Fragments Gathered From Unpublished Items

Ascribed to Mary Baker Eddy




Table of Contents




Introduction

Ever since the discovery of the recorded word, it has been used to preserve revelations from God, and to perpetuate them because of their spiritual value to the race. The Word of God has had a particular significance and utility throughout the ages, even before the art of writing was invented. Because of its inspirational power, it has been used to lead receptive thought above finite conceptions, and thereby to release it, in some measure, from the bonds of materiality and human limitations, and to bring it healing.

After the Master's ascension, healing through the Word was lost sight of. In 1866 Mary Baker Eddy rediscovered this power of the Word to heal, when, by reading it, she herself was healed from the effects of a fall on the ice; and ever after she pursued this spiritual light in behalf of suffering humanity. Not only did she give to the world the textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, but many other writings. She also voiced the healing Word in sermons, poems and lectures. She unfailingly admonished and counselled her students by word of mouth and by thousands of letters. These letters and verbal unfoldments were usually designed to arouse students to their spiritual oneness with the Father, and to point out the deterrents of human thinking, or snares of animal magnetism, that would operate to keep mortals from being conscious of the divine facts of being.

As the years unfolded, the Word of God likewise unfolded with increasing clarity to our Leader. Her light did not grow dim; it grew steadily brighter. On August 10, 1898 we find her writing to Julia Field-King, "All who obey His word prosper, and His word is spoken through my pen and lips even more explicitly now than when I wrote Science and Health."

Such fragments as the above throw much needed light on our Leader's unpublished material. They offer positive proof that the words of wisdom and counsel that she spoke and wrote came from God as definitely as did her textbook. If these items were of value when they were given, they are still of value, even as the letters of St. Paul, written to certain students and churches to meet specific and general needs, still voice the inspired Word of God to all prepared to receive.

One might ask if there are not in circulation letters and notes purported to be by our Leader which are of doubtful character, even as there are apocryphal writings concerning the Master. Such frauds can usually be detected by an advanced student, but not always by the beginner. Mrs. Eddy was a master-metaphysician, and could detect divine inspiration or a lack of it, as the case might be, even as a mathematician can human errors. A beginner in Christian Science, however, must take what he studies on faith. For that reason he should confine himself to the authorized publications, because in them he knows that he will be guided aright.

The fragments in this volume have been selected because they are believed to be authentic and inspired. Several students have tested them in the light of Science and Health and their individual demonstration of it, and it is hoped that other students who read them, will put them to the same test. It is only fair to our Leader to do so, since nothing spurious should be put forth with her name attached.

In the final analysis, of course, the Word of God must be revealed as self-evidently spiritual and correct. Many students have been led to Christian Science as the truth, first believing that Science and Health was full of contradictory statements, only later to come back and have the spiritual truth made plain to them in a way that was completely self- evident and "with signs following." Such must be the final test for all true knowledge and understanding. It must be found self-evident and demonstrable.

Mrs. Eddy’s textbook provides a complete and basic statement of Christian Science. Her other works are entirely based upon it, as are the many letters and fragments which she left behind, which still offer words of inspiration and counsel to students, teachers and practitioners who may be encountering problems that our Leader met and mastered before them. Such items from the inspired one who walked close to God may be of incalculable value to those who are ready for them.

In questioning the authenticity of any of the items in this volume, let one remember that even parts of the Bible are questioned. The Master left no written record; yet he had the utmost faith that his Word would be preserved in its purity. Mrs. Eddy was led to protect her printed writings through copyrights. In addition to these copyrights under the law of our land, are her unpublished writings and statements, which she knew would be protected by God, in order that nothing of value to man's salvation would be lost.

The Bible, like all books written through inspiration, has the peculiar property of meeting all needs — those of the beginner as well as those of the advancing pilgrim. For centuries Christians have found comfort and strength in its pages, even in its surface meanings. And today Christian Science has come to unlock its deeper or hidden treasures, showing it to be a healing agent for God's power to all in time of need.

In the Bible's sacred pages, wisdom gives to the babe clamoring for love, the milk of the Word; it gives meat to men seeking understanding — the very meat which would be too strong for the babe. The meat is there, but it does the babe no harm, since to him it lies dormant, awaiting his further growth. One might say that as far as he is concerned, it is cached, until he is able to forage for it through his further spiritual development.

This same characteristic underlies our Leader’s writings, so that they work out the purposes of good for all who read them. They cause the hardened sinner to tremble; they comfort the mourner; they uplift the meek and heal the sick; they give spiritual meat and drink to the hungry and thirsty; they nourish the babe with milk, even while they strengthen the pilgrim, who having thoroughly learned the letter, is willing to pay the price in order to gain the spirit, which Mrs. Eddy defines in one of the articles in this book as, "hourly devotion, cheerful sacrifice, toil and irrepressible conflict."

It becomes a question with each advancing student at what point he is called upon to leave the nest of the letter, as it were, and forage for the spirit, which all must do in order to progress beyond the infant stage in Christian Science. And in this effort who is to say that Mrs. Eddy's supplementary writings may not be of help?

To leave the nest of the letter by no means calls for one to leave Science and Health; it is the demand to put its teachings into practice.

One’s foundational development in Christian Science comes through the study and demonstration of the Bible and Mrs. Eddy's published works; the erection of the superstructure which is the higher practice of what one has learned, may be enhanced by access to more material by and about Mrs. Eddy which wisdom would not permit her to make generally public. Perhaps such a privilege is granted to those who have developed to the point where they are able to discern unerringly that which comes from God, in contrast to the emanations of the human mind, even though the latter take upon themselves the terminology of Science. They are human nevertheless, because the thought back of them is human. In this manner do students reach the full age that is described by Paul (Hebrews 5 :14), "Strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil."

One learning to detect the difference between edible mushrooms, and the poisonous varieties, must pick only those pointed out to him by his instructor, until the latter's ability becomes his own by reason of practice and proof. By the same token the "babes in Christ" must be warned to avoid all that is put forth in the name of Christian Science, even if it be a reprint of our textbook put out by some individual. The "men in Christ" — those of a "full age" need no such prohibition, since their own developed discernment is a sufficient protection.

There are many offshoots of Christian Science and devious doctrines to which the beginner is capable of giving only surface judgment; yet they may appeal to him because they seem to do so much human good. Students need to be warned of such dangers in the path only until they reach the point where they are able to detect that which lacks the design of wisdom that is to be found in Science and Health and the Church organization founded by Mrs. Eddy. The Bible and her works alone offer a complete salvation, and keep students in the straight and narrow way of Christ.

It is no small attainment to reach the place where one can detect the spurious in an instant, no matter how appealing it may seem to be. One must surely be a "man in Christ" when he can recognize false systems which may contain "the form of Godliness, but denying the power thereof" (II Tim. 3 :5).

The writer was once told by a gentleman who worked in Mrs. Eddy's home in the early 1920's, that one morning when she was explaining the Scriptures, she suddenly turned to Laura Sargent and said, "Go write it; go write it." Laura obeyed and went to her room. Later she brought what she had written to Mrs. Eddy. The latter read it, praised her for her accuracy, and wrote on the back of the paper, "Well done — Mother."

The writer felt a great eagerness to substantiate the truth of this story, since he thought that it would help to refute the belief held by many that Mrs. Eddy habitually frowned on the practice of students writing down what she said to them, as if they could not be trusted to perpetuate her words or thoughts accurately.

The question is often asked, what should be our attitude toward the gems of metaphysical teaching which Mrs. Eddy imparted to her students, or the bits of paper she left behind on which she had written out her thoughts, or rough drafts of articles or sermons? Should we put faith in them as being correct expositions of Christian Science, and treasure them, or should we discard them as untrustworthy, as some students advocate?

In 1941 the writer visited Mrs. Eddy's former home at Chestnut Hill in the company of one who had acted as Mrs. Eddy's personal maid for over three years. There he met the niece of Laura Sargent. He realized that the opportunity had been given him to ask about the incident of the paper. He did so, and this lady not only bore testimony to its truthfulness, but excusing herself, she went to a closet and brought forth the original paper in question. She then read Mrs. Eddy's divinely inspired statement as written down by Mrs. Sargent, and showed the words, "Well done — Mother," written on the back in Mrs. Eddy’s handwriting. The complete text of this paper may be found printed in the book, Collectanea, on page 4 of the Addenda.

The question is, should the crumbs which fell from our Leader's table — those numerous bits of marvellous teaching which she gave her spiritual children — be circulated? Certainly the answer would be no, if their accuracy is questionable, or if by doing so the By-law in the Manual is broken that forbids the use of aught but the Bible and Mrs. Eddy's works, as "textbooks for self-instruction in Christian Science, and for teaching and practicing metaphysical healing."

Another question comes up: Does the word, works, mean only Mrs. Eddy's published writings? It must be true that she wished to remain as the standard teaching of Christian Science only that which she had a chance to revise until it was letter perfect. She instructed students not to accept her earlier writings as her last word.

Therefore it follows that nothing but her latest published works should ever be used for self-instruction, and for teaching and practicing metaphysical healing.

The only rational deduction in connection with Mrs. Eddy's unpublished material is that she expected each student to be taught of God eventually, and that in his footsteps leading to God, the inspired Word of the Bible and Mrs. Eddy's works would be his infallible guide. She knew that in this journey God provides each one with the supplementary aid that will best help him along the road, when he is ready for it.

One point is indisputable. No student is ready to have unpublished material by our Leader until he has studied and practiced her published works to the point, where he can determine to a large degree whether such unpublished material is in exact accord with what she left us in her published writings. When such a time comes for a student, the blessings coming from her unpublished writings may best be described in her own words, that she wrote to Julia Field-King on June 29, 1896: "When you say the effects of my letters last for days you but slightly state it. They will last till you are not a mortal in sense; but realize yourself in Soul — and immortal. 'Heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall not,' said Jesus. Your faith in the immortality of Truth will be according to your understanding of it ... I have taught all that is requisite for all occasions. It only remains for you all to understand and apply it to daily practice."

