Class of 1923 Notes

by Joseph G. Mann, C.S.D.




Table of Contents




First Day

I do not know whether this is the time to read from my old manuscripts, or whether they will mean more to this class than to any previous class. Perhaps you noticed in the Sentinel a few weeks ago the Directors wrote a little article on notes. Before that appeared, this has been the customary way I have presented that to the classes. The classes in those days used to demur a little and wonder why they could not take a little something. They almost disobeyed my special request. This was the point I used to read to them:

“I warn the class not to develop a personal friendship during the class term. Students will not take notes in class nor out of it, as so doing turns the thought toward the letter rather than the Spirit of Science. Nor should any student try to remember a point. What is understood needs not to be remembered.”

I was glad to see the Directors give to the Field this thought of taking notes, for it tends to unify or harmonize teaching. Students must accept this by faith, if not otherwise. When you do not have to remember it makes it much easier, than to be troubled about many things.

Is it easier for you to accept this now that the Directors have given this hint to the Field, or can you see the reasonableness of it regardless of anything that can be said?

Memory you will find is a human product, and I want to invite you at the very outset to ask questions until the point under discussion is clear; and if we dwell upon one question during a class session, do not let any point go by without your having a satisfactory resting place for it. I do not mean that you will understand everything so clearly that you will bring it to actual demonstration, but that everything should rest peacefully; at least your faith should accept it. Everything should be at least so clear to you as to enable you to accept by faith what is scientifically taught.

What is the value of Christian Science? When rightly appreciated does all the world compare with it? I bring that before you for a special reason. You are not able to answer that question from experience. But to somebody, the pioneer worker for instance, or Mrs. Eddy when she discovered Christian Science, it must have meant more than all the world in comparison. I am here preaching Christian Science after practicing it for years, because it means more to me than anything in the world. Perhaps some of you feel that it means much to you; but examine yourselves for a moment and see if you are accepting it at its actual value.

The Master said that but one thing is needful, and that was to sit at his feet. “Mary hath chosen the better part.” The one thing needful, in the most impersonal light that we can put it, is to know or understand God. I should put it as radical as that. Nothing in the world is so necessary to us and the welfare of the world as to understand God. In that light it is the only thing in the world today that dares to contemplate an understanding of God, to say nothing about striving for it. It seems preposterous that we as Christian Scientists assume to understand God. I might make a radical statement which would shock you, something like this: This class today as we are assembled here is of more value to the world than all worldly councils put together, national or international. That is the estimate I put upon it. Our awakening to the understanding of God will mean more to the world for good than all that we hear about economics the world over, or what the world calls business, because we are going to touch the hem of sincerity, and that is more than you will find in the world. We are going to be actually sincere.

All students may not at once become practitioners, but all should at once learn enough of God not to be patients. If anyone has come into the class under treatment, please dismiss your practitioner after this lesson and do not estimate your health from the standpoint of sense. Be students absolutely. Those of you who are sufficiently inspired after the class instructions to become practitioners, may do so; but all should rise above the possibility of becoming patients. That is the great benefit of Christian Science instruction; it spoils the practice of the practitioners. There are practitioners who have a list of patients, and the longer the list the better pleased they are. I haven’t any list: I try to live so as not to have a patient. Even our little protégée in the house here, little Dick, isn’t a patient. He asked me very earnestly this morning, “Are you going to teach the class about Love, Dr. Mann?” He calls me doctor because the others who attended him first were doctors. That is what he says when anyone comes here. So even little Dick isn’t a patient; he is a little Love-student. He is just passing five.


Reading: “What is less than original or reflective is mesmeric. Individuality is originality, and there is no originality in anything that is less than a positive, individual reflection of Mind, – Mind as four-square Principle. Any imitative following is personal or mesmeric, whether suggested by Coué, Camp, or conscience. With a Christian Scientist the question must not be how Walter Camp puts joy into life, but how much does divine Love energize his daily living? The ‘daily dozen’ which your own mental aliveness evolves has the virtue and virility of unfolding originality; but lazily adopting another’s presumptuous pronouncements is negative and mesmeric.”


I am striking out for originality in this; just a hint. You notice how radical I dare to put this.

“Even the most conscientious personal following of Christ Jesus is only religiously self-mesmeric, as is the worshipful personal adoration of God Himself; to understand God scientifically is to reflect Him, – to reflect the infinite resourcefulness of divine Mind as the individual stars radiate upon each other the unspeakable glory of their Creator, without claiming an underived twinkle.”

Do not believe what Mr. Mann tells you. Do not accept anything I tell you blindly. My duty is to help to enlighten you to a point of understanding. Therefore, I need not warn you against quoting me outside of the class. Do not ever say in the future, “Mr. Mann said so and so…” because if you understand you can state a scientific fact without referring to me personally. We have one Leader, and we can safely quote from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. To quote the various teachers would result in confusion, and there would be no benefit to the world or the student. All in the class may hear me say a point, but all may not understand it the same. If you compare notes personally you may upset the natural unfoldment. Even husbands and wives should not discuss the points brought out here at home. Do not compare your impressions. Give God a chance, without any human intrusion.

What is God? That is the first question according to our outline of teaching, and it will be the last question and the only question really throughout the class term. You have this answered in Science and Health. Why isn’t that sufficient? Why have class instruction? There are those who valiantly decry the need of class instruction. Mrs. Eddy advocates it; tells about correct teaching in her books. There must be something in class teaching that isn’t printed. Not secrets.

As you read the Bible you read perhaps what most appeals to you, or according to your mood you seek that which you most naturally appreciate, grasp or understand, or get some satisfaction from. You read to the preservation of self, using that in its broader sense. You read that which is sense-pleasing; or you read sense-pleasingly. Teaching goes to the bottom of mortal mind, which exposes it in a way that it would not be self-exposed in reading. Mortals are still hiding from the light.

Few know the Truth, but there are those who really want to know it and they come for instructions. Science and Health is quite impersonal in its presentation of Truth. You read it and enjoy it as the religionist reads the Bible. You read Science and Health when you are sick, for a specific purpose. In order to understand mortal mind we have to riddle it from stem to stern, so to speak.

The practitioner deals with the effects, and the teacher heals the sin that produces the effects. The practitioner helps you over the bad effects of sin and the teacher has to arouse you out of the pleasurable beliefs of sin. Sin hides under the belief of pleasure. True practice, as our Leader says, is also teaching. “He who heals by teaching and teaches by healing, will graduate under divine honors.” So really there is no fundamental difference between teaching and healing, but in the class we dig down deep to the bottom of mortal mind.

Is there a student here who has come with some special point that he or she felt most concerned about? Have you a thought in reservation which you hope will be cleared up during class instruction? Have you come with the view of being healed of something special? No? I have a waiting class then. I wanted to find out whether you were holding on to anything.

There is always a tendency to help God a little. I said to an old student once, “It is a good thing you can’t do everything, else you would have no need of God.”

There are some who have come out of the old churches and some who never joined a church. Which of these two classes is the more receptive: the religious or the irreligious, so to speak? Which makes the better student? I am taking a little different turn in this class. I am exposing the mesmeric tendency from the beginning. There isn’t any difference between what we all religious mesmerism and the ordinary kind, except perhaps in degree. I do not mean those who have had a bit of faith before coming into Christian Science. Faith is always good. The only question is as to how much we have.

To be able to quote the Bible or Science and Health doesn’t necessarily imply understanding. I can tell the difference between understanding and quotation. In the class we are going to dispose of the books, as if they were not on earth. We are going to deal with Mind entirely.

So the only preparation is the preparation of the heart, – an earnest desire to want to know the Truth. It is well to be able to read, to be sure.

What is God? I want you to give me what seems to you the best sense of God. Whatever term you use I will recognize as your special trend of thought. There are seven terms. Have you ever thought that if you increased those terms it would not help any? Mrs. Eddy has covered the entire scope in those terms. According to the Biblical way of presenting it, the seven terms imply completeness. I am always anxious to find where each student stands in relation to the terms. I want to see whether there is a speck of reality behind your term. I get a good introduction to you by the way you express yourselves about God. Each of the seven terms implies substance. These definitions do not leave very much of a personal sense. I find you reaching out for a sense of Principle after all. Every one of these terms hints Principle.

All that is personal to our sense is dissolved in the contemplation of God. Every personal sense we have disappears in the true sense of God. Nothing that is personal has reality. The human concept of God is personal. How do we know that Christian Science gives us a divine concept; that it may not be speculation merely. The real good that is accomplished in the world comes from above the personal. Christian Science gives us a revealed sense of God, not a personal sense.

What do I mean by revelation? It is a mysterious thing outside of Christian Science. The minister used to tell us the book of Revelation isn’t to be understood now, but sometime later. If what is revealed isn’t to be appropriated now, why is it ever revealed? We might say it isn’t possible to get in touch with God; and that there is no hope of seeing God, except we perish. If one were a little more intellectually alive than another, he might give you a better opinion about God, and if his opinion of himself was pretty good he would give you a self-satisfying sense of God. He would talk about God.

I used to wish when I was a boy that I could pray as nicely as some of the old deacons; but the unfortunate point was I knew some of the deacons. I used to feel miserable because I couldn’t pray loud as the others. You can imagine the joy I felt when Christian Science taught me that I could pray in secret.

It is even more serious with us as Christian Scientists. If we are not consistent representatives of Christian Science in our lives, we bring reproach upon the Cause.

One of the deacons used to fill two-thirds of the barrel, – the first half, at any rate, – with inferior apples. We do not have to speak of any person in particular. The tendency of mortal mind is to deceive others without deceiving itself. In the world they do not know this. Science and Health tells us that “corporeal sense defrauds and lies; it breaks all the commandments of the Mosaic Decalogue to meet its own demands.” As Christian Scientists we need to be very careful to discriminate always in favor of Christian Science when our lives are not at par with it.

The question of God will continue to come up all through the class term. We are not going to answer this theoretically. We are going to answer it from the standpoint of understanding, and all our reasoning throughout the class will be based upon the true sense of God.


Student’s question: “Does an old student pray any differently than anyone else?”

I try to live on such good terms with the Almighty that I don’t have to ask Him for a special favor. There is only one way to pray. Prayer must be realization rather than petition. If you pray very humanly you have a very human prayer, and divine Love does not answer our prayers according to our human requests. Divine Love is typified by the sun, we will say. In order that the sun may shine it is just necessary for the cloud to evaporate. The sun shines without any special request in the degree that it is unobstructed. If you were in a cellar without any windows, the sun wouldn’t shine there. So the human sense of God keeps you in the cellar, or in the dark. What difference does it make what you say in a cellar? You couldn’t appeal to the sunlight to come through a stone wall. As the regeneration goes on, God is felt to be with us. Prayer is rather a conscious desire to know God. To formulate it in words, makes it so personal that it builds a stone wall without windows. I cannot tell you how I pray. It is a continuous prayer, rather than effort to pray. Your wholesome desire invites the sunshine. To know the Truth is the secret of Christian Science.

All those particular references, the effort to write for the benefit of others (in periodicals) is an overflow of one’s own heart. We make a very poor job of it. We think God is influenced by words for a while. The personal sense needs to be rebuked. We need to come out of the cellar, or at least knock a hole through the stone wall. The sun will shine into your house in the degree that you have windows that are clean. That is why the Apostle says, “Pray without ceasing.”

When you use the word Principle for God it hints Life, Truth, Love. Those seven terms radiate around the sense of Principle; are inherent. When Principle itself is used it hints the sum and substance of Truth, Life and Love, Soul, Mind, Spirit. The various shades and colors of Deity are indicated by those various terms. Job said, “The ear trieth words as the mouth tasteth meat.” We want to be very accurate in the use of words. Mind is Principle. You cannot think of Mind as circumscribed, any more than you can think of the atmosphere as being localized.

Is God self-created? Did God create Himself? Was God ever created? Do you mean to say that God is not self-evolved? I know we say that God has neither beginning nor end; but how did He come into being? How can we prove to the class that God never had a beginning? We may say He doesn’t end in our time, but we are not sure that at some time He will end. How can we prove that He is self-existent? How can we satisfy ourselves that God was originally self-existent? How can we reason it out so that we may be satisfied that there is a self-existent being, which means of course an eternal being? We ought to be able to convince even an atheist that there is a God. We ought not to blindly accept the Scripture or even Science and Health. We ought to have some practical, palpable conviction that we can put into words. It surely can be demonstrated; but the little demonstrations we have surely are not the end of the question.

You say God is Life, but it is only an assumption. Remember I said we are going to rule “Science and Health” out. We are not going to deal with this question from memory. Wouldn’t this be reasonable, that there is such a thing as appreciable intelligence in the world today; that is, we have a sense of intelligence as human beings. Insofar as it is human, it is counterfeit to be sure, but if there is a counterfeit intelligence there must be a genuine. Then we have scientific proof that God is self-existent regardless of time, for if intelligence were not a scientific fact, could it ever have come into being? Could something ever evolve itself out of nothing? You know the old legend, that before the earth was created God stood on a turtle, and it still brought up the question where stood the turtle?

If intelligence were not self-existent it could never have come into being, because it is impossible for something to come out of nothing. The sense of God which Science and Health gives us is a revelation. You and I accept it insofar as we are wise or inclined. We are enlightened and inspired by it, but it isn’t mind until we awaken to the point where we ourselves actually realize what has been revealed. Reading the revelation, turns them from personality, but if they live in the realm of memory or absorb what is revealed to another, they mesmerize themselves more and more until what is revealed to another has no meaning to them; and they go to different practitioners until they all get tired of them. Then they are thrown back on God. Our correct sense of God will concur with what has been revealed. Our individuality is what we are after. It is quite self-evident that God is self-existent. Intelligence was never evolved from non-intelligence. It didn’t grow into intelligence by degrees. If we admit that, we would have to assume it started somewhere. It is much more reasonable to assume it always was, than that it ever came into being.

The intelligence that is revealed to us as divine, is infinite. If the original self-existent intelligence was infinite, there is a scientific fact which precludes the possibility of intelligence or God being comprised of more than one quality. Infinite intelligence must imply infinite good. Infinite Life, Truth, good that is real, must be infinite in its self-containment. That does away with the duality of self-existence. Here we strike a sense of Principle. Real being never came into being. Now we know that, we accept it as a revealed scientific fact, but how can we reasonably convince ourselves and others that this is so? Say we are here, but not by chance. A sorry lot we are humanly considered, but nevertheless we are to be accounted for. We would not be here at all if there were not some original intelligence, for we have the assurance that something could not come out of nothing; and the original something always was. Time has nothing to do with it.

If God is at all, must not God be all? Is not that a logical scientific fact again? Original being or self-existence could not be limited. It is impossible that originality can be limited. If you had a chance to start things, would you be satisfied with starting them on a small basis? If you had the first claim, you would take in everything. Well, God was just as wise as we are as mortals. He didn’t give any other power a chance. He just made Himself all. God never created Himself. Humanly speaking, God had the first claim upon everything. I am speaking now very humanly, but we are bound to think of God as coming into being. God is self-existent; then when we say God is Love, it means something.

I speak of Dick again. I had promised to take him out for a ride in the automobile if the sun was shining. When he says Love will do a thing, it has a ring in it. To say something about tomorrow doesn’t mean much to him. He said, “When I get up again may I have a ride?” It happened that it was cloudy that morning but Dick was sure that Love would make the sun shine, and in the afternoon it finally did come out. It seems sacrilegious to think of theory in relation to that child; but we older ones have to learn according to the letter.

To preach about God is no proof of understanding God. The preacher has told the world from time immemorial that it must be better in order to escape damnation. Do you expect to be better as you understand Christian Science more? Then all you have to do is to be what you are. That is being God-like. God never gets better; He simply is. I wrote a little article on Being – “The Bliss of Bountiful Being.”


Student’s question: “Why did Mrs. Eddy arrange the synonyms for God in the way she did?”

I want to destroy all those mysterious interpretations. You are departing from the fact here. If the terms are synonymous, they cannot be a progressive unfoldment. Every term means God in His entirety.

Self-existence is only a revelation. The cloud hides the sun but never can reveal the sun. Finite sense is in the same relation to Mind as the cloud is to the sun. As the cloud evaporates or grows thinner, the sunlight radiates through it and its effect is seen humanly. Your own spiritual progress gives you a clearer sense of God; but spiritual progress implies the elimination of sense, – the putting off of sense, the purgation which purifies the mentality. There is no speculation about it, and there is no mysterious interpretation.

We are laying a foundation for all further reasoning. The clearness with which you handle every question in Science depends upon your true sense of God.

May I tell you what I said when I was healed? Upon opening my eyes from what the doctors had pronounced the death-stupor, the Scientist in attendance said to me, “Have no fear; God will heal you”; and I said, “It must be a different kind of a God than I have ever known.” I didn’t say that doubtingly. I had experienced a touch of healing before I had heard the word of God in Christian Science. I was unconscious when Christian Science found me. I awakened believing that he was telling me the truth, because I had experienced something which I could not deny, and so I said, “It must be a different kind of a God,” and so it was.

Does God, divine Mind, or intelligence, know Himself as God? God knows everything and He knows Himself, but does He know Himself as God? God is all. But there is still that unsettled question, Does He know Himself as God? Has God a need of a God? Only humans have a God. Is God a God to Himself? There is nothing higher than Himself. Humans have a God because they have nothing within themselves. To say God knows Himself as God, would mean that He would be looking up to Himself. God knows Himself, but He looks out from Himself, not up, as it were. Ever-present Principle is, but it isn’t Principle to itself. It simply is reality. There is no personal sense in God. Principle radiates itself, but to itself it is not God. Insofar as it is God it is human. We have a true sense of God as human beings that means a true self-denial. You cannot have a true sense of God and retain the human. As you approximate a true sense of God, you get rid of the human. The human sense of God is the false sense. Only as you awaken are you grasping the true sense. So it is the awakening to the true sense of God that destroys the personal sense.

You may talk and theorize about God until you are mesmerized into a certain mood, but it does not imply that you understand God. Insofar as you are doing this, you are mesmerizing yourself. A true sense of God healed me, and I consecrated my life to Christian Science before I could raise my head from the pillow. The first question I asked was, “Is this something I can learn and teach others?”

The power of demonstration must lie behind instruction, or it remains very light theory. It must be the “Yea, yea,” or “Nay, nay,” of Principle. It is either so or it isn’t so.

Is there a human conception of Principle? That is like asking, “Is there a human conception of God?” It is a very finite conception and not a true conception, if Principle or divine Intelligence conceives humanly, or conceives of itself humanly. God does not know Himself as we know Him, humanly speaking. If He did, He wouldn’t know Himself at all. God sees Himself divinely; He has an infinite conception of Himself. It is the living reality of your entire reasoning in business, or in the sick room, or wherever, that counts. When you get a true sense of God you do not have to be told by anybody what to think. “Day by day the manna fell.” You think from the standpoint of God, and it has to be evolved from within one’s own consciousness.

Do not accept anything that I say because I say it. Do not accept “Science and Health” because Science and Health says it. It is well to begin there, but find out why it is revealed and what reveals it.

Is there more than one Principle? How are you sure there is only one? Principle is intelligence, Mind. Can you conceive of limited Mind? Mind is original intelligence. Does not the fact that there is Mind, carry with it the correlated fact that Mind is infinite? Oneness and allness are one and the same thing. If Mind exists at all it must be infinite Mind, because the original self-existent intelligence has an infinite conception of itself. That seems simply a play upon words and yet it is the scientific fact, which fills you to the bursting point. You lose track of physicality and become conscious of individuality, – individuality which exists not by reason of physicality but in spite of it.

What is abstract to human sense is concrete to the awakening sense. We should awaken to an appreciable sense of God. There is nothing abstract about Him. His presence is appreciable. The revealed sense of God is a scientific sense, but comparatively few are awakened to the scientific sense; therefore, the great majority are believers. And if you are not careful, you will be touched by the religious sense right along. You will be more sanctimonious than scientific and sanctimoniousness preserves the personal, dresses it up neatly and makes it as inviting as possible. The scientific arouses us to regeneration, and we get the joy of reality by living from within out; the reality of individuality, superseding personality, – the reality of God with us, so that we can say conscientiously not only, but understandingly, as the Master said, “I thank thee Father that Thou hast heard me”; the sense that has reality to it.

What we call demonstration is far from final possibility. It may simply be the result of a quickened belief. Positive demonstration is not only subordinating the human but getting rid of the human. There isn’t any danger of getting rid of the human too soon. It will take some scurrying to get away from it. While it isn’t very troublesome you don’t hurry about it, but let me give you the assurance that I have lost nothing by coming into Christian Science very young. I have been in Science a good while and I have endeavored to sacrifice according to the Scripture, “Remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth, before the evil days draw nigh.”

Dickie plays vigorously and quite intelligently, but there is a maturity that runs through his life that is almost uncanny. His maturity that I hint at comes from his being healed at the verge of the grave. Awakening comes positively, in proportion to your reaching out to God.

I swore to the Father that if it is possible to do it, I do not want a student to go out of the class with a religious sense of God, – when they accept Science religiously instead of scientifically.

Please remember not to discuss the lessons. Deny yourselves the pleasure of talking about them and just listen to what God has to say while the class is in session. Then I have no doubt at all as to what the unfoldment will be to you. Keep yourselves uncontaminated from the outward human tendency to compare notes or enlighten each other. Try not to treat anybody while you are in class, and of course I do not want to prohibit, but do not be patients. Study your lessons but do not try to memorize.




Second Day

I will ask you first to present whatever question you may have this morning, because you probably have been thinking since yesterday.

Student’s question as to treating others during class term.

It might be carried to the extreme with profit. If you are active enough in Christian Science to have others come to you for help, wouldn’t it be well not to have any patients while you go through class? Would not the incentive of the class be better utilized by rising to that altitude which disposes of everything that claims to be a patient? Even practitioners become accustomed to patients and come to look for them; and the successful practitioners have a good many worldly things oftentimes, – successful practitioners, I mean, estimated from the financial standpoint. I have a Franklin now, – latest model.

I make that special incentive to you all to clean house; get rid of the old rubbish. You do not help people by holding them as patients or by making it convenient for them to come to you as an easy clearing house. All of my students have not kept themselves as clean along that line as they should. All Christian Scientists should have more pride in not having patients, than in having patients. The incentive gained should be a quickening to you that rids you of this easy hanging stuff.

Patients are well-meaning but they do not know what they need, or they would not come to you or to me. We should give them what they need rather than what they want. Tell them to look to God while you are going through class. Tell them you need all your time for class, and if they have faith enough to lean on God, you feel they will be blessed with you. I think you will be more restful in it, and you will bless them more than the religious treatment you can give them.

I have always steered clear of personal intermediatory help since I have come into Science. I have shunned practitioners. I want to make you real students, and that implies a certain definite knowledge of God which keeps you free but does not make you free. The very fact that it seems a little precarious, uncertain or doubtful, shows how humanly you are clinging. You have not had as much faith in God as this class is giving you. If you forget that you had a patient after the two weeks are over, do not try to recall it.

There is a peculiar thing about it, that sometimes when I have thought I had given the best treatment and expected the best results, the next report would be a miserable one; and when I thought I had failed to give a good treatment, I had a good report. Sense testimony is no criterion.

Appropriate what you get in the class to meet the needs that confront you always. Prove yourselves superior to any human besetment that confronts you. You do not have to say where you get it, in order to meet the human need confronting you. Utilize what you get in class. My special advice was for the purpose of forestalling this human argument, controversy, or contemplation that is simply philosophically stalking around, – that keeps us humanly contemplating when we should be listening to the Almighty.

Student’s question as to God not being created.

If God is self-existent He did not create Himself. What you are puzzled about is this, you are trying to grasp humanly how a thing that is, could be without coming into being. Do not try that; let the reasoning which we are bringing to bear appeal to you, and appeal to you sufficiently clearly as scientific reasoning. Let that reasoning be convincing to you, by faith perhaps; but do not try to grasp humanly what can only be grasped divinely. You are trying to grasp the sum total of infinite Mind through intellectuality instead of spirituality. It unfolds to you as human thought spiritualizes. An intellectual grasp is incompetent, incapable, but we can reason along human lines.

How do we know that there is a God?

You accept the fact that there must be a God, or must be good, somewhere or in some way, by reason of the fact that some of us have realized that and brought forth fruit that looked to you Godlike. That is only a belief so far. How do you know that individuality? How can you explain it to some one that doesn’t believe it? You would have to reason with them, just as you would count out your fingers, for instance, and thus appeal to even the youngest child. Right reasoning leads us to a scientific conclusion. Right reasoning reaches mankind generally, it matters not how unspiritual they may be. If they are at all sensible or sane they will grasp what you say. Right reasoning brings a sense of God that is appreciable. Mrs. Eddy gave it to us by revelation. It is possible through Christian Science to reason rightly, logically, and that is the beauty and practicality of Christian Science. It is not transcendental, but is practical and real. The sense of God that is revealed to us in Christian Science was primarily Mrs. Eddy’s. God isn’t real to us until we individually have just as clear a conviction of God as she had.


What is evolution?

There is a theory on evolution which we want to dig into just a moment this morning. What does the human sense of evolution imply? It presupposes that there is no God in the beginning. What produced the animal that evolution starts with? That is supposedly self-existent. Is it any more reasonable to believe that a little mite started of itself, than it is to believe that there is an infinite God who didn’t even start? The absurdity of human reasoning!

I ask Miss Vaill because she is from the heart of the university and I wanted to show her how much she knew. You can appropriate what Christian Science reveals to you.

Was infinite Mind always infinite, or did it evolve from nothing into infinity? You cannot conceive of Mind as limited. In saying that, you have transcended the human concept. It may be that you voice that somewhat by faith, but reasoning leads you up to that. If Mind is at all, it has to be infinite, because you cannot conceive of impersonality as circumscribed or finite. Mind isn’t evolved out of nothing.

Evolution! Wonderful word! And Darwin has to account for the monkey first before he goes on to mortals.


Reading: “The identity of so-called mortal mind is material, – mortal mind knows itself only as matter; but as it examines itself as matter, looking deeply into the so-called substantiality of itself, it finds that the tiny molecule may still be divided into tinier atoms; and the tiniest atoms themselves are composed of numberless infinitesimal electrons, which fade into imaginary particles whose eluse activity of incalculable swiftness is called force, and as blind force it proves its nothingness, – the negativeness of its self-created momentum movements, its fictitious, imitative being.”


Now we have examined mortal mind. Without so-called matter, mortal mind would have no identity. When mortal mind examines matter it finds nothing, and that is called philosophy, – human reasoning; and they study for days, weeks, months and years, and find out they haven’t learned anything.

Then it is much more reasonable in Christian Science to think of infinite Mind as having self-existent being and always being self-existent, than it is to think that something in some mysterious way develops from nothing. What a horrible thing it is. There was a great big vacuum at one time, and that finally developed something. No God. Think of it. In reasoning, can you develop something out of nothing? Then isn’t it reasonable, to say nothing about its being logical, that God must always have been? When you find people who tell you lies about Christian Science, saying that it is Godless, lifeless, prayerless, it proves that they have nothing. We have let mortal mind examine itself and it ends where it begins, as nothing.

Reading continued: “Mind, real Mind, does not see through matter but it sees no matter, no mortal mind; for it is conscious only of its all-inclusiveness, focalizing all existence from the center of its own infinitude, which admits of no negative counterfeiting. The identity of real Mind is spiritual. To real Mind matter does not exist; even as a dream-world exists not to him who is entirely awake. Mind has entity as Spirit, to which matter no more exists than darkness can to light. Christian Science identifies man with Mind, to which there is no matter.”

Think of the freedom! When you no longer believe that you are living in a little material form, you do not have to wait for a resurrection. By the way, this is Easter week. Resurrection is the putting off of mortal mind, and awakening to the truth of being; which goes on especially in the class room, because here you are obliged to think, while at home you think only when you want to. The interposition of divine light is especially apparent in the class room. There is never a time when the light flashes as it does here in the class room. I scarcely have any personal sense of it myself.

Newspaper article says, “Germs may become ill and die, says scientist.” If we are not afraid of them or do not let them frighten us to death, they kill themselves. How much better it is to realize that those are insignificant thoughts, or effects, or little organisms. You will be asking me whether there are microbes in heaven or in the truth of being, but we won’t answer that this morning.

The great trouble with mortal mind is that its education is of the sort which enables people who do not know, appear to know a great deal. In Christian Science we are not disturbed by a high sounding word. We do as the Bible commands, “Come, let us reason together.” There is no one here who is so materially minded that it is not possible to grasp right reason, and in this way mortal mind is purged and spiritualized until we get a conviction before revelation takes place. We have intuitive guidance even before the truth is revealed.

We will learn the difference between human reasoning, or human reverie, and scientific reasoning. Our reasoning leads to your awakening and the only difference between you and me is that if I am a bit more awake than you, I can awaken you, and if I cannot awaken you it shows we are both asleep. There is no difference between us in God’s sight. The one who is really awake is bound to arouse the other fellow, and we awaken others in the proportion that we are awake ourselves.

Student’s question as to the meaning of “Father-Mother.”

The words “Father-Mother” are humanized in your consciousness, but that will give way to the scientific fact that God is self-existent Mind. God is causal, and we are reflections of that truth of being; therefore, the cause and effect. Father-Mother is cause; we are the offspring or effect. Then you will see how naturally divine Love broods over us, because “in Him we live, move and have our being.” We have a sense of divine Principle which we reflect. The relationship is so inseparable that it is poetically and beautifully described by Father-Mother. Even in the human a child is connected with its parents, and that sense of the Fatherhood and Motherhood of God becomes more natural and real to you as you lose the human sense. Jesus expressed it in many ways: “I thank thee Father that thou hast heard me.” He recognized the inseparability from and the uninterruptableness of the Father. “I do always those things that please Him.” “As the Father speaketh, so I do.” Simply indicating that he recognized himself as the direct reflection of the Almighty. “I myself can do nothing.”

I apparently speak to you in this class room of God. I speak to you as having a more or less clearer understanding of God. But insofar as I understand God I am not speaking for God, but is it not God speaking? Is that shocking? Does that imply that I am presuming to be God? Insofar as self has given place to the purification of self, am I not reflecting God? Is it not God speaking through me? God is not an abstract something apart from His creation. Because I am selfless enough to let Principle radiate instead of personality, is it not God speaking through me? It takes away that old religious sense of God in heaven, which implies personality and locality; we here on earth and God somewhere in heaven. Principle is ever present, everywhere present.

In Science and Health we read: “Divine metaphysics as revealed to spiritual understanding shows clearly that all is Mind and that Mind is God, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience; that is, all power, all presence, all science.” Accepting the revealed without understanding, only strengthens human belief to the developing of will power; but Christian Science is the appreciation or understanding and demonstration of God’s will, to the silencing of all human. It is not enough for you religiously to accept what is revealed, but you must rise to the spiritual understanding that reveals it. Otherwise, it only strengthens you in a human sense of things, and that is the reason there are so many claiming different forms of mind treatment, different forms of mesmerism or hypnotism. They accept the revealed letter of Christian Science and drag it around on earth to suit their convenience. They do not rise above earth to the realization of the heaven from which the word comes, but they appropriate the statements to strengthen their belief and thereby perpetuate it, and practice it in the name of Christian Science or something else, putting their patients to sleep in sense instead of helping them overcome sense. If they can only dream comfortably in the name of Science.

The original departure from the true teaching of Christian Science was based upon intellectuality, which stole the letter which was revealed to our Leader through spirituality. It was her spirituality that made her a clean window for the Almighty to reveal Himself, but pompous intellectuality became rebellious against the demand of Christian Science to overcome sense; so it departed and established these various isms that we hear about. Christian Science is grasped through the purification of thought which lifts conscience to the spiritual altitude from which it was revealed. You cannot substitute intellectuality for spirituality and expect to demonstrate Christian Science.


Reading: “Only from the mountain viewpoint of God can one see the vastness, the infinite import, of Christian Science. It is nothing less than God’s call to mankind to awaken to the truth of being. Hear the following hint from Science and Health: (page 116, line 11, entire paragraph): ‘A correct view of Christian Science and its adaptation to healing includes vastly more than is at first seen. Works on metaphysics leave the grand point untouched.’”


I hadn’t been thinking about it. I just looked up the reference. I called your attention yesterday to the infinite importance of Christian Science; that it means more for us to understand God in this room than all other things transpiring in the world outside of Christian Science. I ask you why Mrs. Eddy instituted class teaching. It is for the purpose of developing right reasoning, which you cannot bring out in books, for they would be misconstrued and misread, and it would do more harm than good. I could not have the freedom in public that I have in the class room. If I were to ridicule the superstitious mortal beliefs, they would not understand. It would be a case of, you “have taken away my Lord and I know not where to find Him.” We do not want to take away your Lord but want to awaken you to Christ.

Reading from Science and Health continued: “They never crown the power of Mind as the Messiah, nor do they carry the day against physical enemies, – even to the extinction of all belief in matter, evil, disease, and death, – nor insist upon the fact that God is all, therefore that matter is nothing beyond an image in mortal mind.”

The grand point in Christian Science is that profound penetration which goes clear through mortal mind and leaves nothing, neither root nor branch, We have to reason clear through it in order to conduct ourselves as masters of every situation. We have got to be right, and we are not right from the standpoint of the human.

The discussion of God seems a little abstract to you; it is bound to, until we get into the practical application which comes more especially in the last week, when your questions will come without any effort. But it is like everything else, when the foundation is well laid we can reason effectively. From the standpoint of my teaching you, you see at least this morning a little more clearly that I had more faith in God than you had when you asked that question. I do not have to know who your patients may be, but I do know this: that you cannot have more faith in God without blessing yourself and others.

