CHAPTER IV - CHRISTIAN SCIENCE VERSUS SPIRITUALISM

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And when they shall say unto you,

Seek unto them that have familiar spirits,

And unto wizards that peep and that mutter;

Should not a people seek unto their God? - ISAIAH.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never

see death. Then said the Jews unto him, Now we know that thou hast a

devil. - JOHN.

The infinite one Spirit

MORTAL existence is an enigma. Every day is a

mystery. The testimony of the corporeal senses

cannot inform us what is real and what is delusive, but

the revelations of Christian Science unlock the treasures

of Truth. Whatever is false or sinful can

never enter the atmosphere of Spirit. There

is but one Spirit. Man is never God, but spiritual man,

made in God's likeness, reflects God. In this scientific

reflection the Ego and the Father are inseparable. The

supposition that corporeal beings are spirits, or that there

are good and evil spirits, is a mistake.

Real and unreal identity

The divine Mind maintains all identities, from a blade

of grass to a star, as distinct and eternal. The

questions are: What are God's identities?

What is Soul? Does life or soul exist in the thing

formed?

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Nothing is real and eternal, - nothing is Spirit, - but

God and His idea. Evil has no reality. It is neither

person, place, nor thing, but is simply a belief, an illusion

of material sense.

The identity, or idea, of all reality continues forever;

but Spirit, or the divine Principle of all, is not in Spirit's

formations. Soul is synonymous with Spirit, God, the

creative, governing, infinite Principle outside of finite form,

which forms only reflect.

Dream-lessons

Close your eyes, and you may dream that you see a

flower, - that you touch and smell it. Thus you learn

that the flower is a product of the so-called

mind, a formation of thought rather than of

matter. Close your eyes again, and you may see land-

scapes, men, and women. Thus you learn that these

also are images, which mortal mind holds and evolves

and which simulate mind, life, and intelligence. From

dreams also you learn that neither mortal mind nor

matter is the image or likeness of God, and that im-

mortal Mind is not in matter.

Found wanting

When the Science of Mind is understood, spiritualism

will be found mainly erroneous, having no scientific basis

nor origin, no proof nor power outside of

human testimony. It is the offspring of the

physical senses. There is no sensuality in Spirit. I never

could believe in spiritualism.

The basis and structure of spiritualism are alike ma-

terial and physical. Its spirits are so many corporealities,

limited and finite in character and quality. Spiritualism

therefore presupposes Spirit, which is ever infinite, to be

a corporeal being, a finite form, - a theory contrary to

Christian Science.

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There is but one spiritual existence, - the Life of

which corporeal sense can take no cognizance. The

divine Principle of man speaks through immortal sense.

If a material body - in other words, mortal, material

sense - were permeated by Spirit, that body would

disappear to mortal sense, would be deathless. A con-

dition precedent to communion with Spirit is the gain of

spiritual life.

Spirits obsolete

So-called spirits are but corporeal communicators. As

light destroys darkness and in the place of darkness all

is light, so (in absolute Science) Soul, or God,

is the only truth-giver to man. Truth de-

stroys mortality, and brings to light immortality. Mortal

belief (the material sense of life) and immortal Truth

(the spiritual sense) are the tares and the wheat, which

are not united by progress, but separated.

Perfection is not expressed through imperfection.

Spirit is not made manifest through matter, the anti-

pode of Spirit. Error is not a convenient sieve through

which truth can be strained.

Scientific phenomena

God, good, being ever present, it follows in divine

logic that evil, the suppositional opposite of good, is never

present. In Science, individual good derived

from God, the infinite All-in-all, may flow

from the departed to mortals; but evil is neither com-

municable nor scientific. A sinning, earthly mortal is

not the reality of Life nor the medium through which

truth passes to earth. The joy of intercourse becomes

the jest of sin, when evil and suffering are communicable.

Not personal intercommunion but divine law is the com-

municator of truth, health, and harmony to earth and

humanity. As readily can you mingle fire and frost as

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Spirit and matter. In either case, one does not support

the other.

Spiritualism calls one person, living in this world, ma-

terial, but another, who has died to-day a sinner and sup-

posedly will return to earth to-morrow, it terms a spirit.

The fact is that neither the one nor the other is infinite

Spirit, for Spirit is God, and man is His likeness.

One government

The belief that one man, as spirit, can control an-

other man, as matter, upsets both the individuality and

the Science of man, for man is image. God

controls man, and God is the only Spirit. Any

other control or attraction of so-called spirit is a mortal

belief, which ought to be known by its fruit, - the repe-

tition of evil.

If Spirit, or God, communed with mortals or controlled

them through electricity or any other form of matter, the

divine order and the Science of omnipotent, omnipresent

Spirit would be destroyed.

Incorrect theories

The belief that material bodies return to dust, hereafter

to rise up as spiritual bodies with material sensations and

desires, is incorrect. Equally incorrect is the

belief that spirit is confined in a finite, ma-

terial body, from which it is freed by death, and that, when

it is freed from the material body, spirit retains the sensa-

tions belonging to that body.