In 1945 the Christian Science Board of Directors issued a book written by Irving C. Tomlinson, which contains a number of items or fragments from our Leader. Many of these are prefaced by the statement that they are what Mrs. Eddy said to him, "as I later wrote down my impression of her words." See page 76 of "Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy."

Evidently the Directors were willing to have Mr. Tomlinson share the spiritual bread that our Leader broke with him, trusting him to have been capable of accurately record- ing such fragments. The Field was blessed by being given Mr. Tomlinson's book. By publishing it the Directors indicated that they placed faith in the fragments that he gathered, as being accurate transcriptions of Mrs. Eddy's inspired pronouncements; they obeyed the Master’s commandment, "Gather up the fragments," as well as Mrs. Eddy's direction to Laura Sargent, "Go write it." The compiler of this book humbly feels that it was prepared in obedience to these same commands.

When a student wrote down what he recalled that Mrs. Eddy said to him, he might color it by his own bias of thought, or transcribe it inaccurately because of a lack of understanding or memory. Errors may thus have crept into some of the revelations recorded by students. Also mistakes may have appeared because of oft copying. But if Mrs. Eddy wanted nothing to be perpetuated other than her printed works, why did she not order all else destroyed? Why did she instruct Laura Sargent to write down what she had been revealing, and permit her to retain the copy? Why did she instruct the Directors in 1903 to go through their files, and to destroy all letters which they felt should not be retained? After such letters (about thirty in all) had been burned by the clerk, William B. Johnson, she wrote to them: "I have read my letters that you enclosed. They are simple and designed for your reading. But if you think they will speak for you in future years an assured word for truth — record them." Here is proof that the letters she wrote to them which today rest in the files of the Directors are there according to her knowledge and wish.

The statements of the Master in which Christendom places the utmost faith were not committed to writing until many years after they were made. The four renditions of his words and deeds do not agree in every detail. Yet if Christianity agrees to accept as reliable, records that were not written down until thirty to sixty years after they were given, should we summarily discard the words of Mary Baker Eddy that were written down a few moments after they were said? Many of Mr. Tomlinson’s statements are prefaced by the statement, "Then she said, as I later made careful note" (Ibid., page 71).

Perhaps some of his statements are not quoted exactly word for word. Many of the Master’s sayings may not have been quoted or translated accurately. Yet the spirit of Truth breathes through them to such an extent, that they express the Science of Spirit correctly for those who have the spiritual discernment to detect it.

The items collected in this volume do not constitute systematic, general rules for self-instruction in Christian Science, its teaching and practice. There can be no guarantee that all of them were written or said by Mrs. Eddy. Unlike Science and Health, many of them were addressed to individuals. Yet it is possible for others to gain good from that which was originally intended to meet an individual need. Some of them represent the birth of articles and sermons which today appear in their fulness in her published writings. How could one who truly loved an article by our Leader fail to cherish scraps or fragments which point to such an article when it first took form in Mrs. Eddy's thought? See S. & H. IX:26.

Mary Beecher Longyear will be remembered for her many generous gifts to our Cause. When she first moved to Brookline, she felt that it was highly important that she retain the finest practitioner in Boston. Upon asking for Mrs. Eddy's recommendation, she was told, "Get one who knows Christian Science history." The implication is that for one to learn of the obstacles that error placed in Mrs. Eddy's pathway in founding the Cause, and of the way she overcame these, would do more toward helping him to meet such obstacles in his own experience than any teaching could. Upon learning the importance Mrs. Eddy placed on a knowledge of history, may not one believe that even the few items of history in this volume will prove valuable to posterity? If the demand on students is to follow her as she followed Christ, and to study her life and demonstration, the more items of her history one has access to, the better.

Mrs. Eddy's own estimate of her history is evidenced in the words she wrote to Augusta Stetson on February 8, 190l: "Mr. — — has not the knowledge of the past history of my struggles and what the cost of bringing Christian Science to this triumphal hour. My students, even, know little more of what I have met for them and still am meeting, than the babe in his mother's arms knows of her travail to bring forth this babe, and toil to bring him up to manhood.”

It is plain that the young student, — the "babe in Christ," — has all the "milk" that he needs in Mrs. Eddy's published writings and the publications of the Christian Science Publishing Society. Such items as are contained in these pages should not be given to him. Advanced students, however, — the "men in Christ" who need the meat of the word, — may read this volume with profit, without violating the Manual in its letter or spirit.

It should be kept in mind that, with a few exceptions, the compiler has not been privileged to see any of the material in this book actually in Mrs. Eddy's handwriting; nor has he been given access to any of the material in the archives of The Mother Church. Furthermore, he has had no help from its Bureau of History in authenticating any of the items, although it is probable that this Bureau has the custody of the originals. Yet he has prepared the material with much loving care, and trusts that it will speak for itself and do good to the hungry ones who are ready for it. If one should find any statements that appear to differ from the teachings laid down in Science and Health, those in the textbook are of course to be accepted as genuine and correct.

It may be objected that the value of some of these fragments is gone because the circumstances that brought them forth are unknown, or not given. But this very point adds to their value because one is thereby forced to turn to God. When, in the attempt to understand any item, the reader ascends to spiritual heights, he will be blessed with God's explanation, and thereby his spiritual growth will be enhanced. Through such an awakening of spiritual sense, he will find at the same time the solution for problems which heretofore appeared dark and unsolvable.

In Mrs. Eddy’s eyes, spiritual growth resulting from demonstration alone qualified one to understand her writings and her life. Proof of this is found in a letter she wrote on October 4, 1898 to Mr. Seward, who was a brilliant writer and lecturer at that time: “..Your proposal relative to a new work of yours wherein to explain the meaning of my works has before been suggested to me by authors, but I have uniformly refused my consent. First, because an author understands best what he means, and, if God- inspired, will express his meaning, leaving the age to grow up to it. Second, because no mind catches an author’s exact meaning that has not reached the spiritual altitude of his thought. Third, because Metaphysical Healing is Science based on a demonstrable Principle that to be understood must be demonstrated in healing all manner of sickness and sin.”

After the Master had fed the five thousand, he commanded them to gather up the fragments. From this incident we learn that there is a value to the broken pieces, or unrelated incidents and statements of his life and teaching, through which students may gain enlightenment and growth. Hence such fragments must be gathered up, and not lost.

The tendency to forget or neglect utterances of spiritual truth is illustrated by some of those who knew Mrs. Eddy at one time, and who recall how she looked, the way she was dressed, and where she used to live; but when asked whether they heard her talk on the subject of Christian Science, are unable to recall a single word of her utterances. Such students failed to gather up the fragments. They permitted mortal mind to rob them of the “better part.”

Perhaps Jesus directed that the fragments of bread and fish be gathered to teach his discip1es through a symbol that in God's own time such fragments must be collected, and the whole loaf or fish be reconstructed.

The items that make up this volume are not grouped according to topics, nor are they given in chronological order. No annotations or explanatory notes are given, even when additional information is available. To do so would lead too far afield, and, in some instances, would not be fair to certain ones who shared their treasures. This present book is not a work for scholastic study. It is a treasure trove, a collection of gems of spiritual thought. Each statement is, so to speak. a volume in itself, and can be appreciated only as it is approached from an inspirational standpoint.

Not a few passages in this work are imperfect in point of grammar or syntax. In some places where it seemed necessary, the compiler has taken liberties with punctuation, and capitalization. Some rough places have been smoothed out; but this was not done if the passage was clear. One article which was largely in the shorthand of Calvin Frye, was given to several shorthand experts to decipher.

It has not been possible to put the material in this book into logical order, or to make it an integrated product. It is more or less the raw material of spiritual revelation. As indeed the oldest Gospel, that of Mark, in the original Greek is artless and often almost rough, the contents of this volume have undergone little polishing. Mrs. Eddy herself left much of the material in the form of rough jottings. Hence these items must be for the humble ones, the spiritually hungry, who can take them to God for divine unfoldment.

Compiler

June, 1947





Ascension

Christ hath arisen! Oh! not one cherished head,
Hath midst the flowery sods been pillowed here,
Without a hope (howe'er the heart hath bled)
In its vain yearnings
O'er the unconscious bier, —
A hope upspringing clear
From those majestic tidings of the morn,
Which lit the living way to all of woman born.

Glory to Him, hope to the suffering breast,
Light to the nations. He hath rolled away
The mists, which gathering into deathlike rest,
Between the soul and heaven's calm ether lay;
His love has made it day
With those that sat in darkness —
Earth and sea,
Lift up glad strains for man, by Truth divine made free.





Hearts

Weary hearts! Weary hearts! by the cares of life oppressed,
Ye are wand'ring in the shadows, ye are sighing for a rest.
There is darkness in the heavens and the earth is bleak below,
And the joys ye taste today may tomorrow tum to woe.
 Weary hearts! God is rest!

Lonely hearts! Lonely hearts! this is but a land of grief.
Ye are pining for repose, ye are longing for relief.
What the world hath never given, kneel and ask of God above,
And your grief shall turn to gladness, if ye lean upon His love.
 Lonely hearts! God is Love.

Restless hearts! Restless hearts! ye are toiling night and day;
And the flowers of life all withered, leave but thorns along your way.
Ye are waiting, ye are waiting, 'til your toilings all shall cease,
And your every restless beating is a sad, sad prayer for peace.
 Restless hearts! God is peace.

Breaking hearts! Broken hearts! ye are desolate and lone,
And low voices from the past o'er your present ruins moan!
In the sweetest of your pleasures there was bitterest alloy,
And a starless night hath followed on the sunset of your joy.
 Broken hearts! God is joy.

Homeless hearts! Homeless hearts! through the dreary, dreary years,
Ye are lonely, lonely wand'rers and your way is wet with tears;
In bright or blighted places, wheresoever ye may roam,
Ye look away from earth-land and ye murmur, where is home?
 Homeless hearts! God is home.





Written Thanksgiving Eve

God of the rolling year; our thoughts
In trembling rapture soar
Thanksgiving — e’en amidst our tears,
We fervently adore.

Rock of all ages, Thou the strength
Of this dear pilgrim land,
Still prove her tower and strong defence —
Bless with a Father's hand;

Where distant torch-light gleamed of yore,
Through forests old and dim,
And o'er the haunted solitude
Rose faint the pilgrim's hymn;

Where roamed the wild, untutored foe,
Where thrilled the bugle's call,
Now dance and song with harpstrings flow
Through the lamp-lighted hall.