The Master said, “Launch out in the deep and you will catch.” Leave the feasible shore of material sense; at least have faith enough to leave the shores and then you will get out where there is good fishing. The secret of God with us cannot possibly be revealed through the letter that can be written in a book. The secret pondering that we have in the class room is like getting on our knees in the closet, and I have said if we could only preserve the spirit of the class room in our daily lives. Nothing is so sacred in the whole world.


Student’s question: “What is evil?”

Evil is all that God is not. We start with the fundamental revealed fact that God is all. From that standpoint we can find out what evil isn’t, but we can never find out what it is. Mrs. Eddy analyzes mortal mind in sum and substance in Science and Health. You can never find out what evil is or isn’t, except from the standpoint of God. Evil of itself does not know itself. Can you see anything in darkness? You have to have light to see.

What is darkness? Nothing; because it reveals nothing. You cannot see anything in darkness. We are reasoning abstractly, generally. From the standpoint of light you are positive there is no darkness. You cannot find darkness with light. The trouble with the world is that it is chasing evil constantly to get close enough to find out what it is. Mortal mind asks itself, What am I? It never can answer it. It is a dream, or a dreamer. It dreams that it is something and it wakes up and it was only a dream, and while in the dream it was wonderful. Is the dream anything to the one who has awakened? If we are really fully awake, we do not remember the dream.

“To human belief spirits and souls are personalities….Error is limited.”

Were it not for the belief of error, we would have no class here today. But the belief that there is no error isn’t demonstrated by saying it. It is a scientific fact that there is no such thing as darkness, but in order to prove it we have to keep the light burning all the time. That is why we have to start with the human standpoint to analyze evil. Evil as we see it now is not merely a superficial human conception of something that is not quite good as judged by human standard. Whatever is contrary to what God is, is evil. From that broad basis, the claim of evil has to be analyzed and awakened out of by us as Christian Scientists. The world scarcely rubs its eyes, and furthermore does not want to awake, only the nightmare gets so painful that it forces an awakening.

Evil claims to be something. The human claims to be and its claim is unlimited. Everything that God is, evil claims to be. That is some evil! Thus you see you will have the problem of reducing it to its nothingness. Mrs. Eddy says the warfare is grand. That is not a very dubious outlook; it keeps us alive. We are reasoning out through and above evil. It is just like waking up, but without Christian Science there isn’t wakefulness enough anywhere to awaken us. Even the preacher in the pulpit doesn’t strike out boldly with what he knows to be the truth, and when he does, he is dismissed. You cannot preach the truth from the standpoint of hire. You can preach it wisely only from the standpoint of unselfishness.

Right reasoning makes God appreciable to the human sense scientifically, and then we can demonstrate the sense of God with us in the overcoming of evil with good.

Then we ask this question, “What are spirits and souls?”

I told you yesterday not to try to memorize anything. I haven’t much use for memory; although we can make it subservient. According to the revealed word you understand that there is but one Spirit. You do not have to be troubled as to just what Science and Health says about it. If oneness means allness you have a sense of infinity. You cannot use the word spirits as Spirit. There is but one sun, but there is an infinitude of radiation. The sun radiates rays.

What does the world mean when it says the spirit leaves the body when one passes on. I found out that there were no spirits in me when I was healed in Christian Science. Christian Science proved Spirit to be omnipresent, in which I lived, moved and had my being. You do not have to wait to die for the spirits to go to heaven. Think of the superstitious belief of mortal mind! How can such a belief as that claim to be Mind, and claim to heal anything?

While in California some years ago I went to a Chinese camp. I had an old uncle who went to California in ’49 when so many had the gold fever. He was a venerable old man, – a school teacher in his day. He was everything in that town, – judge, etc.; so he was free to take us around. There were two gods up on a shelf, a black one and a white one. That seemed a wonderful thing to the white men. But what are these spirits and souls? Beliefs of limitation. Whatever is human we make a false God of. Simply because it isn’t objectified in some little image doesn’t alter the fact.

Student’s question as to moral fitness.

I feel that Mary Magdalene was better fitted than one that never was a Magdalene. I take no human testimony as to moral fitness, because it is no criterion whatever. Self-righteousness may be of the nature of never having done anything wrong because it is too dead to be alive. Is that a moral fitness? That is the religiosity that I have not been able to break through in the class. I confess it with humiliation. They never do wrong but how much right do they do? Positive virtue comes from those who know they are not doing right. If you succeed in being what you are, that is God’s ideal. The moral fitness takes on a different tone. “Lord save me or I perish,” is moral fitness. Necessarily, desire is moral fitness.

You cannot find out very much by questioning because mortal mind is like these little beetles that you scratch off the leaf mold where they hide, and first thing you know they crawl under somewhere again. So it is with mortals asking questions. Only intuition sees under the leaf more without taking off the leaf. Not to take sense testimony covers the whole ground. I am pretty sell assured that those who come to the class have a moral fitness.

Perhaps you have all heard remarks about me, that I am anything but a desirable Christian Scientist. You must have come to get acquainted because my reputation doesn’t accord with my character as I know myself. I admit that I have made no effort since coming into Christian Science to make myself agreeable with anyone. I have spent my life on my knees to be on good terms with the Almighty. I am glad to teach you Christian Science and as you understand Christian Science you will know just why Isaiah said, “When thou shalt see me….”

There is nothing in the human that is attractive, if a Christian Scientist is really a Christian Scientist. I am mighty glad that it is so, because it proves a moral fitness when like attracts like. If they are in need or have a godly desire, that is all I require.

Our beloved Leader herself, as godly a woman as she was, was misrepresented shamefully, and if unworthy ones could have seen her home life, the positiveness of it, the strenuousness of it, they would have called her anything but a Christian. I am telling you this as a sacred secret. Put yourself in her place, when you could see the weakness around, pretending to be godly. When you are nauseated you cannot be blamed for vomiting. You can either smile error out of existence or thunder it out.

I have two ways of healing. One is laughing error out of existence and the other is thundering it out. Some errors are insignificant in their pomposity; then you can smile. Others are so subtle you have to put a charge of dynamite under them to blast them out. I try to keep from being suffocated. We grow more artistic I admit as we understand God better, but we grow more uncompromising also.

Student’s question as to crucifixion: heavens were shaken.

I have no doubt in my mind that the profoundness of that demonstration had that effect upon the elements or universal mortal mind; but it may be superstitiously misconstrued.

Dickie introduced to the class.

I have never seen patience so exemplified as in him.

The question as to whether those things are all literally true has always been a question to the world, but as Christian Scientists we are not troubled about them. It may be possible that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. You can imagine Jonah did some repenting if that did happen. Suppose we regard that either as a literal fact or a story. The lesson is that we try to run from error when God gives us a particular duty to perform; we try to shirk it. But a big fish overtakes us at some time or other when we are forced to struggle.

Jesus represented God sufficiently to stir the universal elements about him, as I stir some who are too sleepy. Through the spiritual understanding which purges our own consciousness we rightly interpret what is revealed, but the human sense of the revealed work conduces to superstition. Understanding is required. If it were necessary for me to say that a big fish did swallow Jonah, I should say that that was done at that time. I would not let it go by as a story, and thus have the Scripture doubted. I would say I believe it. But I would illustrate that by saying that the big whale typifies any unescapable experience that might come to us.

The Old Testament was not fulfilled until Jesus came. The prophecies all point to an experience which he suffered, and we can foresee that working out our own salvation according to the demand of Christian Science does not imply ease in sense. Let us be reasonable in these matters and then we can get out of the superstitious belief that we can escape from matter by some peculiar twist. If we are not spiritually awake to overcome evil with good so far as the pleasures of sense are concerned, we are bound to invite the accumulation of error, and insofar as error accumulates it brings suffering. Then why can’t we be as sincere and genuine in that, as we must eventually face the inevitable suffering? Why can we not see the nothingness of sense before it results in that inevitable suffering which we cannot escape? Why can’t we lay down quickly the superfluous stuff of sense before the inevitable suffering forces us? “The pleasures of sense bring us more than their equivalent in pain,” Science and Health says. But the trouble is that Christian Scientists in the world cannot discriminate between desirable and undesirable pleasures.

I would not put you on the basis of prohibition in the world, but I would give you the godliness and enlightenment that would enable you to discriminate between what is wrong and right. We have to support the best laws that the world can make, to give the moral incentive that makes them effective for the sake of those who have not as much Principle as we have. The beauty of Christian Science is that it says to the world, “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” It says that before the suffering comes. That is the reason I said upon awakening from the death stupor, “Is this something I can learn and teach to others?” I had paid the price of dying up to that point and is it strange that I should live above the seductions of sense? I do not say that we will not be touched by sense on the way to Soul. I saw through the bubble of sense sufficiently not to allow it to become valuable again in my estimation. Since then I have found more joy in living in spite of the doctors.


Student’s question: “Why did I feel so free when you came to Dick?”

Why did you feel secure? You felt you had a friend who did the worrying for you. That is that unexplainable sense that means God with us.

I remember visiting at a friend’s home not long ago with two students. I just went there because the friend was in great need and troubled, and the students wondered why I did not say or do something. They thought I was the most stupid man they had ever seen. I just went there. I went there not to say, but to be. They didn’t know why things grew brighter. The first we knew this friend had awakened from sense to Soul enough to regret she had wanted to commit suicide. Before the class is over I hope to read you an article which I wrote not long ago: “The Beauty of Bounteous Being.”

Dickie. The case had been given up by the hospital and the parents took the child home, as they would rather have him pass on at home. The little chap could not speak in a whisper even. It is easier to meet a case when it is humanly hopeless. The reason she did not fear was because mortal mind had pronounced it hopeless. She had come to a point where she had to lean on God and we as Christian Scientists represented enough of God to encourage her.

The Master said, “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the spirit.” Insofar as we awake to a true sense of God that sense permeates our lives and radiates, not by human call or by human impulsion, but because light is light and reflects itself.

The little fellow simply repeated in himself what I experienced many years ago; and then self-righteous sinners sit on the house tops and criticize impishly our best efforts, or those who live and die for such cases, – the self-righteous hypocrites who call themselves Christian Scientists at times. Since I have come into this locality I have been subject of criticism and condemnation by those who have been stall-fed, – not those who were in need. Wherever there is the deepest helplessness, I like to be best. “Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.”

It is not the healing of the leg, but that the mother is now walking hand in hand with the daddy.

Dick has resolved to keep the boys off Cherry St., and he has also resolved to help me teach love when he grows up.

If these points that we have gone over this morning are clear and rest happily with you, I think we have had a good lesson




Third Day

Will you begin the lesson this morning or shall I?

Student’s question as to the word “religion.”

What you mean is that Christian Science has to give the word a new birth. When you hear me use the word religiosity, I do not mean religion in the sense you are using it now. The word is given a new meaning, just as we use the word prayer; we have an entirely different sense of prayer in Christian Science. We hardly say we do not pray, but we do not get down on our knees as much. The word prayer gets a new meaning through Christian Science. There is a beautiful sense to religion when it holds the true sense of God and man in daily application and living. The word has been so misused that I seldom use it.

Student’s question as to God being “Soul.”

Does Soul as you use it mean something a little different to you than Spirit? When you use the word Soul does it seem more personal? You make a distinction between Spirit and Soul because of the human or external influence on your thought. The world’s sense of Soul is very personal. In Science the terms are identical. When your own sense is more or less religious, when you are more or less imbued with the old sense of Soul, you still have a very personal sense, than the word Spirit. Spirit seems more all-pervading, whereas the soul of man is supposed to live forever according to human belief. Mortal mind reasons that soul must be liberated through death. If you regard soul as simply personal sense, you will get the correct meaning. Just accept the scientific fact that Soul and Spirit are identical and you will find no difference in the future. Those seven terms must be interchangeable in your consciousness, and in the scientific use of them they simply give shade and color to your own sense of God.

Student’s question as to Mr. Mann’s ability to judge us by our understanding of God.

That is my introduction to the class. It is an impersonal introduction. I simply know you by your sense of God. Many students I do not meet personally, and after class is over I do not know them in that way. Sometimes people whisper to me about so and so; that is not the way I know them. I retain my class room conception of them. I learn to know you through the class term better than you know yourselves. That is impersonal and yet appreciable, not transcendental. There is nothing impractical in Christian Science. I beg my friends to see me not in a dual way, for whether I am in my old clothes or in my Prince Albert, I am the same. In my bathing suit I am especially prepossessing.

I must tell you of a little incident that occurred at the shore this summer. A pretty well dressed man stepped off the trolley car one day as I was coming from the shore. I was dressed like a tramp and I hadn’t been shaved for three or four days. I came along with an old clam rake and half a pail of water with some clams in it. He accosted me and said, “Could you help a fellow who has just come out of the hospital?” I looked at him and said, “What do you think I need?” He smiled. I took that way to rebuke him. I simply saw through him enough to ask him what he thought of me, and he was satisfied I didn’t have anything to give him and so went on his way. You cannot judge from the outside. The little children know me in whatever way I am. Little Jane never fails to recognize me. “Hello, Mr. Mann,” she calls out, no matter how far away I am.

Where or how did evil originate?

We believe scientifically that there is no evil because of the logic of our scientific reasoning; but where did this apparent evil originate? Who first made the mistake of misjudging? How could any human being at any time make that mistake if God made man His image and likeness? You mean God made a man who didn’t understand? God’s man didn’t understand God? You do not know that it isn’t real, except as Christian Science has revealed it. It is the revelation which we accept, but how will you explain its apparent origin?

I hope you will appreciate the teaching in its naturalness. If I ask one individual day after day do not feel slighted because you may be drawn in if you ask questions. Mr. D–- is young and he makes a good battering-ram; furthermore, he took a front seat which indicates that he wanted to be showered with questions.

God in the beginning was good, and the Bible tells us all He created was good. Yet here we are: only we aren’t. Often I used to hear Mrs. Eddy say just that: “We are; only we aren’t.” Then you are not going to waste much time to find out how evil originated. It would not pay to chase a will-of-the-wisp with a view of overtaking it. Now we are consistent.


Reading: “The question where or how did evil originate, is only a humanly wise way of implying that error is something instead of nothing. Night asks about the origin and existence of its delirium-created world. Light answers, I find no such world, or even a speck of the inquiring darkness. A true understanding of Science divinely dispels sense; it does not humanly account for it.”


If evil could be accounted for, either in origin or otherwise, it would be real. The world does not know that simple fact, and so it dreams on and the dreamer tries to awaken the dreamer.

Reading continued: “The sunlight of Science melts away all obscure clouds but never comes down to earth to account for them.”

That is the beautiful part of Christian Science; while a human may believe he is in it, yet he understands he is not. The beauty of that is that we have wisdom enough in the light of Science to choose more or less wisely as to what is worth while, so that error does not live itself over and over again as if it were real. There is no reality in a dream if we awaken out of it. I have said sometimes, when we get to heaven, as we speak humanly, we will never realize that we were ever out of heaven. We will have no consciousness of ever not having been there. That is healing. Just as we say now, a patient is never healed until one realizes that he was never sick.

I do not care how much you are helped by a practitioner; you are never really healed until you understand scientifically that you were never healed. You are predisposed to it just as long as you do not understand the Truth, and that is the reason practitioners are so busy. Patients go back, if he has done a good job. I am not minimizing the value of practitioners; we must all strive to be individual practitioners and let our light radiate as far as it can.

For some years in the past friends took advantage of the back door and listened in, and last year and the year before even, the kitchen was filled. Often there were 25 or 30 or more, who sat in the kitchen, on the steps and on the window sills. I had no objection; I felt grateful that they could gather up the crumbs. Just before class commenced it came to me with a sudden conviction to lock the back door. It was a very radical change and I received a letter from one of the older students which I would like to share with you.

Reading of letter.

I did not lock the back door of my own account but I intuitively felt the working of envy and jealousy that had to be intercepted. I appreciate the spirit of the letter. I thought you would appreciate the fact that you are the first class I am teaching under this radical ruling. I feel glad that I had the conviction to do it. It forestalls the envy and jealousy quite unconsciously harbored by those who felt too proud to come or those who could not come.

Evil never got started. What we see manifested is a misconception. When you come to that puzzled sense, it is the only way to answer it. I answered it spontaneously. I have ruminated upon it for nearly 40 years, and it is very clear. I never waste a moment any more to know how it got started. I know it never got started. If you admit evil got a start, you will never stop it. Ask people how they go to sleep nights, or when they begin to dream. Even when ministers get very religious in their magnification of evil, I still have to tell them that God is all, and evil is only an infinite lie in its impersonal sense, and it is no greater for that than a little bit of a lie.

Student’s question as to world war: suffering of the innocent.

Who in the flesh is innocent? I saw a picture, by chance apparently but I think it was providential, last night, in the Ladies Home Journal, picturizing that wonderful forgiveness of the Master when the woman was brought to him for adultery. I like the face of the Master. It has a stern look which addresses the white-bearded angelical ones: “Let him first cast a stone who is without sin among you.”

What is innocence? Does God release any one in the flesh of responsibility? The Bible says, “All have sinned and come short of the glory.” It is a very religious statement, but let us see what it means scientifically. It comes back to the question, Who is innocent? Is the little infant just born more innocent than you? Is the evil in the conscious wrong thinking, or is it in the belief? In the belief. Our Leader once told us that all is in the bud that is ever in the blossom. That is the reason no doubt the Master said that , “the publicans and harlots will go into the kingdom before you!” The publicans and harlots knew they were not righteous, but the scribes, Pharisees and hypocrites thought that they were innocent.

Immortal Mind levels belief. It reduces the mountain of self-righteousness and uplifts the valley of humiliation.

If anything Russian can be innocent I would like to find it. If they were innocent, they would not be in Russia. Russia, selling its grain and letting us send in some grain to help the starving! The innocent suffer for the guilty sometimes, as the Master suffered, who was without sin. Insofar as we are innocent we suffer profitably, but if we suffer for our guilt, we do not suffer profitably. When the innocent suffer they do not complain. The one who suffers most willingly for others is doubtless most innocent.

Student’s question as to the suffering Armenians.

This tramp that wanted something from me appeared innocent. Christian Scientists are doing the best they can everywhere, and that is right, but they are finding the innocent in their help as much as possible. They do not take the world’s judgment as to who should be helped. The Armenians insofar as they are inclined toward Christianity are tending in the right direction. I always believe in everybody giving all they can for the benefit of others. I believe that charity begins at home and radiates out from the home as far as it can.

When you reduce matter to its lowest term, it ends just where evil begins. Nowhere. The Scripture says in Job, “The devil came from going up and down and to and fro in the earth.” Isn’t it more satisfactory to say that there is no evil than to say it came out of nothing? We get somewhere in Christian Science because we have a definite aim.

Speaking of shooting at the target, while visiting some friends the young man had a little rifle and he used to delight in stunting me to shoot. He said, “Mr. Mann must shoot according to Science.” The aim was doubtless with a steadiness of Mind. We gain through Science more than mortals without Science gain throughout all time. It isn’t time that counts.

Student’s question as to Jesus’ reference to little children.

Do you think that he had reference to little children as sense perceives of them? You remind me of what I said to an older student once, “Yes, if he loved them as you love them, he would have had some of his own.” I love little children; I love them enough to save them from their parents. There is nothing religious about Christian Science, but it is Christian.

I am glad that question about helping the innocent was brought up. We are innocent only so far as we awaken to the truth of being, or awaken out of the flesh, or as we are born again, as we are regenerated, as we are resurrected. You hear them tell what a sweet little baby it is; I never saw a baby yet that wasn’t sweet to its mother, and as they grow up they become sweet little devils, unless divine Love regenerates them from birth.

In regard to our child, Dickie, when he was sufficiently restored to be able to speak, he swore at me. We had to take care of his leg, of course, and it hurt him. But he has resolved when he gets well, to go down on Cherry Street and teach the boys not to swear. It is regeneration that is borning him anew. I didn’t have to tell Dickie but once never to use that word again, and I have absolute confidence that he will never be tempted by other children to use these words again. The scientific truth that you imbibe and radiate will stay with them when you are absent.

You have difficulty at home to meet the division because the father isn’t a Scientist, but you must not admit that it is more difficult. You will learn how to get the punch behind your word.

I find in my teaching that the whole thought is overshadowed with a more appreciable sense of God with us. Year after year I find myself more natural in Truth. I do not have to try to be scientific; I cannot help it. The children know when you are consistent. Only this morning Dickie said to Mrs. Mann, “Don’t tell Dr. Mann.” Something wrong had happened, and he wanted to spare me. You have to watch very prayerfully because the error in your home has made certain momentum. The ball is rolling and you have to strengthen yourself to bring it to a halt first. You also have to account for the lack of Science in your husband. Even grandmothers get a little amiable in their old age.

You never heal in a relative sense. I would rather not waste my breath in speaking at all, for unless I find a very worthy mortal minder, I do not want to discuss a point relatively. There is nothing more beautiful than husband and wife, or father and mother working together.

I often use the words ignorance and innocence interchangeably.


Student’s question: “What is there to suffer?”

Your question reminds me of what Mrs. Eddy writes: “What dangles at the end of the rope,” when a culprit is being hanged? What suffers? Let us reduce it to mortal mind. Can anything but mortal mind suffer? Is mortal mind ever innocent? How far do we know that we do right or wrong? Do we know that any farther than we do it? No. Then how much do we know it? If there is no mortal mind, there would be no class. We cannot ignore it. There is no mortal mind to God but to mortals there is, and that is the reason you are in the class. That is the great mistake Christian Scientists make. They think they deny when they ignore. For you to say there is no mortal mind does not translate you. Unless you say it is a scientific fact that there is no mortal mind, you are dishonest. The difference between my work and your work is, that as a practitioner you deal with effects, while I deal with cause.

The wrong you know about is insignificant compared with what you are liable to do.

Then what suffers? Is mortal mind ever innocent? Is the little child just born innocent? Is it any more innocent than the great big ponderous flesh and blood that your see strutting around? You see it more easily in the large. Mortal mind suffers, and insofar as mortal mind is innocent, it does not suffer. Mortal mind is innocent when it isn’t.


Reading: “Christian Scientists are not running their lives by the key-note of Christianity so long as smug self-satisfaction preserves enough of a personal sense to deal grudgingly with each other, instead of overflowing lovingly and healingly, etc.”


I had an experience since yesterday’s lesson, which brings that to you, – how it is possible for a Christian Scientist even in his most prayerful living to live more unselfishly or healingly. There are Christian Scientists, as there are mortal minders, who see error with big eyes, make a reality of it, but do not lift one little finger toward lifting it or neutralizing it. Those who really suffer do not judge each other very personally. Mrs. Eddy says, “Real suffering will stop the farce.” Real suffering would be hinted by death-bed suffering, something that you cannot step around. You do not waste your time then in human criticism, judgment and condemnation. Why cannot we as Christian Scientists love more unselfishly, live above it scientifically, instead of waiting for the death-bed pressure?

While I served at Pleasant View I used to hear Mrs. Eddy thunder against some error at headquarters. The editors especially, if the world had heard Mrs. Eddy’s condemnation of a particular error he had, they would have crucified him with their human judgment of it. It is our duty to teach the very fine hair upon which justice hinges. Mrs. Eddy’s condemnation was a point of Principle that would heal that man, while the students would take that condemnation personally and would sit on the man. That is where the harm comes in; I have seen it over and over. I have spoken to friends about an error of Mrs. Mann’s, and they tucked it behind their ears, and then personalized what I said from Principle for their sake and hers, with killing effect. Mrs. Eddy also knew that real virtue cannot be vitiated. The Scientist who has virtue in him will not be downed by even misjudgment. We have got to rise to where we see the Truth individually. There are so many who are letter-wise. We individually should rise to a point of Principle and leave some of those things with the Father. As I said to a student once, “If we could do it all, we would not need God.”

If I see it rightly, let the radiation of our freedom go out. If there are two or three who understand, there is encouragement. Do not make the mistake of thinking that you are only young students, and that the older ones have more than you. Do not judge yourselves humanly. Just know that you have a sense of God that means just as much to you in your infancy in Science as the sense of the older ones means to those in maturity. Do not make the mistake of thinking the older ones have more than you have. Those old professors with their glasses, when they look over the top of them, make you feel pretty small sometimes. The divine idea that dawns in your consciousness should be respected by you for all that it is, and if you will regard it for what it is, you will not have to go to older students. The older students are more liberal in their opinion because they think they have a little more. The Apostle said, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”


Reading: “The importance of getting an understanding sense of God, of knowing God as He knows Himself, is best seen in the true healing light of Christian Science. The class should know from the beginning that as Christian Science forbids mental or written formulae in practice, so there is in teaching no healing secret, – no special prayer or specific lesson giving a form or outline of treatment. The understanding of God-with-us is the only secret of healing; hence, the everlasting question in Christian Science is, What is God? In answering this all-embracing question, Christian Scientists learn not so much how to heal but how healing is inevitable insofar as the spiritual sense of God….”


There is no secret as to what heals; there is no special lesson on healing. It is the understanding of God that imbues your consciousness and that radiates as naturally as the aroma of the flower radiates. It is so natural that it seems that it isn’t at all. The wise in this world, wise in their own conceit, think perhaps that their philosophy contains more, – a human line of reasoning which is more difficult. The divine light is self-evident; it radiates itself.

You have no right to pass judgment upon a case. Had I consulted sense when little Dickie came to us, it would have been hopeless. It is the sense of God-with-us, and we are not to say whether it is a little sense or a big sense. We are to be the ray representing the sun, and a ray does not judge itself. It simply radiates light.

Conscience. Is conscience a reliable criterion for Christian Scientists? When your conscience troubles you, what is the matter? Mortal mind is judging itself. If it were sure that no one were seeing what it is doing, it would not be conscience-smitten. Mortal mind is very conscious, sometimes; but conscience is eased by mortal mind’s belief that it will not be found out. How much Principle is there in conscience? It isn’t conscience that bids you be good in secret. Conscience is a faculty of mortal mind, but it has to be governed by an overshadowing sense of Principle. The most conscientious person may be most mistaken. Conscience would never inspire healing. You admit that you have some conscience. If you hadn’t a conscience you wouldn’t be here in the class. Until now you have been somewhat troubled by conscience.

Conscience is only an avenue through which divine Truth and Love can and must work. Conscience might be regarded as a window. A good conscience would be a cleaner window. A good conscience isn’t a product of Principle. Spiritual sense is beyond conscience. It guides conscience, and it also creates conscience. You cannot resurrect anyone until they are dead. I just as soon treat a conscience-less person. It is a good deal like the Magdalene. Before she came to the Master she had little or no conscience. A Scientist is more than a professor really, but anyone that lacks conscience needs to be healed. It isn’t so hard to resurrect the dead as it is to kill them first. It is harder to kill them than to resurrect them. You have got to prove mortal mind absolutely rotten before you can awake in the mortal the need of denying himself. In the degree that divine Love awakens mortals, is conscience quickened, but conscience itself isn’t a product of Principle. It is still resident in mortal mind. In the degree that you clean the window, it becomes transparent to the light. You find a very conscientious person oftentimes sick abed. We sing, do we not, “Save us from our own undoing.”


Reading: “To be good up to the highest standard that humans can set up, involves little cross-bearing, but to demonstrate the self-denial requisite to the melting away of the clouds of sense, that God’s image may shine forth in true manhood and womanhood, implies the acquisition of Christlike heroism.”


There are so many standards of good; every family has a definite standard, and so it goes all through life and keeps us jumping about.

“What are the demands of the Science of Soul?”

I have my answer written on the margin of my book and this is what it is: “To deny sense.”

If mortals refuse to honor the demands of the Science of Soul and seek an easier way, are they wise?

When Science shows you that you never can appreciate the reality of things except by spiritual awakening, is it wise to remain asleep? You may be contented with a human sense of things; but you cannot enjoy God’s world until you awake to the life that is God. We find that the promise in Christian Science is not for the hereafter, but for us just as we awaken.

Is there a single student in this class who is afraid that the beauties of nature will be shut out as you go on in Science? The beauties of the birds, flowers and scenery. You really begin to appreciate these things in Science. In complying with the demands of the Science of Soul you have the benefits of awakening from sense, whereas heretofore you have had only a sense conception. As you awake from sense you have a Soul conception. You lose nothing by awakening from sense to Soul.

Is there any difference between intellect and intelligence?

Good. That you answered from understanding and not from the book, and that is the reason why I say good. From that standpoint of understanding, how much in the realm of Christian Science or in the Field of Christian Science passes for spirituality which is simply intellectuality? What proportion do you think? What is your criterion? How do you know which is intellectuality and which is spirituality? How do you know the fruits are good? How can you tell it is intellectuality when it is so finely imitated? You must be able to do that scientifically enough to point to the fact, if only for your own protection. You must be able to discriminate positively between sense and Soul, intellectuality and spirituality.

If you are contented that you could tell, I would drive you farther. Your faith in God is real enough to save you from misleading when you are childlike enough to say that. In my judgment, the greatest danger in the Field of Christian Science today is that very point; the world’s ignorance of the difference between intellectuality and spirituality. The plausibility of intellectuality vies with Principle of spirituality, and the ignorant and uninstructed are attracted by the intellectuality as it appeals more to them, because spirituality is less presumptuous. Not even the healing will satisfy the world, because the world would rather have what is ear-pleasing than the spirituality that says little and does more.

My answer to that question is: The difference between intellectuality and spirituality is the difference between shadow and substance. Intellectuality counterfeits intelligence, as mortal mind counterfeits divine Mind. If mortal mind counterfeits divine, we have an infinite counterfeit to deal with. God is Truth, and evil or mortal mind is error. If God is infinite, His infinity would be counterfeited by mortal mind. By the law of opposites, if God is good, there must be infinite evil.

There is a reason for my forcing this question. I ask you, do you all admit that mortal mind is an infinite counterfeit? How much of that counterfeit do you think you see? The measure of that counterfeit you see is only an infinitesimal part. The belief of the counterfeit claims to equal God; then it is an infinite counterfeit. A cipher that is as big as the universe hasn’t any more value than a small one.

Mrs. Eddy prayed so sacredly that evil should not come into her discovery. She discovered Christian Science from the standpoint of God being all, and not until her favorite husband’s malicious killing did she finally yield to the investigation of evil’s claim. And that is just where you would make shipwreck if you didn’t understand this. Your genuine, conscientious, prayerful desire to voice only the Truth or declare the allness of God, doesn’t make the demonstration. If you were walking through the grass and saw a snake, you wouldn’t ignore it as if there were none there. The thing to do would be to see that there is a snake there, – not ignore it.

The universal lie is an infinite lie. The subtlety of malicious animal magnetism will disclose itself through the light of Christian Science as being infinitely resourceful in its imitations.

One of our students who had a little home, conceived the desire to help some of her relatives who lived across the sea. She had prayed earnestly about it and had become convicted that she should bless them in her way; so she had them come and live with her. They hadn’t been with her long before they began to take possession, and in a little while she felt herself in the way. She stripped herself and sold her birthright, and finally was in such misery that she wanted to die, and you can hardly save a person when they want to die. She was deceived by her old belief of praying, and finally came to the conclusion that it was not God who had spoken to her but the devil.

So be sure that it is God speaking instead of the devil, and that is such a fine line that it simply brings it back to intellectuality and spirituality. How was she to know? By being a little more patient, and trying the spirits more fully. I should not have done it. I have distant relatives in Europe who wrote me from out of the stricken districts for help. It was no easy matter for me to deal with that question. Shall I yield to their human appeal or shall I abide by my understanding of Science? Shall I do a little individual, sympathetic yielding, or shall I consistently abide by my sense of Principle which is more just than the sympathetic yielding? And I decided to appropriate what I have according to my understanding. They were not suffering any more than people anywhere else.

My own brother wrote me once for a loan of $3,000. He must have thought I was a banker. He wanted to buy a cottage for his wife. I appealed to God from the standpoint of my understanding of Principle. I wrote and told him to tell me what security he could give, as I was going to borrow the money from friends. I received no answer to my letter. I can’t give money, as for instance Rockefeller might do; I give such as I have.

As I told you, where misery is deepest, I want to be most. I want to heal them of sense that is the cause of the suffering. I want to bring them Soul. The Salvation Army works in the slums, as they should, but Christian Science heals the possibility of the slums. It deals with cause, while they deal with the effects. Christian Scientists who need that help are more subtle imposters than those who are not Christian Scientists. Guard against Christian Scientists who need help.

I want to thank you because I have not this year suffered the agony of suspense in the upper room as to any of the students being late. In one of our classes a student came late and to rebuke him the whole class had to suffer. We stated it this way: Should the one who was late suffer alone, or should the whole class suffer for the one who was guilty? The class is one body and if one member suffers the others suffer with him. It was only through the suffering of the class that this one could be sufficiently rebuked. But this year I have not felt the weight of the class at all.

What is the difference between sense and Soul?

Let me correct you in your use of the word idea; nothing human is idea. God’s thoughts are ideas. I should never use the word idea with anything that is human. What is the relation between sense and Soul? Sense appears; Soul is. What you are conscious of to human sense seems to be; but is it? We traced matter the other day from matter to molecule, down through nothingness.


Reading: “Sense existence is an ephemeral counterfeit dream of the everlasting reality of being as Soul. The faithful in Christian Science will always find true the Master’s utterance, ‘I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you.’ With every human loss comes a divine gain. Divine Love is just, far above the human sense of justice. Hence, every voluntary or enforced sacrifice of sense, Love rewards with the joys of an enlarged sense of Soul. In exchange for every worthless counterfeit penny, our divine Banker gives a gold dollar.





Fourth Day

I want you all to take a look at my desk here and you will see I have made a Sunday’s preparation, and I am not allowing for the spontaneous part of our lesson. Unless there is something very pressing with you, I will start the ball rolling this morning.