No me-diumship

It is a grave mistake to suppose that matter is any part

of the reality of intelligent existence, or that Spirit and

matter, intelligence and non-intelligence, can

commune together. This error Science will

destroy. The sensual cannot be made the mouthpiece of

the spiritual, nor can the finite become the channel of

the infinite. There is no communication between so-

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called material existence and spiritual life which is not

subject to death.

Opposing conditions

To be on communicable terms with Spirit, persons must

be free from organic bodies; and their return to a mate-

rial condition, after having once left it, would

be as impossible as would be the restoration

to its original condition of the acorn, already absorbed

into a sprout which has risen above the soil. The seed

which has germinated has a new form and state of exist-

ence. When here or hereafter the belief of life in matter

is extinct, the error which has held the belief dissolves

with the belief, and never returns to the old condition.

No correspondence nor communion can exist between

persons in such opposite dreams as the belief of having

died and left a material body and the belief of still living

in an organic, material body.

Bridgeless division

The caterpillar, transformed into a beautiful insect,

is no longer a worm, nor does the insect return to

fraternize with or control the worm. Such

a backward transformation is impossible in

Science. Darkness and light, infancy and manhood,

sickness and health, are opposites, - different beliefs,

which never blend. Who will say that infancy can utter

the ideas of manhood, that darkness can represent light,

that we are in Europe when we are in the opposite hemi-

sphere? There is no bridge across the gulf which divides

two such opposite conditions as the spiritual, or incor-

poreal, and the physical, or corporeal.

In Christian Science there is never a retrograde step,

never a return to positions outgrown. The so-called dead

and living cannot commune together, for they are in

separate states of existence, or consciousness.

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Unscientific investiture

This simple truth lays bare the mistaken assumption

that man dies as matter but comes to life as spirit. The

so-called dead, in order to reappear to those

still in the existence cognized by the physical

senses, would need to be tangible and material, - to have

a material investiture, - or the material senses could take

no cognizance of the so-called dead.

Spiritualism would transfer men from the spiritual sense

of existence back into its material sense. This gross mate-

rialism is scientifically impossible, since to infinite Spirit

there can be no matter.

Raising the dead

Jesus said of Lazarus: "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth;

but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." Jesus

restored Lazarus by the understanding that

Lazarus had never died, not by an admis-

sion that his body had died and then lived again. Had

Jesus believed that Lazarus had lived or died in his

body, the Master would have stood on the same plane of

belief as those who buried the body, and he could not have

resuscitated it.

When you can waken yourself or others out of the belief

that all must die, you can then exercise Jesus' spiritual

power to reproduce the presence of those who have thought

they died, - but not otherwise.

Vision of the dying

There is one possible moment, when those living on the

earth and those called dead, can commune together, and

that is the moment previous to the transition,

- the moment when the link between their op-

posite beliefs is being sundered. In the vestibule through

which we pass from one dream to another dream, or

when we awake from earth's sleep to the grand verities

of Life, the departing may hear the glad welcome of those

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who have gone before. The ones departing may whisper

this vision, name the face that smiles on them and the

hand which beckons them, as one at Niagara, with eyes

open only to that wonder, forgets all else and breathes

aloud his rapture.

Real Life is God

When being is understood, Life will be recognized as

neither material nor finite, but as infinite, - as God,

universal good; and the belief that life, or

mind, was ever in a finite form, or good in

evil, will be destroyed. Then it will be understood that

Spirit never entered matter and was therefore never

raised from matter. When advanced to spiritual being

and the understanding of God, man can no longer com-

mune with matter; neither can he return to it, any more

than a tree can return to its seed. Neither will man seem

to be corporeal, but he will be an individual conscious-

ness, characterized by the divine Spirit as idea, not matter.

Suffering, sinning, dying beliefs are unreal. When

divine Science is universally understood, they will have

no power over man, for man is immortal and lives by

divine authority.

Immaterial pleasure

The sinless joy, - the perfect harmony and immortality

of Life, possessing unlimited divine beauty and goodness

without a single bodily pleasure or pain, -

constitutes the only veritable, indestructible

man, whose being is spiritual. This state of existence

is scientific and intact, - a perfection discernible only

by those who have the final understanding of Christ in

divine Science. Death can never hasten this state of

existence, for death must be overcome, not submitted to,

before immortality appears.

The recognition of Spirit and of infinity comes not

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suddenly here or hereafter. The pious Polycarp said:

"I cannot turn at once from good to evil." Neither do

other mortals accomplish the change from error to truth

at a single bound.

Second death

Existence continues to be a belief of corporeal sense

until the Science of being is reached. Error brings its

own self-destruction both here and hereafter,

for mortal mind creates its own physical con-

ditions. Death will occur on the next plane of existence

as on this, until the spiritual understanding of Life is

reached. Then, and not until then, will it be demon-

strated that "the second death hath no power."

A dream vanishing

The period required for this dream of material life,

embracing its so-called pleasures and pains, to vanish

from consciousness, "knoweth no man . . .

neither the Son, but the Father." This period

will be of longer or shorter duration according to the

tenacity of error. Of what advantage, then, would it be

to us, or to the departed, to prolong the material state and

so prolong the illusion either of a soul inert or of a sinning,

suffering sense, - a so-called mind fettered to matter.