Change, too, hath swept o'er hearth and heart,
Deep shades to life are bound!
Death's desolation hovers o'er
The board with bounty crowned.

Once love was there, with household words,
Which breathed without alloy;
Alas! for them, the few who meet,
Mid pageants stripped of joy.

Nov. 1850





Laying Corner Stone May 21, 1894

The Mother Church is confirmed a type of Christian Science from its foundation; through the storm, the drearing darkness, the cold night, upon a stone rested its watchers, till the three nights were accomplished, and the morning broke in splendor upon the stone that was to be laid at the corner of this Church. The type of the stone in Christian Science which the builders rejected will become the chief corner-stone of God’s temple, both as the body of Christ, and the human body, which it restores to health, and raises from the type of dust, to the reality of immortality, to Spirit. The foundation of this Mother Church was twice rescued from the grasp of death, disuse, loss, and regained through great tribulation. Thus shall it be with the foundations upon which is built the superstructure of Christ, the divine idea of the external Principle of man, and his upward tendencies, freedom, immortality. God lets in light through whatever is transparent. His wisdom stands the storm, the hail, the tempest, and is unselfish. It sends out the light, never retains it, to have it said, “I give it. Know this, and acknowledge it, or I will not impart the light." But buffeted, taking all the outside war of elements, and the inside dirt, and dust, it is the humble factor of eternal sunshine. It is not the light, it is not the sun, but it is God's gentle grace blessing and giving, waiting and working for all the race. God grant that we be willing to be only a beaten window, awaiting and reflecting divine Love, a covert in the tempest, a light to all. Oh, how my thoughts go out in love for every one to whom I have taught Christian Science, and for every one of its teachers, and students, taught by whomsoever, in one silent, fervid, forever prayer: “Father-Mother God, gather them all into the fold of eternal Love, and its manifestation. Let there be no lost sheep from this house of Israel.”





John 4:35

“Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields ; for they are white already to harvest.” The text urges a strong claim on the power of mind over matter; in other words, the superior ability of the higher mortal powers to control the lower, and the immortal Mind's sovereignty to rule and reign over all supposed material law and order. This claim on faith is a condition in divine Science that must be met and understood. What appears a miracle to sense is but a latent mental power discovered or revealed through Science, the Mind of God. These hidden powers of Mind are seen only as we are suitably equipped with the understanding of the practicality of what would seem impractical.

Faith should ascend one round above itself, there to dwell in spiritual facts comprehended, where thought takes no thought, looks not mournfully into the past, and makes astounding demands on the present. To human reason guided by observation and the evidence of the five personal senses, it is anomalous that four months prior to harvest man could behold the ripened grain. But let us remember the most meek and mighty metaphysician fettered not his sight to sense, or by seasons, and waited not for soil or seedling. The little workers underground were too dull and drowsy thoughts for the spiritual facts, of which he spake, to be seen in their action. He who knew that Mind, not matter, makes the golden grain, intended to quicken and invigorate the mental power, and cause it to germinate sooner above its substratum of materialism.

The marvel should not be at the remarkable sayings and acts of the spiritual Jesus, but at our dullness and material basis whence to reason, to heal, or to create. Could not he who stilled the tempest of human passions, and stopped the supposed pains and pleasures of matter in a single moment, gather the ripened grain before its season, even as he had gathered the sweet sense of recovery from disease into the gamer of conscious rest, peace and joy? Our metaphysician was a mental agriculturalist, a mental mariner, a mental healer, a mental resurrectionist, a mental Saviour. With the still small voice of Truth and Love he created and animated all objects. He not only did all marvelous things through Mind, but existed to himself as Mind only; hence, his acts were but his thoughts, that others have materialized and so lost their highest signification and cause. Thus it is that, when we claim to flow out into his spiritual healing, and at the same time, hold fast to a material basis for being, we stumble over ourselves, and can scarce consummate a good resolve without asking aid, outside of the moral and spiritual power, divinely bestowed on man.

The text is terse and essentially Hebrew in metaphor. It makes loud demands, and should startle us with its Science; it should cause us to commune with our present and past hours and ask them what report they bear of progress, and how they might have borne more welcome news; it should teach us to work in the living present out of this absorbing materialism, this swine and serpent, animality and subtlety, empty of all wisdom.

Our blessed Master knew that indolence is error's workshop; procrastination steals away our hours, and loses life's opportunities. The most ominous outrage of divinity is humanity forever behind time, never quite up to the demand of Truth, never clad for the spiritual bridal, always delving in the dark, begging others’ oil for lamps gone out. The spendthrift of Truth is another dangerous procurator of want, blocking up the way, and obliging the more thrifty to constantly clear it for him; he is an indefinable blockade, a curse causeless that stands in the way of others.

The beautiful and glorious traits of humanity, toil, meekness, truthfulness, love, form the stepping-stones to man’s divinity, and we should clasp these jewels to the heart and never part with them. If thou hast them not, sell all thou hast, and purchase them, costly as they may be, pay the price of weary watches, privations, toil, self-denial, cross bearing, cheerfully; then shalt thou possess the Soul in peace and power, and grasp firmly the reward of a life made glorious.

The leading beauty of the text is the possibility it presents of the unlimited power of Mind, and its denial of any other law. Was this possible power peculiar to Jesus? Not if we admit his own words on this point. But had not he a divine nature? Yes, and so has every one who will accept it. The wickedest man is but a temporary eclipse not quite total; and in the great forever he must rotate towards Truth and Life. One ray, one emanation of the divine is eternal, and finally lifts the gloom and lets in all light.

If today, we should openly declare that God, good, could annul the curse of sin, shorten the earth’s period of propagation, and find matter no factor in forming the objects of earth, what would be said of such a radical truism? Precisely what is said: there is no thus saith the Lord for this matter-annihilating Truth of divine Science, even though Jesus declared it and explained its Principle.





Lessons

Commencement

We are now to enter upon the study of mind and its effects upon the body, and shall place all causation as Mind. Metaphysics is our study, and in contradistinction to physics, metaphysics traces all phenomena to mental origin.

We shall commence with cause instead of effect; therefore, we shall commence with God instead of man to explain the phenomenon termed man, for God is the Principle of this phenomenon. Our first question in order is, What is God?

This is an infinite inquiry, and the answer is infinite also, and contains the explanation of all that is harmonious. God, or Jehovah, is not a person but Principle. All creeds, theories, doctrines start with person instead of Principle to explain God; hence, they are unlike the explanations that Science gives of God. Now we will take up Principle, or God, as Science explains this great question, and not as error has explained it, and consider what this Principle is, and learn all that we can of its workings, even as we would learn a part of the workings of Principle through mathematics, music or astronomy.

We learn from the Scriptures that God is Life,--"I am the resurrection and the life” declares this; also that God is Truth in another sentence--"I am the truth and the life"; and that God is Love, in still another quotation.

Then let us ask the next question in our textbook, namely, What is Principle? and learn the answer, namely, "Principle is Life, Truth, Love, substance, intelligence." Embraced in this answer is all that the Author of Science and Health has ever claimed for metaphysics. The impersonal Truth is stated here; if only this vast and infinite statement of Principle was comprehended in its results, or in the effects it has on man to bring out the proof that harmony is the normal state of man, and that he is the idea alone of this Principle, and governed alone by it; that his Life is this Principle; that his intelligence is this Principle; and that his substance is Spirit instead of matter.

We will now consider the meaning of the terms which express Principle, and not person, and in considering this we shall find the true definition of God, and our conclusions will all be spiritual, and not material, drawn from the standpoint of the impersonal instead of the personal, even from Mind instead of matter. Our only true conceptions of Principle are perfect contrasts to our personal views of God, and of Principle, as we shall hereafter learn.

Also that Science reverses what the five personal senses say, or conceive of God, or of His creation. For instance, personal sense reports Principle as something limited, and a rule, instead of an intelligence by which numbers, or laws, or systems of worlds are governed. This is termed the science of astronomy, or of music, or mathematics. But this is a limited view from the standpoint of personality; it is a view that the mortal, limited and erring gives, and not the idea of Principle that metaphysics gives us, but the very reverse of this idea; hence, the great importance for you to understand this in the beginning, that God is not only the Principle of metaphysics, the study we have before us, but that this God is impersonal and infinite Life, and infinite and universal Love, and an infinite and eternal Truth. This Truth then you cannot fully comprehend at once, or in these lessons, but we shall impart it best by understanding, in the first place, the difference between views of theology, physiology, materia medica, and so forth, and the Science that explains God as Principle, and the way this Principle brings out the harmony of being.





II Corlnthians 12:9

"My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness."

Why has God placed man amidst this boundless theatre, revealed around him this endless creation, touched his heart with the love of beauty, and given this delightful and awe-filled interest in that which is spread out before him, if he is merely a creature of the earth, soon to shut his eyes on these majestic scenes? Does this love of the Infinite, this attachment to the universe seem suitable to so ephemeral an existence? Rather do they not suggest the idea of an existence which embraces the entire universe in its comprehensive thought, which is inseparable from ours, and fills an ever-widening sphere? The world's accepted theories admit more than one God, or less than a God.

Scholastic theology presupposes immortal Spirit imprisoned in a mortal body. While it cannot contradict the Scripture that God is Spirit, it adds thereto the falsity, that pure and infinite Spirit is imprisoned in a finite form, having material sensuality and sin, and this form of matter masters omnipotence, expels its Spirit; and then destroys itself. Thus evil being as real, and more universal than good, which is God, would make our heavenly Father even less than a common sinner! This is the great deception, the awful unreality of man and his Maker that is taught today; and adopted into the fervor of human feeling.

Opposed to such fallacies of doctrine stands the divine Science of God and man, contradicting the theory of sensualism, intelligence or Spirit in matter, and giving forth glimpses of light; melting the clouds of sickness and sin into such thinness that we can look through them up to man as the image and likeness of purity and perfection, and thus behold the supremacy of good, and the nothingness of evil.