I have been reminded that I ask the class to speak as distinctly as possible, not especially loud, because the devil is trying to tell some of us that we all do not hear as well. If each one speaks very distinctly, it will help. I ought to give you the benefit of a lesson Mrs. Eddy gave us at Pleasant View. Whenever it was her cross to see a public man or a reporter, we usually heard something as to whether she could read without glasses or whether she heard well, for they delighted in relating anything of this nature to the public, as she was teaching the perfection of man. But we did not think she was hard of hearing at Pleasant View. When Mrs. Eddy didn’t hear, we were rebuked for not speaking distinctly. Do not mumble your words. We had to articulate. What is the Science of that?

I hadn’t in mind to speak of this but since I have touched it, let us reason it out. I never asked her whether she was a little hard of hearing, but I received fewer rebukes than others for not speaking distinctly. The point is here. If Mrs. Eddy had received the full reward of her own righteousness, as she would have received it so far as God’s will was concerned, if malicious animal magnetism hadn’t lived as it were to intercept God’s blessing upon her, don’t you think that her own righteousness would have forestalled even the slightest belief of deafness or hardness of hearing? Don’t you think she would have deserved that? Was it not right then that she rebuked us for not speaking distinctly? Rather than fastening it upon herself by a personal sensitive sense which admitted that she was hard of hearing, she rebuked the human sense that…. (transcript trails off here)

It was the same with regard to seeing. She would snip on her glasses once in a while under different circumstances to read. The last time I was there, when I was called to Pleasant View (I had already settled in New Britain), she read a whole chapter without glasses. Then again I have seen her on special occasions use glasses. Her aim was to demonstrate the sufficiency of Mind.

Now then, let us make great demands upon God, greater drafts, and realize that a defect is not ours personally but is simply a defect which all of us must contribute to surmount. It would hardly be human if we saw a fellow limp with lameness, to simply stand off at a distance and say, “All is Mind; come on.” We would get nearer and give a lift. What is the difference if one is a little bit hard of hearing, for us to speak a little more distinctly? Examine yourselves and see how in our daily conversation we get careless because we have nothing to talk about, and that carelessness or indifference is worse than the hardness of hearing. It contributes nothing, and makes other people reach out for nothing.

I rode in a street car with one of the students one day. While conversing with her she looked out of the window. I turned my back. I had to strain my ears to hear what wasn’t worth listening for.

Student’s question as to wearing glasses during class term.

The very fact that you ask me the question shows that God is demanding a hearing in you. The fact that the quickening comes to you now leads me to encourage you to follow out the divine prompting to take them off. It is more natural to see without them and yet is not a sin against the Holy Ghost to wear them on occasion. I have thus far refused to wear glasses, or use them. I am not boasting of that. Most people of my age think it necessary. I prefer to allow myself to be forced to draw upon Mind harder and harder. Wearing glasses is simply taking advantage of the universal belief to aid or save sight. The universal belief has created this particular help of glasses, we will say. It is the way the individual avails himself of the universal belief of aid, – the universal belief that glasses either improve, strengthen or preserve sight. If you can reach out to the universality of Mind individually, you will supersede that universal belief. Do not examine it so closely humanly. Simply reach out to Mind as far as you can, and do not feel condemned when you snip on the glasses. Mrs. Eddy once said, “The material eye is no more spiritual than the glasses.” Matter does not help you to see, whether it is the eye or the glasses. Make it a natural thing, not a specialty. As a result of your comprehension or appreciation of Mind, it will be a natural thing. If you were stepping on a crutch, you would try to walk without it. Make your draft upon Mind and let loose the human.

Mrs. Eddy was asked once why she had a tooth filled with gold. She answered that she would rather have it filled with gold than with bread.

I spent a little time reading a Journal yesterday and I could not forbear bringing it to class. Article entitled, “Innocence.” In speaking of Mrs. Eddy, how she encountered all forms of evil for our sake, etc., the article goes on and says: “Then shall we who claim to be Christian Scientists strive to emulate her? The way is less difficult for us.” Is the way less difficult for us than it was for Mrs. Eddy? This is a fine question. We are criticizing the literature. The Christian Science literature, of course, we have to help to make perfect, so do not forget it. But do your own thinking when you read it. Do not accept it as evangelical. It is better than anything that mortals can write, but as Christian Scientists we cannot afford to receive anything from the Publishing House as evangelical.

You think that because we have the benefit of the light of those gone before us, it is easier for us? We have all they have written to aid us in our time. According to her argument, my teaching is giving you the light. You are admitting that instruction has enlightened you. Is it easier for us to be Christian Scientists than it was for Mrs. Eddy? It wasn’t hard for Mrs. Eddy to discover it.

Did Mrs. Eddy prove everything she discovered? Did she demonstrate all of Science and Health? Did she understand it? If she had proved it all, she would have been translated instantly. In our class the question was asked, “Does anyone in the world understand all of Science and Health?” A student answered, “Why, yes, Mrs. Eddy, you understand it.” And she said, “No, no, a thousand times No.”

Was God less merciful to Mrs. Eddy? Science and Health says, “While we adore Jesus, and the heart overflows with gratitude for what he did for mortals, – treading alone his loving pathway up to the throne of glory, in speechless agony exploring the way for us, – yet Jesus spares us not one individual experience if we follow his commands faithfully; and all have the cup of sorrowful effort to drink in proportion to their demonstration of his love, till all are redeemed through divine Love.”

We are spared a great deal, but are we spared more than Mrs. Eddy was spared? Is the way easier for us? According to Science and Health, it is not.

Student’s question as to painless progress.

The Master had plenty of pain, and he was a pretty good Scientist. That is the ultimatum, the zenith, of demonstration. We should be willing through the incentive of Science to lay upon the altar, before suffering forces us. There should be painless progress. A good share of Mrs. Eddy’s life was less than painless progress. Those who do not know me think I never suffer. I try not to draw upon others for sympathy; but you cannot tell anything about another. I am not so much concerned about whether it is painless or painful, so long as it is progress.

It seems, therefore, that the Journal does not harmonize with Science and Health. It is a profitable question; that is why I bring it up, not because I want to criticize the literature. There is no claim that it is perfect, but it is our part to make it perfect. There is no getting away from what I read to you from Science and Health. That absolutely disproves what I read from the Journal. Let us reason out why this is so.

God is good and God is just. Now, would it be just for Mrs. Eddy to have suffered more than we have to pay to work out our salvation? Would that be the justice of God? Was it right to take a religious view of Jesus, that God should vent His fury upon His beloved Son, so that sinners could sin without suffering? Jesus showed us how to suffer for righteousness’ sake, that we might not be fooled that his suffering spares us. You love divinely as I am hinting now and see if you suffer for it, and if you love divinely and suffer, you will keep on loving. There is a certain joy in loving, in reflecting God, which is greater than anything the world can offer. We cannot be frightened away from our loving, if we once love.

We suffer only in the degree that we love divinely. It is impossible to work out our salvation and shirk. The demand of Principle is equality. Divine Principle imposes no more upon one than the other. What would be the justice? The laborers that came in the eleventh hour got the same penny that those who came earlier. That doesn’t mean we should stand around the factory gate, and just before the whistle blows, go in and get the same pay. It must mean that whenever we come in, we will have earned the reward. That minute may be comprised of more reality in experience than a thousand years.

I comforted Mrs. Mann when her brother was killed in the war. Her father had been a soldier all his life. By way of consolation, I said to her, “Your little brother lived more in the few years that he lived, than your father did in a lifetime.” Her lamentation was that he was killed so young.

We are compelled to go higher until we prevent the possibility of suffering. We suffer by reason of the error we uncover, until we are so purified that there is no response in us to anything human. The Master said, “The prince of this world cometh but findeth nothing in me.”

Do not go out from this class room and say that the Journal is not scientific. I bring this up in the class room merely. Thousands may not see it. I bring it up here so that we may overcome the belief of perfection in official things. You would not help to make a thing perfect if you believed it was already so.

Is anything human to be despised or abused?

It came to me to write this question and I scarcely had time to dress for the class because it took precedence over everything. Are we not to make a staff of every serpent?

If divine Love watches over memory, is it not a good memory? You will remember I have told you in every lesson not to memorize. It serves well under the direction of divine Love. Is a good memory to be appreciated? If you, by reason of much reading and studying, had stored away in your memory all of the best that has ever been uttered or written, would you then be filled with wisdom? If you were in possession of all the libraries of the world, would you be filled with wisdom? Real wisdom that God gives, is an original flow. But if one is absolutely honest, is there any more harm in having Science and Health in memory than in one’s library? No. If one’s humility increases with one’s increase of borrowed goods, for which one hopes to pay in actual demonstration, then memory is made a natural stepping stone to Mind. I was afraid you would despise memory, because I have asked you not to remember, so I was instantly constrained to bring this up again. One leans not upon the crutch of memory as one embodies and reflects the spontaneity of Mind.

Whatever is brought up must be so illumined that you must grasp it with understanding, or at least with such conviction of faith that it is clear. Usually the very learned Episcopalian minister is puffed up because he is very learned, and the intellectualists that you meet are proud in the proportion that they are well stuffed; but there is no humility in that. So I say, if one’s humility increases with one’s increase of borrowed goods, then memory is made a natural stepping stone to Mind.

There is more divine nourishment in a humble fast of faith in Mind, than in the finest feast of memory. I have two articles that have been written by myself on the difference between memory and Mind. I hope to pass the pamphlets to you at the end of the class term. They were written for and shared with the Association two years ago and treated on the subject more exhaustively.

I still continue to say, do not try to memorize your studies, but do not despise memory.


Student’s question: “Don’t you think that it is harder to memorize Science and Health than other things?”

I cannot say that from experience. It seems to come to me as I need it. When I write articles I find quotations come to me as naturally as I read them. You will pardon me if I am frank enough to refer to what transpired between Mrs. Eddy and myself, if it is of benefit to you. I wrote an article on “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.” I showed it to Mrs. Eddy first, and with her sanction it was published in the Journal and Sentinel. She said, “I have never read an article from a student more original.” And yet there were quite a few quotations in it. It becomes one’s own in proportion as we understand it. It is just as hard for us to understand the Truth to sufficiently demonstrate it, as it was for Mrs. Eddy.

Why did Jesus recommend that we forgive seventy times seven times? If you hadn’t had the Lord’s Prayer written for you, how would you answer it? Suppose Jesus had never been born. Why do you drop a hot potato when you pick it up in your bare hand? You cannot get rid of an error if you hold to it. Only from the viewpoint of God who is too pure to take account of evil, is it seen that mortal…. (transcript trails off here)

A truly Christian heart loves not with the blind constancy of a mother.

When we deal with the human divinely, we overcome it. When you deal with the human humanly, the other fellow is always worse than you are. Christ Jesus, out of his own pure heart, forgave the Magdalene, while the hoary-headed creators of her brought her to him for judgment.

Does a white head indicate purity or innocence? An old man has the privilege of doing anything without being condemned. Even an old woman is excused for the things she does.

I saw the doctor drive up to a neighbor’s house. I walked down town with her one day and she told me all about what was troubling the family. They are good neighbors. They are interested in us because they can’t help being. I have allowed any favors that I could. They want us to visit them and they call here when they can. I have even let them read little articles I have written and they said they were the most beautiful things they had ever read. She said, “I am so discouraged. I do not know why I should have to suffer so.” Things had reached the stage where she wanted to commit suicide. I almost laughed. I quoted the Scripture and showed her how Jesus had suffered though he lived a most pure life, and I said, “Don’t feel discouraged that you are good enough to suffer. He didn’t want to commit suicide; he was glad to live; he wanted to live for the benefit of the world, and didn’t complain about suffering.” They do not want Christian Science because they recognize that one has to work out one’s salvation, – can’t buy it. Yet they complain because the doctors fail to bring relief.


Reading: “Christian Scientists learn that divine Love condones not evil, but they at the same time learn that human condemnation is only a religious unhealing action, proceeding from a self-justifying, self-righteous spirit that is far from Christian.”


So the really innocent suffer as if they did not suffer; they never complain of suffering. So if you hear anyone complaining, you know they aren’t innocent.

I want to introduce to you a book which I am not advising you to get. This came to me last year just before class commenced. By Kratzer (the Teachings of E. A. Kimball). It is a very subtle point. Mr. Kimball was a true teacher, but if this were a good book, desirable for Christian Scientists to have, it would be issued from the Publishing House. It is really laughable the way the book is gotten up. It has titles and topics that would enlighten you in every respect. I write letters to students when they are in need; sometimes a little article which I pass to the student for enlightenment; but I would not have the student compile these in book form. The setting of the book makes it all wrong, and it brings it into a new light if it is published for commercial purposes.

The Lectures by Mr. Kimball you speak of were given at a specific time for a purpose, but all that pertains to the cramming of memory. What is beneficial for us, or written for circulation, should come through the Publishing Society, to retain a sense of unity.

Bible. Mrs. Eddy stuck to the original King James version. It gave mortal mind less chance to criticize Christian Scientists. Why should not you be able to read the King James version and gain the spiritual meaning of it through Christian Science, just as well as some great DD’s revision of the Bible, which does not give you a clearer meaning or spiritual understanding. I should advocate getting all the help you care for. What is especially injurious is anything in the name of Christian Science that does not come from the original channel. I have no Bible dictionary, but you may avail yourselves of such helps as arouse you to thinking and are not harmful. I should be very careful about justifying the issuing of anything through any channel but the Publishing Society.

The main point is that this book savors of formulas. I told you in the beginning that we would have no specific lesson on treatment; it is the spirit of God-with-you that tells you how Christian Science heals. Getting this book together is a good deal like: “Every day in every way I am getting better and better.” We are not questioning Mr. Kimball’s teaching at the time, but we are questioning the present use of it. I should not want what I say in class put in book form. I would have too many critics.

One of the sub-headings: “Treatment: Mother-in-Law.” If you could have had this in your own class before it passed through Mr.Kratzer’s mentality, you would have it in its original meaning, but putting this in the form of a book, gives you a lot of human theory, – right reasoning perpetuated until it becomes mesmeric instead of spiritually enlightening. You could not read over again what you got from the spontaneous overflow in the class here, and get its original meaning. If it is only a little tint or the finest spiritual glimpse, it will awaken you to a realization and will not forestall the realization by a volley of words.

Mr. Kimball was a very gifted man; he taught Science well, no doubt.

Mrs. Eddy’s whole scheme of church work was that the Cause is founded upon one unity, one channel, one everything. What is true of this book is true of every book that does not come from the Publishing Society.

What if Life? Have you any more of a sense of God as Life than you can prove by overcoming death? You say God is Life. How much of that do you realize? Just as much as you overcome death. That forestalls profession merely. To mesmerize yourself by a repetition of that, does not give you a realization of it. To declare it may help to realize it. Only humility opens the way to realization.

What is death? Spiritual awakening is Life. Dying is not death, but that is what the world thinks. They think those who have died are dead. The belief of life in matter is death. The Apostle said, “To be carnally minded is death.” All of mortal mind is death. You are a dead class insofar as you do not understand Life. Insofar as you are dead, you are resurrected. The process goes on simultaneously. I am killing you as fast as I can, and at the same time resurrecting you. As far as you are awakened out of mortal mind, you are conscious of real Life. That gives a little palpable or real sense of Life, when we look at it in that way.

How much substance is there in mortal mind or anything that you are humanly conscious of. Whatever you are humanly cognizant of is shadow. Science and Health says, “Truth, Life and Love are substance.” Would it make any difference if you as a child at the blackboard, were very solemn in figuring out a problem; or if in learning the rules of mathematics or the simple rule of addition or division, you could do an example more easily or correctly if you were solemn about it, or religious? Would that help you solve the problem? You could be serious without being solemn, and you could be smiling and happy, while that problem confronts you. A mathematical attitude cannot be assumed. Assuming a certain human air would not help you to work out that two plus two are four.

Is it any less of a scientific awakening that you need in Science? Is your religious sense of God any more beneficial to you? Does it give you a scientific sense, any more than solemnity would help you to solve a problem on the board? You have to separate between religiosity and Science. A solemn declaration which comes usually out of the storehouse of memory strikes an attitude, and I have had it said to me that I am a good actor. My friends sometimes have a hard time knowing whether I am real or acting.

A little girl was asked in the Sunday School what she would do if she were in trouble. She said she would run to her mama. She was shown that her mama was neither the first nor the last resort.

You will find Christian Scientists grow more solemn when it thunders than when the sun shines. The elements were black at the time of the crucifixion, and you wonder if that was really so. I have seen our Leader stand at the window when a cyclone threatened. She taught us to neutralize the effects of universal mortal mind typified by the weather. The world would call it sacrilegious, but I have seen most threatening storms dispelled before destruction was wrought. She was apparently timid until the need came. When I witnessed her facing a storm, I never saw a human being that towered so strong as she. She called me the weather man. Instead of getting my reports from the newspapers, I had to see that the weather was right. If I were assured today of leadings in this direction, more good results would follow as to the weather. Mrs. Eddy directed me, and I didn’t have any doubt as to her knowing what should be. I respected what she said should be in the weather more than the whole universal thought of the world combined deserved; and oftentimes there were results which were just as natural in bringing out good as little Dickie rejoiced in the sun coming out and having a ride the other day. It isn’t sacrilegious to believe that divine Love favored the little fellow. We glorify God only so far as we recognize His power over evil.

It is the duty of Christian Scientists to recognize that the elements are only universal mind let loose and we are not at the mercy of them. That is the reason Science and Health says, “The seasons will come and go with changes of time and tide, cold and heat, latitude and longitude.”

Everything shall be transformed in the universe as in individuals. Spirituality chases away the gloom of sense. Life overcomes death. Mortal mind gives way to the reality of divine Mind, and reality shines forth. Mortals think they live until they die, and the form of dying which mortals experience they think is death.

Mrs. Eddy says that some individuals are so material, so sensual, that they will have to die many times before they begin to awake. It is well to know that. Mortals who are disinclined to awaken through Christian Science sort of shut their eyes when they get to bad places and hope to get over the difficulty; but we go over them with our eyes open.


Student’s question: “Isn’t the whole of mortal existence a dream?”

The belief of good is even more subtle than the belief of evil, and it is a good point. Before we get through we shall see that the belief of good is more dangerous than the belief of evil.

Some one said to me that my benedictive expression in our last class was so helpful that I will just touch it again. For every counterfeit penny, we have in exchange a gold dollar. That is the awakening in Christian Science, but we do have to bring in a perfect counterfeit, not a defective one.

Student’s question as to “A little child shall lead them.”

It does not mean merely flesh and blood. The faintest spiritual sense, the tiniest glimpse of the truth of being, even faith in the truth of being, that little tiny speck of divinity, leads us individually and collectively. The human interpretation is this, for example. We had a terrible storm at the shore one day. I stood at the window for an hour, and every once in a while little Dickie said, “I’m not afraid.” He spoke out loud every little while. “Love takes care of us, Dr. Mann. Doesn’t it.” Why should not we have confidence in the divinity of reality? Why should we have the selfish sense of animal self-preservation under any circumstances? Why should we think it is a special boon to escape from being killed? What is there in this life that is so sweet that we should be unwilling to part with it? When we realize that what is carnal is death, why then think that a stroke of lightning can kill us? Mrs. Eddy left behind that which will live forever, but who can think that she died?

I doubt, as I have said many times, that she had any sense of dying. So let us be less selfish than mortals who have no hope in God. Let us not fear that we can lose anything by trusting God and let us be bold enough to face a storm and not think it sacrilegious that a universal belief should be neutralized by an individual realization of Truth. A belief is no more real in its universality than an angry person is real in his individual burst of temper. We can have rain without destruction.

Had you rather be driven than drawn? You say God seems nearer when you are suffering on a sick bed than when you go to a dance, or some other pleasant pastime. Does God seem nearer in a thunder storm than in the sunshine? Two very prominent Scientists rode in their limousine while there was a great storm and boasted of it afterwards, and the Scientist who overheard it with me looked at me thinking I would say something. Mrs. Eddy would not have boasted; she would have been on her knees. A fool’s paradise! He had no assurance that it was a demonstration, because he was not personally afflicted. We can go to any extreme and fail to hit the line of demonstration.

The great demand of a fearful hour should not bring God nearer. The old belief was God speaks in thunder. Science and Health says, “Truth and Love come nearer in the hour of woe when strong faith or spiritual strength wrestles and prevails through the understanding of God.” Why? The Psalmist said, “If I make my bed in hell thou art there.” Because mortal mind is too intoxicated in pleasure to think of God when it selfishly enjoys itself; it is too drunk to think of the nearness of Truth; but in case of need, we sit up and listen. We should never be caught unawares. There is quite as much need of God’s nearness in the realm of sunshine; yes, more.

I am reminded of the telegram Mrs. Eddy sent to the National Student’s Association at Chicago. “While you are rejoicing in victory, the enemy is shooting you full of bullets.” We were rejoicing for what had been so far accomplished in Christian Science, and we were enthusiastic, and we got that telegram.

Student’s question as to difference between Christian Science and Divine Science.

In the notification I sent to the prospective students, I made a distinction between Christian Science and Divine Science. The human conception of Divine Science is called Christian Science. Divine Science is the revelation itself, as it dawned to her spiritual appreciation. Her spiritual grasp of the truth of being, or anyone’s, is Divine Science. Our human appreciation of it is called Christian Science. The human through the intermediatory footsteps of Christian Science is uplifted to the spiritual awakening of Divine Science. At that point we commune with God as directly as Mrs. Eddy did. Christian Science is the human conception of Divine Science, and the human conception is spiritualized to a point of inspiration. Then we prove our superiority over being.

“Are doctrines and creeds of benefit to man?”

She does not say they are of no benefit. There is the wisdom of Mrs. Eddy’s writings. It is the same belief that a good many so-called Christians have, that it is a terrible thing to be good. They do not want to be real good. The human belief is that to be real good involves dying, and that universal belief strikes most people, except in Christian Science.

Who has a God? How far do we have a God? Insofar as we are asleep in mortal mind. Every human belief is more or less of a God. Insofar as we believe in God as the highest, real and only being, we still have what is more or less of a personal God. We said the other day that God is not a God to Himself. Insofar as we awaken spiritually, we are Godlike, but God isn’t a God to Himself. To have a true sense of God implies looking out from above ourselves. God cannot look upon Himself. We gain a better sense of God and lose all sense of God insofar as we awaken to the truth of being. If God isn’t a God to Himself, insofar as we awaken to the truth of being, we become Godlike. The superstitious sense of God vanishes in proportion as we awaken spiritually.

Do you think that Jesus thought of God as a being apart from himself? He reflected God. There is the oneness. Therefore, he didn’t look up to God worshipfully, as mortals do. There we have the definition of what Science and Health says, “They shall no longer look up to the stars, but out from them upon the universe.” A mysterious passage. Jesus didn’t look up to God worshipfully, but he represented God scientifically. “I do always the things that please Him.” “Whatsoever the Father doeth, this doeth the Son likewise.”

Is not a true sense of God simply God declaring Himself, – making Himself cognizant to the purified human sense, purified to its vanishment…but which to itself is not God, for as infinite being it has no need, but is all.

Then does man look up to or out from God? I say out from, because that suggests the innate…which demonstrates the Truth of being and destroys all locality. The Truth of being is inherent Mind, ever-presence, to the complete elimination of locality or place. Therefore man looks out from God. Is there such a thing as God apart from man, or apart from His creation, – separate from it? No, because cause and effect are inseparable. We do not have to be religious to reason rightly. God is not seen apart from or separate from man ever. The human belief that God is separated is simply an abstraction, a nonentity.

When that unity of God and man is scientifically apprehended, to say nothing about being comprehended, when you tell a child what to do or not to do, you tell it with the infinite power of the divine reflection behind it. Most of the discipline that is given to children is a mere outlet for the parents. It is not done for the good of the child but for the benefit of the parent.

A true sense of God is not worshipful but scientific, or demonstrable, – a consciousness of Christlike oneness with, but never a being apart from and above, Mind, as mortals vainly or superstitiously or religiously hold God. In Christian Science we honor God by representing Him, not by believing ourselves worms of the dust; while we personalize, idolize, our own misconception, a conception of God as dead as the idols of wood or stone. We honor God by overcoming the discords of life, overcoming evil with good, – as one having authority.

Is there more than one individuality?

You say there is a certain conviction in your feeling that there is but one individuality. You remind me of the old German professors who, when I said to them that some of their grammatical constructions were not according to rule, said, “Das muss man im Gefuhl haben.” (“You have to feel that.”) The simple reason is because there can be but one infinite. The scientific logic begins with that fundamental statement; infinity, unity, oneness, allness. There can be but one all. There can be but one being. That is reasonable, and it is also a fact of revelation. That is the reason we are convinced. We can be fully convinced humanly that there can be but one all. Instead of thinking of the universe as a great big space, containing some vacuity with a big God somewhere, we think of space as reality or filled with intelligence, – space without limit comprising all intelligence, – the reality of space you see, as the air, for instance. We get a sense of universality when we realize that.

“In Him we live, move and have our being.” There is more reality to space as you awaken. The human sense is negative, and there is the something you feel that you cannot describe. That is the new birth going on.

I have not touched a hundredth part of what I have here, but the spirit of it has been breathed out in what has been given.




Fifth Day

Is God all?

Student: “God being infinite, He must be all.”

How do you know God is infinite? You say you do not know, and yet you say God is all. Is it possible for us to know God is all? How much do you know God is all? You cannot measure it humanly. You are answering more or less understandingly; you are stepping on the ice cautiously. I am glad to see that. In all of the classes that I have ever taught, I found the pomposity very glibly expressed, “I know God is all, because so and so.” Christian Scientists are very slow to say they know anything. It is one’s privilege to declare the truth with a view of realizing it. You can declare it safely in your own consciousness with the radicality of the Almighty. In your silent declaration you are safe because you are declaring it in your closet; you are not pretending anything. But when you declare to another with the human assurance that you know, it savors of pride. Pride is weakness. Humility is strength. While it is a scientific fact that God is all and we are privileged to declare that fact, yet there is a vast difference between the declaration and realization, and there is strength in humility. It is just a caution to say we must exercise care as to how we speak as Christian Scientists.

Does anyone in the world know that God is all? They would not be in the world if they did. They would be translated at once. Extravagant human profession fosters pride. The poverty of human proof inculcates humility. Pride is weak, as humility is strong to do good. I find that in my own life, that I talk less and hope to radiate more. No one would know from my profession that I am a Christian Scientist; I mean in meeting and mingling with the world. They might inquire just what I am if they saw some real fruits, but they would never hear it from me. I can give you a better example than that even. I remember when Mrs. Eddy had callers she would lean nine-tenths in their direction in her conversation with them. She was a most delightful hostess. She would talk about anything, and only upon their soliciting it would she talk of Christian Science. She would entertain them most royally from the standpoint of their own interests. She would even have the house supply tea and coffee for them. She would not drink it herself, but she was very solicitous and would make it for them if they chose to drink it.

Science and Health puts tea and coffee in the same category as whisky. Please bear in mind that Christian Science does not prohibit anything, but it leads you wisely out of the human, – above it. I have not drunk any tea or coffee for many years. I saw very early that tea and coffee were proscribed, and I endeavored for a long time to find out why they might be classed with opium. I was well satisfied from the human standpoint that they were a stimulant and contained no food value and Mrs. Eddy wisely discriminated between them. When you find Christian Scientists who tell you, “I am not a slave to tea and coffee,” they want to stick to them a little longer. There is seldom a mortal who has the habit of drinking tea and coffee who would call his appetite depraved because he drinks them. I would say appetite is depraved. Mrs. Eddy classifies appetite as depraved; not that it becomes depraved. You can drink tea and coffee as long as you wish or as long as your conscience will let you.

I saw fit to compromise once. A friend and I went on a little outing up in the mountains. The friends with whom we stayed up there on the farm were much concerned. I thought I could drink coffee with less concern to the hostess. My friend chuckled watching me. Those things are not governed as if we might sin against the Holy Ghost; it is the consideration of others, after all. I do want to say this: if we from Principle recognize the desirability of conforming even by faith to the demands of Science, we are more consistent than if we judge too humanly for ourselves. I would rather take the hint from Science and Health. There is a point of Principle: to put tea and coffee out of existence to my sense, rather than reason it out more humanly for myself, because there is no food value in it anyway, and I think that is why Science and Health has a few other evils especially branded. The world is quite as much a slave to tea and coffee as to other things that have been prohibited.

I practiced long-sufferance a good many years in my own home. If Mrs. Mann will allow me to say, she drank tea for a long time before I said anything. Finally the students began to say, “Mrs. Mann drinks tea,” and then I asked her how long she was going to drink it.

We might say by way of admission that any appetite finally becomes depraved, and if all is in the bud that is afterwards in the blossom, I think appetites are depraved. They are so human that they are in that category. All appetites are selfish and human, but if they are not nipped scientifically they soon prove to be depraved; so it is better to lift them as early as possible. If you have ever done any pruning in caring for trees and shrubs, you will recognize that. It is easier to destroy a bud that promises to be a sucker on a tree. If you wait a few weeks, you might have to use a saw or a knife.


Reading: “Separate teaching from superstitious mysticism, etc.”


I hold you as a class exactly where I am, and I hope you will not feel either now or any time during the class that you wish you understood Christian Science as Mr. Mann understands it. Do not compare yourselves with anyone. I hold you where I am and speak to you from that standpoint of enlightenment. Mrs. Eddy told us once at Pleasant View, “Make no comparisons for error.” That wicked sense is sometimes quite apparent in practitioners. They treat patients so mysteriously that they go away awe-filled. That does not wear well. We should feel the unity of God-with-us, and insofar as God is with us, He is with us quite impartially; and when I say impartially, I mean that from stage of growth as students, you have just as appreciable a sense of God as I have. The sense of God Christian Science gives to you is just as practical to you where you are, as mine is to me where I am. That is fair. That gives God a chance. I might carry that up as far as Christ Jesus himself. You are not called upon to do what I am doing. Your sense of God will do for you what you need, if you will believe it. If you think anyone else has more, you are not using your own. You should appreciate your own. That brings us to the point of appreciation.

I heard this morning that a student of last year’s class was told by an older student that as much as she appreciated her class instruction, it will be nothing compared to what she will get when she listens in, as they have been wont to do. When I hear these little expressions, I see the divine leading that prompted me to shut the back door.


Reading: “Appreciation inheres in divine worth; it is not inherent by human repetition. Your measure of appreciation lies within yourself. It is your own worth that enables you to appreciate, and that responds spontaneously.”


Human repetition leads to mesmerism instead of spiritual enlightenment. So I am very glad that you are waiting upon God now, and are not mesmerizing yourself into believing that tomorrow you will be better fitted to hear the Almighty. You will never be any better fitted than you are this moment.

I noticed there are quite a number of wives in the class whose husbands are not here, and out of mercy to the husbands I have written this: “Ask the wives if they believe themselves in Science, but exclude their husbands.” I do not know how many of you believe your husbands are with you or how many are opposed to you.

Your husband thinks he does not need Christian Science, because he is well and strong and full of business. Doesn’t he need it more because he thinks he doesn’t need it? You need to see very clearly that divine Love is blessing you both in order to give God glory for two. Until he realizes that it is not by chance that he is placed in his position, you will need to realize that for two. How can you hold him outside of the consciousness you are in? How can you humanly discriminate against it, if you really love him; and perhaps you felt that you have always loved, but you have never loved as Christian Science is teaching you. He is with you in Science. It is bad enough if he thinks he isn’t. You should give him the first attraction, and thank the Father that he is with you.


Reading: “Love your husbands. Christ Jesus’ admonition to Christian Scientists is, ‘Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves.’ The wisdom and harmlessness of selflessness or of divine Principle lived instead of talked, lift Christian Scientists to the drawing altitude and Christ Jesus’ spirituality, the Christian tone of which consistently sustains, makes us winsome followers of our beloved Leader whose strength of irresistible womanhood was acknowledged by those who, etc.”


I do not want you to go from the class with a humanly radical sense which makes you humanly offensive. You should be more winsome and attractive in every sense of the word. You should say without words, “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Your consistency will give you strength of attraction. A woman discovered Christian Science, don’t forget it; and it took the best woman in the world to discover it and stick to her text consistently enough to attract even men. The best men are drawn to the support of good women who lead off in Christian Science.

At any rate, you have a good thermometer in Christian Science. You can measure your own true Christianity in the effect upon your husband.

The least that we have in Science is more than they accidentally have. If non-professors had as much as we have, they would be with us. Goodness attracts goodness and if there is unalloyed goodness in anybody, they find their way to Christian Science. Water seeks its own level. The time is coming and is now when more and more people will come to Christian Science from Principle rather than from the mean standpoint of seeking mere physical healing; they will come from Principle because it is the right way. They will come less selfishly.

Does not the wisdom of divine Love do the right thing at the right time and in the right way? Christian Science never makes fools of us. Men who are husbands may try to make wives believe that they like negative puppies. They don’t. Men like positive responsiveness, positiveness. Women are not negative in Science any more than men, and the sense of Principle you have balances your whole being so that you become masculine to the degree of being more positive and wholesome, so that there is a companionship of reciprocity between husband and wife and all human relationship, – a positiveness that is reciprocal rather than subservient. When you give and take from that worthy standpoint of real virtue, just think what a grand companionship that is.

Is a true sense of God anything less than God declaring Himself? It is sacrilegious if it were considered from the human standpoint, to think we should presume that God declares Himself; and yet that is what it is, because only God has a true sense of Himself, and He declares Himself through us in the degree that we are purged of sense and reflect Soul. You do not know just how, for as the Scripture says, “The wind bloweth where it listeth.” God declares Himself through us insofar as we spiritually reflect Principle and are selfless. It takes away the mysticism of praying to somebody, or the personal sense of God, and you will be surprised how much this personal religious sense of God still tries to cling to you. Guard against the old theology as mesmerism.

