By MARY BAKER EDDY

 

Discoverer and Founder of

 

Christian Science and Author of Its Textbook

 

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

 

 

Title Copyright December 19, 1900

 

By Mary Baker Eddy

 

 

I have from the beginning of my labors uniformly associated man and woman in all endeavors to demonstrate Christian Science, physically, morally, and spiritually. I have given the preponderance to the masculine element in my organizations for carrying out the functions of Christian Science. There is but one woman to three men on the Board of Education. The Board of Trustees are all men. The Board of Directors of The Mother Church are all men; the Board of Lectureship has eleven men and two women. The Publication Committees all are men.

 

God is All-in-all. He is masculine, feminine, neuter. He is the Father and Mother of the universe. What need, then, of procreation or sex, since God is the only Creator, and all is made that can be made quite unconsciously of sex or gender?

 

Herein we show no usurpation of power on the part of woman, either in the Principle, the rules, or the organization of Christian Science. The equality of man and woman is established in the premises of this Science. God made them male and female from the beginning, and they were in His image and likeness-not images, but image. In the divine Mind there is no sex, no sexuality, and no procreation: the infinite Mind includes all in Mind.

 

If there were minds many, there would be gods many, and we should lose monotheism at the start; but Christian Science maintains one God throughout. If God has at any period bestowed a superabundance of His image and likeness on man more than on woman, or vice versa, He is not an impartial God; whereas the Scripture informs us- that God is no respecter of persons. If at any period the reflection of the masculinity of God seems more apparent and desirable to the human senses than the reflection of His femininity, it is because the human perception, apprehension, and understanding have not kept pace with the divine Love and order that characterize the period which manifests the dual nature of God, and the equality of man and woman.

 

The era of Christian Science never had a beginning; it always was. The human date, or Christian era, began practically with the advent of our Lord and Master, the Galilean prophet. The masculine element has had precedence in history; but the history of time is temporal--it is not eternal--and the precedents of time belong to the human and material and temporal-the antipodes of God. The divine data are forever spiritual and eternal. The masculine element must not murmur if at some period in human history time should take a turn in behalf of woman, and say her time has come, and the reflection of God's feminine nature is permitted consideration, has come to the front, and will be heard and understood. Then the mandate human will appeal to man by works more than by words, and these shall declare whether Love is usurpation, or God's law, and whether the feminine element is less beneficial to mankind than the masculine.

 

At such a juncture I would not dislike to be referee; I would declare that one was not less, nor more, important in God's sight than the other, and that in the divine order they both originated in One, and as one, and should continue thus without taint of sexuality. Why you admit that God's order has been infringed, and made to represent -two sides of a sphere so-called, instead of the round whole. This digression came from suggestion, even the lie, and the liar that from the beginning was the father of the lie: hence this lie was the so-called opposite of God, and, confirms the present fact in Science that God has no opposite, since a lie is never true This departure from Truth commenced with the words sex, sexuality, sensuousness, matter; and these are the objective state of what is called mind separated from God, the one Mind. The plurality of mind sprang from just this falsity. And the question of woman's wrongs and woman's rights sprang from the dire effect of one lie producing another, till the offspring of error mooted these questions to relieve its own creation. Divine Metaphysics, which includes the sum total of all being, will finally answer and solve all questions in Science.

 

Now, then, let us return to God, to the divine Principle of the universe including man; we shall find therein no occasion for departure, no occasion for strife, no, suggestion of pre-eminence, or disseverance of the masculine and feminine elements of God's creating-no question of whom shall be the greatest. Then the kingdom of heaven will be here and everywhere, and the one Father-Mother God and His children will be understood from everlasting to everlasting.

 

The so-called devil has always been at war with the divine; but, thank God, there is no power in a lie. Truth reigns. Discord may seem to antagonize harmony, but harmony cannot be touched by it. It is a divine Principle--eternal, immutable. If the so-called devil would fight with God over the comparative rights of His creation, and man and woman, his Satanic majesty must succumb to the overrulings of divine Love. Christian Scientists cannot afford to drop their weight into the scale of evil on this topic, or on any other that conflicts with one God, one Mind, the Sermon on the Mount, and the recognition that woman is not least because last at the cross and first at the sepulchre--the last to linger in tender ministrations of love, and the first to discern the Christ idea--the life that is everlasting, that knows no pain, no death, no severance from Love--that burst the tomb victorious over the grave, sin, disease, and death.

 

The feminine weakness that talks when it has nothing to say, that gossips, slanders, unwittingly or unconsciously, that envies or scorns where it should only pity, is out of line with being in Science, and in line with the masculine element that robs innocence of purity, and peoples of liberty and life, in the name of the rights of might. These are indeed dark stains on the brighter disk of humanity. But God's dear love washes away these plague spots, and divine Science makes clean the inside of the platter, unselfs the human, and gives back the divine. "To err is human, to forgive, divine."

 

In Christian Science God is demonstrable Life, Truth, and Love, and we live in Him only as we love God and man.

 

Along the lines of evil is the role of lamentation over the sins of others, not, however, the lamentation of the prophet, just and reformatory. Failing in one act, evil quickly lifts the curtain on another. But the scene shifts, and behold a woman! --the almond blossom upon her head, busy hands and pen, never leaving the post of duty, but week after week, month after month, and year after year, toiling, watching, praying, and sending forth messages of God's dear love over all the earth. No remuneration, save the blessing it brings to mankind, compensates such a life: hence her refusal thereof, and joy to share the income from her books with the needy ones of earth and for life's best objects.

 

No person understands Christian Science who regards a corporeal man or woman as a Christ. The very nature, premise, and conclusion of God and man is sullied by such a thought. Christ is incorporeal. Jesus, the prophet of Galilee, the man in flesh, was not his better part, or Christ apart from fleshliness; Christ was his Godlike nature, that never entered the material, temporal, or visible to human sight--that, as the Master saith, dwelt forever in heaven. Christ was the Son of God; Jesus was the son of Mary: hence the distinction he made when alluding to himself as the Son of God and the son of man. This dual nature divine Metaphysics clearly explains, and human nature must not becloud the interpretation of God and man.