Paul said, "When I am weak then am I strong.” A weak error unfolds a strong truth. Forget not that the senses material have no treasure where moth and rust doth not corrupt, where sin and satiety break not in upon mortality to rob her fleeting joys, imaginary affections, pleasures and pains. Selfishness, lust, falsehood, indulged, steal away the sense of good. We must strip error of its exteriors, vanity and pride, before it will bend to Truth and unloose the sandals of Her power.

Walking in humility and love we are like eyes that, becoming accustomed to the light, require it, and cannot see in darkness. Only by spiritualizing thought, can we see God, Truth, and gain the power of spiritual healing, and the perception and demonstration of Love. Sensuality is the eye accustomed to darkness, to which the light is painful, and so it turns away from it. Nature instructs us, the stars come out in darkness to make night and gloom glorious, the flowers turn to the light for life and beauty. Be this the stars of our night, that God is Love, that every step of goodness is a departure from material sense and self, and the entrance into man’s spiritual selfhood.

Beyond and above this mortal and material sense of being exist the immortal and spiritual facts of all things to bless and beautify our lives. Vanities and deceits suspend the attraction toward Spirit--the infinite and perfect, for they narrow man and attract him to imperfection and a loss of spiritual power.

Throughout the epistles of Paul, we see the gravity with which he regarded the awful treachery of time and sin. He journeyed to Jerusalem under a certain sense of doom. The route lay along those famous islands of Asia Minor, the beauty of which is proverbial; the advancing season was clothing every low shore, and the edge of every broken cliff, with refreshing verdure. The winter storms had ceased, and small vessels plied safely in shade and sunshine between the neighboring ports. He sailed in the finest season, by the brightest coasts, in the fairest weather; yet the foreshadowing of his fate at Jerusalem, that city of erudition and priestcraft, enshrouded him. Naught but the self- conscious grandeur of clearing the way for others’ happiness, and the presence divine, could have sustained such a sacrifice. As it was, he lost all fear in the bliss of a more exalted sense of life's great purposes and use. Out of the scanty store of a few years in Christian Science, he hesitated not to cast his mite into the treasury of Truth, to leap undaunted into the crucible of affliction, and work out the great problem of being up, up to its glorified sense.

Thus it was that mite of Paul's gained others, making him a material mite less, and a spiritual mite more in the ponderous forces of Truth and Love. Thus it is, that fidelity and labor through diviner footsteps, little by little taketh the new-born out of the grasp of sensualism, of sin, sickness and death, and layeth them gently upon the bosom of spiritual permanence, peace and power.





Galatians 5:7

“Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the Truth?”

The most precious of all possessions is power over ourselves, power to withstand evil, to bear trials, to front danger, power over pleasure and pain, power to follow our convictions however resisted by menace and scorn, the power of calm reliance in scenes of darkness and fell revenge. No truth is more certain than this, that man is the arbiter of his own fate. The mutations of time, the periods of the leaf and flower, the enormous cycles of geological and astronomical change, are the motions of continual Mind photographed, the formations and development of an exhaustless mental energy. Even the forms of decay are but marks of regeneration, the secret alembics of Life. There is something in the universe besides material forms; for they are moved by a power external to themselves, and the substance on which they are based is greater than they. As to the Truth and power of this intelligence that acts above and beyond the forms of sense, we cannot doubt. We are connected with a higher order of realities than those we see around us. What is it that warms in the sun?

We are ourselves greater than any material thing, and God is demanding of us to bring out His body. The term, man, is colossal, and his acts should support the inference; man is not a mountain in labor with a mouse, filling the earth with groans and violent contortions, and astounding the world with much ado about nothing! And the body of a man is not big enough for his Soul, nor should it be deemed an inn for his transient shelter, a hiding place for a coward, the lair of an animal, an apartment for ease, a mechanical adjustment for hearing and seeing through loopholes, a culinary establishment for appetite, a theatre for amusement, and a whited sepulchre for the dead.

The body is but a picture of which mind is the artist, and paints his thoughts upon it without material brush or coloring. Mind touches the body with its hue of thought, and it paints a blush on cheek and brow; then it touches the body with another hue, and pallor o’erspreads the face. It moves the wind of thought to draw an outline, and it delineates on the body strength, the firm sinew, and paints the roseate hue of health. It dips the pencil of thought in sorrow, and traces the lines of care, the crow's feet, and the tired eyes. It touches the hair with the thought of age, and tints it with the almond blossom. Then dipping its brush in other beliefs, it paints upon beautiful ringlets the white sea foam as after tempests swell the tides. The shade of thought again changes, its hue is darkness, and it draws a shadowy form bent and feeble; this time it hath dipped its brush in a belief of sickness, and perhaps paints the picture of diseased lungs; then starts as it beholds its own work, and calls it the work of another.

Now it saith, “Matter has done this, and mind was not the artist, for how could it have been so busy with pencil and brush upon my body and I not know it? I knew that mind was an artist and at work, but I knew not the pictures it was forming, until the senses material told me that the body was sick. Then I believed it and beheld the pictures, felt it; but here I wish to be understood that matter did it, and so mind could not again draw its brush over the picture and erase it."

If the mind says to the body run, it moves at this suggestion, and swift as the antelope, if the motive that moves it is pinioned with pleasure. And what are our motives for action? Are we working at baubles and ashamed of our work; ashamed of children's play in manhood hours; or are we idlers? Then it is high time that we put off our swaddling garments, and look around for work, not with uncomprehending wonder, or with the stupid eye of an animal, but with glorified vision! There to behold ourself busy with God, and allied to Deity that sprung over chaos an arch of “awful beauty,” and lighted up its myriad suns, an ever-active and glorious Mind breaking out in every nook and phase, from the flowers underneath our feet to those secrets that retreat in shadow, where man grows giddy with surprise, and halts weary before the infinite and unconfessing Truth. Then shall we not ask what is required of us, and why the example is furnished us to act in the living present, and act not for one but for all, to move onward and launch into human life, meet its mutations, its melancholy, or its ecstatic realities, its shame and its glory, its broken resolutions, and its undying hopes, its close clinging to the low and groveling things of earth, and its gravitation to glory; and meet this with thirst greater than sense can satisfy, to master them all, and be an actor on the stage of Life?

All earthly distinctions, all comparisons of power, vanish before the calm and steadfast purpose to wheel into the line of God, and fight it out on this line. The plodding materialist not only commits an intellectual mistake, but he robs and impairs his own nature; he digs a hole in the earth and buries his talent; then calls God a hard master that would gather where He has not strown.





The Language Of Spirit

The short sentence of the beloved disciple, St. John, is familiar to us all, namely, “God is love.” No higher term nor human conception can be entertained of Deity that that he gave. It is equally plain that, if God is Love, He is also Spirit, even as the Scriptures declare, “God is a Spirit. Here thought is arrested with this great questioning: “How shall we commune with Spirit?” The answer is, spiritually, we cannot commune with Spirit materially. And what is the language of Spirit and spiritual communion?

Certainly it is spiritual.

The German talks in the German language, the Frenchman in the French language, and the Englishman in the English language, the native tongue is more natural in which to talk and write. Now what is the language of Christian Scientists? It is the new tongue Christendom has taught and written in both languages — the spiritual and material — but talks of the one Principle and its various denominations with one tongue, namely, the spiritual, the language of Spirit.

When Christian Scientists meet, it shall be natural for them to speak the mother tongue, to think and talk or to read the Scriptures in its native tongue, and thus declare ourselves and our generation, our thinking and our life, as spiritual and but one mother tongue. To this end we shall read the Scriptures spiritually, until they become to our thought the veritable translation of the Scriptures, and thus taught are understood.

Otherwise, they are a forgery that can be mistaken, misinterpreted, mistaught and misunderstood, even as they are.

I love to read my Bible in the mother tongue, in its spiritual sense. I read it so at home in my secret sense of God, and have come to you today to read it thus, and with a prayer that your eyes shall not be heavy that you cannot see, nor your ears dull, but the spiritual sense shall be active and take in my simple version.

(original partly in shorthand)





I John 4:8 ... For God Is Love

Few half centuries in the history of the world are more remarkable for numerous and great changes than the last; but the progress in communicating between continents is not so important as the changes begun in thought on subjects of the deepest interests.

Fifty years ago, the question was till being discussed whether there are three person in the Godhead, or only one, whether God had foreordained from the beginning that some men should be saved and others eternally punished; and whether this punishment was material fire, and horrible odors, where hope had escaped and reform could never come, but black despair brooded over the scene, clapping its dismal wings and croaking “nevermore” or the pangs of remorse and the sense of sin that come at length, to suffer their own self-inflicted tortures, until finally consumed by their own fires, they yield to Love.

Upon the answer to the foregoing questions depended the decision who was a Christian, and because of such monstrous conceptions of the All-loving, there sprang up the infidel query, not if there be three persons in one God, but if there be so much as one; if there be any God, any supreme Good, with such a declarative nature?

Considering how much more fundamental the question of the great first Principle of man is in relation to his life and happiness than a mere speculative opinion of Deity, we are rejoiced to know “that God is love,” for if spiritual Love is found the Principle of our problem of existence we shall grow into a correct sense of Deity upon the basis of Love.

We should shrink from ascribing to the government of the All-wise, human affections which involve weakness, or a changeable, passionate or partial self-will. It has ceased to be in my power to think of God as a human being, infinitely magnified. The undying thirst of the affections demands a being of love, an unfailing good applicable to our daily needs, and to know we have not a need for which there is no supply. We should not rest, nay, we should recognize in the conclusion, that in this measureless expanse of being , there is now here to be found a divine effluence in which, while we bow before Him, we can repose our utmost faith, and of which we can gain some clear sense, in whose intimate nearness to us, we may find comfort in all sorrow, strength under every burden, deliverance from sin, and the inspiration of immortal hope.

Uncertain as the revelations of what is termed physical science are, we need a spiritual Science to anatomize life, and bring to light immortality. Some eminent men would conclude, because searching they cannot find out God through matter, or take up Soul on the point of the scalpel, there is no God; or because they cannot find God in love, find little love in God.