Progress and purgatory

Even if communications from spirits to mortal con-

sciousness were possible, such communications would

grow beautifully less with every advanced stage

of existence. The departed would gradually

rise above ignorance and materiality, and Spiritualists

would outgrow their beliefs in material spiritualism.

Spiritism consigns the so-called dead to a state resembling

that of blighted buds, - to a wretched purgatory, where

the chances of the departed for improvement narrow

into nothing and they return to their old standpoints of

matter.

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Unnatural deflections

The decaying flower, the blighted bud, the gnarled oak,

the ferocious beast, - like the discords of disease, sin,

and death, - are unnatural. They are the fal-

sities of sense, the changing deflections of mor-

tal mind; they are not the eternal realities of Mind.

Absurd oracles

How unreasonable is the belief that we are wearing

out life and hastening to death, and that at the same

time we are communing with immortality!

If the departed are in rapport with mor-

tality, or matter, they are not spiritual, but must still

be mortal, sinning, suffering, and dying. Then why

look to them - even were communication possible - for

proofs of immortality, and accept them as oracles? Com-

munications gathered from ignorance are pernicious in

tendency.

Spiritualism with its material accompaniments would

destroy the supremacy of Spirit. If Spirit pervades all

space, it needs no material method for the transmission

of messages. Spirit needs no wires nor electricity in order

to be omnipresent.

Spirit intangible

Spirit is not materially tangible. How then can it

communicate with man through electric, material effects?

How can the majesty and omnipotence of

Spirit be lost? God is not in the medley

where matter cares for matter, where spiritism makes

many gods, and hypnotism and electricity are claimed

to be the agents of God's government.

Spirit blesses man, but man cannot "tell whence

it cometh." By it the sick are healed, the sorrowing are

comforted, and the sinning are reformed. These are the

effects of one universal God, the invisible good dwelling

in eternal Science.

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Thought regarding death

The act of describing disease - its symptoms, locality,

and fatality - is not scientific. Warning people against

death is an error that tends to frighten into

death those who are ignorant of Life as God.

Thousands of instances could be cited of health restored

by changing the patient's thoughts regarding death.

Fallacious hypotheses

A scientific mental method is more sanitary than the

use of drugs, and such a mental method produces perma-

nent health. Science must go over the whole

ground, and dig up every seed of error's sow-

ing. Spiritualism relies upon human beliefs and hy-

potheses. Christian Science removes these beliefs and

hypotheses through the higher understanding of God, for

Christian Science, resting on divine Principle, not on ma-

terial personalities, in its revelation of immortality, intro-

duces the harmony of being.

Jesus cast out evil spirits, or false beliefs. The Apostle

Paul bade men have the Mind that was in the Christ.

Jesus did his own work by the one Spirit. He said: "My

Father worketh hitherto, and I work." He never de-

scribed disease, so far as can be learned from the Gospels,

but he healed disease.

Mistaken methods

The unscientific practitioner says: "You are ill. Your

brain is overtaxed, and you must rest. Your body is

weak, and it must be strengthened. You have

nervous prostration, and must be treated for it."

Science objects to all this, contending for the rights of in-

telligence and asserting that Mind controls body and brain.

Divine strength

Mind-science teaches that mortals need "not be weary

in well doing." It dissipates fatigue in doing

good. Giving does not impoverish us in the

service of our Maker, neither does withholding enrich us.

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We have strength in proportion to our apprehension of

the truth, and our strength is not lessened by giving

utterance to truth. A cup of coffee or tea is not the equal

of truth, whether for the inspiration of a sermon or for

the support of bodily endurance.

A denial of immortality

A communication purporting to come from the late

Theodore Parker reads as follows: "There never was,

and there never will be, an immortal spirit."

Yet the very periodical containing this sen-

tence repeats weekly the assertion that spirit-communica-

tions are our only proofs of immortality.

Mysticism unscientific

I entertain no doubt of the humanity and philanthropy

of many Spiritualists, but I cannot coincide with their

views. It is mysticism which gives spiritual-

ism its force. Science dispels mystery and

explains extraordinary phenomena; but Science never

removes phenomena from the domain of reason into the

realm of mysticism.

Physical falsities

It should not seem mysterious that mind, without the

aid of hands, can move a table, when we already know

that it is mind-power which moves both table

and hand. Even planchette - the French toy

which years ago pleased so many people - attested the con-

trol of mortal mind over its substratum, called matter.

It is mortal mind which convulses its substratum, matter.

These movements arise from the volition of human belief,

but they are neither scientific nor rational. Mortal mind

produces table-tipping as certainly as table-setting, and

believes that this wonder emanates from spirits and elec-

tricity. This belief rests on the common conviction that

mind and matter cooperate both visibly and invisibly,

hence that matter is intelligent.

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Poor post-mortem evidence

There is not so much evidence to prove intercommuni-

cation between the so-called dead and the living, as there

is to show the sick that matter suffers and has

sensation; yet this latter evidence is destroyed by

the Mind-science. If Spiritualists understood the

Science of being, their belief in mediumship would vanish.

No proof of immortality

At the very best and on its own theories, spiritualism

can only prove that certain individuals have a continued

existence after death and maintain their affili-

ation with mortal flesh; but this fact affords

no certainty of everlasting life. A man's assertion that

he is immortal no more proves him to be so, than the op-

posite assertion, that he is mortal, would prove immor-

tality a lie. Nor is the case improved when alleged spirits

teach immortality. Life, Love, Truth, is the only proof

of immortality.