I am reminded of the old minister in my class. He had been pretty well riddled by Mrs. Eddy on a question of theology one day. About the time when he was all shot to pieces, he looked up and said, “Well, Mrs. Eddy, what benefit was my study of theology to me?” She sat back and laughed heartily. She wanted him to see that. What good was his old theology when it was all shot to pieces in one shot? That is what she wanted him to see.

We dare to believe that God is with us in Christian Science. We can do that without blushing if it is true. I should hesitate to stand before you challenging you to question me, if I were not pretty sure that God was standing right behind me. I wish you would question me more. I wish you would let all your curiosity come to the surface during the class, if it is possible for the women to do that.

That reminds me, why do so many more women come into Christian Science than men? I answered it sarcastically once, that it takes fewer men to counter-balance women.


Student’s question: “If God is not conscious of Himself as God, then man would not be conscious of God.”

What is the consciousness of God? The consciousness of good, in being conscious of itself, does not have to be deific. It simply is. My point was that God does not look above Himself; He is simply Himself. As we awaken to the truth of being, we are not conscious of God as God, but as one with God. Does it mean less to you when you cannot look up but simply look out? There is more reality to that. That unity which reflects as intimately as the rays radiate the sun, means reality to me. You see how the mesmeric, human religious sense clings to us. We want to look up to God. We should consecrate our lives and be sincere and serious, but not necessarily sanctimonious. That savors of the old prayer-meeting prayer: I am a worm of the dust. The truth of being holds us Godlike.

You know the part of the benediction at every Sunday service from John: “Now are we the sons of God.” But the first reader usually spoils it from there on. He usually says, “and it doth not yet appear what we shall be.” As if we could be more than the sons of God sometime. I used to read that, “Now are we the sons of God, but it doth not yet appear what we shall be.” It simply does not appear yet, but we are already the sons of God; human sense hides it. I just swallow the “what we shall be.” You have to read the meaning into the words. You can read that if it is ever your privilege to do it, and you will read the meaning into it. I just hold my gaze to the scientific idea that we are now the sons of God.

The understanding is infinitely diversified. It never becomes mechanical, because your understanding is tenderly shaded always. As you grow you will shade it differently. The main point is never to lose the scientific fact. The infinite variation that comes with your own understanding is never stereotyped, because reflection is infinitely variant, colorful. I want to just say to you, because I love to recall it, how I used to enjoy hearing Mrs. Eddy read, and speak for that matter. She would not read as if words were anything to her. You would lose track of the words and you would hear her appeal, “Don’t you see as I see it?” You would hear a heart appeal.

Student’s question as to the word “adoration” employed by Mrs. Eddy.”

Humans cannot adore God too much. Don’t you see Christian Science is revealed for mankind? There will be a time when there will be no Science and Health. Already it is true that insofar as you have the understanding, Science and Health isn’t, to you. Science and Health is for those who do not understand. We should be just, if not generous, to ourselves, Mrs. Eddy advises.

You see how Christian Science teaches the healing as we go along from lesson to lesson. We make Truth practical.

“Are doctrines and creeds a benefit to man?” Is there a little benefit in them? Then you are not one of those who believes that good is found everywhere, as perhaps you have heard it said. Do you say right out then, that there is no good in the old church? You will remember that we said everything that Christian Sciences teaches is not written in books; so we can speak right out here in the class. If we weigh it in God’s scales, would Mrs. Eddy have established a new church if she could have built on the old? The good old Universalist minister in Kansas wondered why we started churches of our own. He would say, “We need you in our own. We need the spiritual vitality which you represent.” We started with the Sunday School and later on we did regular preaching from a text. The old man, about 70 or 80, (I used to go to his church before we had services of our own), used to preach so nicely on the universality of Love, that God would save us all. That suited me. He used to plead with us. I told him, “If I should stay in your church and teach what Christian Science teaches, you would throw me out of the window.” We had to separate and agree to disagree.

Mrs. Eddy speaks beautifully of the old church in her writings and we should recognize the good which they intend to do or strive to do. We would hardly be Christian if we would speak ill of the church as far as that is concerned, but as Christian Scientists we must see clearly.

I have asked this question before prohibition was on the statute books: Which is the more harmful to society, the old mortal mind church or the saloon? Shocking question! Mortal mind shrinks from such a contemplation. Which has opposed Christian Science the more wickedly, the saloon or the church? “A man’s foes are they of his own household.” Then, which is the more harmful? Which must you guard most against, the belief of good or the belief of evil? Which is the more dangerous to you? Which is more apt to deceive you, the belief of good or the belief of evil? The saloonist would come along with his mouth smeared with tobacco juice possibly; but if a minister comes along with a collar button behind, it might fool you. But still the one is as human as the other possibly. The Master said, “The publicans and harlots will go into the Kingdom before you.” It is necessary to see this, but we are not to cry it from the housetops because that is too human. We cannot bless our enemies if we peddle them off from the house tops.

Mortal mind is the same in everybody and everywhere, and human beliefs supposed to be good are equally subtle everywhere. In Christian Science error cannot hide and we have to call a spade a spade, as the old saying is. I have had experience all the way along, and in the beginning I argued with lawyers, doctors, and ministers, and used to enjoy it, but I do not come in contact with them now.

Mrs. Mann had the good fortune of meeting a doctor sometime ago. She went to have her heart examined, and she should not have done that, of course; I could have told her more about it. But in order to join the YW swimming pool, she had to give an account of her heart. He took advantage of that and asked her who her doctor was and overstepped his balance quite a bit; and I am glad to know she defended herself well, according to what she said to me.


Student’s question: “Why shouldn’t she have had her heart examined?”

I suppose we are subject to these laws; the same as pupils are examined for various reasons. They do not want to assume the responsibility of heart-failure in the swimming pool. I mean she should not have had the desire to swim and she wouldn’t have been subject to that particular insult. We have to submit to the requirement of the law if we expect to enjoy the privileges, and they do that to forestall the danger that might result from plunging.

There is a certain amount of knowledge that is necessary. We need to read, for instance. Mortal mind expands itself, – outgrows itself. The law requires vaccination, so you might have to submit to it, but that, of course, is the least part of it. Submitting to that demand doesn’t mean much. There are those who oppose vaccination from the standpoint of fear; but we submit to it with less fear. Until we rise to the point of majority where we can control or ameliorate the universal thought of the belief in matter, and not merely oppose vaccination, the belief in matter is no protection. You may willfully run away and escape a particular individual ordeal, but how much are you ameliorating the universal thought that such things are necessary? Christian Science is the leaven in the lump of mortal mind. We have to watch not only to escape from a certain immediate threatening. We are not merely dealing with effects; we are dealing with cause always. Our unselfish aim is to heal mortal mind of the belief of vaccination.

To escape the study of hygiene would be of no special benefit. It is better to let mortal mind explode itself; let it swell up to its own explosion. Christian Science is leavening the lump, and healing the belief of mortal mind of that superstition. The spirit which fears not, the spirit of fearlessness which is inspired in Christian Science, is what we need. The pro’s and con’s of the human demand are of less immediate importance to us. We must aim to heal the root.

Some years ago when I practiced in Boston, a call came from the northern part of New Hampshire for a Scientist to treat a case there. It was a malicious belief and the whole family were in quarantine. A very important practitioner had been treating the case and hadn’t been getting along very well. One or two members of the family had passed on and two or three were still sick, and they called upon me to see if I would take the case. This practitioner was asked to go in and minister, and he had to decide whether he would be quarantined with the family or treat absently. Think of treating such a case absently! The practitioner left the case, and I stayed with the family, and sooner than the authorities expected, the family was lifted out. The practitioner who had a lot of patients, in justice to them, could not be quarantined. I was less important. I didn’t care whether I might be stricken with the family and brought them out with me. I was less conspicuous. I was a less important practitioner.

It is that Love that is needed to heal the universal belief of the need of vaccination, rather than the selfish determination to…. (transcript trails off here)

What do you think is the most subtle error that Christian Scientists have to guard against in the world today? What is the most subtle thing in the world today that Christian Scientists are threatened with? Is it within or without the camp? Have you students heard anything about the danger of Catholicism? I was told by a big-eyed Scientist that Roman Catholicism is the most subtle thing that Christian Scientists have to cope with. The most subtle and the most dangerous thing is Christian Scientists; that is, I mean the error of self-mesmerism which is maliciously played upon among Christian Scientists. Take the case I have just told you about. Could there be a practitioner important enough not to be able to come near enough to take the family by the hand and not fear? Would not that have healed the family? Such a practitioner might have personal reasons for not wanting to be quarantined.

We hope not to frighten you about Catholicism. The subtlety of self-deception maliciously fanned among Christian Scientists, is the most dangerous thing you will encounter. A person who is self-deceived will live to deceive you in order to justify his own self-deception. There is hardly a stage in the progress of mortals in the world that does not like to register itself with the same old “I told you so.” Mortal mind justifies itself at every stage of its progress, so-called. “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.”

If a practitioner is humble, he can never be humiliated. We do not humiliate ourselves; we simply prove our humility. “The ear trieth words as the mouth tasteth meat,” so we have a faculty of using the right words at the right time in the right way. If we do not humble ourselves in due time, we are bound to be humiliated, but voluntary humility forestalls humiliation.

Never have I done anything so joyfully in the world, since serving with Mrs. Eddy, than to have Dickie with us. We have done it gladly. We are almost conscious of feeling that we may miss him. We would like to keep him a patient a little while longer. Friends have said, “You will miss him when he goes.” We are ahead of that; we are going to allow ourselves to miss him. He will make it easier for us if he will come to see us often.

Are you ready to say with all your heart that you cannot trust a minister? If he would make ever so pleasing a prayer, that would not necessarily deceive you. Some of them do use nice language, and I used to envy them because of it; but I don’t now. Those Scientists who talk most glibly are apt to deceive you most easily. I do not want the world to hear this, but here in the class room we must learn these things. Have faith in God only, and do not believe anyone else. The Bible tells you the same. “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man.” I quote you that Scripture without remembering it; it just comes.

We do want to see the ministers as we see ourselves, but do not believe them, that is all. Do not believe anyone but God.

Here is a Scripture that bears on the question of doctrines and creeds: “Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep; all that ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not know them.” All who are not in Christian Science are thieves and robbers, but you do not have to pick a quarrel by telling them all that.

Student’s question as to difference between our Church Tenets and doctrines and creeds.”

The Tenets are merely a positive hint of Principle. You do not subscribe to them by believing in them, as they do in creeds and doctrines. The Tenets are a hint of Principle which you are aroused through Christian Science to understand. Those Tenets do not let you rest on belief; they keep you reminded of Principle; whereas the doctrines and creeds make you feel good in belief. There is a vast difference. You might just as well say that we repeat the Lord’s Prayer, but don’t we repeat it differently? Christian Science cries against the letter of anything. The Tenets hint the substantiality and sufficiency of Principle, which you must understand; it does not ease you in belief. Doctrines and creeds simply make you purr in sense instead of waking you out of sense. The Lord’s Prayer becomes clearer and clearer to us as we repeat it, but we have no special belief in the mere repetition; we do not feel better simply because we repeat it, or because we offer the prayer; but we lift our consciousness to more spiritual altitudes whenever we repeat the Lord’s Prayer understandingly.

What is error?

Student: The scientific fact is that error isn’t, but it is just as hard to know that as that God is all.

Is there no sin?

Your saying no, doesn’t prove it. Then let us for the sake of the argument and the awakening that comes from it, ask, what is sin. Sin is sense itself; all sense testimony. Whatever is not of God is sin; the human sense which hides God is sin.

Is sin only the wrong that you do, or is it also that which you are capable of doing? Sin is mortal thought whether it is active or passive. You have heard the old religious statement, that there is a sin of omission and commission. That broadens out the question. The old theologists think we ignore sin. It is like the cloud which hides the sun. Scientifically it is right to say there is no sin. But insofar as you say that as one in a dream, you may be consoling yourself in sin, or mortal mind, and that is dangerous and very wrong; that is self-mesmerism.

Sense is sin (only it isn’t). We see error only to unsee it. Never see it with big eyes and walk away from it. According to the Bible, “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” Not to be awake to the Soul of being is sin.

Is sin in the wrong done or in the sensual sense, the lack of spiritual awakeness, which makes the doing possible? The wrong done is but the effect. The possibility is the false sense itself. Insofar as you are not awake to the truth of being, you are asleep in sense and you are liable to dream anything. You cannot regulate your dreams when you are asleep. The only escape from sin is to awake to the Truth.

We are broadening out; we are not satisfied with the little religious outlook which says, Do and don’t do it.

Anything mortal mind can advise you is short-sighted and very narrow. Your own sense of Principle is worth more to you than the best the old minister can give you. Your infantile conception of light gives you more than the old conception of the ages.

John the Baptist said, “I must diminish while he must increase.” The highest human that John the Baptist represented must give way before the spirituality which Jesus represented. John’s introduction of Jesus as the forerunner was very personal, which would have to give way to the dawning sense of Principle.

Mrs. R. felt more secure when she knew I was present with the boy, than she felt in God at the time. My presence seemed more real to you than the Almighty’s. You were of the strong belief that He was with me, but that He wasn’t very good to you. That is a very personal belief which is now decreasing, and your sense of God is increasing; and isn’t it beautiful that we can convert such a serpent into a staff? All the religious praying of time wouldn’t have awakened you.

I have always said that the shot that shot me into Science was a good shot, but how many would be willing to be shot as I was? I am not boasting, but I am thankful that the shot shot me into Christian Science. It was a wonderful shot – a shot that was heard around the world.

Does Christian Science prohibit?

Yes, but not personally. The slightest pure sense of predominant Principle protests against any and all prostitution, and insists that even in this world therefore, let your garments be always white. Paul saw the need of a spotless sacrifice when he said, “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” I agree with Paul that it is only a reasonable service, because what sacrifice is there in giving up a corpse? You are glad to have that buried out of sight.

Jesus did that as our example. Christian Science teaches how he did it. It destroys that religious belief that he did it to spare or save sinners; he did it to save them from themselves, not the need of going and doing likewise. Then you will recognize that Christian Science does not free us them the need of cross-bearing, but it enables us wisely to bear the cross profitably.

May I ask you if the lessons so far have quickened you to a more intimate sense of God? Has God become more to you since you have come to the class? Has He become more real to you? If the sense of God is sufficiently clear, we are ready for the riddling which comes soon after the question of man is made clear to us.


Student’s question: “What is the ‘still, small voice’?”

It is not conscience. It is representative of God. Conscience, if it is a good conscience, listens for the voice of God because it does not know just what to do. Conscience is eminently a little peek-hole of mortal mind. It is no criterion whatever. Humans say that their conscience must guide them, but woe unto the humans that are guided by conscience, for some have a very tender conscience and some have a very dull conscience, and conscience is just as variant in its leading as mortals are different. The ‘still, small voice’ is a divine conviction, which possibly is so imperceptible, so delicate, that we scarcely will know it. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health: “In the silent sanctuary of Truth are voices of solemn import, but we heed them not.” Why don’t we heed them? Because the ‘still, small voice’ is too divine; the dull senses don’t quite hear; or hearing, too busy with worldliness to heed. God is so good that He watches for every opportunity to hint something to us, and when we really want to hear, when we are in need, then we are too selfish to listen because…. (transcript trails off here)

I sometimes sarcastically say, the good house wife does her work, and possibly after dinner she dresses up in a white apron and then she begins to live. I have no objection to the white apron, but why can’t she do all of the work restfully? I rather do all that I have to do restfully.

The ‘still, small voice’ I think of sometimes as intuition. I will read to you in one of our lessons a little article on intuition. It is on healing, an article written out of a recent experience in healing in my own ministration to another. It will show you how important it is to listen for and understand the ‘still, small voice’, because it was only through intuition that I detected what was really the trouble, in spite of what the sufferer felt was the trouble; and by evidence to the contrary, the intuition was the right guide and proved itself so.

You remember what Shakespeare says about conscience, “A fiend says run; conscience says stay.” Conscience hasn’t any virtue of its own. You are conscientious in the degree that you awake to the truth of being. It is always a point of Principle that makes us strong to do right – to see right and to do it. We often hear the ‘still, small voice’ but we at once recognize the cost of heeding and we are too selfish to obey. Angels do not tarry when they rap and you don’t say “Come in” right away, and with a whole-souled hospitality which you should feel.

I saw from the beginning how foolish and futile it was to tell Mrs. Eddy something plausible. She was not dependent upon what you said. With her it was a case of the least said, soonest mended. The heart could only be honest around her. I do not care what my patients tell me. You cannot heal yourself or anyone else when you depend upon sense testimony. Always work from the standpoint of seeing from within, because a patient may be honest and yet not tell; he may mislead or deceive you.

We should be so well acquainted with ourselves, we should know God enough, to discriminate between false suggestion and intuition. To call it talking with God, is not terrible. It is very genuine. That is not farfetched. I do not think we are any worse than the patriarchs of old; I sometimes think we are a little better than they were. They were very liberal concerning themselves in those days. Perhaps they differed in this respect: they dared to call their ruminating, talking with God. If you think that the Bible characters were specially favored, because they wore long flowing cloaks, you are not doing yourselves justice. It is wonderful how Mrs. Eddy rose to the point of intimacy with God, so that she could say about Jesus (I think in one of her writings) that if wisdom had guided all of our Master’s sayings, he would not have prophesied his own death, and thereby have hastened it. Think of her apparently arrogating to herself the sufficiency of passing judgment on the Master’s life. But how could she represent God in Christian Science without the innate honesty which demonstrated that God is no respecter of persons? God is not discriminating between His children. It is only a human sense, a very self-righteous sense, which pains humility by a very exalted personality, and Principle likewise is impartial and is to be respected everywhere.




Sixth Day

Have you been troubled over that point in Science and Health that there should be painless progress, since you spoke about it? You think it was made clear enough at the time we referred to it. Apparently we are not realizing painless progress. It came to me to bring that out again this morning. “There should be painless progress” (Science and Health), and if all in the world were equally bent upon leaving sense for Soul, this ideal would follow as naturally as the flower turns to the sunlight; but so long as the majority resist the demands of Truth, this idea cannot be reached. Jesus’ experience in various ways must be repeated in all leading individuals, as he said, “Ye shall indeed drink of my cup,” and Science and Health speaks of “The cup of sorrowful effort.” But even painful progress is more than the world outside of Christian Science can claim, for the worldly suffer in guilty human circles with scarcely perceptible progress.

For instance, what has the world profited by this terrible war we have just been through? We do not have to stop to answer that, but let us think of it for a second. In Science and Health we read: “Was it just for Jesus to suffer? No; but it was inevitable, for not otherwise could he show us the way and the power of Truth. If a career so great and good as that of Jesus could not avert a felon’s fate, lesser apostles of Truth may endure human brutality without murmuring, rejoicing to enter into fellowship with him through the triumphal arch of Truth and Love.”

The ideal is before us; there should be painless progress. That is like the consummation of our work rather than the beginning and the footsteps. That ideal is our perpetual inspiration; we have something higher to aim at than we are realizing. Many times I have read the chapter on the Eucharist and have shed tears. We think it is a terrible thing in our selfishness if we have a stomach ache, if we have eaten something we should not have, possibly, or have eaten too much. That is not suffering. I could tell you a few instances in my experience as a Christian Scientist which I think have touched the hem of the garment of real suffering.

We should not be selfish in our expectation of painless progress; we should work unselfishly toward it. The truth of being silences even the most malicious suffering. After we purge ourselves up to a certain point, we are simply fitting ourselves for real suffering, because we do not really suffer until we get unselfish. The selfish complain a whole lot over a very little; but the unselfish scarcely complain over very much. It is true that we become very sensitive to every discordant atmosphere and we feel like flying away. There is a false sense of that manifested in so-called artists in the world – those who have long hair. They are high strung, they say, – nervous. They have a human sense of the irritability which makes them peculiar; but there is a true sensitiveness which makes us very ill at ease in an atmosphere which is not Godly up to our own standpoint.


Student’s question: “Why isn’t it easier for us to-day than it was for Mrs. Eddy?”

My answer to your question came before you had finished it, and it is substantially that because we today, as a result of all the progress that has gone before us, are dealing with more subtle forms of error than they dealt with then. We have not as much in volume perhaps as in subtlety. The nucleus of error today which malicious animal magnetism generates is just as heavy for us to bear because of that subtlety, as that pronounced resistance to Jesus.

Mrs. Eddy discovered the subtlety of malicious animal magnetism through the loss of her favorite husband, and when I say her favorite husband I mean it sincerely, but it could be misconstrued if I treated it lightly. He was virtually killed through the subtlety of malicious animal magnetism before she understood it. That was some cross, – a man that was as godly as she knew him to be, to be taken away. He was really a helpmate, but it was through that extreme suffering that she awakened for the first time to the murderous sense of malicious animal magnetism. There are those who ignore it on the theoretical basis that all is good and that there is no evil.

The amount of evil that each one has to cope with first or last is in substance the same, though it is in changed form; else you see God would not be just. If several thousand years ago He had imposed more upon Jesus than we have to account for, where would the justice come in? If for no other reason than that, you should see it. Whether it is a pound of feathers or a pound of lead, it is that much to carry, and it will cost us just as much to work out our own salvation as it cost Jesus. If this were not so, it would not be true that divine Love is impartial.

Those out of Science are not feeling what we feel in Science, until they come into Science. Divine Love never changes anywhere, here or hereafter. There is no hereafter to divine Love; it is always here.

We often hear it said how terrible it must have been for the boys in the trenches. I am not minimizing what they experienced there. They went through many an extreme that they would not have selfishly chosen. Contemplating their suffering from the human standpoint, does not get the right focus on it. To illustrate, they were more or less material and hardened in a human way. I do not mean they didn’t have their own degree of suffering: rats, cooties and everything. But they didn’t suffer as my own sensitive standpoint contemplated their suffering.

To illustrate further, did you ever decapitate a Thanksgiving turkey? The hardened butcher would take him by the hind legs and chop his head off, and when he stops jumping, put him in hot water. It’s not the turkey that suffers at all; his head goes off so quickly he doesn’t know what has happened. But it is the sensitive individual who does the suffering.

We have to reach a certain amount of goodness before we really suffer. If I can show you the value of suffering, you won’t mind the suffering. Without the truth of being, without the sensitiveness which regeneration brings to you, you suffer profitless; you gain nothing by it. You have to be punished until you don’t need it any more. Christian Science makes our suffering profitable. Don’t try to wear the crown until you have borne the cross.

I suffered all that it is possible to suffer in dying. That is more than most human beings living can say. I say it in all seriousness. I had so died that I would never have come back to this world had it not been for the touch of God. I had suffered all that I could suffer in dying. If you do not learn the truth of being as Science reveals it and become unselfish enough to become willing to suffer, you still will be obliged to suffer in dying. If you do not suffer willingly to demonstrate the realities of Life, you have to suffer unwillingly in dying. You cannot escape it. So what is the use of making a fuss about it? The Bible says, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Do not be afraid to tremble. Mrs. Eddy has not taught or written that we go into the kingdom on the wings of reverie. We work through blood-sweating, but it is not what that seems.

Have you ever ridden in a car approaching a hill? From a distance it seems a big hill, but as you get nearer it is less steep and you very naturally and easily reach the top. So everything human vanishes when you approach it unselfishly.

“To be carnally minded is death.” The experience that mortal mind calls dying is not death. Stand still for a moment and imagine a sudden change which precipitates you from one room to another. The Scripture says, “As the tree falleth so it shall lay.” Mortal mind awakens as it goes to sleep because yielding to error does not yield you progress in Truth. You can figure it out in this way: That when you overcome sickness through the awakening to Truth now, in other words when your mentality rebels against the belief of physical pain, you rebuke it through a more or less understanding. The Truth destroys that ache or pain and you feel the freedom from it; you feel victorious. On the same basis, if that ache were allowed to run to it self-destruction, it might carry you off into what is called death.

What puzzles you is, what the awakening is. How can you expect any progress in drifting in error? If you are swept over by the current of error that sweeps you down stream, or if you go cross-wise….There is nothing gained by the mere belief of dying. You awaken as you fall to sleep. There is no mystery about it. I wasn’t conscious of dying, even when I was unconscious to the world’s sense. When I was unconscious to my friends, I was not unconscious to myself. I have learned in Science that we gain only so far as we overcome evil with good, as the awakening to Life forestalls the possibility of the human sense of death. Insofar as you do not understand the truth of being now, you are dead.

You wonder in what form you would awake? A cat or a rat? We have always lived, but you never solve it from the standpoint of human thinking. Pre-existence is no greater mystery than after-existence, but it is always the truth of being. Jesus recognized his pre-existence when he prayed that he might be as before the world was. It is no mystery to me. I am sure that we never lose our identity. There is no reason why you should believe these suggestions of theosophy, or any other form; spiritualism, hypnotism. As you put off mortal mind you awaken to the truth of being. You need not worry that you will ever lose consciousness of your own identity. You will never be unconscious of yourself.

If we commit suicide or are willing to suicide, we have that much added to our problem. We lose insofar as we are willing suicide, because selfishness which predisposes that has to account for that. Nothing is gained here by shirking.

Why should divine Love be any better there? You never lose your own identity. After I was healed through the touch of God, my whole life was transformed. I began from that moment to live out of the world instead of in it.

Before we get through we ought to touch the question of procreation. You know Christian Scientists have been greatly troubled over the outlook upon the world if they do not prove themselves more fruitful and multiply as the Scripture advocates; they are afraid the earth will be depopulated. Do you think that God’s creation is dependent upon what is appreciable to the physical senses? Do you think it is limited to the physical sense conception of it? You will never see the future any more than you see the present. As you see the present rightly, there will be no future.

Why do you stand and look forward and then turn around and look back. Just take care of the present and the future will take care of itself. You also know that divine Love is divine Love infinitely so, everywhere.


Student’s question: “Do animals and trees have to work out their own salvation?”

Let us take up the question of man before we go into that.


Student’s question: “Science and Health says, ‘God is individual and personal in a scientific sense.’ What is ‘personal’?”

The words “in a scientific sense” is your key-note. I have followed Mrs. Eddy’s revision of Science and Health in thought. Indeed, while with her I had the privilege of helping on some points of revision. I bought a new Science and Health every time there was a semblance of a revision. I used to mark the changes and then study why they had been made. The theological world has made a great howl over Mrs. Eddy taking the personality of God away. She has tried to use every possible term to appeal to even the theological world, even the word personal. If the theologian reads that, he will have to admit that Mrs. Eddy has a God, but he still has to find out what the “scientific sense” means. You would have to construe that to mean that personality and individuality are synonymous. Mrs. Eddy’s sense of personality isn’t the human sense. Therefore, He is individual and personal in a scientific sense; and that is the sense that God has of Himself, because the human sense, Mrs. Eddy says, never yet gave forth a positive tone. Science is a divine sense; therefore, the scientific sense of God is God introducing Himself. Our human sense of God changes until we see infinite individuality. What is the difference whether it is called individuality or personality, so long as it is infinite.

Infinity cannot be circumscribed. God is individual and personal in a scientific sense. You cannot separate that statement from all the other statements in Science and Health. The Bible says, “God is a Spirit.” The article “a” is used, which we would cut out in a scientific sense. Yet if you religiously take the Scripture which is literally written, it will be a very great Spirit, but it will be a Spirit. It is the scientific quickening we need to appreciate. God’s sense of Himself is individual and distinct in its completeness; but remember, it is always to be recognized scientifically in its infinitude. Astronomers will tell you when you look as far as you can, you can look that far again and again, and keep on indefinitely. In this way we get some sense of infinity. Infinite personality; think of a personality so big! Any way that you grasp infinity, anything that gives you a fuller sense of infinity, will help you.

Student’s question as to individuality.

Think of God as self-existence; individual self-existence; individual being. A thing has to be, in order to have individuality. Originality and individuality are identical. If God has originated Himself, you would think of originality; but individuality carries with it a sense of being without consciousness. Call it self-consciousness. A person of individuality is one of independence. There is a certain sense of reality that goes with the word individuality. Individuality is a distinctness which holds its own. God Himself is inherent individuality. He is within Himself all-in-all. Individuality would carry the sense of reality also.

Be careful that you do not try to get a grasp of God too humanly. It would be far better for you to realize that these scientific statements compel the arousal which dissipates the human sense; and the divine sense dawns without your human speculation or human effort, if you will accept the scientific statement with the humility of a child. The very acceptation will eventually act as the leaven which clarifies mortal mind and dispels sense, and the divine comes in. You can never tell how the regeneration goes on, – the new birth evolves. You can see that individuality and personality are only human terms, which if too humanly held, but limit God. They forestall your seeing the infinitude of God. The infinitude is what you need, – illimitable, uncircumscribed, all.

The most needful thing in teaching is a settled sense of God, a scientific sense of God. God is the only real individual in the world. His oneness still leaves individuality wholly to Himself. God is the only individual because there can be but one infinite. Infinite individuality can be ascribed only to God and insofar as we have individuality, we reflect God. Our individuality is only a reflection of the individuality of God. That leaves God as infinite. God is individual being; we, the reflection of that being. Humanly speaking you make distinction between individuality and personality. Personality is the human sense of individuality.

The strength of God to us is in the infinitude of Mind without form or outline. The scientific statement, if it is accepted with the humility of a child, will constantly ameliorate your human sense, until the human sense becomes clarified and the light shines through.

I like to see these aftermaths of questions, because they clear up things. We cannot contemplate the question of God too long.

A student once asked Mrs. Eddy why he seemed to feel the weight of evil more in Boston than when out of Boston. She answered, “Because error locates Truth.” That same thing can be said about the class room. Error would be especially active in this little realm now, if there were not consecrated Love to neutralize it. Latent error comes to the surface that you would perhaps be ashamed to have come to the surface. It is the new sense of God that brings it to the surface. This student wondered why he seemed to feel the weight of evil more in Boston. The enemy shoots at the commanding general, and airplanes hover over his camp. It is not terrible, if we do not mind suffering. Error locates Truth. Error says we are having a class here this morning.

Catholics. We ought to be wise, as they are witty. Do not fear them and let your smile be so genuine that it reassures them. It is just natural inquisitiveness to know where you are going.

As we were saying, error locates Truth. Does God know anything about this class? The “no’s” have it, if we decide the question by vote. That brings up the question of our Government right now. We boast of our Government and we may well boast, because it is as good as any on earth; but it is far from infallible, when politicians award votes. I must vote with the “No’s.” If God could know of this class, we would reduce Him to the human to that degree.

The better way to answer this question would be to get at it in this way. What is human existence? You are here to learn of God. Did we know ourselves as God knows us, we would not be here. Insofar as we rise above the class, we find God. If God could know this class, He would have a human view of us and this would be real. Can a person who is awake know what you are dreaming in a nightmare? How can God know what does not exist? I am speaking to you from the standpoint of God, as it were an intermediator. Insofar as I am awake, I can awaken you, and when we are wholly awakened out of the human, we will see things as God sees them. It is a startling question.

Error locates Truth, but Truth never localizes itself. Error says we have a class here; God doesn’t say it. That seems like abstract reasoning, yet it is true. It is only to the human sense that we have a class. Your motive for coming is to get out of human sense, and to learn of God. You come to find God, but God does not know that you are here. It is because you believe in error that you come as a class. The class exists to the human sense but not to the divine sense. Isn’t it error that locates God? Isn’t it only to human sense that God seems localized? Heaven seems a local habitation. That is a human sense. God does not localize Himself, because through revelation we find that God is everywhere. So God to Himself is not localized, but limited humans locate Him in a local heaven, – limit or circumscribe Him, or personalize their God after the pattern of their own personality or the exact reverse of Principle.

Principle does not localize itself. That is what jars mortal mind. Humanly, you think of God as you think of yourself, only you have a mysterious thought that He is good. When you say that, you do not know what you mean. Do you think that God knows us as stupid human beings? That would mean, light can know darkness. The human effort is honest. Can light know darkness? Do not fear to reason radically. Then is there any shade of darkness that light can know? You say every honest human effort; insofar as it is human, it is not honest.

I am reminded of Father Knapp who taught the old men’s class in the Sunday School in the early days of Christian Science. I was young, but I wanted to be in the old men’s class where there were lively discussions. In one instance the remark was made, “Paul held Steven’s clothes while they stoned him.” One of the other students said, “Well, I think Paul was honest.” And old Father Knapp said, “If Paul was honest, then honesty stoned Steven.” It was logical. Then the question arises, is there such a thing as human honesty? No. Whatever is good, whatever is really honest, comes from God directly.

Is there anything good in a mortal? Why do you think there is a little good in mortals? You haven’t seen the end of them. I have had some say to me in my day, “Now you don’t mean to say that Rev. So-and-So isn’t a good man.” I said, “You let me have the last talk with him and we will see what a good man he is.” You never can see what a mortal is by looking on the surface. A human being is always putting his best foot forward, and human beings think the best foot is a good foot. I said to you the other day, Trust no one but God.

No matter what our human relationship is, how much reality is there in it? I have said it has the reality of a dream. Sense appears, but Soul is. God is neither limited, personal, nor localized, except through human sense, and that human sense is a false sense. A true sense awakens us to the truth of being, and you get a true sense only through God Himself. No human being can give you a true sense of God. The scientific statement in Science and Health and the revealed word in the Bible, tell you about God, that He is good, but let us dispose of these books and then you have only God Himself. God must reveal Himself. I may have the revelation, but still that does not convince you; but when you really know that He is God, you have the sense yourself. He never introduces Himself to us personally.

Teaching awakens one to the truth of being. I am bringing out what you already are. As you awaken you see the sunshine. You blink a little and the dreams fade out. Perhaps you have had a horrible nightmare, or perhaps the dream has been pleasant.