What we call physical science has extended its views ages back, only to be lost in the midst of remoteness; it has gone down only to make us aware of lower depths’ it has gone up only to find His presence still veiled. It may scrutinize the many-colored curtain, thread by thread, that the Omnipotent weaveth, and say, “It is self-woven,” because no corner can it lift to look behind and behold Him.

Where then, and how, is seen the object of our supreme love and trust? “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God;” to the true affection is accorded the ineffable vision. Through love Jesus explored the way from sense to Soul, from matter to Spirit. He was the creative center of our modern life. The divine Science taught by him cast out error with truth, healed sickness and sin, and said unto death, “Where now is thy sting and where thy victory, O grave?” for “The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law,” and, “I have broken the law of matter with the higher law of Mind, whereby the supremacy of Spirit is seen, omnipotence understood.”

In meekness and self-abnegation our Master took the irrevocable step that committed him to the conversion of his pure ideal into life, and by no miracle, no preternatural interposition, no act of will but by the divine Science of love he found the truth of health, happiness and heaven, and was true to the highest truth. Behold then in him the way, and the manifestation of the Godhead; learn then from him that only from a sense of duty profound and all-absorbing, comes the consciousness of Christian healing, and Life as God, illimitable and indestructible, reaching higher every hour.

The apostle John had a very clear sense of God as Love, he said, “let us not love in word but deed,” — the superlative term for Deity.





Subject: Love

I John 4:18 — “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.”

Prayer is a desire — and is more a prayer when unexpressed, silent and sad. In times of fear we pray, for prayer is the carrier pigeon of heaven; it flyeth incessantly from sorrow to joy; but we need most to pray in prosperity that is prone to forget God.

Mortals are tremblers; doubt, dismay and fear fetter them; exiles tugging at their chains only to make them more galling; slaves to beliefs, without freedom, and without wings, being not made perfect in Love. But, child of earth, when its burdens descendeth upon thee, Love can make them light; our Master said with all earth’s woes upon him, “My burdens are light.”

God is not in the earthquake, not in the fire, not the flood, He is not in sickness, not in wrong, not in sorrow, nor in death: then look away from these myths of mortal mind and listen; now you catch the keynote of heaven, the still small voice of Truth, pleading and interceding.

Love is atonement. In the erring thought is the fall; in the heart, the atonement. Sin and atonement go through the lifetime of mortals; sin comes forth full-grown, but atonement is not awake; no sensation it sleeps an infant Jesus in the manger, then comes forth in the mortal hour of fear, in the manhood of Jesus, to still the tempest. O ye imprisoned mortal fears, wait this deliverer that loves and atones evermore.

Love is the essence of God, the only breath of being; it is Life and Truth casting out error and healing the sick. There is no fear in Love; let us lie still in its bosom; its arms encircle us, and in the tempest of sickness, or of sin, we are safe there, and nowhere else.

Child of mortality, thou needest, not fear; look, if thou canst into the depths of heaven, and there behold thy life in perpetual glory; remember, the pale mockeries of earth are but the counterfeits of thee and thine. Wish what the Holy One wishes, and not from fear, but affection. Perfect Love casteht out fear, for the heart that loveth is willing. And lovest thou God as thou oughtest? Then lovest thou likewise thy brethren. Are they not sailing, lost like thyself in an unknown ocean of events? Remember then, it is sweet to stammer one word of the Eternal’s language on earth, and that word, forgiveness. Knowest thou him who forgave with the crown of thorns on his temple? Love is our only welfare with God; but among mortals love is but an endless sigh; it smiles with tears on its eyelids.

Here hope befriends us, and is no longer a dim play of shadows. In Christian Science hope is transfigured into faith, and faith into understanding, groping no longer in night. Christian Science gives a living assurance; it is the light to the eyes of affection; it opens these eyes in darkness; it interprets earth’s dreams, and carves our joys in marble; its countenance shineth like the Hebrew’s, for it hath looked on God.

Harmony is the homestead of Love, and Christian Science healing the sick is this animate Love, even as flowers are animate springtide, and this Love casteth out fear that hath torment.

O child of earth, God looks into thy heart only through the window of Love to pour in light, and this light freeth from the fetters of sense; sickness, sorrow and death flee before it, and patience, meekness and self-abnegation come with it. Love is the dawn of a better life; it breaks o’er our earthly horizon with the first faint streaks of morning until it floods the dawn. It comes with the sunlight of Truth that maketh our days longer, and giveth to our eventide repose. Hatred is the dread winter of sense, when the earth’s retreating sun enters the sign of the scorpion, and the night. Love is the summer of Soul, and no night is there.

God is Love. Let our thoughts ripen into action; let us work while the day lasts — from today grows the harvest of heaven.

Father of all, —

Let us not miss in bliss one original of these before us, and my they bear witness with us that we have taught them the way of salvation. Pure and more tried may we meet, and say in heaven, “Father, Love, lo! I am here and the children Thou hast given me.”





Origin Of Evil

Dictated in one-half hour, July 8, 1898

ST. PAUL writes, “There is one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” Eph. 4:6. Spiritually and literally that all is Spirit, and all is good, for God is Spirit and God is good, and God is All. Here is the closing argument as to the actuality of this fact? Who is it that says that matter exists? Who is it that is evil, sinful, wicked? We answer in the words of Jesus when he replied to the hoary question as to the origin of man and coincide with St. Paul’s declaration in asserting that God is the Father of all, and there is but one God, one Mind, hence all is Mind, and there is no matter.

But what of a sinner, and whence are sinners? We answer in the words of our Master, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. Now here is the origin of evil — a lie, and a lie has no origin in truth; it was always a lie. Then the origin of a lie is a lie, What can be said further than this in corroboration of the nothingness of evil, its non-existence?

But say you, I see the working of evil; I feel evil; I hear evil, and whence are these evidences; and am I not “I:? Yes, you are I, but this I or ego is neither matter nor evil. What then is it? We repeat the answer, a lie and a liar, and the liar is not more real than the lie.

Among the thinkables which explain a falsity is this. Here is a man possessing a large estate; he owns it, his father owned it before him, and still more remotely his grandfather owned it, and so far as the history of the property can be traced, it descended legally to this one heir; but a deed is presented by another claimant to the real estate. This deed is written in due form, the names of the grantor and grantee are given, and the names of the witnesses in their different handwritings, and the seal is attached to the name of the owner, But the owner of the property disputes all this fair seeming, and declares that the claim is false, and defies the man to sustain it; and he cannot, even though the deed is recorded.

Thus it is with God, good, and evil, the opposite claim to good. With God, Spirit, and matter, the opposite claim to Spirit, the false claim is written out, and it is recorded, but the true claim is not less valid because of this and the false is not more true because of its remote date, or millions of years, and God will not admit its truth any more today or tomorrow than yesterday, for it never was true, and He declared it from the great forever, for Gid is without beginning or end of days. He is from everlasting unto everlasting, and God is good, and God is infinite; therefore, God is All, and there is none beside Him, as the Scriptures plainly declare and which declaration was not only in the Hebrew decalogue, but exists indisputably and eternally in the nature of God and in the definition of Infinity.





Bible Lesson

“Thou art Peter, and upon this rock, I will build my church--Matt. 16:18

PETER was a person; the name was derived from the Latin “rock.” We learn from the text that Christ built his church, not upon the person of Peter, or of Jesus, as we define person, but upon the rock of Truth, Life and Love; that which Jesus defined, named, his personality. Building upon this rock, Christ Jesus was announced as the gospel method of salvation. Our Master would settle the question of personality on these ground, “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” hence his personality was not the form the senses material look upon, but the infinite God.

When Jesus said to the doubting disciple, “I am Truth and Life,” he could not mean his outlined personality was that, or that God was outlined in him through his life, so hidden in holiness from the material sense of that age and this, that even his disciples could not discern by what power a personality could be governed, as when the sick were made whole, and this personality could walk the wave. The Benjamites taking refuge in the rock, Rimmon, escaped the fury of other tribes of Israel. Moses gave the children of Israel, in the wilderness, water from a rock. Jesus prolongs the figure as a fundamental truth against which the winds and waves beat in vain, and the divine Life, Truth, and Love whence the superstructure of all faith and spiritual understanding rose to God, and against which the gates of hell should not prevail, the floodtides of sin, sickness and death could not overthrow, since the proof over these should establish and explain Christianity.

The commencement of this chapter shows the point of his argument he addressed to the materialism of the age to destroy it, and establish Christianity upon a purely spiritual basis. The different sects, Pharisees and Sadducees, demanded of him a sign of his spiritual Christianity, built not upon personality as finity, but upon infinite power and goodness — which was better or beyond theirs — built upon personality as finity, and materiality, the materiality of rites and ceremonies. How inconsistent was this demand for a sign, when those signs had been given them, and their significance misinterpreted. He had announced to John that he was the Christ on the basis, “Go tell them the things ye see and hear, the lame walk, the deaf hear,” as much as to say, “My personality is divine power, Love, and Truth, the Christ, and not the Jesus, the divine Principle of the man Jesus, and this Principle and its idea man are inseparable; but do not call the finite man the personality of his infinite Principle.”

Manfully and Godlike Jesus refused them a material sign, and demanded they should understand his spiritual signs and their great significance, how and whence was his healing; he knew their need, that the letter killeth, and the Spirit maketh alive, He knew that the materialistic religion bringeth not forth the fruits of the Spirit, casting our devils and healing the sick.

Seeing the deadness of the church, he warned the disciples to beware the leaven of the Pharisees, but the materialism of even his students shocked him when they inferred it was a warning to take with them some bread to eat. For this materialism be rebuked them, saying, “O ye of little faith! Do ye not yet understand, neither remember, the miracle of the loaves and fishes?” In other words, can Christians see no power except in meal or monad that is natural and divine? Is matter to them more than Spirit in every case? Does the life of man consist in what he shall eat and drink since God is our Life, and when “this shall appear we shell be like unto him?” Our personality will not be of finity and matter, but Spirit an infinity.

Our Master first upbraided their lack of faith, next their lack of understanding, since faith and understanding combine in the Science of God that Jesus was demonstrating for the instruction of man.”