Mind's manifestations immortal

Man in the likeness of God as revealed in Science can-

not help being immortal. Though the grass seemeth to

wither and the flower to fade, they reappear.

Erase the figures which express number, silence

the tones of music, give to the worms the body

called man, and yet the producing, governing, divine

Principle lives on, - in the case of man as truly as in

the case of numbers and of music, - despite the so-called

laws of matter, which define man as mortal. Though

the inharmony resulting from material sense hides the

harmony of Science, inharmony cannot destroy the divine

Principle of Science. In Science, man's immortality de-

pends upon that of God, good, and follows as a necessary

consequence of the immortality of good.

Reading thoughts

That somebody, somewhere, must have known the

deceased person, supposed to be the communicator, is

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evident, and it is as easy to read distant thoughts as near.

We think of an absent friend as easily as we do of one

present. It is no more difficult to read the

absent mind than it is to read the present.

Chaucer wrote centuries ago, yet we still read his thought

in his verse. What is classic study, but discernment of

the minds of Homer and Virgil, of whose personal exist-

ence we may be in doubt?

Impossible intercommunion

If spiritual life has been won by the departed, they

cannot return to material existence, because different

states of consciousness are involved, and one

person cannot exist in two different states of

consciousness at the same time. In sleep we

do not communicate with the dreamer by our side despite

his physical proximity, because both of us are either un-

conscious or are wandering in our dreams through differ-

ent mazes of consciousness.

In like manner it would follow, even if our departed

friends were near us and were in as conscious a state of

existence as before the change we call death, that their

state of consciousness must be different from ours. We

are not in their state, nor are they in the mental realm

in which we dwell. Communion between them and

ourselves would be prevented by this difference. The

mental states are so unlike, that intercommunion is as

impossible as it would be between a mole and a human

being. Different dreams and different awakenings be-

token a differing consciousness. When wandering in

Australia, do we look for help to the Esquimaux in their

snow huts?

In a world of sin and sensuality hastening to a

greater development of power, it is wise earnestly to

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consider whether it is the human mind or the divine

Mind which is influencing one. What the prophets of

Jehovah did, the worshippers of Baal failed to do; yet

artifice and delusion claimed that they could equal the

work of wisdom.

Science only can explain the incredible good and evil

elements now coming to the surface. Mortals must find

refuge in Truth in order to escape the error of these latter

days. Nothing is more antagonistic to Christian Science

than a blind belief without understanding, for such a

belief hides Truth and builds on error.

Natural wonders

Miracles are impossible in Science, and here Science

takes issue with popular religions. The scientific mani-

festation of power is from the divine nature

and is not supernatural, since Science is an

explication of nature. The belief that the universe, in-

cluding man, is governed in general by material laws, but

that occasionally Spirit sets aside these laws, - this be-

lief belittles omnipotent wisdom, and gives to matter the

precedence over Spirit.

Conflicting standpoints

It is contrary to Christian Science to suppose that life

is either material or organically spiritual. Between

Christian Science and all forms of superstition

a great gulf is fixed, as impassable as that be-

tween Dives and Lazarus. There is mortal mind-reading

and immortal Mind-reading. The latter is a revelation

of divine purpose through spiritual understanding, by

which man gains the divine Principle and explanation of

all things. Mortal mind-reading and immortal Mind-

reading are distinctly opposite standpoints, from which

cause and effect are interpreted. The act of reading

mortal mind investigates and touches only human beliefs.

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Science is immortal and coordinate neither with the

premises nor with the conclusions of mortal beliefs.

Scientific foreseeing

The ancient prophets gained their foresight from a

spiritual, incorporeal standpoint, not by foreshadowing

evil and mistaking fact for fiction, - predict-

ing the future from a groundwork of corpo-

reality and human belief. When sufficiently advanced

in Science to be in harmony with the truth of being, men

become seers and prophets involuntarily, controlled not

by demons, spirits, or demigods, but by the one Spirit.

It is the prerogative of the ever-present, divine Mind, and

of thought which is in rapport with this Mind, to know

the past, the present, and the future.

Acquaintance with the Science of being enables us to

commune more largely with the divine Mind, to foresee

and foretell events which concern the universal welfare,

to be divinely inspired, - yea, to reach the range of fetter-

less Mind.

The Mind unbounded

To understand that Mind is infinite, not bounded by

corporeality, not dependent upon the ear and eye for

sound or sight nor upon muscles and bones

for locomotion, is a step towards the Mind-

science by which we discern man's nature and existence.

This true conception of being destroys the belief of spirit-

ualism at its very inception, for without the concession of

material personalities called spirits, spiritualism has no

basis upon which to build.

Scientific foreknowing

All we correctly know of Spirit comes from God, divine

Principle, and is learned through Christ and Christian

Science. If this Science has been thoroughly

learned and properly digested, we can know

the truth more accurately than the astronomer can read

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the stars or calculate an eclipse. This Mind-reading

is the opposite of clairvoyance. It is the illumination of

the spiritual understanding which demonstrates the ca-

pacity of Soul, not of material sense. This Soul-sense

comes to the human mind when the latter yields to the

divine Mind.