Student’s question: “Is there any difference between mortality and humanity?”

They are identical. The human and the mortal are the same. When you speak of humanity you have a shade of divinity touching humanity. Where the divine radiates upon the human, there is a delicate tint of reality which does not belong to the human. You see in me more of individuality than you see personality, I hope; and that also is attractive. Insofar as you see the mortal subordinated in me, you see Godliness. It is divinity subordinating humanity that you recognize. You can have confidence in a maniac just as far as you have strength to handle him. The divinity which is now planted in Dickie is an everlasting seedling which not only will redeem him but heal others. That beautiful tint of divinity overshadowing humanity is not understood by the world and it is ascribed to the human.

The human again discriminates between one individual and the other. It says, “If I only had the divinity that the Master had,” or “If I were as good as Mrs. Eddy.”

I scarcely realize that I am living in a locality. People have said to me, “Why did you come to this insignificant place, this God-forsaken place?” Because I wanted to be conspicuous. There is no more less propitious place than New Britain, but I am not located in New Britain; my field of labor is Mind.

New York is a lonely place. I have never been more lonesome than in New York, especially on the White Way. There is such a superficial sense there; just a continuous round of human revelry. It has no meaning to it. They get drunk one evening and that keeps them until the next, and then they drink again; and they call that business or pleasure.

The Wednesday evening testimony meetings. I wish testimonies were given without endeavoring to teach. The trouble is that those who are benefited want to tell you how they were healed. It is foolish to try to theorize in public how you did a thing. The radiation of the sun has always been a living sense. I have tried to discourage students from trying to teach the public just how they were helped. They can testify gratefully and graciously without telling just how they were healed. You are bound to teach in color and otherwise fall from the mark.

What is man?

I am glad that we begin to see that nothing in the human is real, that we accept that, and that what we see as attractive in the human may not be worthy. Unless you are spiritually awakened you are bound to be deceived. You cannot tell the difference between the genuine and the counterfeit.

How can you tell the difference between what is real and unreal? What is the difference between courtship and marriage? There is the same difference that there is between moonshine and sunshine. In courtship we bring sweets, and in marriage we have a superabundance of bitter. That is the end of it, at any rate. It may not appear for a long while; but the bitter of the human is bound to be experienced sometime and somewhere. I use the illustration of courtship and marriage because it is a good figure. You may think a companion is as genuine as he appears to be in courtship, and after marriage you find the flaws. Sense testimony is no criterion at all.

Then what is man? Is he a mortal? (Definition of man read from Page 475 of Science and Health.) How do you understand the “compound idea of God, including all right ideas”? We assume that all ideas are right. As mortals work out their salvation, the animals and trees will have to work out theirs; in other words, mortals work out the salvation of animals and trees. What you term the universe, will have been transformed with your own individual transformation.

What is embraced or comprehended in the word reflection? Is the universe in man or is man in the universe? Does the universe exist in man or does man live in the universe? It is important that we understand whether we are looking out or in. They are two different views. The effect is not the cause. Man is God’s image and likeness. God is Mind, and man is the compound idea of infinite Mind. Then infinite Mind’s infinite idea comprehends all right ideas. Therefore, the universe must be in man. Man is the compound idea of God including all right ideas. Infinite Mind focalizes the infinite idea of man. Man reflects all that God is. You would have no difficulty in seeing that infinite Mind comprehends or focalizes its entire creation. If infinite Mind comprehends its own infinite self-containment, it focalizes all that infinite Mind can conceive of, and that is all embraced in this compound idea called man. The conception is an infinite conception.

There was a time when Scientists were fools, and they would say, “This is no tree; that is nothing”; a beautiful flower, “That is nothing.” There would be no reality to anything.

What is this (pointing to a pot of lilies)? Would you say there is no flower there? That is the human concept of the real flower. The real flower is God’s idea. The human concept grows more beautiful, but you are never without the flower. To say it is nothing, would leave you with vacuity.

Mrs. Eddy writes, “The universe is more beautiful to my spiritualized thought.” That human concept is not seen alike by any two of us. Everything that you see is a human concept of the reality.

Christian Scientists heal the sick because they have a better sense of man than the one who is sick. The human concept is transformed by the renewing of the Mind. Spiritualization transforms the human, beautifies it.

Is there a real flower and an unreal one? Is there a real man and an unreal one? That is the sad mistake that we are apt to make, that we are human now but that sometime we shall be better. Duality is a human concept in everything. Unity is the divine. There is only oneness in divinity, and everything human has a dual sense. For instance, the belief of good and evil, real and unreal. That sense of duality is unreal.

Is it clear that man is a compound idea including all right ideas? That makes also clear the revealed fact that man has dominion over all things. The power and dominion of man is seen in this true understanding of man. We estimate what man is from the standpoint of God and not from the human concept. Then it is a different man than this scheming thing that runs around in flesh and blood.

Everything that has life hints the reflection of God. How much reality there is in a stone, I am willing to have unfolded to me. As matter it appears to be. The human concept of matter is transformed through spiritualization and stones may be just what our dream creations are. In our dreams and nightmares we have mountains, stone houses and trees. Science and Health says, “Rocks and mountains stand for solid and grand ideas.” When you contemplate the inanimate from the standpoint of sense, you may dream reality into it. Mortal mind has its own so-called phenomena and claims.

What is substantial to sense may be absolutely insubstantial to Soul. I have had dreams of going through walls instead of doors. That is no more wonderful to do in dreams than for the Master to do it in reality. We call it an apparition to human sense. The sense is only a dream conception. Everything that manifests life in sense is a hint of the reality of the ideas in Soul, – a human hint of the divine reality. The little bugs hint part of the infinity of God’s ideas; they are a human hint of the infinite creation, but in heaven they do not destroy. Mosquitoes know their places in heaven; they do not torment; perhaps they sing sweetly.

Student: “There is no body in heaven for them to rest upon.”

They hint part of the infinity of creation. Anything that manifests life to sense is a counterfeit; therefore, I say it is a human hint of the divine idea. As we realize the truth of being we scratch less when they bite us. I still feel that cleanliness is next to Godliness, and it is better to keep the bed bugs out, than to feel at rest with them. Moses annihilated pests in Egypt. As we grow in individual grace, that leaven will go out and these things will grow less. In heaven all these things are governed by Principle. Everything is in its right place.


Student’s question: “Did Jesus walk on the water?”

I have no doubt. He did it just as easily as a swimmer swims. To him substance was Spirit and not weighty matter. It matters not whether you think he strengthened the water or made his body light. He demonstrated the law of spirituality to the complete neutralizing of the law of gravitation. It was no more for him to walk on the water than it is for us to walk on the ground. Peter walked on the water until he became self-conscious.

The hopelessness of the human turns us God-ward, just as a terrible nightmare awakens us. A pleasing dream does not wake us.

Our individual effort is constantly countered by universal wickedness, that it recreates bugs. In the West there is what they call the jigger, a little red mite that you can scarcely see with the naked eye. You walk through the grass and this little thing will get under your skin, and irritate and pest. We can master all these things through the reality of Mind. We should escape their torture, or we can lessen it by the grace that we have within us. Nothing external has a claim upon us, as we awaken from within out. All of sense is external. Reflection is always from within out. Therefore, I write so much and speak so much about living from within out.

Does every individual reflect the whole of God, or do we all unitedly reflect God? Whatever you can humanly hope for must be divinely possible. How could you hope for anything that could not be? You could not possibly hope for more than there is. Do you have to apologize to anybody or to the Almighty for any lack? Humanly speaking, you are just as much an individual as anyone else. The differences that exist between us are only human differences. Human differences are not divine. Every human being is a human concept of what God knows of oneself. God knows us as we are; humanly we see ourselves as we believe ourselves to be. Every human being is a human hint of that divine quality.

The “lesser ideas” the textbook speaks about are human gradations. Does God discriminate humanly? Divine Mind does not discriminate humanly. Science and Health is human, of course, to that degree. It has to give the human sense of the entire creation and leads it up to the divine.

Is a mortal any more the image and likeness of God than a pig?

I asked this question of one of my students who was an artist, he thought. He was horrified to think a pig could be just as much the likeness of God as a mortal. When you speak of the gradation of creation, it is only a human concept. Insofar as any idea reflects God, it has equality. We do not think of these things from the standpoint of shape, form and size.

Every idea reflects the whole of Mind, because every idea emanates from the same Mind, and there can be no idea so tiny or so small that it can exist without the complete Mind. Everything that reflects Mind, is the outcome of that complete Mind. Wholeness is the inevitability of the truth of being.

Does every individual reflect the whole of God? Yes. When you ask that question, it is startling. Look at the might that goes with it. There is no such thing as an idea being conceived by less than a whole Mind, individually and collectively. The whole of infinity is focalized in a single idea. A single idea in its individuality is compound in its reflection; that is, every idea reflects all that is embraced in infinite Mind. Everything that is comprehended in Mind is focalized in every idea; and there is the relationship of independent interdependence.

The Scripture reads, “No man liveth to himself alone; no man dieth to himself alone.” If one is awake in this room, all will be benefited by that awakeness. If one is asleep, all will be affected by that one. There can be no such thing as selfishness cherished that will not harm everyone. Every spiritual sense that you grasp, every bit of spiritualization that permeates your consciousness, goes out into the entire world that much, and blesses the entire world; not by reason of your running out physically, but by reason of overcoming; that lets God radiate in the entire world.

There is no such thing as selfish reflection.




Seventh Day

You see my load this morning. There is something undesirable about manuscript; it confines us to the human a little.

If we were to conclude our term with this lesson, would you feel satisfied? Would the majority be satisfied? I have a right to express my opinion. I wonder how the class would feel? I should be satisfied to dismiss you after this lesson. Mrs. Eddy says somewhere, that when the mists of the old sense had been more outgrown by her, she taught more in seven lessons than she taught first in twelve. I feel this class has had more in seven, than many a class has had in twelve.


Student’s question: “Does God know He has reflection?”

It reminds me of Mrs. Eddy’s question when we were yet a little stupid. We have with us in our home here an unfortunate woman, recruited from the insane asylum in which she had been confined some ten years in a hopeless ward; and I want to recommend you to that place if you need a housekeeper that will stay with you, one who won’t strike for wages. She is handy, willing and untiring. I am often reminded of her comparative negative sense. Perhaps we were not any more alive to Mrs. Eddy than Nettie often seems to us. I haven’t the least doubt that that was so. She asked us one day, “Can the sun be and not shine?” I can hear it today. She fairly shook with power when she asked the question. We were around there without reflecting the light that was shining, so she rebuked that dull sense in us. Can God be without being conscious of His entire being and reflection? Consciousness cannot be unconscious of anything that is. God is Life; He isn’t dreaming like mortals.

It isn’t so important that God should know just where you are humanly, as that you should know just where He is divinely. The Scripture says, that not a sparrow falleth without His knowledge. That gives a hint that He knows all that is worth knowing. You can be glad that he does not know the ninety-nine things that you do.

I have heard Scientists say, “There is no harm in my doing so and so; God doesn’t see it.” That is rather a graveyard sense. The law of divine Love is, “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.” We cannot escape that. But it is consoling to know that God knows only what is real. It is impossible for light to know darkness. God who is Soul cannot take cognizance of sense. If He could, it would be real and we would have absolutely no hope.

Then you are satisfied that God knows all that is necessary to know, and that our part humanly is to forget ourselves and learn to know Him.

I have here a thought on teaching which was born this morning, which I would like to read to you. “The teacher’s strength lies in his own sense of being whose reality is radiated to the class in….” (transcript trails off here)

It is like the spring sun, which rises higher and higher and awakens the earth to the resurrection. The radiation of spiritual wakefulness in the teacher’s consciousness calls forth the latent divinity in yourselves on the basis that light attracts light.


Student’s question: “Does the real man, God’s idea, possess Life and Intelligence?”

My question here is: “Has man an immortal Soul?” It is only the peculiarity of the question that makes you think. That is all I am asking it for. God is Soul, and man reflects it, so he must have an immortal Soul. Consciousness is possession. You must be conscious of what you reflect. Otherwise, it is negative; it is only human. Positive reflection is consciousness. Man has all that God is. Man is nothing of himself; he has nothing of himself. God is, and man is in possession of all that God is and has. God’s being is reflected by man. We have just knocked over the belief that there are souls and spirits as an individual possession, but you see that does not eliminate the truth that possession is consciousness. Man reflects positively, not negatively. Science and Health says, “Man is that which possesses no life, intelligence, or creative power of his own, but reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker.” Reflection in that case is positive, not negative; you cannot separate it. You are negative reflection unless you recognize it as being the only substance you can be possessed with.

I make it merely a point of positive appreciation. You can play upon words and still not get the meaning. You will humanize to that degree. Science and Health says that man is “that which has not a single quality underived from Deity,” but it does derive it from Deity; man, “that which possesses no life, intelligence, or creative power of his own,” but it does possess it in the sense that it is one with God, – by reflection, to be sure. It is not possession as being, but a reflection of being; but it is none the less possession. You cannot reflect and have the reflection less substantial than the being which it reflects; if you do, you humanize it. That is where the lack of power comes in. The reflection is in itself substantial; only it reflects the substance of God; but it is none the less conscious of itself.

Is the reflection separate? Never; therefore, the substance of being is reflected. The reflection has within itself all that being is. Being is cause, and reflection is effect; and the effect is no less substantial in itself and to itself, than cause is substantial. Cause, of course, has the sense of causal substance, and effect has the consciousness of reflection, but it is equally as substantial. You think of reflection as negative; your human thought overshadows what you read, and instead of getting rid of the negative sense you cast a negative shadow upon what is positive. The fact that it is not underived means that it has those qualities. Science and Health says, “Few understand the meaning of reflection.” The positiveness that goes with reflection is quite as substantial, as reflection has the positiveness that goes with being, to being.

Isn’t man just as important to God as God is to man? There you have the sense of substance. Without God, man would be a nonentity. We might just as well become sacrilegious and affirm to ourselves that man is as important to God as God is to man. The sun cannot be without the rays. You cannot rob reflection of its substantiality. When you do, you negative it, and it becomes human. The same mistake that religiosity has made during the centuries; it has deified Jesus instead of recognizing the Christ Principle.

We are talking about what man has. Has man an immortal Soul? And according to what you read, regardless of what you amplify in your further expression, will you not admit the fact as it is in Science and Health here, that man is “that which possesses no life, intelligence or creative power of its own, but reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker”? It does not possess it as its own. It implies what man has; only the reflection is not self-existent; it emanates from a Cause. The reflection being co-existent radiates all that God is. God is Soul. We are reaching now where we discriminate between man and mortals. God is the reality of man’s life. You see it makes a little difference in one sense whether you speak of man or God, because you will admit that they are co-existent; and the effect, of course, derives all that it is from the cause. The effect necessarily expresses all that the cause is. The effect, we might say, has the effect of cause.

You have not lost anything by thinking about it. It is original thinking that enables us to square our reasoning with Principle; but you see, unless you can square it from the top down, you are apt to confuse the line of reasoning. It is either revelation or right reasoning, and right reasoning means scientific reasoning, and it is possible to reason wrongly; that is, to reason ourselves into a deadening sense, instead of into an enlivening sense.

Has every effect a cause? You acquiesce at once. I ask those questions in peculiar ways in order to puzzle mortal mind. You can see the difference between that and Couéism or any of the other forms of self-mesmerism or hypnotism. They mesmerize you into a mood, but it does not shock you out of mortal mind.

Is man an eternal being? No. Man has eternal being. God is; man has. You must understand; you cannot answer these questions by guess-work.

Is man co-existent with God? Is he co-eternal with God? Yes. Is man co-equal with God? Why not?

Student: “Man is nothing except as he reflects it through his oneness with God.”

Co-equal would imply that each would be a God. Your sense of reflection must be more positive, as possessing all that God is. I do not mean to let you get away with a sense of negative reflection. Positive reflection is representation of God. Reflection is substantial. Reflection has all that God is, the same as effect has cause, and the effect has all that the cause is.

Student’s question as to man being the expression of Soul as Science and Health states.

If he can express anything without having it, I would like to see it. Man is one with God, and in that sense again he has all that God is. You cannot get away from that “has” without sacrificing substance. You do not reflect negatively; you reflect positively. You have what you reflect. That does not imply ownership; as for instance, many husbands think when they have a wife, they possess her. If we idealize transcendentally to the point of claiming that we have no God, if we idealize in our reasoning, we are not practical; we do not reduce to the appreciable the truth of being; we are transcendentalists, and transcendentalism never meets the human need. “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.” You might as well ask, “Has man a sense of Love?” You surely would say he has. From where we are in the human, our sense of love becomes purer and purer, until we get to the highest, and finally reach the sense that is God. When we get to heaven we are not striving to get there. Then the relationship is so natural and so real that there is no human speculation about it; there is no reasoning required.

Has the tone that you hear substance? Music is inherently in Principle, but has the tone that you hear reality? Put it that way. Has man reality? The sense that you have makes man a very evasive thing, not substantial. A tone represents the Principle which embodies the sum and substance of music; a tone has reality but not in itself. Its reality is that which it represents in Principle. You are simply wrangling in consciousness over an expression without any special meaning. I object to your gaining a negative sense of the word reflection. To my sense, man has the substantiality of reflection, as that which he reflects is substance in itself. Man has substance in God; man must reflect the substance that God is. There can be no effect without a cause and the effect has the reality of what the cause is. You cannot get away from that.

Student likens it to the sun and its rays.

You cannot separate the two. The ray has consciousness of all that the sun is.

I think if you will read all of Mrs. Eddy’s writings you will see there is nothing conflicting in what we are insisting upon. What is the particular point that still seems to linger with you? As reflection, hasn’t man substance? You have no substance to your sense of reflection; you deny its substantiality. You maintain that the reflection is nothing substantial in itself.

If man is co-existent with God, he existed from time immemorial. He never was created, in other words. Then he is essential to God, as God is to him; because God would be without entity, without positive appreciation of Himself, except as man identifies God. God is identified in man, and that identification is a positive identification. I have dwelt much upon this word reflection. Your sense of reflection is negative. You almost separate man from God by your being so humanly meticulous. You might almost say, the oneness is so close that they are almost identical. I do not mean to say that man is God; that is the mistake so many make that call themselves Christian Scientists. You would not say man is a part of God. That is what many try to make out. I object to your separating the reflection, when you do not see the substantiality of it. The reflection has substance.

Spirit is substance and the reflection has it. The substance that isn’t reflected, isn’t. It is substantially reflected; it has substance. It has the substance that Spirit is. Man reflects this substance; therefore, he has it. How can you have a dollar in the bank and not be able to draw upon it? If it isn’t yours, I pity you. Every dollar I deposit in my name is mine. I draw upon it when I need it. You will find there is a fine point there. You are touching a problem here that is very fine indeed; that is subtle merely. It is very important. Even when you bring illustrations to bear, you are afraid to let go for fear that you have the scientific grasp that man and God are united. Their oneness is not identicalness, but it means inseparability. The cause would be a nonentity if it were not for the effect, and there would be no effect, if there were no cause. God cannot express Himself except through His creation. It has reality; it has substance. There would be no effect without a cause to identify it. They are not equal in that the effect cannot be the cause.

There is but one infinite; therefore, there can be no comparison. Infinity has no comparison, because it is all. You cannot reason wrongly and arrive at the right conclusion. Infinity means allness, or oneness. Therefore, you cannot say anything is co-equal with it because it is all; but you can say that God and man are co-existent and co-eternal because cause cannot be without effect. Principle cannot be without reflecting. The sun cannot be without shining. Are the rays equal to the sun? They reflect the entire sun but are not self-existent; but the rays can never be the sun.

Man has all that God is. Therefore, man reflects the whole of God. The one point you need to see is that you deny the substantiality of the reflection which I insist upon. That is the only difference between your thought and mine. The substantiality of the reflection is greater than you admit, therefore I use the word with much reality. The trouble with Scientists is that they have the letter without Soul. If there is reality in companionship and friendship, you will feel the loss of it before you get the scientific realization of…. (transcript trails off here)

I have seen Mrs. Eddy weep more than I have seen her smile. There is an involuntary softening that comes with our growth in Science. You cannot comfort another unless you get near enough to one to feel something.

At the time Mrs. Mann received the news of her mother’s death, a student wondered why Mrs. Mann wept. To me the hardness of that sense was so deplorable, so heartless and soulless that I wept, and my tears helped to comfort Mrs. Mann. I wept because of the hardness of the heart of those who could not weep with Mrs. Mann. Scientists learn to love appreciably. Those of us who can weep with those that weep, have touched the heart of tenderness and get near enough to help them.

We might ask, has man sympathy, has man virtue, has man the grace of the Spirit? Mrs. Eddy says, “The divinity of the Christ was made manifest in the humanity of Jesus.” Has man these virtues? You despoil Science of its reality, you make it transcendental and theoretical. Man reflects the graces of the Spirit. He has sympathy; we call it compassion. It isn’t the sympathy that mortals have; it is better.

As mortals we have consideration for each other. That is a counterfeit consideration. If he has a counterfeit, hasn’t he also a real? If we as selfish mortals have consideration for each other, then have we not something in the truth of being? If we now have a counterfeit, have we not a reality? If we do not come down to that, we are transcendentalists. Mrs. Eddy says, “The heart and soul of Christian Science is love.” If we love scientifically, we love substantially; therefore, we have reality. Then has man what God is? A reflection that has nothing, is nothing. Let us rest it there.

I remember in my first class in New Britain, we had a very stubborn man in the class. He was one of the best business men in the town. I do not think he will object to my naming him. Col. Johnson; most of you probably know him. He took two or three lessons before we finished one question. It was in regard to the Immaculate Conception. He could not understand how Mrs. Eddy was of purer birth than any child born. He fought it for three or four days in the most wicked way. Finally I brought out this illustration. I said that when I was in Germany I found that the Germans admitted that the American glass was a purer glass than they could make. For some reason or other our American glass was more clear, pure. I asked the Colonel why there was that apparent difference in glass. To him all glass was glass and all that were born of the flesh were flesh; therefore, how could Mrs. Eddy have been any purer than any other child? It isn’t unprofitable question. Was she any purer at her birth than any other child?

Science and Health says, “If a child is the offspring of physical sense, with what truth could the Scriptural rejoicing be uttered by any mother, ‘I have gotten a man from the Lord’?” “With what truth” is the question, could that Scriptural rejoicing be uttered? Is the child that is born to the physical sense of the Lord? How far is the child that is born of the flesh begotten of the Lord? Insofar as it isn’t born. What is born of the flesh? Is it God’s child? The human concept of God’s idea; a human concept is born. Then why was Mrs. Eddy less material? She was converted before she was born, according to the good old minister. The human concept was no purer than ours, but it was less human at its birth than ours. The regeneration began before birth. If she hadn’t been more spiritual before birth, she could never have discovered Christian Science.

Children born in Science are, as a rule, more impish. That is because Christian Scientists let go of the old before they catch hold of the new. They have a rod, but insofar as it is material, they spare it and spoil the child, as Mrs. Eddy says; because they fear that it teaches the children sensation in matter; and the spiritual rod they are unable to wield because of the lack of understanding. I give the child the benefit of the doubt, and insofar as I am not so sure of the spiritual rod, I use the other. Little Dickie sometimes requires a little pulling by the ear, but it isn’t the amount of the pulling but the vigor with which I do it. A fine school teacher once said to me, “I wish you were principal of our school.” They had about 50 children with which she could do nothing. The principal draws his salary by keeping out of the way and we pay taxes to help to support him. The Scientist hangs between heaven and hell, and there he dangles in an impractical way. They are too transcendental to meet the human need. “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.” The need is discipline. If you love divinely, you will make things appreciable.

Student weeping.

Does the discussion touch you to condemnation? That has been your experience; you had no children. Does the persecution follow you? You did well in surviving it by your own unalloyed faith. You clung to the Almighty’s neck without actually understanding. You had a very real taste of the cruelty of human relationship, but rejoice. Let me tell the class that the hem of the garment of what you experienced awaits everyone of us. I could tell you a story that would astound you; if I should give you just a hint of my own father who rejoiced in my miraculous recovery, while he labored under the belief that I was beyond human aid. He told the relatives I could not possibly live until morning; and yet inside of two years, when I pursued the study of Christian science and refused to forsake it for some reason that Father felt it would be wise, when I refused to accept his favors to set me up in business, or if I wanted to be a minister or a doctor, become a real one and not chase this will-of-the-wisp, which of course was no honor to him, and of course I recognized his fatherly interest in me and thanked him for his kindness, but I could not do it. It came to a head at election time when he wanted me to vote his way. I do not know whether it was then that I changed from a Democrat to a Republican. I found the Democrats did not seem to have quite the sense of principle; to be sure, the Republicans’ was small enough. Father cursed me and wished I had never been saved in Christian Science; wished I had died, so that I could not fool others as I had been fooled; that same dear father who wept his head off when I was dying. I forgave him. He was so angry because none of his children had obeyed him. I told him that I would give him a chance to recover. I would go away for a week, and when I returned if he was still of the same opinion I would pack my trunk and say good-bye forever. I said it quietly and precisely. I went away and when I came back, we went over the subject again from A to Z, and argued it out. That is the first, last and only fight I ever had. After that he was blessed by the ministration of Christian Science when materia medica had failed, and he passed across the river with my standing there ministering Science.

Human relationship has absolutely no sense of Principle. It is incumbent upon you to live so wisely and understandingly as to draw. The Scripture says, “If a man please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to make peace with him.”

Get that true sense of divine Love which realizes that that experience never was. You will see that in the unfoldment of healing. Realize that sense of divine Love which, if we should argue or reason it out, does not know anything about that wicked experience of yours. Aren’t you glad He doesn’t, for you would then never forget it. “Learn to forget what you should not remember,” Mrs. Eddy says in one of her writings. The way to overcome evil is to do good. You have taken the right step; you have gone forward in Christian Science; and you will demonstrate Christian Science for the benefit of others, and return good for evil. And I do not care who the relative was who persecuted you, leave the situation with the Almighty; He will settle it. Science and Health says, “Divine Love metes not out human justice but divine mercy.” From this moment you yourself take the radical stand in your consciousness that you never lost a husband. You remember my saying Mrs. Eddy’s favorite husband became the victim of that stuff. You can make a staff of your experience.

Mrs. Eddy was a more spiritual child from birth. I am going to confide to this class what Mrs. Eddy told us, but this isn’t for publication. It will fit here and will enlighten you. I have a touch of it in my scrap book. You probably know that Mrs. Eddy was the youngest of the children born to her mother. You remember how beautifully she speaks of her mother in Retrospection and Introspection. The doctor had advised the mother to have another child for her own health. Therefore, you see that Mrs. Eddy was the offspring of her mother’s unselfishness. She was less a child of lust; she was rather the offspring of a holier desire for healing. It was what universal belief proscribed to relieve the mother of her physical condition, so she looked very consecratedly forward to the healing. It was not a conception resultant from mere sensual gratification. There was a reality to the motive on the mother’s part. There is more in that as you realize it. There was a sacredness of expectation on the mother’s part; and surely the child that was born brought healing. It is not sacrilegious to believe that the angel came to Mary and said, “The holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God, and shall save the people from their sins.” Perhaps the angel spoke to Mrs. Eddy’s mother in a different language, but it was nevertheless a prayer for healing that gave birth to the child, and surely that was demonstrated in Mrs. Eddy’s life. Furthermore, the delicacy of the mother was more than brought forth in a very tender, delicate child. History tells you that Mrs. Eddy had been an invalid from childhood. Humanly speaking, she was an invalid, until spirituality pierced through the cloud of sense, like the ray pierces the cloud to its dissipation. As a sense conception, she was no more spiritual than us; but the cloud of the human was thinner, or she would never have discovered Christian Science.

Insofar as Christian Science was born in America and not in Germany, the mentality of this nation was typified in their manufacture of glass. That is not far-fetched.

There is a difference in us all; we all come to class for a specific knowledge of Science, yet we all approach it from a different standpoint.

This class will never be fooled by that plausible argument that man is a part of God. They sometimes take the illustration of the hundred pennies making the dollar; but in the case of God, the dollar exists and gives value to the hundred pennies. Instead of the hundred pennies giving value to the dollar, they represent all that the dollar is; they have the value of the dollar.

Does mortal man embrace one atom of goodness? Then you are firmly convinced that there isn’t an atom of goodness in mortal man. You are not as apt to be deceived in the future; and isn’t it delightful to know that the goodness which proves itself good, which you see apparently humanly, is to be ascribed to God and not to flesh and blood? And that no matter how attractive the particular touch of goodness may be, you never want to allow your confidence to repose in the personal, because the personal is always unreliable.

If you see a man or a woman of principle, it is because God is really reflected. You cannot think of Abe Lincoln as any different from a man of statuesque principle. As I think of Mrs. Eddy, I do not think of her as humanly good. The Master said, “Why callest thou me good?” When a great need confronted Mrs. Eddy, I have never seen a human being represent the strength that she did, because self gave way before the overwhelming sense of divine Principle which imbued her.

Is there anyone in the class who thinks it is too radical to say there isn’t an atom of goodness in a mortal? It does away with comparison. We do not have to waste time saying so-and-so is better than so-and-so. We leave that to the Father. That is the reason I have never felt like being introduced humanly to anybody. Friends have urged me time and again to come out in public, – at least introduce a lecturer or someone else, so that the people who never see me might at least hear and see me. I do not care what they think of me personally; I want to get better and better acquainted with God. When I am in a throng I can become a good mixer, but it is a hard thing for me to do.

I would rather go out into the meadows and hills and be alone with God. The flowers in the hills grow just as beautifully there as if they expected to be seen. I am never lonesome when I am alone, but I am lonesome when I am in New York.

The counterfeit neither adds to, nor detracts from, the real. Do you think that all of God’s ideas are counterfeited? What is the difference whether they are or are not? If a cypher as a negative offsets every positive, what is there to it? If you stand by a clear lake, the landscape around the lake is deflected in the lake. We will say the landscape typifies the reality, and looking in the lake you see the deflection. If you dive into the lake would you find the deflection? You would lose it. The more you seek to prove it, the less you find it. What you see in the lake is the unreal. So human existence is only a deflection of the truth of being. Of course, you do not see the entire world deflected in the lake, but that is because human vision is limited. You will remember the devil took Jesus to the mountain top and showed him the entire world. Jesus saw it all, but to him it had no reality in it, and didn’t even make him wish he might possess it.

Is there anything in your college course that you have been taught, which is opposite to what you have learned in the class? Naturally mortal mind is opposite. I am considering mortal mind from the standpoint of divine Mind, while philosophers consider it from mortal mind itself. The deflection in the lake is nothing to be despised. It is something that appears to be but isn’t there.

I asked a student in one of the classes, “What am I?” She promptly answered, “Nothing,” and I objected. I had done my best during that whole lesson and I thought I was more than nothing. Then I am at least a little ray of sunshine representing itself quite positively and yet not willfully. I am here representing God, and in representing God I must be something of a reflection, and I really feel that way. I feel that my recovery from the valley of the shadow when I was first healed, makes it natural for me to represent myself less personally and more of the sense of the Principle that saved me. John the Baptist said, “He must increase; I must decrease.” The belief of sense in all these years has receded and Principle has come out. That is all I have in life; that is all I want to do; represent the truth of being where the need is, and teach it, so that others may have it. That is what I mean by consecrating my life to the Cause. I came in before I knew how I came. You are coming more like feeling your way along. Mrs. Eddy put it this way once, “You were violently thrust out of the house and you picked yourself up. ‘Go not back.’” You remember what happened to those who were cleansed and then went back into the house and took up seven devils more. A Christian Scientist is one who denies sense to the reflection of Soul.

What is matter? All is Mind, is our scientific statement. Then what appears to be matter must be mental instead of material when it is reduced to its lowest denomination; it must be mortal mind. Mortal mind conceives of itself objectively; but Science shows that what seems to be objective is really subjective; that is, what seems innate is its own mortal sense. To mortal mind there is matter, but to real Mind what appears to be matter is reduced to mentality and that is even a false sense of mentality. That is where we reach the point of unreality. All that appears to be dependent upon brain or nerves is simply mortal mind itself believing that it endows its own conception. Doctors will tell you, or physiology teaches, all about matter. They open up the skull and remove a bit of the brain and the person keeps on thinking. They begin to speculate how brain can be the seat of mind and yet cannot be disturbed by removing a part of the brain.

According to Science, all is Mind, and Mind is infinite. That is already a scientific fact, but it is a revealed fact. We accept the revelation because we are quickened by reasoning up to the spiritual acceptation of it. If you had the revelation you would be convicted.

Old Bible characters. Their conviction came from their appreciation of (transcript is blank here), we from a less spiritual standpoint, reason up to that standpoint. We accept it; to us it is not yet a conviction which we demonstrate very conclusively. We accept that Mind is fundamental, primary. If all is Mind in reality, the counterfeit, or mortal mind, is not material. Mind cannot be counterfeited materially; it can only be mentally counterfeited. What appears to be matter is really mental, and you will never heal anything, yourself or anyone else, from the standpoint of believing in matter. Insofar as you see error to be mental, you can destroy it, but you will never destroy it as material. True Mind is counterfeited mentally, not materially. So then, all is Mind in reality, and in unreality only that one is real and the other isn’t real and isn’t. Now we have reached the point that is most essential to healing.

Reading of the Scientific Statement of Being.

Mrs. Eddy once said, “If it is true that there is no life, truth, intelligence nor substance in matter, you can have all that is left of it.” Mrs. Eddy uses the word matter because mortal mind contemplates itself materially, but scientific awakening reduces what appears to the mental, and from that standpoint we reason.

The counterfeit of divine Mind is a mental counterfeit, and the physicians or materialists who dabble for the benefit of mankind with the body, are only wearing themselves out dealing with effects. They never awaken mortal mind out of itself through spiritualization.