To get nearer to their spiritual need, and test their capacity, our Master next asked his students,”‘Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am?” They answered, “Some say thou art John the Baptist: . . . others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.” This answer indicated that the opinions of some people of that period were flavored with mediumship. The individuals referred to were dead; hence, the inference that Jesus was controlled by these persons, instead of a divine Principle, in his healing.

The darkness of that period, and of this, rests on the wrong sense entertained of personality, how Mind constituted it, and finity and infinity; moral mind has its finite personality, immortal Mind the infinite; and the whole error of their conception of God was constituted Him a sinning, sick and dying man, was in putting the infinite and finite together, even infinite Spirit into finite form. That destroyed their true sense of God’s power, since it gauged the infinite by the capacities of the finite, and gave matter supremacy over Spirit. They failed to see how God could come into the life and acts of man through reflection, and not the person of God, even as light comes to the earth and lightens it, yet bringeth not the sun with it. They failed to see that God is infinite Love, not finite, compressed to a limited form; hence His personality is His infinity. I agree to this, for God is Love, and Love is not person, but Principle.

If the personality of God was understood, we should feel His ever-presence. Our false sense of it keeps Him afar off; that is why Christians turn to matter; and away from the ever-present Spirit to drugs and material methods for power, when God is all power, and an ever-present help in every time of need; turn to personality as finite form instead of infinite Love to lean upon; and worship the creature more than the creator.

On the great truths of Spirit, Christ built his church, healed the sick, and cast out devils, evils; he directed our worship to the Father. The divine Love and Truth which he designated as his own personality, and claimed a less personality as God manifest in the flesh, only what the material eye could see, the ear hear, and the hand touch, that which he called a ghost instead of his substance, but which even his disciples call substance, and Spirit a ghost, until the descent of the Holy Ghost, — divine Science, — illuminated their understanding with a better sense of the substance of Spirit.

The personality of Jesus was changed before the eyes of his students, and finally is disappeared wholly to their comprehension, when he rose to the status of spiritual being that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard what this is. But God is revealed to man in Truth, Life and Love.





The Way Of Error

Each one with a way of their own, a theory of their own and a protest against personality, if Mrs. Eddy is the personality, with their own personality growing apace, is the programme of spiritualists, theosophists and mesmerism. I have heard Richard Kennedy boast at the end of eleven years that he had got a student under this misrule, and had kept up his purpose to this all these years. Mrs. Swartz said to a student of mine, it took him six months to take Emma Hopkins away from assisting me on the C. S. Journal, and during this time I was giving her money, clothes and help in other directions, and she was so demoralized by this influence that she would thank me, and go right out into the city, and misrepresent me, warn people against me, and tell people that she hated me.

It would take volumes to tell the story of malicious mental practice, just as I have seen it, and know of its workings through veritable circumstances and disclosures of the individuals. I have suffered more from the variance and the disaffections in our ranks caused by the outside devil, than I ever suffered from all the individual wickedness, and voluntary action of the human heart. Yes, a million times more, because its purpose was hate, and hatred is more persistent, faithful and devoted to the purposes of hate, than love is to carry out its action, motive and purposes. This is my experience with the human heart of mortal mind.

Jesus said, “They hated me without a cause,” but he knew if they had watched, held guard over their own hearts, and known enough not to look for the cause at home when it was abroad their houses would not have been broken open. They would not have turned away from their Master in an hour of need, just when he was establishing most successfully the truth that would bless them all, both friends and enemies, and if he had not been betrayed into the hands of man by his own students on the grounds of personality alone, he would have redeemed the human race from sense human to sense divine, and established the truth that their betrayals caused to be lost, by the power it gave the enemies of truth to stop the influence of that man Jesus.

It was the falsehood told by the emissary Jews about that personal Jesus, that stopped the progress of the greatest of all religious elements, Christian Healing. Truth regenerating the mortal mind and body; but if a consistent saint had refused to dishonor him, it would be said, “You worship his personality,” and “He maketh himself as God; away with the man, crucify him.”

True generalship on the field of battle is to know the enemies’ movements and how to meet them. There is war between the loyal and disloyal ranks of Christian Scientists; they are sending their spies into our camps, and false reports. Does the wise general credit their heralds? No, he takes the very reverse position.

What is the wisdom of today on this battlefield, is it hospitality to spies, and unity with their plans? They never come into your camp with a whine until they are whipped, and then the dough faces give them help. “The poor fellow, they are in need of it,” and they lift them out of their difficulty by treachery to their general and the cause. Now the enemy are again more bold, self-defiant and assured than ever, more aggressive and triumphant. The period of warfare is lengthened, whereas it would have closed but for the sickly sympathy for criminals.

Twenty-two years, and I have seen this warfare between loyal and disloyal Christian Scientists perpetuated, either by helping the enemy in their hour of need, or by deserting their own ranks in their hour of need.

The moral question of this contest rests upon the same inquiry that it did in the time of Herod, “Where shall the young child be born?” In other words, shall the truth that heals the sick be found personal or impersonal” Shall it start from man or God? Shall it originate with a mesmerist or spiritualist; in scholastic theology, from man or woman? If it rests on the basis of personal opinion, and is both of persons, it is born of scholastic theology, who worship a person instead of Principle, If it originates with spiritualism or mesmerism, it is born of persons and its basis is personally throughout. If it born of man, it generation declares it. If it is born of God, divine Science declares it, and woman, who was fist to proclaim the error, must be fist to discover by revelation of Truth, and this discovery takes Truth out of the hands of personality, and personal origin, and established it on the rock, Christ Jesus, God and His idea.

If our great Master in the beginning of his career, used material means for his illustrations, turning the water into wine, and anointing the eyes of the blind with his spittle and clay, — as he rose in his God-given mission above matter, — his demonstration was purely mental. Lazarus came forth as the mandate of Mind opened the grave, and restored the so-called dead to his living sisters and childhood home.





Science

Matt. 7:16

“Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?”

The meek and loving John was the eagle of Christianity, whose strong wind carried him upward into ineffable light. The school of mystics and Gnostics possessed what they deemed an inward and direct apprehension of Truth, but their deepest sense came infinitely short of what John understood directly from divine Science.

A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

Many will say to me in that day Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name and in thy name done wonderful works.

Then will I profess unto them I never knew them; depart from me ye that work iniquity.

Attempts to reach our metaphysical system of healing have begun here and in Europe. We have earnestly hoped for the hour when a student of ours should be fitted to take that place and share that great responsibility with us, but we regret to say the first one who assumed that advanced stage of metaphysics is an unworthy aspirant, letting loose upon the world stolen goods, and a medley of Science and the nonsense of personal sense peculiar to himself. But even this each catch-penny plot — even error — may call more attention to the opposite of Truth, and time will remove the clogs to the car of progress thrown across the track of Truth.

Ignorance, envy, and malice have been at work in all ages filling their pockets with other people’s brains; hence, the disasters to society. When my more advanced students, whose demonstrations in healing have exceeded the one who claims to teach a hundred per cent, modestly wait to go up higher before they presume upon such a responsible step, we are reminded of Young’s satire, “Fools empty-headed rush where angels wait.”

We never state our thesis of metaphysical healing, Had we done that, we should never have given to the world the demonstration of metaphysics. The vague and uncertain, and the direct and terrible demonstrations of those who have possession of our private directions for metaphysical healing, and who were not qualified for their use, are sufficiently startling. They ought certainly to forewarn and stop the honest practitioner, until he knows how to handle the strongest element in existence, even mind that governs the body, not in part but the whole. Account him not wise who clamors with midnight and tempest, with a feather plucked from the plume of vanity.

The most reliable and safe practice ever known is metaphysical healing, but treating disease mentally without a clear understanding of metaphysics is dangerous in the extreme, and will prove the most prolific source of disease that has ever yet been practiced.

Materia medica is speculation, and void. It begins in effect instead of cause, and more frequently than otherwise, reproduces the effect, and always strengthens the cause. But metaphysics begins in cause; it commences with mind, and if mind is a charlatan, it is a fearful quack — more to be dreaded than lancet and material poisons.

Friends: step by step since the beginning of time mankind, or that kind of man that we name mortals, have been gaining through Christ Jesus, through the uplifting of human experience the divine interpretation of Life, Truth and Love. Every epoch of time has unfolded the fact that progress at every point indicates a step more spiritual. Yet, we of the 19th century have not the longevity of the Antediluvians who lived nearly a thousand years, by taking less thought than we about the suppositional life of matter, and what they should eat, drink or wear; neither have the floods of error ceased; its troubled sea still overflows, and will until there is no more sea, until divinity is understood to flow through channels of humanity.

What has been won is an enlarged sense of human possibilities. We are beginning to apprehend that Life is God, and God is good, and good includes no evil, but destroys the sense that sins, and its sequence sickness and death; also that mortals can be good enough to find this Life with its unbroken harmony.

Twenty years ago I ventured to declare that true Christianity is a divine Science, and this Science is the Comforter that shall lead into all Truth; hence, the universal panacea for the evil beliefs that flesh is heir to. This Truth was a stranger; the common people heard it gladly, but from the scorn of the schools there was no appeal, for they remembered not the stranger within their gates, and there was no appeal from their scorn and persecution. My hope was in God only. I worked, I healed, and the fruit of those labors began to vindicate their Principle.

Eight years ago I was called to the pulpit in Boston of Rev. Mr. Williams a Baptist clergyman, have never accepted a salary, and seldom if ever have taken the amount contributed when I spoke. Now the gospel of salvation from sin, sickness and death is beginning to resound from east to west, and north and south. From across the continent, California reaches out her hand to Massachusetts, and across the seething sea of humanity, God stretcheth forth His hand as of old to rescue His children from their oppressor, when He leadeth them out of darkness into light.





The Power Of Truth To Heal The Sick

Isaiah 61:1

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.”

The text refers to the office of Christ, the action of Truth upon the understanding and affections. This graphic summary of what Truth does for man was not confined to the appearing of Jesus, or to his demonstrations; it had entered into the history of Christianity centuries before the Christian era, and continued its benign influence, healing the sick and reforming the sinner three centuries thereafter.