Value of intuition

Such intuitions reveal whatever constitutes and per-

petuates harmony, enabling one to do good, but not

evil. You will reach the perfect Science of

healing when you are able to read the human

mind after this manner and discern the error you would

destroy. The Samaritan woman said: "Come, see a

man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this

the Christ?"

It is recorded that Jesus, as he once journeyed with his

students, "knew their thoughts," - read them scientifi-

cally. In like manner he discerned disease and healed

the sick. After the same method, events of great mo-

ment were foretold by the Hebrew prophets. Our

Master rebuked the lack of this power when he said:

"O ye hypocrites! ye can discern the face of the sky;

but can ye not discern the signs of the times?"

Hyprocrisy condemned

Both Jew and Gentile may have had acute corporeal

senses, but mortals need spiritual sense. Jesus knew the

generation to be wicked and adulterous, seek-

ing the material more than the spiritual. His

thrusts at materialism were sharp, but needed. He never

spared hypocrisy the sternest condemnation.. He said :

"These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other

undone." The great Teacher knew both cause and

effect, knew that truth communicates itself but never

imparts error.

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Mental contact

Jesus once asked, "Who touched me?" Supposing

this inquiry to be occasioned by physical contact alone,

his disciples answered, "The multitude throng

thee." Jesus knew, as others did not, that

it was not matter, but mortal mind, whose touch called

for aid. Repeating his inquiry, he was answered by the

faith of a sick woman. His quick apprehension of this

mental call illustrated his spirituality. The disciples'

misconception of it uncovered their materiality. Jesus

possessed more spiritual susceptibility than the disciples.

Opposites come from contrary directions, and produce

unlike results.

Images of thought

Mortals evolve images of thought. These may appear

to the ignorant to be apparitions; but they are myste-

rious only because it is unusual to see

thoughts, though we can always feel their

influence. Haunted houses, ghostly voices, unusual

noises, and apparitions brought out in dark seances

either involve feats by tricksters, or they are images and

sounds evolved involuntarily by mortal mind. Seeing

is no less a quality of physical sense than feeling. Then

why is it more difficult to see a thought than to feel one?

Education alone determines the difference. In reality

there is none.

Phenomena explained

Portraits, landscape-paintings, fac-similes of penman-

ship, peculiarities of expression, recollected sentences,

can all be taken from pictorial thought and

memory as readily as from objects cognizable

by the senses. Mortal mind sees what it believes as

certainly as it believes what it sees. It feels, hears, and

sees its own thoughts. Pictures are mentally formed

before the artist can convey them to canvas. So is it

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with all material conceptions. Mind-readers perceive

these pictures of thought. They copy or reproduce

them, even when they are lost to the memory of the mind

in which they are discoverable.

Mental environment

It is needless for the thought or for the person hold-

ing the transferred picture to be individually and con-

sciously present. Though individuals have

passed away, their mental environment re-

mains to be discerned, described, and transmitted. Though

bodies are leagues apart and their associations forgotten,

their associations float in the general atmosphere of human

mind.

Second sight

The Scotch call such vision "second sight", when

really it is first sight instead of second, for it presents

primal facts to mortal mind. Science enables

one to read the human mind, but not as a

clairvoyant. It enables one to heal through Mind, but

not as a mesmerist.

Buried secrets

The mine knows naught of the emeralds within its

rocks; the sea is ignorant of the gems within its caverns,

of the corals, of its sharp reefs, of the tall ships

that float on its bosom, or of the bodies which

lie buried in its sands: yet these are all there. Do not

suppose that any mental concept is gone because you do

not think of it. The true concept is never lost. The

strong impressions produced on mortal mind by friend-

ship or by any intense feeling are lasting, and mind-

readers can perceive and reproduce these impressions.

Recollected friends

Memory may reproduce voices long ago silent. We

have but to close the eyes, and forms rise

before us, which are thousands of miles away

or altogether gone from physical sight and sense, and

PAGE 88

this not in dreamy sleep. In our day-dreams we can

recall that for which the poet Tennyson expressed the

heart's desire, -

the touch of a vanished hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still.

The mind may even be cognizant of a present flavor and

odor, when no viand touches the palate and no scent

salutes the nostrils.

Illusions not ideas

How are veritable ideas to be distinguished from il-

lusions? By learning the origin of each. Ideas are

emanations from the divine Mind. Thoughts,

proceeding from the brain or from matter, are

offshoots of mortal mind; they are mortal material be-

liefs. Ideas are spiritual, harmonious, and eternal. Beliefs

proceed from the so-called material senses, which at one

time are supposed to be substance-matter and at another

are called spirits.

To love one's neighbor as one's self, is a divine idea;

but this idea can never be seen, felt, nor understood

through the physical senses. Excite the organ of ven-

eration or religious faith, and the individual manifests

profound adoration. Excite the opposite development,

and he blasphemes. These effects, however, do not pro-

ceed from Christianity, nor are they spiritual phenomena,

for both arise from mortal belief.

Trance speaking illusion

Eloquence re-echoes the strains of Truth and Love.