A few years ago I spent a good part of the summer at the shore below Bridgeport. We were neighbors to a doctor there and used to swim and play together. He never talked about materia medica and I never talked about Christian Science. The doctor’s wife was a tiny little woman, wiry, and full of life. The sandy beach was delightful, and I was working away at the cottage one day digging a hole for a cesspool, and the doctor’s wife stood by with some others to whom she said, “And that is what Mr. Mann calls a vacation. No wonder he is so thin.” I answered at once, “It doesn’t matter; matter has no value anyway. All I need is enough to identify myself by.” She couldn’t understand such reasoning. The strenuosity, perpetual motion, the positive activity, and incessantly at it; she could not understand it. It was a rest to me to get away from the telephone and doorbell; nothing but hearing mortal mind constantly, especially the scientific reasoning that is mechanical and heartless. This scientific reasoning to see whether we are right in the letter, leaves nothing but a carcass.

The intelligence that seems to be in matter must be admitted to be simply mortal mind, and that does away with brains and nerves.

Are you clear as to how evil originated? It didn’t. How does the deflection in the lake originate? How does a thing seem to be and yet not be? What is real between and among us is that sense of God-with-us which we cannot explain. It is rather a subordination of ourselves and a radiation of Principle in and among us. There is reality in our companionship, association, friendship. We do not want to leave it on the negative side. We only need to recognize that the human sense of things is only a false sense. If the false sense is so wonderful, how wonderful must be the reality! That is what we want to say. We can enjoy the contemplation of the deflection while becoming conscious of that which is deflected. We do not want to die and be buried; we want to die and be resurrected at once.




Eighth Day

Let me ask a very abstract question to begin with this morning. Is there diversity in Science? The word diversity means variety, just what the dictionary tells you it means.

Student’s answer, “No.”

Only one disagrees with you, and I agree with that one. There is diversity in unity, – infinite diversity. How do we know it? Logically we know it this way. Everything that pertains to the truth of being is on an infinite scale. Everything that has to do with God or reality is necessary on an infinite scale. There must be infinite diversity or God would not be infinite in every way. It isn’t a case of “every day in every way” getting more and more infinite. Therefore, there must be infinite diversity if we even are logical in our reasoning. Infinite diversity in infinite unity or oneness, – it is easy to see; it is beautiful to be seen. You see a hint of it in the material universe. Have you ever seen two human beings alike? In riding in a street car or train, I study faces perhaps, and I have never yet seen two human beings alike. Sometimes you find certain points of sameness, but there is only one of every kind in the vast world of sense. Then there is a great variety to human sense, and that is only a counterfeit hint of what is true in reality. What I am most pleased with is the scientific fact that God does everything on an infinite scale. He is a real artist, and in proportion as you become scientific, you will all be so different that none will pattern after the other. There will be originality that is beautiful and harmonious.

That seems an abstract question, but it is only a leader for another. God is the same yesterday, today and forever; but from all eternity there was infinite diversity. It hasn’t changed from the beginning, as it were. The fact that infinite Mind exists, implies infinite resourcefulness. That is a fact from all eternity. Science and Health speaks of “multifarious forms.”

You admit that every human concept counterfeits a divine idea. I did not drive the remainder of that question to its conclusion. Every human concept counterfeits a divine idea, but is every divine idea counterfeited in human conception? This question was brought to my mind by an old student, and let us see if that student answered it correctly. If a single idea is counterfeited, every idea must be counterfeited. Then the question is, are there as many counterfeits as there are ideas? Yes, whether it appears to sense or not, every positive is offset by a negative. Every negative that is not, is nothing. As mortal mind is an infinite counterfeit, it includes as it were everything that is existent in divine Mind; and also from the standpoint that if you admit that a single idea is counterfeited, mortal mind being one, it naturally follows that every idea is counterfeited. It is true they do not all appear on the surface, but what of that? The question is whether error is hidden or is open. There could not be a single counterfeit in the world if there were no truth of being. That is the way I reason with unbelievers sometimes. How do you know there is a God, or everlasting Life? As Science teaches, this mortal sense of existence being unreal, it must be a counterfeit of something. It counterfeits the truth of being.

The counterfeit is an infinite lie, and it is even less than a finite lie. It is a very apparent lie; so big that you can see it. It does not make it any less a lie on account of its infinity. If you could place yourself on the elevation of God, if the entire material universe were deflected in the lake, as we spoke the other day, you would see that everything that is in the reflection, is in the lake. It is easy to see then, that whatever is reflected in the truth of being, is deflected in the error of being. The counterfeit amounts to nothing; it only points to the Truth when you reverse it. That is what I mean by being on the elevation of God. Science enables us to reason from the standpoint of Principle. From there we reason out through personal sense; we do not reason simply on the surface. With the eye of Soul, which is Science, we see clear through the claim of sense, and we see as Mrs. Eddy says, “the end from the beginning.”

That is why we do not go astray very far, as we realize we only have to come back. We deny ourselves gladly, or compulsorily. Paul said to the Galatians, “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.” We are no longer taking sense testimony, is what he meant. If the understanding is not quite clear, we see by faith. That is one of the finest points in Science; denying sense, even by faith; and your understanding annihilates sense.

“Does Christian Science or metaphysical healing include medication, material hygiene, mesmerism, hypnotism, theosophy, or spiritualism…?

Spiritualists are usually very good natured people; great absorbers.

I think this is a good time to tell my experience on mesmerism. These various phases of mortal mind are called by different names. When I visited Germany, my prime reason for going was to have a little furlough, and at the same time accompany my niece who thought of specializing in German. We were there some nine months, and I had plenty of opportunity to visit other parts of Europe, also. I attended a wedding in Germany. They were well-to-do people, quite representative. There must have been fifty to a hundred guests at the banquet table; two kinds of wine at each plate. They had what is called a small drink that was of the same color as the wine. I asked them to place a bottle of the light drink at my place, but had to watch they didn’t shift.

After a while they wanted to give the guests a special amusement. They had one friend who was not a professional hypnotist, but sort of a parlor mesmerist. All that was necessary was to find a victim to give the guests a little entertainment. So it came to them to try the “Amerikaner.” They knew nothing of my being or profession. I was quite willing to become the subject and I told them I would be delighted, and they felt happy to have so willing a subject. He told me not to resist, to be sort of passive, and I told him I would do everything I could to help him. I was so amused I could hardly suppress my smile. I made no conscious resistance, simply tried to suppress my smile. He made his most desperate effort, and finally he grew more or less nonplussed and chagrined. He worked until he got red in the face, but he had no results. “Guess,” he said, “he doesn’t understand it,” and thought I wasn’t a receptive subject.

It seemed like a fool-hearted thing for me to do. I would not recommend your subjecting yourselves to it, but I thought I would let him try so that I might prove the natural protecting power of divine Love. I speak of that to show you first of all that “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.” I rested in the fact of divine Principle, and my conscious thought in acquiescing even, did not vitiate that. It was the leaven of spiritualization which had become a reality in my consciousness which had become self-protective.

You hear Scientists say, “I must do my work to protect myself.” And they make a personal effort counting their beads. A few years ago I rescued a nice woman from that awful thralldom of having to do her work. When you hear them doing their work so valiantly, they are mesmerizing themselves into a mood. This woman, before going downtown on a shopping tour, would sit down an hour or so and pray to be protected from the different things that might befall her. I finally awakened her to a sense of Science which saved her.

Spiritualism is a form of superstitious self-mesmerism – mortal mind seeing what it believes consciously, or believing what it evolves unconsciously out of its latent depth of ignorant, superstitious imitation, or malicious, mesmeric imposition.

These good-natured people that you tell about, great big self-mesmeric, self-satisfying individuals, are so big and sprawl in their lazy consciousness that they absorb all in you, – a sort of a broody sense. Perhaps I am not a fair one to comment on them. As I said to Mrs. Eddy at one time, “I am light-footed, not encumbered by superfluous flesh, and error has a hard time catching me.” She laughed and saw what I meant.

I remember in Kansas when I was in the practice, one of these great big good-hearted women came. I told her we help people without taking it on ourselves, without having to shake it off again. I kept her at arm’s length. I knew she didn’t want what I had; she simply wanted physical relief. We should not come down to their level; and you haven’t an uncle who is a medium, have you? That is where you slam the door first of all, because if you identify yourself in this way, you leave the door wide open. Just deny it. Spiritualism is mortal mind believing itself to be something; mortal mind running from its own spooks; creates them first and then runs. They absorb everything in the belief of good as a belief, which comes from God Almighty or understanding,. They appropriate the fruits so far as they can, without doing anything towards developing them. You remember Mrs. Eddy tells us that we have nothing to do with persons or people; we are dealing with the phase.

Fake spiritualists. Mortal-minders generally try to make good from their own standpoint. I do not want to say how much of it is fake. All of mortal mind is deception; “deceived and deceiving,” as Mrs. Eddy calls them.

You are not resting on belief; you are resting on understanding. You try to overcome evil with good. They are asleep in evil and call it good.

You wanted to see how error would act. That was the trouble with Eve in the beginning. She was curious. You better be scientific rather than curious. I have no reflection to case on Eve, though; Adam was glad to be deceived.

What is mesmerism? All of mortal mind is either active or passive and mortal mind in itself is a state of mesmerism. A belief of Mind apart from God is self-mesmerism.

How can we classify mesmerism? You class it generally by saying all of mortal mind is mesmeric. There are three distinct classifications. The activity of mortal mind is mesmeric. Let me lead you out in this way. The first natural belief of mesmerism is ignorant; mortal mind is ignorant of itself. Ignorance covers the ground of mortal mind generally. Sympathetic is the next. Then comes the malicious. The Master said we are to overcome the “world, the flesh and the devil.” These are my own unfolding. The world is ignorant; the sympathetic, the flesh, – which would take in friendly or blood relationship, companionship. The sweet side of human existence is the sympathetic; that which we welcome, dote upon, we live for. Then the malicious; when we want to get rid of something but cannot. We are either too material, too sensual, too selfish; we are not awake enough to detect or neutralize it. In other words, when you want to get out, the devil says you can’t.

When the spiritualists come they come with a wave of the sympathetic, and try to cover you as the waves of the ocean. Sympathetic is that form when relatives come to see you and you hang Christian Science in the closet for a few days and deport yourself as a good friend or relative should; have a chicken dinner perhaps; go to their church.

And the malicious form comes when your husband doesn’t join you in Christian Science and he puts up all sorts of antics to oppose you, but would not for the world harm you, but does all sorts of thing behind the scenes, and thinks all Scientists should be killed.

I must just touch what we used to call the Factionists. They were those who departed from Mrs. Eddy on this point: they accepted the scientific revelation that God is good and all, but they absolutely refused to recognize that the devil claimed to be all. They refused to go after the devil step by step instead of ignoring him.

I thank you for your beautiful citation, a beautiful experience, and it has awakened a new question for the class. Bear in mind that malicious animal magnetism will always reach you, if it reaches you at all, through the nearest or dearest channel in the world. Malicious animal magnetism is so subtle that it can only reach you through this channel of human relationship. You remember all of you the notification which was sent to you, how you should watch as never before. You see what inspired that.

I must tell you of an experience, since you speak of his not wanting you to go through class with me. There are good friends who are practicing Christian Science in our environment, who are sitting up nights to introduce me without knowing me to their friends, and I will give you an experience which happened a few years ago here.

A husband (they are troublesome things when they are not rightly handled) hated me worse than poison. His wife and mother-in-law both went through class with me, but the wife, I am sorry to see, is what I call one of the stall-fed ones, because they are sleek and fair and lazy and blame everything that happens on to someone else. She was not taught that in class. She acted in her own home anything but wisely and gave me as the reason for it, and the husband thought he was surrendering his birthright, of course; all of which was hatched up by her. No student can say that I have taught prohibition in any respect. She gave him the impression that I was to blame for her unreasonable conduct. The husband came into close contact with Mrs. Mann one day and told her he hated Mr. Mann and would sit up nights to do it. She answered him, “You may hate Mr. Mann, but there is one thing you cannot do, and that is to make him hate you.”

Love enough for two, and you will see that home is the center but not the boundary of the affections; it is a Godly center and radiates godliness.

I am sorry that the students are not more circumspect and prayerful in their lives. I do not mean they should be religious. There are few students who give me credit. Paul once said, “I wish ye all were as I am.” I am living as willing to lay my life down for the Cause. You are living to get the benefit of Christian Science. I have lived from the beginning to give what I have received. I have said many times that I would not thank the practitioner if I had simply been restored physically, for then I would have to die again. Mere restoration so far as it is physically concerned, would have simply obliged me to suffer again; but the sense of God that healed me…. (transcript trails off here)

The trouble with a certain student, who is now ailing in a distance, is that she is standing still waiting for a politician to be willing to go forward, and this is a husband. You must progress. “I cannot bring the Lord Christ down,” we sing. We must go forward. It is only progress that keeps you ahead of the devil. If you sit down long enough he overtakes you.

The final step in the world’s progress is taken under the leadership of a woman. Every step of reform was pioneered by a woman. Do not be proud but grateful that this is so. You will find the men prove their manhood by following a true woman.


Student’s question: “Am I not loving enough if my husband is an invalid and is not willing to take up Science?”

You are doing more than you realize toward his healing. “Divine Love is not hasty to deliver us from temptation, for Love means that we shall be tried and purified.” Do not judge your husband, and do not forget that divine Love knows what it is doing. You cannot say what this leaven in the class will do for you and him. After my papa stopped drinking whiskey for his medicine and took free treatments to see how they worked, I used to hear him say to mother, “I haven’t taken a drink for two or three days, yet I’m not feeling any better.” He didn’t realize that the healing in Christian Science didn’t begin on the surface, but way down deep. But I wasn’t offended. He finally gave up the whisky entirely. He had to be whipped into it. I do not know your husband, but if you represent Christian Science in your home as you are in class, you are justified in looking for good results.

The point is here, furthermore, you must be wise enough not to condemn yourself. What do you say to those whose husbands are divorced? Our Leader set the example. Surely you cannot say she did not know how to love. You need to have the lens of divine Love in order to look through the situation. Those who love most consistently, most profoundly, may stir up more error than those who love more superficially. Mortal mind is a cesspool of wickedness. It takes a lot of stirring sometimes to bring it to the surface. You do not have to individualize it. We all have the same measure to meet and all the same price to pay; so do not condemn yourself, nor justify yourself. Sometimes we rather justify ourselves on a very human basis. If error is tenacious, deep-rooted, and our loving does not love it away, we are apt to condemn ourselves. The only difference between now and when I was a child in Science, is that I am not looking for sense testimony as in the beginning. I cut straight to the mark, plow through like a snow plow; and when I come up against a snow-pack, I have to go back quite a way and punch in pretty hard sometimes. I have said sometimes to students, if they are not successful in doing it all, they might leave something to God.

We are to emerge gently from matter to Spirit. All I want to say in reading that, do not make the mistake of emphasizing the “gently” too much. They emphasize the “gently” so much they forget to emerge. So you see there is everything in reading Science and Health.

The question in Science and Health is: “Is materiality the concomitant of spirituality, etc.” Page 484:28 S&H.

We have covered that by the counterfeit. A counterfeit is not necessary to the truth of being; but so long as there is a truth of being, there is a suppositional counterfeit. Does that forestall concern as to what we were or what we are going to be? Has pre-existence troubled you? Suppose I read an article I wrote before I thought of class teaching which will touch that. All that I write is well fitted for the class, but it might have to be revised if it were for publication.

Title: “Beginningless and Endless Pre-Existence”

That means simply this: you ask, How did I go to sleep; and when you awake you say, I have awakened out of sleep; and when you are fully awake you will never remember that you were ever asleep. I like to think of it as in the movies sometimes. You see a terrible picture and when you awake, it was a dream. It reminds me of my experience when I was shot. I was a young man. I had not done anything that anyone could point a finger at; and yet from the instant I was shot to the time that they grasped me to keep me from falling, I lived my whole life over. The panorama of my whole life passed before me and I had time to regret that I hadn’t done better. Yet I didn’t repent of any particular sin, but simply because I hadn’t done better. I had time to know I was doomed; and the years of my life passed before me as real as it ever happened.

The dream existence can never affect the truth of being. You must remember I am standing between sense and Soul. I am standing as it were with my back against the Almighty. I am talking to dreamers from the standpoint of my own awakening. To show you what that awakening is I will share with you a little more of my first experience.

During the afternoon of intervals of awaking, in which I was bleeding to death, as the doctors found, which was true enough according to all human sense, when I became conscious in excruciating agony, I wished I might become unconscious and remain so; but this time I awakened without pain and I wondered what had happened, and the Scientist had sense enough to say, “Have no fear, God will heal you.” I asked him if this was something I could learn and do for others. The friends, in sympathizing with me, wanted to know if I condemned my brother-in-law who did the shooting. They thought I would still pass on, of course, but they wanted to get my thought. He felt deeply grieved over the calamity. I said, “Do not blame Charlie; he is not to blame.” I forgave him absolutely; had no condemnation for anybody, and that is the secret of the soil in my wonderful healing. I could have condemned him if I had felt like it. In spite of having witnessed this wonderful healing, and he himself having been healed from the verge of the grave, he had not virtue enough to take up Christian Science.

If we can wake up entirely here, there is no hereafter. There is no hereafter to the reality of the present. Abiding in the reality of the present, we have no consciousness of the hereafter or the before. What is the use of analyzing a lie? Its beginning is false, and its end is false; and how true is it between the beginning and the end? We begin to smile from the top down.

When people who are very selfish tell you their aches and pains, when they come around and steal from your garden, you let the truth radiate not because you want to, but because you can’t help it.

If during the period of gestation the prospective mother has an accident and the child has a birth mark, how is that explained? I remember an account of a prospective mother who in lowering a window marked her wrist, and afterwards the baby was marked in the same way. We are so prone in our obtuseness to think of matter apart from mortal mind.

The Godliness with which you realized the first command, brought the old error to the surface and healed it. When the Master healed the blind man he first smeared the eyes with matter in contempt of matter. Instead of supplying a mustard plaster, it destroyed faith in the plaster and also your husband’s resistance.

I had an old scar in my face which became quite livid during my recuperating period; it seemed it was opening afresh. It was simply the Truth sounding the depth of error and wiping out the belief that I had ever been healed through matter. One is never awakened except through the truth of being.

Student’s question as to mesmeric sense we call healing.

I will give you our Leader’s point; that, I think, covers the question. When it came to the question of healing in our class she said, “You bring to me a person dead and raise that individual to life before my eyes, and it will not necessarily convince me that it is Christian Science healing.” That covers the whole question. Why? How do you know whether you are healing in Christian Science? Sense testimony is no proof of anything. The evidence which appears to be before the senses is no criterion or proof. I have had a great deal of sport, if I may use that very tantalizing word, with a very old student, a practitioner in the field, who in justifying herself usually says, “I have some good healings and I can’t be all wrong”; and I ask her whether sense testimony, healing that is seen by the senses, is proof of anything. Oh, how it stirs that good woman.

What is healing? Regeneration, spiritual awakening. Therefore, the healing goes on until we are absolutely regenerated if it is rightly begun, and your healing is beginning in this class probably. It began before you came to this class in your honest seeking of Christian Science. That is the best evidence of healing. In the measure that we awake from sense to Soul, are we healed and being healed. We do not rejoice as selfishly as mortals who live in the belief of matter. We do not think that physical health amounts to so much. Health is divine Mind realized and reflected, embodied, demonstrated, for others.


Student’s question: “Are not many healed in passing on?”

Mrs. Eddy has written that they are healed in passing. She says very distinctly that the error that claims to kill an individual is self-destroyed in the process of dying. But that does not imply that they advance beyond what they had spiritually grown to. That means if you pass on with a terrible headache, the headache and the possibility of the headache is destroyed in passing. All that kills people is fear. Mrs. Eddy said once, “If you take the scare out of a thing, you are done with it.” The particular error that frightens people to death is self-destroyed in proving its own nothingness. We should realize the truth of being which keeps us here, instead of being killed off and letting those who are bent upon repopulating have the freedom of recreation and procreation. Error destroys itself in its pretense to kill you. I am not so sure that those who die with the harness on and are faithful up to their highest point, do not gain.

I do not mean that we gain by dying, but we awaken to a sense of life beyond what the world’s freedom enables us to enjoy here. There is a certain degree of life that we awaken to that is not fully rewarded. Sometimes I think I am not getting all I deserve. Sometimes I rebel against the little gratitude.

Mrs. Eddy learned much more in this world than she realized in our presence. I do not think that anyone can think of her passing as dying. She scarcely recognized what we call death. Even if another realizes the truth of being for you, it has the same effect. It does not make any difference whether you carry the lamp or another. If it is real light, it continues to dispel the darkness, and the darkness cannot return. But you see, the Master said, “If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.” If by any human process you succeed in changing a belief of evil, how great is that deception if you think that belief of good is real good.

That is all mesmerism does. It dabbles with and changes the effect, but it does not reduce the sin that makes the effect. Christian Science awakens you out of sense, not only frees you from the discords of sense. I do not mean Christian Scientists cannot have a good time. We have a better time than others because we dream less, – because we are on better terms with God; we play profitably. There is scarcely a joke that I allow myself to have part in that has not a lesson that points upward.


Student’s question: “Is it the fault of the practitioner when a patient is not healed?”

Why do so few out of the many healed, accept Christian Science or do for the Cause? The Bible says, “Many are called but few are chosen.” When I was healed the whole town believed until they saw it involved the sacrifice of their religion. In just a few years they all dropped off. We are taught to sow beside all waters, and the Master said, “No man cometh unto me except the Father draw him”; also, “No man cometh unto the Father except by me.” The truth of being is so costly that few want to pay the price. A good many look the bargain counter over.

If it is a Christian Science healing he will go forward. You cannot be attracted and repelled at the same time. I would advise you not to be too critical according to sense judgment; but it is true that one who is absolutely healed, comes to give thanks, and that is the way we give thanks. Of the ten lepers Jesus healed, only one returned.

He is being healing in Science. Your drawing capacity should be greater now. The Master said, “He who is not against me is for me.” Lovingly convince him that one must work out one’s own salvation. Sacrifice very earnestly all you can to help him, just as he appeals to you, and if you think there is a reason why he does not respond as promptly as he ought to, you do not have to tell him in a way that condemns him; you can appeal to him that he should help you. Help him without exacting more than you should. Win him into co-operation, instead of repelling him.

Whose fault is it if a patient is not healed? To say that it is the patient’s fault is a convenient way. The practitioner is supposed to be the doctor. It is a scientific fact that it is the practitioner’s fault if the patient is not healed. Honesty is representative of Principle. You have got to recognize Truth.

I have hinted to you before that I always fought shy of practitioners in my whole career in Science, not because I think I am so superior to others, but because I have seen from the beginning as the Bible says, that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, and it is more fearful to fall into the hands of a practitioner.

God holds us individually responsible for not only helping ourselves but our brother, because insofar as we are unselfish we are each and every one our brother’s keeper. Love is impartial, unselfish, impersonal and pure. It is unlimited in its possibilities. It is always wise; and wisdom is a splendid attribute.




Ninth Day

(Class commences a little later than usual.)

The first question is whose fault was it. Insofar as you were riding with a sinner, you were guilty.

There is a good point: Our Leader in her letter to the Mother Church in instituting the Wednesday evening meetings said, “Learn to forget what you should not remember.” It is not human to forget. You cannot forget by human trying; therefore, her wise admonition, “Learn to forget what you should not remember.” Some of the mottoes say, “Cheer up”; but they don’t tell you how to do it. How are you going to learn to forget? I received a bump myself once. The apology of the friend who drove did not heal my bump. It wasn’t really a sincere apology, a genuine one; it was sort of a good joke to him. That is a very fine point in Science. To declare radically that it never happened seems like a far-fetched thing, and yet it gives you a right start.

A young man who was totally deaf in one ear (this was quite early in my practice) believed in Science and wondered if he could not be healed. I asked him how it happened, whether it came on gradually or suddenly. He said he went swimming at one time and in diving struck the water flat with his ear. In treating him I cut off the belief that he had ever gone swimming, and that he ever dived or struck the water. When he came to me again he came with the delightful response of a testimony. He awakened one night and heard his watch tick and naturally thought it was his good ear, but he tried both ears and found his deaf ear was healed. That was the result of “It never happened.” You may not realize it. Merely to declare it, hasn’t much effect. You must understand why. This is the secret of my reminder to you in the beginning, that your understanding of God gives you the strength of right thinking. With the understanding of God your thoughts embody, as it were, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind; divine Principle is behind every thought. Indeed, it is the thought of God; God thinking, as it were, through you. To understand God is to represent God. Therefore, you do not ask anyone how to treat this or that.

The power of your treatment lies in the strength of your originality; it shows the morbid nothingness of formulas or good thoughts. I have said you cannot hold a good thought; if you can hold it, it isn’t good. You can hold human things, but the divine radiates. When you hold a thought, you mesmerize yourself. What you get from Science and Health and your own understanding has the vitality of originality, and that is the virtue. The world has repeated the Lord’s Prayer from the time it was given until Christian Science came; but how many have realized it? With the spiritual interpretation we gain more of the spirit that inspired it. When you repeat it with religious sanctimoniousness, you mesmerize yourself into a belief that beclouds your sense. I call it an insult for anyone to ask me to hold a good thought; it implies ordinarily I am not holding a good one.

Science and Health says, “We all must learn that life is God. Hold perpetually this thought, that it is the spiritual idea, the Holy Ghost and Christ, which enables you to demonstrate with scientific certainty the rule of healing, underlying, overlying and encompassing all true being.” She tells you to hold this thought, but how can you focalize it so humanly that it becomes a theory? It is not a human thought. That passage gives you a Christly sense and not a human thought. What you radiate of Principle, is what that means; but it does not focalize a human thought. It means, doubtless, to keep reminded of thought, but it is not born of human thinking; you might say it means to keep yourself aroused to the truth of being.

What the unawakened world calls good, is what mortal mind wants.

(Door bell rings.) Mrs. Mann answered the door bell seven times in response to school children going around begging a dime for some scheme a mortal conceived. That is what mortal mind calls good; harassing people; and when they get the money, they spend it according to their morbid belief of doing good for something. We propagate the cause of Christian Science without calling on those who do not believe in it, and we lovingly invite them to come and get without price and without money.

“Learn to forget what you should not remember and live for the good that you do,” and that is a most delightful thing to do because it implies progress.

I have here a New York Tribune which I take along with the Monitor, but before I call your attention to this heading, I want you to remember I wrote something about King Tut before this morning’s paper. (Heading read.) Sir Arthur has come for more funds and he is going to fool the Americans a little more. He gives good proof. He takes pictures of the spirits, and what other proof is needed? Science and Health says, “Mortal mind sees what it believes, as surely as it believes what it sees.” The world generally believes what it sees, but it hasn’t learned outside of Christian Science that it also sees what it believes. You get a sufficient number to concentrate upon the possibility of anything and they work out in form and outline what they believe; but the unenlightened naturally are superstitious, and of course, what they dream out through their exciting of mortal mind must be spirits, because it is mysterious. There is no more mystery in the personalities they call spirits, than there is in those that we see in our waking thought. It seems more mysterious because it is less common.

Spiritualism is only a more concentrated form. They evolve what they think of long enough. It is mysterious simply because mortal mind in its superstition isn’t conscious of the images it evolves.

The English earl, who spent seven years and an immense fortune digging into the earth in search for mummies, is dead. He is supposed to have died by the sting of an insect…ascribes it to the prejudice of spirits. Offended spirits have the power to kill! The imprecations of the dead king are supposed by reason of the weight of time to have more power than the protestations of the living. This English earl was the victim of a corpse! The superstitious world laughs at these things in a general way, and yet it laughs with a sort of a superstitious shudder. It laughs, but does nothing toward destroying the superstition.

They tell you how wonderfully King Tut was laid away. It shows the very pious and religious sense with which he was buried. But this unholy Englishman desecrates the belief of a people, digs into the tombs, and therefore brings upon himself a nation’s indignation. This Englishman was too personally ambitious. There was no godly reason for digging into the tombs, and he was exposed to the ignorance of that retributive sense.

What a world we would have if we had to look out for the spirits as well as mortals. The godliness with which we mind our own business is what protects us. Imagine the Master digging into old Egyptian tombs, spending time and money! It is like digging into a dream to find the sum and substance of a nightmare, – digging into a sleep.

It is not the Germans who are dead that are doing the mischief. The dead ones are wiser by this time. I discovered as a student of Christian Science over there, that the German nation is perhaps more versed in hypnotism and mesmerism than any other nation in the world. I found even women of fine standing studying hypnotism. Naturally, they confided in me because they thought I was in their class. They thought I was a spirit worker; they gave me all sorts of names. It was pure unadulterated hypnotism they were studying.

When Woodrow Wilson seemed to act as one bound hand and foot, before we broke our relationship with Germany, I said again and again that he was being manipulated by the diplomats of Germany. I believe it was a direct hypnotic influence that was exercised over our president. I saw that so clearly that I could not help but realize the one Mind. He seemed to fall into trap after trap. Today the same hypnotic influence is being exercised, only insofar as Christian Scientists neutralize it.

Insofar as that nation fails to recognize its primary guilt in precipitating the war, insofar as they are not awake to a speck of Principle which recognizes the divinity of Christianity, of being their brother’s keeper…and the United States will intervene in behalf of the world only insofar as Christian Scientists neutralize the universal effect of hypnotism, – the effect precipitated through that nation. No one can say how much we will have to suffer before that spell is finally broken.

I am tired of hearing the economic situation discussed, – the business or commercial side of it. Morality is never mentioned. All they are thinking of is how the nations can make an extra dollar. Christianity seems to be too transcendental even to mention. The moral situation is left out of it entirely. We send wheat to Russia to save the babies, but how much does such charity contribute toward removing the cause of the need there? We send milk to Germany to save the babies, and in about eighteen years we will have a worse war than we just passed through, and we help to provide the material for that war.

I ask you in the face of this, what is the difference between sin healing and sickness healing?

This is the first time in all my teaching that it has been answered in the first putting. That is splendid. That question went around the entire class in my primary course at the college. Mrs. Eddy put that question to some 45 members in those days and not one answered it rightly until it came to me. I could not express it clearly. I started to say it in stammering words and Mrs. Eddy helped me. I am almost surprised that any student can answer it. The reason I ask it is because I am speaking of the need in Germany. I said to Mrs. Eddy, “Sin healing requires an uncovering and sickness healing has to be covered up.”

The sick come and tell you where the ache and pain is, and you throw the mantel of divine Love on that and smother it out. The sinner comes and says he is a saint and does not know why he is suffering. The Master said, “But one thing thou lackest. Go and sell all thou hast and come and follow me.” Sin hides under the subtlety of innocence. Unless you have the intuitive penetration, you will never be able to heal the sinner, and it is a question whether we as individuals or all combined, have the moral virtue to bring Germany to conviction. I say Germany, because I take her as the chief offender. Unless Germany admits her guilt, she is not even touching the hem of the garment of healing. You cannot possibly heal a faulty battery by connecting it to a good one. Divine Love must bring that nation to conviction as surely as it brings an individual to conviction.

I will illustrate this to you by a specific case. A young man in apparently good health had suffered quite a while and materia medica was not helping him. His relatives were in Science but he was not. They begged me to go and treat him; they feared he might pass on, and I went to him for their sake. I found him in bed in a very painful condition and he was still caring for himself as the doctors had advised him. I asked him what was the trouble and he told me it was kidney trouble or bladder trouble. I had not been with him long, – sat quietly by, and he wasn’t disposed to tell me much more about his trouble, – when like chain lightning I asked him, ‘Have you been mixed up with women?’ He fell back on his pillow and wept like a little youngster. He had kidney trouble! The very lie he told me disgusted me. I had to find out what was the trouble. I began to arouse him to the truth of being and the need of his standing close to me and Godward, and he was soon out and healed. I bring this to you plainly. Suppose I had accepted his diagnosis of his ailment instead of having spiritual insight to detect the hidden sin. Sin is healed by the unmerciful uncovering which it requires; uncovering heals it.

That which mortal mind is frightened at or believes, must be unseen. You rebuke the one as not being, and you rebuke the other by bringing it so fully out that it cannot be denied. Dealing with the cause, or overcoming the bad effect by rooting out the cause, – not picking off the top; that is Christian Science.

Take little Dickie, as wonderful as the healing of the leg is, restoring the flesh, covering a broad patch with new flesh, the healing of sin in that little fellow is the most wonderful thing I have ever witnessed; the extreme sensitiveness in that little midget. He knows exactly what you mean, and is as sharp and full of subtlety as the devil himself. It is a great study; he looks you blandly in the face and wonders if he will get by with it. He is not an animal ruffian; he is just as delicate in his feeding as in everything else. One needs to be an artist in feeding him. Sin plays around quite innocently, like the lightning flashes; although he is far from a sinner humanly speaking. He is an innocent little fellow. I speak of him because there you see the impersonality of evil. The man who steals, the burglar or murderer, is a very coarse and open type of sin’s expression.

Mrs. R. has two lovely sisters, humanly speaking, and they were most reverently interested in Christian Science when they witnessed Dickie’s healing. They were concerned in his behalf; if Dick would only not have to go back to the atmosphere in his home. They thought they were better fitted to take care of him. They did not dream Mrs. R. would awaken. They appealed to Mrs. Mann again and again, to see if they could not be permitted to make a home for him. They would like to sacrifice.

