engraft upon its purposes and achievements wherewith to obstruct life's joys and enhance its sorrows.
We have no enemies. Whatever envy, hatred, revenge — the most remorseless motives that govern mortal mind — whatever these try to do, shall “work together for good to them that love God.”
Why?
Because He has called His own, armed them, equipped them, and furnished them defenses impregnable. Their God will not let them be lost; and if they fall they shall rise again, stronger than before the stumble. The good cannot lose their God, their help in times of trouble. If they mistake the divine command, they will recover it, countermand their order, retrace their steps, and reinstate His orders, more assured to press on safely. The best lesson of their lives is gained by crossing swords with temptation, with fear and the besetments of evil; insomuch as they thereby have tried their strength and proven it; insomuch as they have found their strength made perfect in weakness, and their fear is self-immolated.
This destruction is a moral chemicalization, wherein old things pass away and all things become new. The worldly or material tendencies of human affections and pursuits are thus annihilated; and this is the advent of spiritualization. Heaven comes down to earth, and mortals learn at last the lesson, “I have no enemies.”
Even in belief you have but one (that, not in reality), and this one enemy is yourself — your erroneous belief that you have enemies; that evil is real; that aught but good exists in Science. Soon or late, your enemy will wake from his delusion to suffer for his evil intent; to find that, though thwarted, its punishment is tenfold.
Love is the fulfilling of the law: it is grace, mercy, and justice. I used to think it sufficiently just to abide by our State statutes; that if a man should aim a ball at my heart, and I by firing first could kill him and save my own life, that this was right. I thought, also, that if I taught indigent students gratuitously, afterwards assisting them pecuniarily, and did not cease teaching the wayward ones at close of the class term, but followed them with precept upon precept; that if my instructions had healed them and shown them the sure way of salvation, — I had done my whole duty to students.
Love metes not out human justice, but divine mercy. If one's life were attacked, and one could save it only in accordance with common law, by taking another's, would one sooner give up his own? We must love our enemies in all the manifestations wherein and whereby we love our friends; must even try not to expose their faults, but to do them good whenever opportunity occurs. To mete out human justice to those who persecute and despitefully use one, is not leaving all retribution to God and returning blessing for cursing. If special opportunity for doing good to one's enemies occur not, one can include them in his general effort to benefit the race. Because I can do much general good to such as hate me, I do it with earnest, special care — since they permit me no other way, though with tears have I striven for it. When smitten on one cheek, I have turned the other: I have but two to present.
I would enjoy taking by the hand all who love me not, and saying to them, “I love you, and would not knowingly harm you.” Because I thus feel, I say to others: Hate no one; for hatred is a plague-spot that spreads its virus and kills at last. If indulged, it masters us; brings suffering upon suffering to its possessor, throughout time and beyond the grave. If you have been badly wronged, forgive and forget: God will recompense this wrong, and punish, more severely than you could, him who has striven to injure you. Never return evil for evil; and, above all, do not fancy that you have been wronged when you have not been.
The present is ours; the future, big with events. Every man and woman should be to-day a law to himself, herself, — a law of loyalty to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. The means for sinning unseen and unpunished have so increased that, unless one be watchful and steadfast in Love, one's temptations to sin are increased a hundredfold. Mortal mind at this period mutely works in the interest of both good and evil in a manner least understood; hence the need of watching, and the danger of yielding to temptation from causes that at former periods in human history were not existent. The action and effects of this so-called human mind in its silent arguments, are yet to be uncovered and summarily dealt with by divine justice.
In Christian Science, the law of Love rejoices the heart; and Love is Life and Truth. Whatever manifests aught else in its effects upon mankind, demonstrably is not Love. We should measure our love for God by our love for man; and our sense of Science will be measured by our obedience to God, — fulfilling the law of Love, doing good to all; imparting, so far as we reflect them, Truth, Life, and Love to all within the radius of our atmosphere of thought.
The only justice of which I feel at present capable, is mercy and charity toward every one, — just so far as one and all permit me to exercise these sentiments toward them, — taking special care to mind my own business.
The falsehood, ingratitude, misjudgment, and sharp 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 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 of evil is essential to a rounded sense of the existence of good.
This frail hypothesis is founded upon the basis of material and mortal evidence — only upon what the shifting mortal senses confirm and frail human reason accepts. 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 God and His idea.
This postulate of divine Science only needs to be conceded, to afford opportunity for proof of its correctness and the clearer discernment of good.