It is due to inspiration rather than to erudition. It shows

the possibilities derived from divine Mind,

though it is said to be a gift whose endowment

is obtained from books or received from the

impulsion of departed spirits. When eloquence proceeds

from the belief that a departed spirit is speaking, who

PAGE 89

can tell what the unaided medium is incapable of know-

ing or uttering? This phenomenon only shows that the

beliefs of mortal mind are loosed. Forgetting her igno-

rance in the belief that another mind is speaking through

her, the devotee may become unwontedly eloquent. Hav-

ing more faith in others than in herself, and believing

that somebody else possesses her tongue and mind, she

talks freely.

Destroy her belief in outside aid, and her eloquence

disappears. The former limits of her belief return. She

says, " I am incapable of words that glow, for I am un-

educated." This familiar instance reaffirms the Scrip-

tural word concerning a man, "As he thinketh in his heart,

so is he." If one believes that he cannot be an orator with-

out study or a superinduced condition, the body responds

to this belief, and the tongue grows mute which before

was eloquent.

Scientific improvisation

Mind is not necessarily dependent upon educational

processes. It possesses of itself all beauty and poetry,

and the power of expressing them. Spirit,

God, is heard when the senses are silent. We

are all capable of more than we do. The influence or

action of Soul confers a freedom, which explains the phe-

nomena of improvisation and the fervor of untutored lips.

Divine origination

Matter is neither intelligent nor creative. The tree is

not the author of itself. Sound is not the originator of

music, and man is not the father of man. Cain

very naturally concluded that if life was in the

body, and man gave it, man had the right to take it away.

This incident shows that the belief of life in matter was

"a murderer from the beginning."

If seed is necessary to produce wheat, and wheat to

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produce flour, or if one animal can originate another,

how then can we account for their primal origin? How

were the loaves and fishes multiplied on the shores of

Galilee, - and that, too, without meal or monad from

which loaf or fish could come?

Mind is substance

The earth's orbit and the imaginary line called the

equator are not substance. The earth's motion and

position are sustained by Mind alone. Divest

yourself of the thought that there can be sub-

stance in matter, and the movements and transitions now

possible for mortal mind will be found to be equally

possible for the body. Then being will be recognized

as spiritual, and death will be obsolete, though now

some insist that death is the necessary prelude to

immortality.

Mortal delusions

In dreams we fly to Europe and meet a far-off friend.

The looker-on sees the body in bed, but the supposed

inhabitant of that body carries it through

the air and over the ocean. This shows the

possibilities of thought. Opium and hashish eaters men-

tally travel far and work wonders, yet their bodies stay

in one place. This shows what mortal mentality and

knowledge are.

Scientific finalities

The admission to one's self that man is God's own like-

ness sets man free to master the infinite idea. This con-

viction shuts the door on death, and opens it

wide towards immortality. The understanding

and recognition of Spirit must finally come, and we may

as well improve our time in solving the mysteries of being

through an apprehension of divine Principle. At present

we know not what man is, but we certainly shall know

this when man reflects God.

PAGE 91

The Revelator tells us of "a new heaven and a

new earth." Have you ever pictured this heaven and

earth, inhabited by beings under the control of supreme

wisdom?

Let us rid ourselves of the belief that man is separated

from God, and obey only the divine principle, Life and

Love. Here is the great point of departure for all true

spiritual growth.

Man's genuine being

It is difficult for the sinner to accept divine Science,

because Science exposes his nothingness; but the sooner

error is reduced to its native nothingness, the

sooner man's great reality will appear and his

genuine being will be understood. The destruction of

error is by no means the destruction of Truth or Life, but

is the acknowledgment of them.

Absorbed in material selfhood we discern and reflect

but faintly the substance of Life or Mind. The denial of

material selfhood aids the discernment of man's spirit-

ual and eternal individuality, and destroys the erroneous

knowledge gained from matter or through what are termed

the material senses.

Erroneous postulates

Certain erroneous postulates should be here considered

in order that the spiritual facts may be better

apprehended.

The first erroneous postulate of belief is, that substance,

life, and intelligence are something apart from God.

The second erroneous postulate is, that man is both

mental and material.

The third erroneous postulate is, that mind is both evil

and good; whereas the real Mind cannot be evil nor the

medium of evil, for Mind is God.

The fourth erroneous postulate is, that matter is in-

PAGE 92

telligent, and that man has a material body which is part

of himself.

The fifth erroneous postulate is, that matter holds in

itself the issues of life and death, - that matter is not

only capable of experiencing pleasure and pain, but also

capable of imparting these sensations. From the illusion

implied in this last postulate arises the decomposition of

mortal bodies in what is termed death.

Mind is not an entity within the cranium with the power

of sinning now and forever.

Knowledge of good and evil

In old Scriptural pictures we see a serpent coiled around

the tree of knowledge and speaking to Adam and Eve.

This represents the serpent in the act of

commending to our first parents the knowl-

edge of good and evil, a knowledge gained from matter,

or evil, instead of from Spirit. The portrayal is still

graphically accurate, for the common conception of mor-

tal man - a burlesque of God's man - is an outgrowth

of human knowledge or sensuality, a mere offshoot of

material sense.