They fell down around Christmas time when I invited them to come and hear a Christmas piece I had written. They failed to come and that freed Dickie from a chance change. You must be so strong from the inside as to return good for evil. If you are big enough to overcome evil with good, you will draw them. You must not rebuke evil or sin personally; you must not be personal in rebuking your friends. It is like evil trying to heal evil. You cannot rebuke sin except through righteousness. Science and Health says, only virtue is a rebuke to vice. This personal stuff that claims to be so righteous is only self-righteousness, and if you use this to rebuke some other form, it makes confusion.

I had the best lesson in patience and long-suffering when I served under our dear Leader. I am not merely imitating her, but hope I am emulating her. The virtue that we have cannot be vitiated by contact with evil; virtue cannot be polluted. You can mingle with sinners a long time before you become a sinner, and if you are a saint you do not become a sinner.

That one point of holding thoughts. I defy you to find the thought that you are to hold. This is the beauty of that. You can simply be aroused by the contemplation of the Christ, the divine idea, that heals. You contemplate that, as absorbing; you become imbued with it, but you cannot hold a divine thought and have it humanly. You cannot personalize Truth; Principle radiates but you cannot personalize it. I rejoice more than you realize in your response.

Yesterday we had one of the finest cases of healing testified to that I have ever witnessed, when Mr. G. said what he did. Immediately after class the day before yesterday, I went to my room. That whole afternoon and until bed time, I searched and searched, and finally I said to Mrs. Mann, “For heaven’s sake, call me off.” And when you said yesterday that your enlightenment was gained from the very passage read from Science and Health, I want to say that my prayerful digging did not hinder your enlightenment.

When Mrs. Mann first came to me, I said to her, “You reflect the whole of God,” and she could not forget it. It was an unusual thing to tell a stranger; and that is what she has been doing ever since.


Reading: “A positive reflection as substance, is substantial; it has the substance of being that being is. The human has sympathy for its own; it has mutual consideration of its own; etc.”


Will God ever be seen by man apart from Himself? God will never be seen as separated from man at any time, anywhere, in any way. Then, how can you humanly discriminate between God and man, or pronounce upon, or conceive of either humanly, and have no reality in the conception? Jesus recognized it when he said, “I and my Father are one”; and the religious world has made the grand mistake (if a mistake can be grand) of calling Jesus God.

The reflection is the only evidence of God that He is. You can understand the divine fact and stop superstitiously looking for God apart from yourself. There is where Christian Science is iconoclastic; it breaks the false images. “Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven images.” That is, you should not try to formulate a human concept of Deity, because that is not a divine concept. This takes away the mystery of the Old Testament. It is the interdependence of God and man. I apparently stand here talking not of God, but for God. Insofar as I reflect, God speaks through me; but do not say that outside because it is too holy to be uttered. It is just as true of you though; so if you realize that, you will do me justice, – whether you realize that you are speaking for God or voicing God, or whether God speaks while the senses have been silenced in me. The reality of the relationship is what Christian Science reveals, and Christian Science demonstrates. It is the interdependence of God and His reflection that gives reality to us. Jesus’ consolation was, “Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me.” What is the difference; one could not be without the other.

Student’s question regarding twenty-third platform, page 336 of Science and Health.

She forestalls by that statement the attempt to personalize infinity. That does not contradict what we have said, that every idea, being the focalization of infinite Mind, reflects infinity. It is simply a precautionary statement to preclude the possibility of a human conception. What is true of you is true of every idea. While a single idea would focalize infinity as a result of its being a conception of infinite Mind, yet infinite Mind’s ideas are infinite, and the infinitude to Mind’s ideas is not realized in a single idea; but all ideas combined, of course, bring out the infinity of that reflection. You may within yourself realize the focalization of infinity, but you would have to embrace in that realization the consciousness of its including all ideas, – all right ideas. What we realize for ourselves in Science must be all-inclusive. The world is embraced in the awakening we have. The blessing, I mean, does not end with us; it only begins with us and radiates from us.

There is a sin against the Holy Ghost. When you become so self-centered as to reject the appeal of Principle you are absolutely hopeless, and your malicious fixity can only suffer itself out. Therefore, the Master said, “It cannot be forgiven here or at any time.” It is the rebellion against divine Science; that is, the possible leavening of Principle. When you willfully reject it you are beyond the reach of enlightenment.

The people you have in mind say, Man is God. I helped one of your friends out of that and I wrote an article on it. They refer to an old edition of Science and Health and claim it is the only inspired edition. There are people who are mesmerized in their own thought, and they get their hold through the sweet credulity of their false sweetness. They may ease even an ailment a Christian Scientist hasn’t healed, and that false sense gives them prestige. Even what they do has the effect of establishing error, because error seems to establish good sometimes. These people are far in advance of Christian Scientists; in other words, they are giving up their lives to comfort Christian Scientists, so look out for them.

“Walterism.” Mrs. Eddy made Science and Health fool-proof, as she went on revising it. Inspiration to them was a fixity which struck once and then ceased to be. To me inspiration is perpetual.

The difference between New Thought and Christian Science is the difference between covering up sin and uncovering it. The difference will be seen by your friend in the end, but we as Scientist have to see the end from the beginning. Wherever there has been egotism enough to inflate personality intellectually, there has been a new departure. Think of the wickedness that arrogates to itself personally what can only be true of Principle!

Your friend’s chief difficulty was that she did not know how to get rid of a very good friend who had been captured by this Walterism. She wrote me a very fine letter sometime afterwards, that she was getting loose. I advised her to be radical and not fear to lose, because such loss is gain. Mrs. Eddy says, “Loss is gain,” it is beautiful.

Let us cover ground in this way. Some plausible intellectualist sweetens up his theories more to the taste of other individual intellectualists. Error always has a reason for being, – a plausible one at that.

I have often said, Do not speak of my having been at Pleasant View to prove anything. Years ago I looked not for converts through wonderful healings. Jesus said, “Though one rose from the dead, ye would not believe.” Mrs. R., you took up Christian Science because you saw the reality of Christianity.

Don’t forget what I said in the beginning; Do not be guided by older students; and I will give you what Mrs. Eddy gave me when I first went there to take charge of the estate. On my arrival she said, “I want you to take charge of everything, – all my entire affairs. Take care of them as if they were your own.” And I said, “What I don’t know, I will ask Mr. Frye.” She replied, “No, don’t ask Mr. Frye; ask God.” Think of it. I was to superintend the affairs; knew nothing about the premises.

Those who are willing enough to answer your questions cannot answer them, especially those who are too willing. I do not mean that Christian Scientists should not be able to give themselves an unselfish hand along the way, but do not seek light through them. Each one has God. We should help each other, as God helping us. But the trouble is we do not grow upward at once; somehow or other we grow backwards. I mean the older students have not outgrown the pride of being older. They will volunteer, and when they do, be very polite and loving, but consult the Father afterwards.

The class must know there is but one channel from which must issue all that we call authentic literature. Let headquarters decide what is authentic and do not let some plausible intellectualist fool you.

Older students that you rebuke turn on you because you do not rebuke them hard enough. You might ask this question, Why doesn’t a big snake stop wiggling with the first blow you give him? It takes divine grace to wound to heal.

I will show you that Mrs. Eddy’s rebuke to the earlier students was hardly personal when she rebuked intellectualists for not taking up the question of animal magnetism in its different forms. They turned from her and refused to follow her. She rebuked them for ignoring animal magnetism without handling it. It is like saying that there is no mortal mind, and here we sit more or less the victims of mortal mind. You do not overcome a thing by the scientific declaration, but by the scientific realization. It is not wrong to declare the Truth, but do not let it rest there. Blood-sweating sacrifice may precede realization. If you realize it, you have the proof.

“Will you explain sickness and show how it is to be healed? A full answer to the above question involves teaching.”

I said to you in the beginning that there are many things to be taught in class that cannot safely be printed.

Student’s question as to a passage in “Miscellaneous Writings.”

I began to heal the moment I left my bed. I think I remember indistinctly just what you refer to. Mrs. Eddy speaks of ancient Christian Scientists who healed beautifully but they could not teach; like natural musicians. They have the spirit which radiates, but finally only understanding will save them.

Speaking of the natural musician, Mrs. Eddy speaks of that somewhere. Jesus understood Christian Science, but I think the disciples healed the sick more through their emulation of him than their understanding. He did not teach Christian Science as we today gain it from Science and Health. What does that imply? It takes away the mystery of the Master and his disciples. When we realize that divine Science is an inspiration of revelation which all can awaken to, it takes away the religious belief in the ancients. Just insofar as you believe that I am more favored than you, you miss the Godlike sense. If you pay the price that I pay, you will have what I have, and if I pay the price Mrs. Eddy paid, I will have what she had. It is wrong to think that you are less.

Is anything less than God’s image and likeness, man? It is like asking, Is anything less than harmony music? Nothing less than harmony is music. Mere sound isn’t music. Nothing less than a true tone is music. Music must be represented by a true tone. So nothing less than God’s image and likeness is man. The human concept is the dream-concept.

Is it right for a Christian Scientist to exercise will-power?

Will-power is mortal mind’s method of emphasizing itself.

Is will-power a product of good or evil? If evil, can it be an avenue for good? Is will-power personal or representative of Principle? If you were out for your firm selling machinery and you had learned how to convince the other fellow, you will sell a machine. You are expected by the firm to sell their goods. You are not sure that the tractor you represent is the best one manufactured. I gather that so far as you can, you are honest. It would be a matter of business if you shut an eye and could sell a tractor. Are you working from Principle or for the firm? Could you do justice to the firm by working from Principle? We leave it today that you are working from Principle instead of the firm.

And let us watch and pray to be promptly on time as we have been on Monday.




Tenth Day

(Largely a historic review, for the purpose of giving the lie to error, or of proving the triumph of Truth over error.)

Let us have a very practical lesson today. If I were to ask you to treat me this morning for what ails me, how would you go to work? I will tell you the symptoms and let you diagnose the case. I awakened this morning very early with sniffles. I had no sign of it last night when I retired. I am well enough to be in the class as you see, but I still seem more or less afflicted, and I want you to diagnose my case and tell me whether it is cold that is troubling me. I am doing pretty well now and I am coming to you for treatment. I want you to treat out.

I do not expect to leave any curtain when this class is dismissed. You remember very clearly in our lessons I said I wished we could maintain the life and activity of the class room at all times. It is very much like the Master taking the three disciples up on the mountain. I will bring you back to earth.

The fact that I have lived all these years is proof of something.

The class as a whole will admit that it has thought of me much; by reason of my teaching, you have thought of me personally, and your acquaintance with me is so surprisingly something; I do not know what. You could not help to identify the teaching with me. You would focalize it upon me. The class becomes the open channel for personal concentration upon me. I am not finding fault; I am glad I have a cold to speak of.

I felt all day yesterday that I did not want to eat anything, but Mrs. Mann’s soup was so good I could not resist. I had a cold last year when I taught, and one of the students could not get over the shock that Mr. Mann should be touched by anything, and to this day she is morbidly fearful. Why, if Mr. Mann can be touched, what of me? We might as well say Mrs. Eddy died. I have a cross to bear and it is not so easy. I am stirring up sin and perhaps because of that, it is not so easy. This little sensitive student idealized me into Christian Science. I am demonstrating Christian Science with the rest of you. The Bible tells us Jesus was our brother. When Paul healed the snake bite, the ignorant natives worshipped him as a God.

We had a very bad day yesterday, and I told Mrs. Mann her part reminded me of a life saver. Oftentimes this summer she had made it a point to life saving. Take some big fellow like the Colonel; she would go out into the deep to rescue them, bring them to shore, and she succeeded in doing this. Her effort yesterday in helping me reminded me of that life saving effort. She told hold valiantly.

I want you to diagnose the case. If it were open or expressed you could handle error, but it never comes out that way. If it were not for the point of Science, we would be talking about family affairs. Even the appreciation which the instruction has inspired is more or less personal and opens the channel to reach me. The godly impression you have of me still centers itself on my person.

I ask you all as a class whether it is not proof of something beyond personality that we are together as we are today. Last year I taught a class of 25; I am teaching a class of 25 this year, only by the Almighty’s drawing. If it had been possible for the devil to keep you away, you would not be here.

Notice in the Journal: “Not all who have the degree of C.S.B. and C.S.D. are authorized teachers.”

The word teacher came to be used quite without my noticing.

{The following Journal references are listed in the margin of this transcript:

Vol. 39, Jan. 1922, p.xvii

Vol. 39, Jan. 1922, p.xxiv

Vol. 40, Dir. xxix, “teacher”

Vol. 40, 1922-23, Dir. xlv

Vol. 41, 1923-24, Dir. xlvi (last listing)}

For years the argument of evil was to kill Mrs. Eddy’s students. The argument was subtle and open. There are very few of Mrs. Eddy’s students on earth today. I have known most of the old teachers personally, and I have looked the Journal over and cannot find them.

My authority to teach came not from the Journal but from the College. I would rather be sought without advertising. I even sort of rejoiced in being blackened and besmirched, and those who did come, came because they wanted to come. I never made a specialty of teaching.

Would you like your money back?

You know me on the inside well enough to let God speak, but I am going to give you a human introduction to myself this morning, giving you the official proof step by step, and at the same time show you what malicious animal magnetism is.

The statement in the March Journal does not have to be taken by us personally, because there are doubtless many in the field with promiscuous teaching, and headquarters has got to separate between the sheep and the goats; and I will pray to the Father to see what has to be done about my advertising. I have not been driven to advertise as a teacher, although I have taught for years. I shall never vindicate myself personally. There is no one at headquarters or in the world that is going to pass upon my teaching but the Almighty. If the word teacher will be received without my undergoing an examination, I shall be glad to have them publish it; but I shall be more glad to retire, thankful to know that I have had a successful class in closing.

That shows you what my cold is. I would rather suffer and die in suffering and be grateful to the last breath, with my colors flying, to have worked independently, as I did live. I have not been indebted to anybody for 40 years now, and this malicious stuff that arises every now and then to discredit my life and to bring it into disrepute, can be healed through the demonstration of divine Love; and if the students have an infinitesimal part of what I try to teach, you will neutralize malicious animal magnetism to the glory of God.

Do not mention me when you vindicate the Truth. If you do your duty, you will come nearer doing it in my judgment, if you dissolve and go in with the First Church, until Love demonstrates a growth in overflow and you need a second church. Now I ask you whether Mr. Mann is teaching you to work independently or belligerently. The very origin of the Second Church is not legitimate; that is, it is not the result of an overflow. It is the result of differences which should be healed. If the differences that separated you had been healed in the First Church, there would be less today in Hartford. You perhaps would not have grown so in numbers, but you would have developed the spirit of Christ. You may outgrow the difference that exists in Hartford through staying Second and First Church, but you will never outgrow it except through the spirit that would have healed the First Church.

I am not outlining for the Second Church in Hartford, but there needs to be enough humility there to rise to the point that heals. It would require a great deal of humiliation in the Second Church to disorganize. If you could go back with the humility that I see possible, it would not be long before the leaven of humility would change all. I am not touching this by way of advising you; but I would like nothing better than the depth of humility which would make it possible for you to disorganize the Second Church. If you are born of humility and go back with the love that has no resentment or personal feeling, you will be respectable. The membership would change and increase until it would be developed in natural order. They could not resist taking in members. The possibility of that humility is irresistible. I speak of it only to show you the possibility of that love that would have forestalled the disruption. The dirty corner that left you there, you will build in your own church. If I were to lead you, I would lead you over the ground of humility that would so surprise the First Church that its walls would burst. I would lead the Second Church to the First Church. I understand how hard it is to overcome evil with good.

If the students appreciate what God gives them through me, I will not stop teaching. Bear in Mind it was not right for the Master to be crucified.

We are having today the best practical lesson on malicious animal magnetism that can be given. I am going to introduce myself to you personally. I never expected to have to bring these papers out from under cover. You have seen the certificates. These give me authority to teach. But isn’t it pitiable that those degrees do not mean much today? Some of Mrs. Eddy’s students who went above Mrs. Eddy on intellectual wings, left her to suffer under it,…

Reading of different letters.

It is a little disheartening when I look back on practical experience. We had a warm affection as fellow-workers; but the immensity of the Cause has made it necessary to be more business-like.

The lawsuit in Boston. The Board of Directors asked me to come to Boston at the time of the trial. I went up there but what I knew didn’t happen to be of special benefit to them, and I was sorry not to be able to help them. I never had any sympathy for the Trustees. God holds them responsible for not having avoided the lawsuit. If there is a family quarrel, there are two to fight. It is a big question, but I stood with the Father, hoping that the Trustees would be trounced and that the Directors would learn an invaluable lesson. The courts cannot settle a question that only God can. I went to them and would gladly have cooperated with them.

The original Board of Directors had the wisdom of sacredly understanding and obeying Mrs. Eddy. They were faithful men who loved Mrs. Eddy, and were obedient to her, insofar as they followed her. It was a failure to demonstrate the Mother-Love that caused the lawsuit. If the disposition is in us to fight, we will fight until we wear ourselves out.

That sense of fighting for Principle subordinates error, rebukes it, reduces it. Personal quarreling does not heal, but sometimes gives black eyes. Fighting for Principle from Principle carries with it the blessing. While the charges were being preferred, they were wallowing at headquarters. If the Directors had had the humility before the trial to appeal to the Field for their needs, could not we have risen enough to have forestalled the lawsuit, instead of fighting so very humanly to vindicate the Manual, which will vindicate itself? That appeal would have exposed the Trustees.

Do you feel that this was less of a lesson than preceding ones?

I do not want to appear to be so near God that all these things are perhaps unjust or innocent. I do not want to advocate innocence. It is true that the sharp shooters aim at the commanding general and his camp.

When I get fighting mad I feel metaphysically bigger than other people. I grieved all day yesterday because I found myself obliged to touch all this stuff, but making it subservient, I felt better about it.

My healing is almost complete. I come out of error as not having been in it. I do not admit I am in it and then try to come out. It is not my superior understanding that keeps me coming out; it is the fact that I do not admit I am in.

Are you clear as to Walterism? You only need to see that God and man are one, but not the same thing. They maintain that man is God. Cause and effect are one, but cause is not effect; nor is effect causal. In the first edition of Science and Health, I do not know that Mrs. Eddy didn’t say man is God. She says herself that a child lisps in numbers and the numbers came. The new sense of God was so clear that it just lisped itself, and indeed was God Himself. The substantiality which had a God, was God radiating through her. But she saw how it might be misunderstood, so she changed it. The simple thing that assures you is that God is always God, and man is man; but those fools thought Mrs. Eddy didn’t realize what she was doing. The absurdity of belief that inspiration is a limited ray of light, or one that can be interrupted! How can inspiration be interrupted? It was inspiration that revised the book.

If you have a friend or patient in a distant place, or in need in a place beyond your personal reach, would it be right to send to the object of your heart’s concern a good thought? Why not? Is a thought that you can send really good? It is too human; that is considering thought as a thing. All it does is to satisfy your human thought that you have done something. You are not sending thoughts, because every true thought you have, you cannot hold; it radiates. You do not have to strike a light and make it shine; it radiates. You do not have to send it. Sometimes I say to friends, if I have to stir my friends up to hold a right thought, it is pretty human support. We neither hold thoughts nor send them. What we have can neither be held nor sent, because it is so genuine that it radiates and radiates.


Reading: “All in the world of mental activity who are not in harmony with Christian Science are mesmerized or hypnotized. That is, they appropriate or indulge mortal mind instead of denying it. Only Christian Science teaches the healing Christianity of Christ Jesus who said, ‘Let him who would come after me deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.’ In the language of Christian Science, deny sense, at whatever human cost, to final spiritual awakening. Christian Scientists are representatives of the Christ Mind or the power of Principle. The mental mongers outside of Christian Science, by whatever name known, represent a passing puff of inflated personality. Christian Scientists must not ever honor personality by personally exposing or opposing it. They must understand divine Principle spiritually enough not to be deceived by the presumption of personality, and with the impersonal sense of pure Mind, impersonalize every personal claim to its nothingness.”





Eleventh Day

It would be fair I think if I invite you to take advantage of the opening this morning and perhaps lead off in the entire lesson, if you care to, and even tomorrow morning. Perhaps that is the best way to gather up the loose ends that are lying around; not that I am short of material.


Student’s question: “Will you tell us a little more about whether the human concept touches the hem of the real man?”

My spontaneous reply would be, it never touches the hem of the real man. It is a good question. I took exception to one of the students one year calling me nothing, because I did not like the student’s conception. That left the student with an abstraction. There must not be an interval between this and that. Existence is just as real now as it ever will be, and the reality of that must be demonstrated even to human appreciation.

My question here on paper is: Does not spiritual awakening supplant all human deficiency with divine sufficiency? In the awakening even there is no interval between, and yet the human concept never touches the real. We are discussing a very fine point. It is almost like seeing the incoming divinity and the outgoing human with the same glimpse. The outgoing human is so beautiful, as a result of the divine tint which overshadows it in its outgoing, that you can hardly discriminate; but there never must be a sense of duality. The divinity overshadowing the human, graces and beautifies the human, but it still must be outgoing, – it disappears to the divine awakening.

Student’s remark as to Mrs. Eddy’s reference to “the coincidence of God and man.”

Coincidence is the positive. The word coincidence really implies what I say, “The divinity of the Christ was made manifest in the humanity of Jesus,” but there is no duality. I am talking to the class from the standpoint of ‘way above the class,’ but not any less appreciable to the class. I am talking to you from the standpoint of God and speaking understandingly enough to make it appreciable. The rays of the overshadowing sun reach the earth from above the earth; and that is Christian Science healing.

It is not an operation of the human mind but a dispelling or dissipation of the human mind. Paul expressed it figuratively, that a kernel of wheat must fall into the ground before it bears fruit or grows. It shows that at every point of progress…

The revolution of the earth is so rapid that we think it is standing still. We have to believe science that it is moving at all; and we think it is flat. It revolves so fast that nobody is really standing on his head. We deny physical sense entirely in the realization of the true sense.

There is the scientific necessity urged upon the human through revelation, and also reached through the right reasoning which we have spoken of from the beginning. Revelation illuminates, and right reasoning arouses the human. After we have said all we can about any subject, we have just given you the skeleton. The filling in will have to be done by divine Love itself. If you have the very least understanding of God as Christian Science reveals it, and are reasonably honest and sincere in your praying, it will unfold from there, because you have been correctly started; the pure seedling is planted, and it is very robust and vital in itself. The spark of Truth planted is self-sustained. Science and Health says, “Nothing but wrong intention can hinder your advancement.” There is no similarity between the human and the divine. The mirage seems to be the same, only you view it upside down; it is the same yet it isn’t.

Does not spiritual awakening supplant all human deficiency with divine sufficiency?

Christian Scientists are not honoring their calling unless they see from the beginning that nothing short of perfection is permissible; that we are to be whole physically, morally, and spiritually; we are to be healed of whatever lack we may have. In other words, ignorance of any kind should be routed through the quickening of Christian Science; we should be correct in every way; we should speak and write correctly, and also should be able to sing a little. We should be able to do things better, by reason of the inspiration which Christian Science brings to us. We must have the ideal before us and aim at it. I saw it from the beginning; self-instruction, self-improvement. I had the ideal so planted in my mind that I knew I could not do Christian Science credit unless I improved….

I want to call your attention to the reality of my own sense of healing. I never feel that I overcome something; that is, that I come out of something; but through the understanding of God I deny ever having been in. I do not come out; but I prove that I am not in error. There is a beautiful reality about that.

You do not fear when you are healed in Christian Science that perhaps it will be repeated, or that you will keep out of the draft. The Science of healing is not really overcoming, but proving the nothingness of that which claims to be. In Science and Health we read: “If sickness is true or the idea of Truth, you cannot destroy sickness, and it would be absurd to try. Then classify sickness and error as our Master did, when he spoke of the sick, whom Satan hath bound, and find a sovereign antidote for error in the life-giving power of Truth acting on human belief, a power which opens the prison doors to such as are bound, and sets the captives free physically and morally.” “Whom Satan hath bound,” – malicious animal magnetism. He recognized the woman as not physically afflicted, but he recognized it as malicious animal magnetism.

A Christian Scientist, I have said, and have proved it many, many times, naturally lives above the realm of ignorant error. That which makes people abnormally sick, would not touch a Christian Scientist. A Christian Scientist lives in a more wakeful mentality; he lives above the ignorant realm when he turns his back upon matter. But the other two stages, he cannot quite be so sure about, – the sympathetic and malicious. The sympathetic will more or less victimize you by opening the channel for the malicious.

Yesterday afternoon our neighbor called up and said her husband had just passed on. I naturally felt the weight of that unexpected happening; not an old man by any means, quite a young man. I said to Mrs. Mann quite sarcastically, “Are you going to take charge over there now?” She looked at me to find out my bearing. No, she wasn’t going to do that. They had not appealed to Christian Science in spite of my neighborliness. Here we were declaring the Truth on this side of the road, and they were dying on the other side. I said, “Don’t take it to heart; she will be married again in a few weeks.” I routed the sympathy in myself by giving this rebuke to mortal mind.

There is one consolation, we do not create the error we grapple with; it is self-created. We are not the creators of mortal mind.

Is mortal mind a dream or a dreamer?

Student: “It is a dream that there is a dreamer.”

Mortal mind is a dream. That dream is unconscious to itself, not to you merely. The human is egotistical enough to think it is pretty wise; but no human yet has ever known himself. We said once that the counterfeit is an infinite lie. To speak of mortal mind as the dreamer would still personalize it. In order to get a right sense we have to impersonalize. The dreamer is acted upon or created by the dream. There is a desire to account for the human in some way.

Mrs. Eddy once asked how she ever did such a wonderful work as the establishment of Christian Science. She answered, “I just got out of the way and let God reflect.”

The understanding of the Ego is God and man, and that Ego radiates. You cannot hold a thought and you cannot send it, because the Ego radiates in the degree you understand.

There is a peculiar struggle that goes on within me, and has for several days, as if I would like to stop teaching. It is an abnormal thing. There is a desire to hide myself and radiate from hiding. If I could radiate without being seen humanly, that would make me happy, – just be absolutely free to live and radiate. I am not going to try to regulate this humanly though. It is on the same line that I have refused to open my doors very easily to those who want to become patients, – those who seek the physical healing. I have insisted more and more to make it hard for anyone to reach me, because I have so little satisfaction in what appears as physical healing. I enjoy teaching; I see a real value in it; I see the awakening out of sin. I awaken mortal mind out of the dream and forestall sin. Mrs. Mann would tell you that more have been healed by being turned away lovingly than by treatment given by practitioners who are more professional in their practice. I am not discouraging practitioners; I am speaking only of my own feeling. I have had such disappointments. I have seen people blessed and blessed and yet they do not return to give thanks. Practitioners will all have to rise where they have less satisfaction in the physical healing. There was a time when the Master saw only those who came down through the roof.

God isn’t left without witnesses. I am simply insisting that you see the greater or real work that Christian Scientists have to do. Unless we see that the greater work is to heal sin, we become patent medicines. Somebody must represent that which is worthier than humans can buy. There must be the test that the Master gave the woman when he said, “It is not meet to give the children’s bread unto dogs.” Could anyone have given a meaner thing? “Yea, Lord,” she said, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” I am not flattered by human response. It does not move me pro or con. It isn’t because I am in my declining or reclining days, either; it is simply the result of the assimilation of inevitable experience.

“Whom Satan hath bound.” We overcome an error once as the result of denying it. It all depends how much we understand the truth of being as scientific. If we deny it without the truth of being, we mesmerize ourselves. We heal ourselves of an ache or pain by denying it. Our understanding of God or the truth of being represents Principle; Principle denying or rebuking personality. Tomorrow or the next day you have the same trouble and you wonder why. You were healed once. If it comes the second time, why has it come? Not because you have gone backwards. The first time you overcome your own sense of belief in it. The next time it tempts you, perhaps you have had a tea party or something and good friends come in and they brought you enough of the human atmosphere that it comes back. You overcome it this time by overcoming sympathetic mesmerism, because error cannot fool you into believing it is real when you have proved it unreal once. If your understanding is progressively clear, you will say, “I thought I had overcome it.” You will have a harder job the second time. This time you overcome it by rebuking sympathetic animal magnetism. You have said, “Satan, get thee behind.”

Then you are pushed into it the third time, and you have to meet it as the Master met it finally, – as malicious animal magnetism. Do not regard it as physical at all. I remember a demonstration Mrs. Mann had some years ago, when I myself was in great need and the pressure was great upon me. I went to her and found her helpless, under the same error she had been healed of. What do you think I did? I got all the dynamite that I had within reach and touched it off. I told her if she had one speck of love, she would be in condition. That was so swift that…. The devil was going to kill her in his attempt to overload me. I freed myself by rebuking her. That takes some maneuvering and clarity of thought; and it took some receptivity to not want to die after that terrible rebuke.

I witnessed some very severe struggles at Pleasant View. The world wasn’t worthy to see Mrs. Eddy struggle. Could some of her struggles have been seen by the world, it would have called her anything but a Christian woman. We deserved nothing better than we got, because had we had the grace we ought to have had, she would not have had to do what she did. The disgrace was upon us. Mrs. Eddy’s original healings were like the cesspools of the world suffocating her.

Story of Mrs. Mann falling into cesspool when a child. I always think of that with the deepest sympathy.

The world’s sense of wickedness is nothing less than that to one who was as spiritual as Mrs. Eddy was.

The Master did not call the Scribes hypocrites because he wanted to call them names. He rebuked the condition of mortal mind which was trying to suffocate him.

You cannot overcome substantially the same thing the second time, much less the third time, by still regarding it as physical. That is the finest point in the Science of healing.


Reading: “The Wonderfulness and Directness of Intuitive Healing Understanding.”


It will appear to be physical, just as physical as it ever was, and more so; that is what I mean by being entrenched. You will never know how intuition comes, but a woman has it. If she would only abide by her intuition when it comes to knowing men, she would be much wiser than generally.

Morbid religiosity: that wonders why I am suffering. I have been a pretty good person. Conscience will say, Perhaps I am not good enough to overcome this. What have I done? Short circuiting prevents the application of power.

Let me make it plain. You are called in to treat me. I am very sick. You come in very religiously and forget your theory. You wonder whether I am innocent, and the malicious suggestion will be that I am guilty, and the two human elements will be obtained in your thought to the complete hindrance of the love that is needed to heal.

I want to tell you that I wrote this out of an experience of positive healing. I hope it has given you some general light as it is written. You might just get this additional word. For some time I had been trying to help a most worthy, active student, and no good was realized apparently. Things were at a standstill, and without saying anything to the needy one, I seemed to awaken positively with an unchangeable conviction as to what was the trouble. The conviction was altogether contrary to the human testimony. I said nothing about it to the student and awaited God’s final revelation. In about three days everything gave way before it, justifying my intuitive touch. I do not think it would have broken at all; it threatened to be killing even, but the break was so positive a confirmation of the intuitive conviction that it was beautiful.

According as our spiritual understanding unfolds, we will detect error intuitively, in spite of generalizing with our eyes shut, or a sort of mesmeric way of feeling around. The Scripture says, “Thou art the man.” That is the conviction we want. Mrs. Eddy called it scientific healing instead of guesswork. This, of course, is the ideal, but you do not want to despise small beginnings.

The conviction I had was stronger than the suggestion to doubt; the conviction had nailed the thing I was after, – was strong enough to forestall the wavering or doubt. Intuition will identify itself to you. I do not believe that there is any danger of thinking it is simply a belief. In intuition you hear the wings rustle, somehow. It is the same as the new birth; “the wind bloweth where it listeth.”

You are feeling for human assurance. Your fear must have started when I intimated Mrs. Eddy feared the coachman. You remember I waited until it was almost too late before I got married because I had a fright from the beginning. It took me long years to overcome that. I told you that the coachman thought Mrs. Eddy feared; I didn’t say Mrs. Eddy feared. He was fool enough to think that his good natured sleeping was reassuring Mrs. Eddy. If I had an imbecile for a housekeeper and superintendent of my affairs, I should not feel very happily secure of that. It would not be because I am afraid, but because I was alive enough not to be imposed upon.

Mrs. Eddy was most determined and sharp with all who had duties in her home. For instance, if the house was too warm. It was to be a certain sensible temperature, and it was supposed to be there. If the coachman had been awake, she would not have been concerned. That is always the case, somebody must compensate for the other fellow’s sleep.

Mrs. Eddy knew it was the coachman’s sleep that made him feel so secure.

Nettie. It requires sainthood not to weary of that animality that eats and sleeps.

Do not mind the bruises that come to awaken you.

Is it clear as to how we must detect the so-called cause if we want to heal? Faith by no means is to be despised; but understanding is the goal.

Young practitioners usually get the hardest cases. New Britain became the dumping ground for all incurables, until I awakened one day that I am no specialist. Some practitioners have the misfortune of taking cases that go the rounds. Each practitioner adds to the case more than was there originally. That is where I began to learn how to heal them; by holding them away. I remember the last case that appealed to me, one that had been around all the Scientists in Hartford. I wrote him a letter saying that if he really wanted to be healed he should know that God is the Healer and that I am no specialist. I healed him of the belief that would have sent him here, by not taking him. I destroyed the belief that was manufactured by the Scientists in Hartford. When I relieved him of that, the angel pointed him Godward.

Your point is that you would not want to turn anybody away unwisely, selfishly. They are neither young nor old in Science. I look back and find that some of the best healings I remember were wrought when I was only an infant. I should advise you and the class not to admit the belief that a case is old or has been somewhere else. Give the patient the benefit of the doubt, if you feel there is a conscientious seeking for the Truth. Do not think of it as an old case. You would have to start with this: That not only has he not been sick, but he has never been treated. Your own honest sense will be quite self-protective. You can afford to give the needy one the benefit of the doubt. Some practitioners have names on their lists, and they will say, “Oh, I have treated him for six months.” I was horrified recently when a practitioner said to another practitioner, “Has she still a bad temper?” Think of admitting that she ever was treated!