The great element of reform is eternal, but is not born of human wisdom; it draws not its life from human organization; it is the spirit of Truth and it penetrates to the heart, elevates and consecrates the affections — until man thinks, speaks, and does good from the very necessity of his being. From this standpoint of Christianity, the institutions of error and wrong crumble and pass away; sin dies out; the human yields to the divine; the mortal and erring thought falls before the immortal and unerring; and the prayer is fulfilled — “thy kingdom come” — and the supremacy of Spirit is seen, the omnipotence and omnipresence of God are understood.

That men have misunderstood and perverted Christianity is true. But it is also true that the Science of man’s being, the noblest efforts for human advancement, are based upon it.

Come ye unforgotten ones, whose pictures grace our walls, and whose histories live in our hearts, who took your conduct from the line of Truth — break your silence, and answer, is it not so? On the words of another, “Come Howard, from the gloom of the prison and the taint of the lazar house, and show us what philanthropy can do when imbued with the spirit of Jesus, “Come Eliot, from the thick forest where the red man listens of the word of Truth.” .” “Come, Penn, from thy meek counsel and weaponless victory, and show us what Christian zeal and Christian love can accomplish; with what an eye of faith it regards the lowest and least of our race; and how diligently it labors, not for the body, not for rank, or health, but for the plastic spirit that is to course the ages of immortality.” Tell us ye who have sought your record on high, how kindly a spirit, how lofty a purpose, how strong a courage Christianity breathes into man.

Isaiah in ecstatic vision beheld this vision of Truth; and his Messianic predictions prove his inspiration; he read the future history of Christian healing, for he was familiar with the Spirit that demonstrates Truth, that anointeth its minister, that bindeth up the broken-hearted, proclaimeth liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.

Spirit is a term of wide signification; in Hebrews it is ruach, in Greek, pneuma — but Spirit is the one living and true God, and this is its only definition. In every other instance the term is used figuratively, as in the following passages of Scripture, the spirit of evil, the spirit of good, the spirit of wisdom, of knowledge, the spirit of prophecy, the spirit of grace and of prayer — familiar spirits, and so on. Poets sing of the spirit of song, the genii of the groves, the spirit of the wind, the spirit of mirth, of sadness, etc.

These are all metaphorical terms, and are not the actual definitions of Spirit.

The Scriptures speak of the four spirits of the heavens — in Hebrew it is the four winds of the heavens — Jesus said the wind bloweth where it listeth — in Greek it reads, pneuma, spirit, goeth where it listeth. Ministering spirits are metaphorical terms for good and pure thoughts — evil spirits are the same terms for evil thoughts. John speaks of the spirit of Truth whom the world cannot receive.

Again he writes when the spirit of Truth is come it will guide you into all Truth; by this is meant that demonstration of the power of Truth depends upon understanding its letter, and possessing its spirit. We shall learn of divine Science the Truth of health. By this he meant, that we must possess the spirit of Truth, Christ, or we cannot have the power of Truth, Christ wherewith to cast out error and heal the sick. Both the spirit and the letter are indispensable in Christian Science, and without them both, there can be no instantaneous healing.

To become a Christian Scientist, healing the sick indiscriminately and instantaneously, — for what Christian Science implies, — one must first learn the letter of this Science, the same as he does the rudiments of music to become a musician, or studies theology to become a theologian or reads medicine to become a medical practitioner. The great and only difference is that the student of Christian Science learns the Science of Spirit instead of matter, and he learns that the evidences gained from the personal senses are not the evidence of Truth, that from these personal senses we can gain no correct view of God, of Life, Truth or Love. The letter of Christian Science teaches the fallibility of the evidence obtained through the spiritual senses, whereby we learn God, and thus obtain correct views of Life, Truth and Love.

Religion based on a personal God, rests on the evidence of the personal senses, and is therefore more finite, limited and material in its doctrines, rites and ceremonies than Christianity can be, for Christianity is supported alone by Spirit, impersonal and infinite Truth and Love; therefore, Christianity is enlarged, liberal, charitable, demonstrable, universal. It heals all sickness, destroys all sin, and brings to light the unity of God and man.

We need not fear this Christianity, nor need we fear to lose material bread and intoxicating wine, as symbols of Christ, Truth, when we gain the spiritual sense of these in Christ, in the Truth, that cometh down from heaven, and the inspiration of Life pressed from the vine of which my Father is the Husbandman. From this vine cometh the inspiration of Truth, that twineth its gentle tendrils around omnipotence and bears the first fruits of paradise. Divine inspiration utters itself apart from all material sense of life, saying in the sweet simplicity of conscious Truth, “God is my Life, and when this shall appear I shall be like unto Him in glory.”

Life and health are not dependent on matter, or material conditions; Mind is the only causation. If we understood good, the original term for God, evil would have no power over us; then death could not come through sin, and Truth would rob the grave of its prey, and death of victory.

Let us begin to understand Jesus directly, in at least one of his sayings, and judge a tree by its fruits. The good done by Christianity, the sick healed, and the sinner reclaimed, are fruits noteworthy; and shall we call that bearing these fruits, less than the barren creed, the sterile rite, and pharisaical scorn? Have we faith in God, if our faith is too weak to trust Deity as soon as a drug, and too blind to see that a creed is less than a deed, and that the fruits of Christianity are works more than words?

Jesus showed us, teaching his disciples, students, that the letter of divine Science, like all science, must be acquired through the understanding, and needs to be taught, learned methodically, correctly and clearly. But remember, the Spirit of Truth, which is divine Science, must be won, as well as the letter, for if either the spirit or the letter be lacking in the practitioner, he will not heal as he otherwise would, and the yoke will not be found easy, and the burden will not be light. The Christian Scientist, at war with the world, the flesh and the devil, choose whom ye will serve, and bear ye up bravely, be strong, be faithful, be joyful, and remember your Master’s words. “Lo, I am with you alway.” If faithful, you will gain Christ, Truth, and set your affections on things above, and so becoming more spiritual, you will familiarize yourself with the actual truth of divine Science, and the yoke will then be found easy and the burden light. The field for Christian healing is white already for the harvest, but the laborers are few, for many are called but few chosen.

The poor sinner that has not looked away from earth to heaven, is not ready yet; the church member of thirty years or more has to grapple strongly with conscience and creeds, before entering this field; not having understood the bias of his education, and the freedom of the sons of God, he will fear to go forward; he has not the perfect Love yet that casteth out fear; he sees not as yet that he cannot be learning he letter of Truth wrongly, if this learning is giving him more the spirit of Truth; an wherefore cling to that which has not given him the power to heal the sick and cast out error, and thus resist the example of prophet and apostle? Truth hath come to its own, and its own receives it not.

The unbiased thinker is sometimes careless or impious, and he is not ready when the bridegroom cometh, ready to be wedded to Truth, having no other affection, no other pursuit, no other God before Me; and so the door is shut upon a vast array at these bridals of Science. If an individual is taught the Science of Christian healing, and enters not in having on a wedding garment, he is not united to Truth and Love, so he may seek ere long, a divorce. But if he has come for the loaves and fishes, he may feign this divine wedlock, and chatter the letter of Science like a mocking bird, but like a jay in borrowed plumes, he is found out at last; God will finally place him where he belongs, for nothing is hid that shall not be revealed.

The truth of the body is essential to man’s harmony as the truth of the Soul, but the letter regarding both is not sufficient for either. The letter of Truth is useful only that thereby the student may gain the spirit thereof; the letter alone killeth, but the spirit maketh alive; we work cheerfully for what we love; eagerly we pursue the object of affection, and how certainly we accomplish that whereunto we devote our lives, and give our energies. The apathy, the lack of Love and Christian vigor, comes of seeking only the letter of Truth, and stopping there, because it costs so much more to gain the spirit thereof.

The price of Truth is hourly devotion, cheerful sacrifice, toil and irrepressible conflict. Are you willing to work for your own self-advancement, and for the good of others, or do you think a few tireless laborers must or can do your work for you, and then you receive from a just God the wages you have not earned, and which is given to him who hath labored, and accordingly as he has labored?

The Science of Christian healing or the basis and tendency thereof, can be taught, but the Principle of this Science can never be fully understood unless you strive for the spirit of Truth and Love; then quench not the spirit, and despise not prophecy, and let him that thinketh he standeth take heed, lest he fall.

Friends, would you gain the understanding of Christian Science? Then you must gain its Principle, and arrive at the demonstration of Truth and Love. We must be wise to make others wise. The concord of our own being must be able to still the discord of another’s, if we heal in Science. Nor can we be ignorant of how to heal the sick and be confident of success. We first must know our way in Christian Science, and then walk in it.

If we understood the omnipotence of God, we should have no fear of sin, sickness or death; that would take away all fear, and gain the ear and arm of omnipotence. The spirit of Christianity, yea, the Truth of being reached, turns man away from matter toward Spirit, as naturally as the flower turns to the light. It enables him to discern the supremacy of Spirit, the omnipotence of Truth, its power over sickness, sin and death; and thus hath it come to be understood that they who worship the Father must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.

Relying on the help of God is looking to a person instead of a Principle for our demonstration, — divine Science requires more of us; do your own work is the demand of Truth. You must understand the Principle of Spirit so far as to realize the nothingness of matter, and the supremacy of Spirit. Isaiah said “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; it hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek. It hath send me to bind up the brokenhearted, to preach liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.”

In the parable of a man traveling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods — to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to every man according to his ability, and straightway took his journey.

Then he who had received the five talents, went and traded with the same, and made other five talents’ and he that had received two, gained other two, but he that had received one, went and digged in the earth and hid his Lord’s money. After a long time the Lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them; and so he that had received the five talents, etc.; but he that had the one talent came and said, “Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou as not strawed: And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.” His Lord said, “Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed; Thou oughest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore the talent of the slothful and give it to the industrious. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

With emotions not to be expressed, we leave this little Church of Christ to our Father’s loving care; having done what we could for the brief time we have been with you. Paul may plant and Apollos water; but God giveth the increase. Fourteen years we have labored in this state, writing, teaching and lecturing on the subject of Christian healing.

When we commenced these labors, not one within our knowledge knew what we meant, as we talked with him for the first time, on metaphysical healing, But undismayed we toiled on, inspired by the magnitude of our subject and having at heart only the welfare of mankind — the improvement of health and morals.