Seek the Anglo-Saxon term for God, and you will find it to be good; then define good as God, and you will find that good is omnipotence, has all power; it fills all space, being omnipresent; hence, there is neither place nor power left for evil. Divest your thought, then, of the mortal and material view which contradicts the everpresence and all-power of good; take in only the immortal facts which include these, and where will you see or feel evil, or find its existence necessary either to the origin or ultimate of good?
It is urged that, from his original state of perfection, man has fallen into the imperfection that requires evil through which to develop good. Were we to 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 incapable of knowing the facts of existence and its concomitants: therefore to him evil is as real and eternal as good, God! This awful deception is evil's umpire and empire, that good, God, understood, forcibly destroys.
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 Principle of man; and evil, good's opposite, has no Principle, and is not, and cannot be, the derivative of good. 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, disease, and death. But the sinner is not sheltered from suffering from sin: he makes a great reality of evil, identifies himself with it, fancies he finds pleasure in it, and 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 adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” The great Nazarene Prophet said, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” Nothing aside from the spiritualization — yea, the highest Christianization — of thought and desire, can give the true perception of God 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 surrender to God, of childlike trust and joyful adoption 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 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 God, and the fulness of the stature of man in Christ appears.
In mortal and material man, goodness seems in embryo. By suffering for sin, and the gradual fading out of the mortal and material sense of man, thought is developed into an infant Christianity; and, feeding at first on the milk of the Word, it drinks in the sweet revealings of a new and more spiritual Life and Love. These nourish the hungry hope, satisfy more the cravings for immortality, and so comfort, cheer, and bless one, that he saith: In mine infancy, this is enough of heaven to come down to earth.
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 God; and this infinite Principle hath infinite claims on man, and these claims are divine, not human; and man's ability to meet them is from God; for, being His likeness and image, man must reflect the full dominion of Spirit — even its supremacy over sin, sickness, and death.
Here, then, is the awakening from the dream of life in matter, to the great fact that God is the only Life; that, therefore, we must entertain a higher sense of both God and man. We must learn that God is infinitely more than a person, or finite form, can contain; that God is a divine Whole, and All, an all-pervading intelligence 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 in Christian Science.
Now, dear reader, pause for a moment with me, earnestly to contemplate this new-born spiritual altitude; for this statement demands demonstration.
Here you stand face to face with the laws of infinite Spirit, and behold for the first time the irresistible conflict between the flesh and Spirit. You stand before the awful detonations of Sinai. You hear and record the 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 omnipotent harmony and good, as opposed to any supposititious 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 doctrines, give up your more material religion with its rites 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 God to heal and to save. Then it is that you behold for the first time the divine Principle that redeems man from under the curse of materialism, — sin, disease, and death. This spiritual birth opens to the enraptured understanding a much higher and holier conception of the supremacy of Spirit, and of man as His likeness, whereby man reflects the divine power to heal the sick.
A material or human birth is the appearing of a mortal, not the immortal man. This birth is more or less prolonged and painful, according to the timely or untimely circumstances, the normal or abnormal material 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 accumulating pains of sense, — by which one loses himself as matter, and gains a truer sense of Spirit and spiritual man.
The purification or baptismals that come from Spirit, 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 welcome 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 gods before me;” “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” These commands of infinite wisdom, translated into the new tongue, their spiritual meaning, signify: Thou shalt love Spirit only, not its opposite, in every God-quality, even in substance; thou shalt recognize thyself as God's spiritual child only, and the true man and true woman, the all-harmonious “male and female,” as of spiritual origin, God's reflection, — thus as children of one common Parent, — wherein and whereby Father, Mother, and child are the divine Principle and divine idea, even the divine “Us” — one in good, and good in One.
With this recognition man could never separate himself from good, God; and he would necessarily entertain habitual love for his fellow-man. Only by admitting evil as a reality, and entering into a state of evil thoughts, can we in belief separate one man's interests from those of the whole human family, or thus attempt to separate Life from God. This is the mistake that causes much that must be repented of and overcome. Not to know what is blessing you, but to believe that aught that God sends is unjust, — or that those whom He commissions bring to you at His demand that which is unjust, — is wrong and cruel. Envy, evil thinking, evil speaking, covetousness, lust, hatred, malice, are always wrong, and will break the rule of Christian Science and prevent its demonstration; but the rod of God, and the obedience demanded of His servants in carrying out what He teaches them, — these are never unmerciful, never unwise.