You will accept my invitation as a class to join our Association. When you come, you will be voted in by the Association. All students are expected, according to our Leader’s arrangement, to unite with the Association, and you can be contemplating that privilege. I told the Association that it is just as much their duty to be there on that one day of the year as the teacher’s.

Your desire to do will probably outrun your wisdom. With your honest heart you cannot help blessing the patient some. You have no business to take sense testimony. You have no business to limit yourself; and to God there is no patient.

When Mrs. Mann entered the field of practice here, I was prompted to go out of town. She took over my work. If she should tell you what this cost her, it would hardly be humanly encouraging. Anyone that gets within reaching distance, she gives a bath to, first thing. She doesn’t even ask if they have just had one. She begins to wash in some way. She washed the floors and windows and anything else.

At the table one time at Pleasant View Mrs. Eddy told us that when she was quite a little child, she used to go out and sing to the pigs. Along toward evening when they got hungry they became noisy, so she went out and sang to them. I said to her, “And, Mother, you have been singing to the pigs ever since.” She smiled and understood of course that I meant her ministering to mortals.

It is not the shutting of the door against the callers, but the spirit with which the door is shut, that helps them. They sometimes meet me on the street and say, “Mr. Mann, I hear you are not in practice.” It all depends on who says it. Sometimes I just smile; sometimes ask who said it. I do this intuitively.

(Student gives testimony of having overcome fear of darkness since coming to class.)

It is the sense of the truth of being that gives reality to every human thought. There isn’t anything you do without the divine inspiration.

(Reference to letter written at the time Mr. Mann first came into the New Britain Field.) Some 25 to 40 people had signed an agreement to form a society. When I came to New Britain I was still a member of the Mother Church and a member of the Concord Church. (Letter read.) I had made application to join the Society here in New Britain, so they wrote Mr. Frye. I want you to see the workings of malicious animal magnetism without fearing it. The Hartford people had filled the Colonel full of my having been dismissed from Pleasant View.

Let me give the women a lesson in true womanhood. Men sometimes think they can deal with women pretty easily. It is usually the case, I am sorry to say. When Mrs. Eddy bought Pleasant View the property around her was very undesirable. In order to straighten out her lines she wanted to buy a little adjoining piece that had an old barn on it. Mrs. Eddy began to negotiate for it, and every time the owner raised the price. You should hear Mrs. Eddy tell this, to appreciate it. I want you to see how wisdom out-wisdomed…She knew there was somebody behind the old farmer manipulating him. So what did she do but employ this man, a Mr. Brown, to purchase the property for her. Mr. Brown was sure he could do it. Mrs. Eddy said, “If you will buy that property for me I will make you a very handsome present.” He bought it, and she said, “I will make you a present of the barn, and you can take it off whenever you wish.”

They finally accepted me as a member of the Society in spite of the Colonel. The Colonel said he never saw a man as Mr. Mann; you can’t pick a fight with him. The Colonel was just as personal as I was for Principle. He was every inch an officer. I have not gone to church very regularly because I want to forestall the malicious accusation that I am running the church. I have a living interest in it, but God forbid that I manipulate it personally.

I want to read you the letter Mrs. Eddy wrote me. The argument has been that I was sent away in disgrace. The only disgrace was that I wasn’t spiritual enough to do what I wanted to do; but I was not sent away. I was the only volunteer that ever went to her and stayed with her any length of time, and when I felt I had carried the cross as far as I possibly could for her, it seemed to me wiser to go, and finally she consented to let me go. That is what I had to combat when I first located in New Britain. I felt myself between the devil and the deep sea. I am not at home in the world anyway; I am not a wire-puller, – I don’t shake hands humanly pleasingly.

And this should be encouraging to you; I weathered through up to the present time without asking any human favor. Even my good friends used to say, “There must be something wrong, or he would vindicate himself;” but I had patience to wait for God’s vindication. Only the Truth needs to be vindicated. I always had two or three that believed in me; if I had more, it was pure gain.

Student’s question on Catholicism.

I want to speak just enough of it to take away the scare that a great many Christian Scientists have. They seem to get it from their teachers. I am reminded of Mrs. Eddy’s way of showing that there is nothing to fear. We should see scientifically what error pretends or claims to be, without being blind to it. One day she lifted up her hands and said, “You see them, but do you have to fear them?” You ignore what you fear and you fear what you ignore. It is the same with Catholicism. It is a form of religious hypnotism, – a very so-called positive negative. You might even go so far as to say that Catholicism religiously represents the counterfeit or the personalization of Principle which Christian Science represents. Catholicism might be regarded safely as the belief of personality claiming to stand for Principle, – this belief of Peter; the Pope one-man-ism, – the belief of human power. That shows it is absolutely untrustworthy, but do not be fooled by it. The love that Christian Scientists have within them is protective.

I spoke of spending a good part of an hour or more treating. If you have any virtue, contact with worldliness does not vitiate it. We are more superstitious than Catholics if we fear them. If we are more virtuous than they, we are not going to fear Catholicism. We are also to be alive to the religious aggressiveness represented by the priest. Until the world is permeated with the Spirit of God, there will be religious differences. You cannot trust personality. Trust no one but God. You cannot get away from that and be safe. That does not mean fear, but assurance.

I have steered clear of taking Catholics as students. A student who was born a Catholic applied to me for class. If she had kept still, it wouldn’t have been maliciously manipulated. If you admit that you once had so and so but that you were healed in Science, then you are not safe, because your sympathetic friends will still remind you.

How about testifying at Wednesday Evening Meetings? You testify to a lie for the benefit of the world, and that justifies your doing it. You testify to their appreciation. You say, “Come unto me,” and that justifies your doing it. You are doing it for somebody; you are not admitting it; it is but a belief that you recount for the benefit of the other fellow.

A Catholic loses nothing by being unfortunate enough to be stigmatized by the thought of having been a Catholic. The universal thought is being leavened by Christian Science.

It makes all the difference in the world how you are cautioned. We must not make a reality of it and go to sleep.

Your reassurance is that divine Love is self-protective; it is a law of protection. You live under the law of protection. Mrs. Eddy says each one is a law to himself. Isn’t it beautiful to know that you are protected and that you do not have to protect yourself? God-with-us; not God coming at our call. The Catholic priests will wear themselves out cursing us if you do not bother them.

I supply the genuineness and I do not accuse him of subtlety. I can be just as genuine as he is sweet. The Bible says, “Saddle the ass.” Give it a little good oats once in a while, and look out for the heels.

Is birth any more real than death? Why are we more glad when a child is born than when one dies? I wish I could feel safe to speak to you of a radical thing Mrs. Eddy voiced to us. We are not preventing marriage or spooning under the moonshine; we are trying to give you the wisdom to do it profitably. Marriage is a preparation for murdering, and the Scripture says, “Thou shalt not kill.” To marry or not be married means more than the law compels us to do. Sensuality cannot be legalized. The women have only one way to regulate birth control and that is through spiritual womanhood, not legislatively. The murder begins with that false sense of life, – with the beginning of a false sense; rather than the apparent ending of it.

Isn’t mortal mind as much an illusion in our waking dream, as in the dream of sleep? Then how does the dream affect the waking? But we are loath to look at it that way; we think it is scientific teaching only.

What you rejoice in is that sense of God with you that is tending toward awakening. Your joy lies in awakening, or even in the faith of your prospective awakening. The Apostle said, “The life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the son of God”; and the Master said, “Ye must be born again.” Mrs. Eddy was spiritually-enough born to later see the rift in the cloud. We are purging sense with the gold-dust of Soul.

Student’s question as to paying taxes.

Those of us who have lightened our own burdens, are unselfish enough to help the other fellow carry his burdens. The world’s taxation is unjust, and those of us who deny ourselves are still taxed for those who mis-spend it.

The politician. I cannot say how it affects me. I have the greatest admiration for a good statesman, one who has a purpose and lives for it; but those fellows who just make a living, – I cannot help feel the reality of life. The Master paid taxes. As we go on, our wants are less. We overflow with a sense of Principle. Little by little the leaven of Christian Science is permeating the lump of mortal mind, and we will have better men representing us. We will be more careful that statesmanship should supersede the policy of the irresponsible ones. It will be a living reality. We are to blame that our best men do not represent us. I am looking with great hope to the women’s part in politics. Up to this time I have been disappointed in the women, because they have made the mistake of imitating the men. They think they must smoke to be a real woman; but even one good woman will do wonders in the world of reform, as Mrs. Eddy proved.

I am not advocating a hatchet. Mrs. Eddy said that to be a genuine woman is to be representative along the progressive lines, which naturally brings into the political world what is lacking there. And what is lacking? Principle; heart, clean and pure; reality.




Twelfth Day

I could be sorry, if I should allow myself to be, that this is our closing lesson; but let us remember that this is commencement, as the schools say, not the end; and then we will overcome a great deal of the personal feeling which you cannot help being more or less conscious of at this time. There will be no such thing as parting, or the pain that goes with parting. We will feel no weight then of a discontinuance.

Is it possible to see my individuality through this exterior? It is beautiful to think that it is the human concept, which isn’t here by chance. The reality of that we see more or less by faith. Think of the beauty of that, and then think of what Science and Health says, that “Thought will finally be understood and seen in all form, substance, and color, but without material accompaniments.” I have had a very satisfactory sense that identity isn’t dependent upon matter. If the human concept (of the rose) as the Old Testament says, is beautiful and is only a counterfeit, we cannot humanly dream of the beauty that will be seen in the real rose.

I want to share with the class the expression of a student of two years ago. She is a Smith College graduate and is teaching somewhere in New York State now. She had to do quite a good deal of fighting to get to class and especially through Northampton. (Reading of her letter.) I very naturally appreciate her very soulful expression of appreciation. I can reassure you that class instruction isn’t based upon memory. You are learning to trust God; and furthermore, what is understood in the least will be self-preserved.

These two little pamphlets that you have I am glad to have you take home with you. I simply speak of them now to say that I feel they are for you, and not for publication. If they were for publication I would send them for approval for publication; but they are for the students. They are more of a straight, direct punch for the students who will understand me perhaps better than outsiders.

Is one any more conscious of dying, than one is of being born? Who suffers the more, the one dying or the friends looking on? From experience, I think I will be of help in answering that. At birth, sense testimony tells us the mother suffers more than the child. The child is mindless when it is born; that is, it has scarcely any consciousness of its own. The cry is a senseless cry. We must admit that it is the mother that suffers.

To whom is one dying? Is the one who dies, dying to his own sense? The one dying isn’t conscious of dying any more than the baby is conscious of being born. I should say by all means that it is the friend who looks on who suffers the more.

The change is so subtle, so gradual, that the one dying hardly realizes it. I think that the real interest in dying to the one dying, makes that separation felt less even in the one dying than the one that is supposed to be living and watching. There is a difference between the reality of the unescapable suffering of the one passing through it and the less real, yet more harassing, suffering in the one looking on.

What is human consciousness? That which conceives of things that are not. My answer is: A self-evolved dream.

Is a dream something that can be known either as beginning, being, or disappearing? Has a cloud any beauty of its own? No. It takes the light of the sunshine upon it to make it beautiful.

Does mortal mind know itself? No, but it believes it is real. How long? Does mortal mind ever know the Truth? Then how long does it believe itself real? Until it knows the nothingness of itself. How does it begin to know the nothingness about itself? How does a little chicken come out of the incubator? Then, the warmth of divinity hatches mortal mind out. It incubates mortal mind until there is vitality enough in mortal mind to break its own shell. Mortal mind does not know itself, but it believes itself real until revelation pierces or rifts it. The experience which develops from the sunshine of divinity upon mortal mind, apparently quickens it into a vitality which bursts its own bounds, and then, of course, the light breaks through.

Whatever is really beautiful, or what beauty is real, is the spirit in each one. The spirit in each one which lights upon the human concept, permeates mortal mind with the sunshine of divinity, and causes it to disappear beautifully before Principle’s real and permanent appearing of being. That is the province of Christian Science; to make us perfect counterfeits, which perfect counterfeits we can conscientiously exchange in the bank of Soul for the genuine. The gift which thou offerest on the altar must be without blemish.

The imperfections we are glad to lay down; the aches and pains which we are glad to give up. The superfluous something which we can spare, isn’t sacrifice but awakening out of the belief of pleasure in matter which ultimates in pain, to that perfect sense of health which could spend itself in self-indulgence if it were selfish enough. Therefore, it is the unselfishness which we awaken to which lays the best upon the altar, because the best only will be received in exchange for the genuine. Mrs. Eddy says, “Jesus had to become an honest and good carpenter before he became the glorified Son of God.”

I don’t want you to go out with a negative belief as to any sense of duality. You must not go out with the sense of the human being something on the one hand, and the divine on the other. There is only unity to Science, and that is the sense of God-with-us which overshadows the human, making not two but one, – the human divinely overshadowed to the disappearing of the human. Do not go away saying, “This is nothing,” but you are arrived at something. To me there is a great reality in friendship and companionship, and that reality is in the unity of Principle which I enjoy and which my friend enjoys, – which we enjoy interchangeably or reciprocally.

Mortals can only hope for what man has. But even a false hope could not spring up in a fleshly heart if there were not the reality of the great God-heart to counterfeit. The hope which springs up in the human heart does not point to nothingness. It isn’t possible to realize what humans hope for humanly, but it can be realized divinely. There is never a negative. Humans hope for what man has, through themselves. The Master’s way was to deny sense, and as we deny ourselves self-sacrificingly, we awaken to the realities of being.

According to Miss V’s remark, there are Christian Scientists who feel that the living can weigh or hold down the dead. What would your question be if you should ask just what you are seeking for? Is it possible for the living to hinder the progress of the dead or those who have passed on? Those who have passed on cannot aid our progress here. Could we then hold down those who are passed on, by any thought concerning them? It is the same mortal mind in all cycles or so-called planes of existence. The only effect that such a belief would have, – the belief that we who have not passed on can in any way affect the welfare of those who have passed on, – would be the effect of self-mesmerism. It affects the one who thinks it.


Student’s question: “What is the difference between the two realms, – before and after death?”

What is the difference between having passed on and not having passed on? That is quite a question. Mrs. Eddy somewhere refers to the difference with the illustration of the dreamers, dreaming in different realm of dreams. We are near enough in the same realm of dreams here as mortals, to be conscious and sensitive to each other’s back and call; but the separation called death, – the separation which comes from the belief of having died and not having died, makes it impossible for mortal mind to intercommunicate. A new dream is started on their part, and a new belief starts on this side, and they find too late they are not dead. The separation has occurred in the belief of dying. Their friends will be absent from the new dream just as truly so as their presence is from us. There is no reality in memory; we do not reproduce them through memory. It takes absolute demonstration of the truth of being without limit, to restore them to actual individual presence; but thinking of them or recalling them through memory has no effect, and is only self-mesmerism. We grieve, – grieve ourselves into the grave. It is not possible to weigh down those who have passed on.

There are many who are joined together by the human law and are not together, right here in this realm. They do not wake up together, but sleep together. Do they ever catch up with each other? It would be possible; but this is a better way to consider it, that unselfishness appreciates unselfishness and appreciation is the only true mutuality. When you have unselfish appreciation, you are not going to question whether it is Jones or Smith or somebody else. You will be happy in the appreciation, and the joy is in mutual appreciation. Times and names have nothing to do with it.

I had two old people in one of my classes who have celebrated their golden wedding, and they sat together afraid I would take them apart. I have never seen two mortals cling so humanly. I tried to show them in every conceivable way that marriages are not contracted in heaven, and on earth there is no heaven in marriage; but they would not open their eyes. That does not give you the license to spurn the relationship which you should demonstrate the perfection of. There is such a thing as demonstration, but when all human relationship has been perfected it isn’t divine, but is to be exchanged for the divine.

A student once asked, “Will we know each other in heaven?” I said, “Ask it this way, ‘Will we know friends in heaven?’” Selfishness precludes the appreciation of heaven. You cannot appreciate heaven by twos.

As to the child that dies before it gains consciousness. That little bud enfolds in itself all that human experience can unfold, and its unfoldment in its early dying is to me just as natural and inevitable as the more drawn-out unfoldment. I would only have to ask you this: How much more reality is there in the educated sense that is called intellect at its zenith, than in the little child that passes on when it is born? How much reality is there in the prime of mortality?

Then it is easy to see that the little bud may burst and bloom in a day far beyond what we can appreciate from our standpoint of intellect. From the standpoint of sense we develop nothingness, and full developed nothingness is no more than primary nothingness. The bud passes into a new realm where divine Love develops it, with perhaps more expedition than here. The bud under the sunshine of divine Love develops not according to human….It had not yet entered into an independent self-existence; therefore, it had only the inherited belief of a special sin to overcome. The unfoldment is simply different, but it must be substantially the same.

Disposing of crippled infants is selfishness getting rid of a burden. The bud unfolds under the warmth of divine Love. Divine Love creates in new realms what we cannot speculatively enter. The bud must pass through the stages of unfoldment. Every human so-called impulse even has to be accounted for by somebody in some way.

If the mother or the parents in the process of giving birth to a child had awakened or progressed enough out of the sensuality which gives birth merely to human children, that divine harmony would predominate. Mortals say what a wonderful thing it is that Christian Science promises to relieve the birth pangs of a mother; yet the Scripture says, “In sorrow shalt thou bring forth,” until the nothingness of mortal mind is seen.


Student’s question: “Is a woman committing murder when she gets rid of a child?”

It is a wonderfully fine question. Mrs. Eddy tells us that we should leave some things to unfold, and not try to teach all. At the same time I am not going to evade the question. You are opening a new phase by that inquiry. It involves a higher sense of justice than it is possible for humans to conceive of. It involves a sense of justice which no human law can do justice to. I know what the human law is relating to this, and the human law is effecting your question. But I want to lift it above that, – lift it to an altitude of divine justice.

In the first place we must see that there is a stage of inception which can hardly be considered life. Then we will have to see also that a few unfortunate girls or women are made scapegoats of the licentiousness of the world; that is, the sensual world indulges itself at the expense of a few helpless victims. I can see also that legislation cannot legislate animality out of the world. If we are not careful, we will deify matter, and become the slaves of it in doing so. Paul says, “All things are lawful unto me but all things are not expedient.” The lawfulness which is above expediency would justify a victim’s trying to escape bearing the effect of a penalty, or individually suffering a penalty, which the universal world is to blame for. The licentiousness of the world goes on indulging itself, and does not become horrified until some individual becomes the victim of it.

I am going to say this and leave it with the Father. I do not think it is murder for an individual to take advantage of any reasonable way or means to prevent foisting upon the world a nameless, new so-called birth. If the little child were even sacredly born, the very mortals who condemn the girl who is the victim, would ostracize the little one. Then how can you settle this question humanly? What you call murder is in the act which precipitates that; that is the first stroke toward murder. That is the running loose of mortal mind which shirks the responsibility of its acts. But should the victim suffer through that lack of Principle just through some religious belief that what is conceived is too sacred to arrest at a time when possibly the arresting of it will enable that very unfortunate one to love more and do more good in this world than a thousand such little things fostered, only again to work out their salvation?

God’s idea is not killed or touched by this whole human procedure that you contemplate. It is a question of expediency, or of righteous lawfulness beyond expediency even. The question would be largely: Are we resorting to something by way of expediency simply to perpetuate that indulgence which precipitated that, or are we awakened through that experience to a higher manhood and womanhood? If the motive justifies the means, I would not call it murder.

I have never touched this question before in class, but have prayed not to have it construed as justifying sexuality for pleasure; but that through experience, – through the suffering of that unfortunate indulgence, – we might awaken to spirituality enough to deny ourselves in the first instance, or as early as possible, rather than through the superstitious sense of the legitimacy of it, foisting upon the world something we will have to take care of later.

The conclusion of the whole matter is, that if we struggle hard enough to deny ourselves in the first instance, we won’t have to speculate what to do. We gain enough progress out of experience to look God in the face and say, “Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more.” That does not mean prohibition; it means progress out of the human as fast as possible. Science does not prohibit, but promises everything, when we see there is nothing in the human. There is nothing more beautiful than when the Master said, “Neither do I condemn thee.” Only one who is free enough from the human can say that.

Sinners make laws to be violated.


Student’s question: “Do Christian Scientists believe in having children?”

Whether they believe in it or not, they have them. It is hard to say what they believe, if they have them. We believe what Science and Health teaches, that the counterfeit is not necessary; that it isn’t necessary to have all the counterfeits made manifest in any special way to sense. God isn’t dependent upon the human counterfeit or the appearing of it. We mean by that, that God’s children are from all eternity. Whatever appears as procreation is simply a counterfeit of what really is. What you mean is, Shall Christian Scientists keep on counterfeiting? Christian Scientists, insofar as they have children, should give birth to finer types.


Reading: “Never desecrate the sense of Science which God gives you, by reducing it to sense, as it ever is the effort of malicious animal magnetism to do by the so-called law of reversal. The consecrating sense of God-with-us never prohibits, but in everything it sanctifies humanity with ameliorating divinity. Christian Science inspires and develops the new birth, to the discouraging of the old; but it consecrates even the old by holding up to the world irresistibly the pattern shown to Moses in the Mount.”


The human concept is never despised but evangelized, and it may be baptized or evangelized before birth; but Christian Scientists must know from the beginning, whether they have children or not, what they are.

I once asked an individual if a man with a pocket bulging with counterfeit money is any richer than the man who hasn’t any. He wiggled a little and smiled. That settled the question. Mrs. Eddy says our offspring must be improved. The only difference between Christian Scientists and mortal-minders is that Christian Scientists have their eyes open; they are not calling counterfeits genuine. They render “unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”

To deliberately set about making counterfeits…but to understand that a counterfeit is a counterfeit, is the only thing is Science.


Reading: “Christian Science inspires the birth control of divine Love, – a consummation no more to be arrived at through human legislation than materia medica will ever arrive at the Science of healing.”


Through our demonstration of divine Love we should forestall the possibility of the slums; but the Salvation Army, bless their hearts, go into the slums and make the slums more comfortable. We like to take care of them before instead of afterwards. Is this too idealistic, too transcendental? If it seems so, the leaven of divinity is never too high for pure, absolute, unadulterated planting.

I have helped many a mother at that crucial time which cannot be avoided when the pangs of hell lay hold. There are Christian Scientists who believe that painless birth is proof of spirituality. It may be a good demonstration, and it may be a good proof of animality. Which is it? That miserable duality comes up again and again. You cannot judge from sense. The Indian mother went out into the field in the morning and in the evening came back with a baby.

We think because we take human thought of a thing, we have a great hand in it. Human thinking amounts to very little; but it is being which radiates without thinking that counts.

What would become of Christian Science if Christian Scientists wouldn’t have children? If Christian Scientists didn’t have children from the standpoint of godliness, the radiation of their Godly consciousness would do more toward ameliorating the world or lifting it above sensuality than all the births that can be crowded into all of time. This is the province of Christian Science, then.

Does childlessness imply pure spiritual living? Every normal human being has that to grapple with. It is the most natural thing in the world that a woman should become a mother; but to be motherly beyond human motherhood, is…. (transcript trails off here.)

What counts is the spirituality we demonstrate in subordinating fleshliness. Not having children is no sign of spirituality to me. It is a certain form of aliveness which we can respect, but by no means is that a criterion. Nor is it any more true that a raft of children is a sign of sensuality. Mary the mother of Jesus bore quite a good many children after Jesus was born. I was asked this question once, “How did she fall from grace after Jesus was born?” There was a time when Christian Scientists were afraid they would be other Marys, –they might have a spiritual conception.

When the clouds that cover the heavens have been self-dissipated, the stars all come out. The clouds which hid the stars had nothing to do with their being, but came to view when the clouds rifted. God’s ideas are already in view, but sense hides them. Blot out the belief that counterfeits are all seen by the mortal mind.

Why did Mary have children after Jesus was born? She certainly must have been high, holy and pure. A very good Scientist who became a mother said it was her husband’s fault. That is where the old accusation was reversed. Adam said in the beginning, “The woman whom thou gavest me….” She didn’t love her husband, that is why she said that. Here is the fine point, that Christian Scientists are humanly repulsed by lack of affection, and they call it spiritual growth. Latent sensuality blames the more patent sensuality. The way to help is to awaken mortals to a sense of spirituality that consistently demonstrates its independence. It is what we meet and master that counts.

A wife who had considered herself barren, like Sarah, came to see me, and we had a very earnest talk in my study. She didn’t exactly lament that fact. I smiled, and that was all I had to do with it. I warned her and said, “Be careful, Christian Science heals.” In other words, the barren will become fruitful. The results which followed were healing. Within the very year a little child was born in that family, and we have smiled over it many times. I must confess that I suppose I was to blame. Mrs. Mann thinks none the less of me for it. I say to you, “Take heed.” Nothing less than actual demonstration is safe.

Barrenness isn’t even approaching the counterfeit.

It is clear, then, that Christian Science does not prohibit procreation; but it shows us the better way if we are honest and conscientious. It does not teach us that we can indulge sense and escape the final result of sense. You cannot indulge sense without suffering the consequences of indulgence, because you cannot go downhill and reach the pinnacle. You cannot remain on earth and really appreciate fully what hell is, and much less can you go to heaven by going in the other direction. This is all logical and consistent. “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.” The Bible covers it all.

Catholicism. I want the class to know the workings of malicious animal magnetism without fearing it. If we are more virtuous than Catholics, we are not going to fear Catholicism. The big-eyed Christian Scientist is more to be feared than the Catholic he warns you against.

What is lovelier than the unpollutable purity of the truth of being touching the human, which comes in contact with the world like virtue that cannot be vitiated?

The divine Principle which Jesus realized, – which divinely governed him, which was the cause of his being, which he recognized as his Father, – was reflected; and the reflection of the truth of being is the Christ. It is the sense of Principle that is realized and demonstrated that is the Christ, – the Christ-Principle that subordinates the human in us. Christ Jesus you see as the reflection of Principle. Jesus the Christ means the same, but differently stated. The Christ which actuated Jesus was unseen. It is the true identity. It is individually externalized in what the senses call personality; but what was seen as personality vanished in the spiritualization and translation of Jesus. Jesus’ spiritualization was so positive and progressive that he ascended out of sense into Soul, without leaving anything to be buried. He overcame not only the discords of matter, but his realization and demonstration proved the nothingness of matter. Why should not he walk on the water? He demonstrated that water wasn’t substance.

A very fleshly woman in our class asked Mrs. Eddy if she could not overcome the fleshliness. It takes actual demonstration and more than the “daily dozen.” We have to have more originality than that.

I am about the same stature I ever was. I have just enough not to be troubled with it, and yet to identify me. Being slighter than most, I would not be considered a perfect model according to the measurements of the human. I inherited the wiry from my mother. That inheritance can, of course, also be changed to a more perfect development, but insofar as it is human, it is imbedded in the latent mortal man, and it takes more spirituality to change that to a more normal state. There is no such thing as a human ideal and a standard. There were six children in our family. Only two out of the six took after father who was rather corpulent, and the others took after mother, – strong and wiry. There is no such thing as a fixity or standard in mortal mind, but there should be a well-balanced medium. The belief that reality is of flesh and blood is exploded in a moment.


Student’s question: “Is sensitiveness a form of selfishness?”

Sensitiveness may be a form of selfishness, but does it imply that obtuseness and bluntness is a sign of spirituality? We grow more sensitive, and that comes to intuition. There is a false sense of sensitiveness which is selfishness, and there is a false modesty. We must discriminate between Truth and error all along the way. The Master was sensitive. He asked, “Who hath touched me?”; and the disciples were so materially minded that they said the crowd thronged him. We superstitiously give the disciples a halo, and by doing it we limit ourselves. The Master didn’t praise them very much. “Virtue went out of him.” He was conscious of being obliged to deny error and it wasn’t his.

That is my only salvation. I would be condemned to death if I believed all that I feel were mine. We read mortal mind insofar as we ourselves are alive to the purity of divine Mind; then we read mortal mind by opposites. If we are pure up to a certain point, we detect what touches us from without. Human thought is no more confined than real Mind.

The whole of human existence is only the truth of being reversed. When at Pleasant View we heard more about reversal than anything else. I grew actually tired of the word. You tell Nettie to do a thing in a distant part of the house, and before she gets to the destination in all probability she will either forget it, or it will be reversed. Unless your own thought is positive and reflective, you are too dreamy to reach the destination before evil subtlety begins to work upon it. The Master said, “Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.” Nettie is no more stupid from our standpoint than we were from Mrs. Eddy’s. Unless you are imbued with a sense of God and the truth of your being, enough to make you as positive and direct as chain lightning, morbidity of the human invites reversal. And you ask what is it? It is malicious animal magnetism that lies in wait, so subtle that you think it is your own thought; so subtle that it seems to be physical.

A teacher once came to me for help. He had what he called sciatica. He said to me, “Mann, don’t treat me for sin; it is here!” I said to him abruptly, “If you know so much about it, why don’t you treat yourself?” That Scientist was bamboozled by malicious animal magnetism to believe it was physical. He needed the arousal of chain lightning or dynamite, and he received it for a while, and it ceased to be physical.

When I was a boy about four years old, I was sent to the store in the country town where I was born, about three blocks. I forget what my mama had sent me for, and I was mortified to go back and ask what I was sent for. That is malicious animal magnetism. It works through sympathy, – agreeable personality.

Sympathetic animal magnetism is that phase of the human which loves itself, and you think it is loving each other, – human relationship hugging itself; that phase of animal magnetism which appeals to each other. A husband will tell a wife he is very sick, and she pities him, and that is what he likes; and vice versa. But malicious animal magnetism behind the scene makes the sympathy sweet and subtle. The whole of human existence is only the truth of being reversed; therefore, in the warfare of life the enemy lies in wait for every move contemplated, and whenever it is possible turns the weapons against him. Malicious animal magnetism makes you believe that you are going to bunt something else, but works out an experience of suffering for yourself. It is the subtlety we have got to detect and we can detect it only through spirituality. What we do not forestall through spirituality results in experience.


Reading: “Reversal is possible only so long as a Scientist is too personal in his purpose. To God there is no reversal, – no opposite; and the God-like act too swiftly in their self-sacrificing endeavor to let even the most malicious….” (transcript trails off here.)


It teaches us to testify more unselfishly, more intelligently, more genuinely. It is a most wicked thing when Christian Scientists are cowardly enough to fear to testify for the benefit of others. You are inviting, if you fear, the very thing you fear, because the Master said, “He that denieth me before men, him will I deny also before my Father.” The human cowardliness which hopes to escape an ordeal, precipitates the ordeal by reason of its cowardly hiding. If Truth destroys error and holds the ground, can’t you talk about the error without losing the ground? The unselfishness with which you testify should be and is your protection.


Student’s question: “You have told us to radiate and live our prayer more, and in the case of so-called serious conditions would that eliminate our having to sit up nights?”

If you have a case that you can’t get away from, by all means get away from it. Don’t sit up nights for any case if you can help it. If you take a case, you have got to take care of it. If you have a case, you can’t get away from it. The only case you have is the one that you take.

When Mrs. Eddy first practiced Christian Science she discovered she never had a patient. She despaired of proving to the world that Christian Science heals. She had to work out an original way to prove that she had something to do with the healing that constantly went on. Before she reached the case, the case was healed. Therefore, she never had a case. She finally worked out an original plan whereby to prove that she did heal. She told us this in the Primary Course at the College. She made up her mind that when another case came, she would take up the argument that the case was sick, just as it was told her. She did this, and she said to us, “When I got there I had a case, and I had all I could do to save the case.” She had all she could do to reverse the momentum of her own producing.

As practitioners we at once grow solemn when a case comes to us, and after we have taken the case, put it on our books, we sit down and treat regularly. We give a good strong treatment and expect to treat again tomorrow; and we treat faithfully for a few weeks, months, or if we haven’t any other case, we treat it for a year or two.

I have given you the substance of my life’s history; I have shared everything with you but to examine the body to show you the mark. When Garfield was shot and he had passed on, the question was raised as to why he was not saved, and it was brought out that Christian Science took up the case. When it was known that Christian Scientists took it up, the tide was reversed, – malicious animal magnetism again. Mrs. Eddy said, “We have with us in our class a man who was much more dangerously wounded than Garfield, and he was healed.” Why? I wasn’t President of the United States. That shows the need of entering into the closet and shutting the door.

Another case that Mrs. Eddy spoke of. She was called to treat a dumb woman. She treated it spontaneously. As soon as she came face to face with the woman, Mrs. Eddy said, “It is a good thing for the people around you that you can’t talk.” The woman immediately said, “I can talk.” Intuition detected that error. She saw the mean disposition; it wasn’t physical.

There is another case that she told us about, of a child, which shows you how like a mountain peak apart from the child the error stood out. This little youngster was both deaf and dumb and Mrs. Eddy healed it. First thing the youngster said was, “I hate you; I hate you.” That is natural error opposed to Truth. Impersonalize that and you get the meaning of the Scripture, “The carnal mind is enmity against God, is not subject to the laws of God, neither indeed can be.” There is no sense of Principle in mortal mind. That is the innocent child.

I want to close the class with a quotation from the Mother Church Manual:

“The less the teacher personally controls other minds, and the more he trusts them to the divine Truth and Love, the better it will be for both teacher and student.”

It is not your conscious thought that ever hurts anybody, because your conscious thought is right with God.

You will always find God, if you can’t find a Christian Scientist. Do not fear to trust God; and be natural.

Will-power. Some Christian Scientists hug an indulgence to justify their sleeping in it on the basis that they must not exercise will-power. They cannot give it up until they lose their desire for it, they say.

If we cannot as a class discriminate between will-power and the power of will, we are a dull class. We pray, “Thy will be done.” If Christian Scientists radiate God’s will, they will have no will-power.