Opposing power

Uncover error, and it turns the lie upon you. Until

the fact concerning error - namely, its nothingness -

appears, the moral demand will not be met,

and the ability to make nothing of error will

be wanting. We should blush to call that real which is

only a mistake. The foundation of evil is laid on a belief

in something besides God. This belief tends to support

two opposite powers, instead of urging the claims of Truth

alone. The mistake of thinking that error can be real,

when it is merely the absence of truth, leads to belief in

the superiority of error.

The age's privilege

Do you say the time has not yet come in which to

PAGE 93

recognize Soul as substantial and able to control the

body? Remember Jesus, who nearly nineteen centuries

ago demonstrated the power of Spirit and said,

"He that believeth on me, the works that I

do shall he do also," and who also said, "But the hour

cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall

worship the Father in spirit and in truth." "Behold,

now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of sal-

vation," said Paul.

Logic and revelation

Divine logic and revelation coincide. If we believe

otherwise, we may be sure that either our

logic is at fault or that we have misinterpreted

revelation. Good never causes evil, nor creates aught

that can cause evil.

Good does not create a mind susceptible of causing

evil, for evil is the opposing error and not the truth of

creation. Destructive electricity is not the offspring of in-

finite good. Whatever contradicts the real nature of the

divine Esse, though human faith may clothe it with angelic

vestments, is without foundation.

Derivatives of spirit

The belief that Spirit is finite as well as infinite has

darkened all history. In Christian Science, Spirit, as a

proper noun, is the name of the Supreme Being.

It means quantity and quality, and applies ex-

clusively to God. The modifying derivatives of the word

spirit refer only to quality, not to God. Man is spiritual.

He is not God, Spirit. If man were Spirit, then men

would be spirits, gods. Finite spirit would be mortal,

and this is the error embodied in the belief that the infi-

nite can be contained in the finite. This belief tends to

becloud our apprehension of the kingdom of heaven and

of the reign of harmony in the Science of being.

PAGE 94

Scientific man

Jesus taught but one God, one Spirit, who makes man

in the image and likeness of Himself, - of Spirit, not of

matter. Man reflects infinite Truth, Life, and

Love. The nature of man, thus understood,

includes all that is implied by the terms "image" and

"likeness" as used in Scripture. The truly Christian

and scientific statement of personality and of the relation

of man to God, with the demonstration which accompa-

nied it, incensed the rabbis, and they said: "Crucify him,

crucify him . . . by our law he ought to die, because he

made himself the Son of God."

The eastern empires and nations owe their false gov-

ernment to the misconceptions of Deity there prevalent.

Tyranny, intolerance, and bloodshed, wherever found,

arise from the belief that the infinite is formed after the

pattern of mortal personality, passion, and impulse.

Ingratitude and denial

The progress of truth confirms its claims, and our

Master confirmed his words by his works. His healing-

power evoked denial, ingratitude, and be-

trayal, arising from sensuality. Of the ten

lepers whom Jesus healed, but one returned to give God

thanks, - that is, to acknowledge the divine Principle

which had healed him.

Spiritual insight

Our Master easily read the thoughts of mankind, and

this insight better enabled him to direct those thoughts

aright; but what would be said at this period of an in-

fidel blasphemer who should hint that Jesus used his in-

cisive power injuriously? Our Master read mortal mind

on a scientific basis, that of the omnipresence of Mind.

An approximation of this discernment indicates spiritual

growth and union with the infinite capacities of the one

Mind. Jesus could injure no one by his Mind-reading.

PAGE 95

The effect of his Mind was always to heal and to save,

and this is the only genuine Science of reading mortal

mind. His holy motives and aims were tra-

duced by the sinners of that period, as they

would be to-day if Jesus were personally present. Paul

said, "To be spiritually minded is life." We approach

God, or Life, in proportion to our spirituality, our fidel-

ity to Truth and Love; and in that ratio we know all

human need and are able to discern the thought of the

sick and the sinning for the purpose of healing them.

Error of any kind cannot hide from the law of God.

Whoever reaches this point of moral culture and good-

ness cannot injure others, and must do them good. The

greater or lesser ability of a Christian Scientist to discern

thought scientifically, depends upon his genuine spirit-

uality. This kind of mind-reading is not clairvoyance,

but it is important to success in healing, and is one of the

special characteristics thereof.

Christ's reappearance

We welcome the increase of knowledge and the end

of error, because even human invention must have its

day, and we want that day to be succeeded

by Christian Science, by divine reality. Mid-

night foretells the dawn. Led by a solitary star amid

the darkness, the Magi of old foretold the Messiahship

of Truth. Is the wise man of to-day believed, when he

beholds the light which heralds Christ's eternal dawn

and describes its effulgence?

Spiritual awakening

Lulled by stupefying illusions, the world is asleep

in the cradle of infancy, dreaming away the hours.

Material sense does not unfold the facts of

existence; but spiritual sense lifts human

consciousness into eternal Truth. Humanity advances

PAGE 96

slowly out of sinning sense into spiritual understanding;

unwillingness to learn all things rightly, binds Christen-

dom with chains.