The task of healing the sick is far lighter than that of so teaching the divine Principle and rules of Christian Science as to lift the affections and motives of men to adopt them and bring them out in human lives. He who has named the name of Christ, who has virtually accepted the divine claims of Truth and Love in divine Science, is daily departing from evil; and all the wicked endeavors of suppositional demons can never change the current of that life from steadfastly flowing on to God, its divine source.
But, taking the livery of heaven wherewith to cover iniquity, is the most fearful sin that mortals can commit. I should have more faith in an honest drugging-doctor, one who abides by his statements and works upon as high a basis as he understands, healing me, than I could or would have in a smooth-tongued hypocrite or mental malpractitioner.
Between the centripetal and centrifugal mental forces of material and spiritual gravitations, we go into or we go out of materialism or sin, and choose our course and its results. Which, then, shall be our choice, — the sinful, material, and perishable, or the spiritual, joy-giving, and eternal?
The spiritual sense of Life and its grand pursuits is of itself a bliss, health-giving and joy-inspiring. This sense of Life illumes our pathway with the radiance of divine Love; heals man spontaneously, morally and physically, — exhaling the aroma of Jesus' own words, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
ONE CAUSE AND EFFECT
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE begins with the First Commandment of the Hebrew Decalogue, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” It goes on in perfect unity with Christ's Sermon on the Mount, and in that age culminates in the Revelation of St. John, who, while on earth and in the flesh, like ourselves, beheld “a new heaven and a new earth,” — the spiritual universe, whereof Christian Science now bears testimony.
Our Master said, “The works that I do shall ye do also;” and, “The kingdom of God is within you.[2q]” This makes practical all his words and works. As the ages advance in spirituality, Christian Science will be seen to depart from the trend of other Christian denominations in no wise except by increase of spirituality.
My first plank in the platform of Christian Science is as follows: “There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual.”[1]
I am strictly a theist — believe in one God, one Christ or Messiah.
Science is neither a law of matter nor of man. It is the unerring manifesto of Mind, the law of God, its divine Principle. Who dare say that matter or mortals can evolve Science? Whence, then, is it, if not from the divine source, and what, but the contemporary of Christianity, so far in advance of human knowledge that mortals must work for the discovery of even a portion of it? Christian Science translates Mind, God, to mortals. It is the infinite calculus defining the line, plane, space, and fourth dimension of Spirit. It absolutely refutes the amalgamation, transmigration, absorption, or annihilation of individuality. It shows the impossibility of transmitting human ills, or evil, from one individual to another; that all true thoughts revolve in God's orbits: they come from God and return to Him, — and untruths belong not to His creation, therefore these are null and void. It hath no peer, no competitor, for it dwelleth in Him besides whom “there is none other.”
That Christian Science is Christian, those who have demonstrated it, according to the rules of its divine Principle, — together with the sick, the lame, the deaf, and the blind, healed by it, — have proven to a waiting world. He who has not tested it, is incompetent to condemn it; and he who is a willing sinner, cannot demonstrate it.
A falling apple suggested to Newton more than the simple fact cognized by the senses, to which it seemed to fall by reason of its own ponderosity; but the primal cause, or Mind-force, invisible to material sense, lay concealed in the treasure-troves of Science. True, Newton named it gravitation, having learned so much; but Science, demanding more, pushes the question: Whence or what is the power back of gravitation, — the intelligence that manifests power? Is pantheism true? Does mind “sleep in the mineral, or dream in the animal, and wake in man”? Christianity answers this question. The prophets, Jesus, and the apostles, demonstrated a divine intelligence that subordinates so-called material laws; and disease, death, winds, and waves, obey this intelligence. Was it Mind or matter that spake in creation, “and it was done”? The answer is self-evident, and the command remains, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
It is plain that the Me spoken of in the First Commandment, must be Mind; for matter is not the Christian's God, and is not intelligent. Matter cannot even talk; and the serpent, Satan, the first talker in its behalf, lied. Reason and revelation declare that God is both noumenon and phenomena, — the first and only cause. The universe, including man, is not a result of atomic action, material force or energy; it is not organized dust. God, Spirit, Mind, are terms synonymous for the one God, whose reflection is creation, and man is His image and likeness. Few there are who comprehend what Christian Science means by the word reflection. God is seen only in that which reflects good, Life, Truth, Love — yea, which manifests all His attributes and power, even as the human likeness thrown upon the mirror repeats precisely the looks and actions of the object in front of it. All must be Mind and Mind's ideas; since, according to natural science, God, Spirit, could not change its species and evolve matter.