The darkest hours of all

Love will finally mark the hour of harmony, and spir-

itualization will follow, for Love is Spirit. Before error

is wholly destroyed, there will be interrup-

tions of the general material routine. Earth

will become dreary and desolate, but summer and winter,

seedtime and harvest (though in changed forms), will

continue unto the end, - until the final spiritualization of

all things. "The darkest hour precedes the dawn."

Arena of contest

This material world is even now becoming the arena

for conflicting forces. On one side there will be discord

and dismay; on the other side there will be

Science and peace. The breaking up of mate-

rial beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want

and woe, sin, sickness, and death, which assume new

phases until their nothingness appears. These disturb-

ances will continue until the end of error, when all

discord will be swallowed up in spiritual Truth.

Mortal error will vanish in a moral chemicalization.

This mental fermentation has begun, and will continue

until all errors of belief yield to understanding. Belief is

changeable, but spiritual understanding is changeless.

Millennial glory

As this consummation draws nearer, he who has

shaped his course in accordance with divine Science

will endure to the end. As material knowl-

edge diminishes and spiritual understanding

increases, real objects will be apprehended mentally

instead of materially.

During this final conflict, wicked minds will endeavor

to find means by which to accomplish more evil; but

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those who discern Christian Science will hold crime in

check. They will aid in the ejection of error. They

will maintain law and order, and cheerfully await the

certainty of ultimate perfection.

Dangerous resemblances

In reality, the more closely error simulates truth and

so-called matter resembles its essence, mortal mind, the

more impotent error becomes as a belief. Ac-

cording to human belief, the lightning is fierce

and the electric current swift, yet in Christian Science

the flight of one and the blow of the other will become

harmless. The more destructive matter becomes, the

more its nothingness will appear, until matter reaches

its mortal zenith in illusion and forever disappears. The

nearer a false belief approaches truth without passing

the boundary where, having been destroyed by divine

Love, it ceases to be even an illusion, the riper it becomes

for destruction. The more material the belief, the more

obvious its error, until divine Spirit, supreme in its do-

main, dominates all matter, and man is found in the like-

ness of Spirit, his original being.

The broadest facts array the most falsities against

themselves, for they bring error from under cover. It

requires courage to utter truth; for the higher Truth

lifts her voice, the louder will error scream, until its in-

articulate sound is forever silenced in oblivion.

"He uttered His voice, the earth melted." This Scrip-

ture indicates that all matter will disappear before the

supremacy of Spirit.

Christianity still rejected

Christianity is again demonstrating the Life that is

Truth, and the Truth that is Life, by the apos-

tolic work of casting out error and healing the

sick. Earth has no repayment for the persecutions which

PAGE 98

attend a new step in Christianity; but the spiritual recom-

pense of the persecuted is assured in the elevation of ex-

istence above mortal discord and in the gift of divine Love.

Spiritual foreshadowings

The prophet of to-day beholds in the mental horizon

the signs of these times, the reappearance of the Chris-

tianity which heals the sick and destroys error,

and no other sign shall be given. Body can-

not be saved except through Mind. The Science of Chris-

tianity is misinterpreted by a material age, for it is the

healing influence of Spirit (not spirits) which the material

senses cannot comprehend, which can only be spiritu-

ally discerned. Creeds, doctrines, and human hypotheses

do not express Christian Science; much less can they

demonstrate it.

Revelation of Science

Beyond the frail premises of human beliefs, above the

loosening grasp of creeds, the demonstration of Christian

Mind-healing stands a revealed and practical

Science. It is imperious throughout all ages

as Christ's revelation of Truth, of Life, and of Love, which

remains inviolate for every man to understand and to

practise.

Science as foreign to all religion

For centuries - yea, always - natural science has not

been considered a part of any religion, Christianity not

excepted. Even now multitudes consider that

which they call science has no proper con-

nection with faith and piety. Mystery does

not enshroud Christ's teachings, and they are not theo-

retical and fragmentary, but practical and complete; and

being practical and complete, they are not deprived of

their essential vitality.

Key to the kingdom

The way through which immortality and life are learned

is not ecclesiastical but Christian, not human but divine,

PAGE 99

not physical but metaphysical, not material but scien-

tifically spiritual. Human philosophy, ethics, and super-

stition afford no demonstrable divine Principle

by which mortals can escape from sin; yet

to escape from sin, is what the Bible demands. "Work

out your own salvation with fear and trembling," says

the apostle, and he straightway adds: "for it is God

which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good

pleasure" (Philippians ii. 12, 13). Truth has furnished

the key to the kingdom, and with this key Christian Sci-

ence has opened the door of the human understanding.

None may pick the lock nor enter by some other door.

The ordinary teachings are material and not spiritual.

Christian Science teaches only that which is spiritual and

divine, and not human. Christian Science is unerring

and Divine; the human sense of things errs because it

is human.

Those individuals, who adopt theosophy, spiritualism,

or hypnotism, may possess natures above some others

who eschew their false beliefs. Therefore my contest is

not with the individual, but with the false system. I

love mankind, and shall continue to labor and to endure.

The calm, strong currents of true spirituality, the

manifestations of which are health, purity, and self-

immolation, must deepen human experience, until the

beliefs of material existence are seen to be a bald imposi-

tion, and sin, disease, and death give everlasting place

to the scientific demonstration of divine Spirit and to

God's spiritual, perfect man.

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