Since 1866, we have introduced our subject into nearly every state in the Union, and to a limited extent into Europe. Our students have gone into distant fields to spread the good tidings, to proclaim liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.

There never was a time in this century when the advancing truth of Christian healing was more looked upon and prosperous than now. There have been strong measures taken by a few of our backsliding students, to injure this cause, and to subvert Truth. But God has unmasked their malice and put to shame the leaders. More signal blessings and proofs of divine aid have followed every effort to dishearten us, for God reigns, and Christian Science cannot be held back.

Within the reach of every Christian student there is a high goal, hopes that cannot deceive, virtues that bring their sure reward, joys that are imperishable. But remember, vigilance is the price of success, victories worth achieving are not cheaply won. The Christian Scientist equipped with the spirit of his work is a sure victor: if he works, no matter if his opportunities to acquire the letter have been less than others more indolent, he will not turn back, and having the mark of the Lamb, the good shepherd that knoweth his own will feed him with the bread of Truth, and lead him into green pastures beside the still waters.

Change awaits the history of mortals; men flit across the stage of action like snowflakes driven before the storm; they sink and soar, until like the eagle, with an eye on the sun, they build their nests on high, and build for eternity. The places once knowing us will know us no more forever; the scenes, the friends, the smiles, the tears of the past and present are drifting by us into the fathomless sea of oblivion; we are parting before we part, hastening away from the present, into the future. What shall the meeting be? Are we ready for this hour and the next?





Lecture

Given at Parker Fraternity Hall, Sunday, June 23, 1879 Extemporaneously by Mrs. M. B. Glover Eddy Subject

“And why take ye thought for rainment? Consider the lilies of the field, . . . they toil not,” etc. — Matt. 6:28-29

Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these (holding up a bouquet). Who hath clothed the flowers, who gave them outline, and painted their fair petals? Was there a hand that did it? And was this hand flesh and bones? Was it matter or was it Mind that painted the flowers with fingers of light? Is there intelligence in a seed, an artist within a grain of mustard? What and where is the intelligence — at work for all; and what is this omnipotent, limitless infinite Mind, that shadows forth these tiny representatives of its own innate and intrinsic quality, beauty?

Do you say, “My mind can picture a flower in thought but my hands must outline, form and tint that flower?” Then do you see there is no resemblance between a personal action and God’s works, or the action of the Mind that creates all? But if mortal mind had not been at work to the result you named, could your hands have formed the waxen leaf? It is you, and not your hands, that evolves the ideals of Mind, and every method whereby Mind is expressed. Annihilate Mind, and there could be no flowers, no phenomena, no action — all is Mind; matter is but a belief that mortal mind entertains, and Mind cannot result in matter; therefore, it cannot produce matter — it is as impossible for Mind to result in a material flower, as for a flower at length to become Mind. One species cannot produce its opposite species.

You say the seed makes the flower. I say that both seed and flower are thoughts, emanating from Mind; mortal mind calls them matter, but to the immortal and omnipotent Mind they are thoughts, and thoughts are things, but the are spiritual things.

“He made every plant before it was in the ground. “Now you ask, is there anything to verify this statement? Yes, a very wicked thing will do it; the action of a wicked will proves it; mesmerism shows the result.

Belief is a quality of mortal mind; by acting upon the belief, a mesmerist will cause what is termed matter to change its form and appearances so that a flower instantly may become a serpent to him who believes it; hallucination and delirium tremens prove that objects of sense are but the creations of mind. Belief governs all the conclusions of mortal mind; the omnipotent intelligence illustrated this to the Hebrew law-giver when his staff became a serpent, and he was afraid of it; and his hand became leprous, and was healed without liniment or lotions. These proofs were important to the mission of Moses — first, because they proved that matter was not something, or a primitive condition, but simply what a man believes, — he sees it, feels it — in fine, what the senses say of it, — second, because the understanding of this fact destroys his fear of matter — third, because it revealed a practical Principle by which the sick are healed.

Moses would have been a necromancer, or mesmerist, had not God equipped him with the spirit of the Ten Commandments, which made him a law to himself, that was a prohibition to evil. Truth, Life and Love guided Moses, and this awakened understanding left him not a trickster, to cajole, or to wrong his race. Moses could not abuse the power that immortal unerring Mind, not the erring and mortal, confers.

Abiding by the Ten Commandments, the servant of God, commissioned to do good, cannot trespass on the rights of mind, cannot steal its treasures, or kill its joys any more than it can be a thief of material things, and a murderer. The power of Moses, of Prophet, and of Apostle to heal the sick was Christian Science, not mesmerism or the malpractice of mind that breaks the Ten Commandments, is an outlaw, a secret assassin, trespassing on the secret thoughts and intermeddling with the most sacred rights of mind. The primitive Christians’ demonstrations of the power of Mind were limited to divine Science that should govern all phenomena, since it gives harmony to all and discord to none.

That matter is but manifest mind, our night dreams afford evidence; we see, hear, feel, etc., in our night dreams the same as in our day dreams; objects have the same solidity to our touch; flowers the same fragrance, and landscape the same variety — beauty has its all-pervading charm, — friendship its joy, hatred and malice; sickness its pain, etc. But mind is all that sees, hears, feels or takes cognizance of this endless variety and passing panorama called matter.

“And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, . . . they toil not, neither do they spin. “We all shall learn that life in matter is but a dream, a belief, whether this dream goes on with open or closed lids; and our final wakening without matter where all is Mind will prove this. Dreams have defied philosophy simply because we are dreaming habitually, and much more of our philosophy is a dream.

There is a universal, as well as individual, belief of this mortal and erring mind, and we call this universal belief a law of matter; there is a universal law of the omnipotent unerring Mind — but this law is moral and spiritual; let us be careful not to blend these two in our reckonings, and mistake the one for the other. Jesus or Paul never spake of a law of health; therefore, when those that believed in laws material attempted to heal after the manner of the Apostles error indignant retorted, “Christ we know and Paul we know, but who are you?” Whoever would convince the mortal lawgivers to health and physics that matter never made a law, and that Jesus refused to recognize such a supposed law, and healed contrary to it with metaphysics, has something to do even though his demonstration, walking over the conditions of the supposed laws, proves them null and void.

These abstract statements of an occult science are valuable to you only in proportion to the good they do, and because if you fully understand them, it would enable you to heal the sick on the metaphysical basis; and only because you do not understand them yet, are you not able to heal on this Principle and Truth of being in defiance of material barriers.

I believe it has been reported we could walk to Egg Rock, but we have no recollection of that transaction, and think the reporter must have placed that laurel on metaphysics out of his own fertile fancy.

It is a universal concession of mortal mind that sin and sickness exist; and yet we all would like to make them non-exist; our only difference in opinions lies in the modus operandi of doing this. Theology treats sin scientifically in part; it instructs us to believe if we would be saved — then does not theology hang the salvation of mortals on an action of the mind, and why not hang health on this same peg? Jesus did, and it is self-evident if the action of mind accomplishes so very much in one direction, it can in another, and that it requires less helpless credulity to conclude that we can restore health through the medium of Mind and the understanding, more easily than we can save through belief.

The Soul that you cannot see must be infinitely more than the body. Is it less possible through an action of Mind to destroy inflammation, tubercles, or ulcers of the lungs, than to change instantaneously a sinner into a saint? I have cured consumption instantaneously through the action of Mind, but I have not succeeded so readily in curing a chronic sin, and healing morally.

The possibility of healing the body through Mind is already established; ancient Christianity furnished the precedent and proof; then, wherefore delay to modernize this great good? There is more materiality in sin than in sickness; it is more gross, the supposed material law producing it more imperative, and mortal mind is less willing to part with sin than sickness; therefore, it is easier to heal sickness than sin through Mind. Matter is inert; its entire action is governed by and dependent on mind, whether this action be mental or physical in our subdivision of terms; hence the importance to understand the powers of mind in motive, conscience and capacity.

Metaphysics demands more, and points higher than any other educational process; but it demands proof instead of profession, and can demonstrate all it demands. Metaphysics requites Christ,Truth, to heal the sick, whereas the modus in other instances may be morphine or whiskey. We begin at foundation when we begin in Mind, and demand Truth.

The embryo of mortal and material man is error, and the superstructure it builds are propensities, malice, falsehood, yea, delusion. But Truth is the master of a lie, and is tearing down the false and upbuilding the true, both physically and morally; hence, the enmity between Truth and error, and the outcry, “why art thou come hither to torment us before the time,” but physics are kneeling to metaphysics — insomuch as the spiritual survives the material, and error goes down before Truth.

Whether is greater, the potter that has power over the clay, or the clay assuming power over the potter? And which shall be the passport to confidence and the ensign of success, a material diploma, or the mental equipment of Truth? Which shall be greater, the stamp of physics, or the impress of Almighty God in metaphysics?

Mind is causation; there we begin at the foundation to make pure the streams. When we begin with Mind understood to govern the body, it will be governed right, and never until then. Men busy themselves to learn what matter is doing without mind, when it is self-evident it can do nothing, and treat disease as if matter was the only acting intelligence. When I medicated on blotting paper pellet and powder according to homeopathy, I verily believed medicine did the cure, even when there was no medicine, and according to my belief so was it unto me.

From Aconitum to Zincum oxydatum all through the two hundred and sixty remedies of the Jahr — I could give the general symptoms, characteristic peculiarities, and moral symptoms to which each medicine was applied, and this helped me as a pharmacist, for when I shook the paper or the bottle that contained the drug thirty times in preparing it, and retained but one drop of the original tincture, to one hundred drops of prepared alcohol thirty times, I was thinking thirty times of what that remedy ought to cure, the result was I got more metaphysics than physics into the dose; hence the potency of the higher attenuations, and their increasing efficacy as matter disappeared, and mind went into the medicine. I would attenuate Aconitum until it was no longer aconite, but sugar of milk; and this self-same sugar named aconite, would at once allay febrile symptoms, reduce the pulse, and promote powerful perspirations.

I would take common table salt, one grain, call it Natrum muriaticum, and then say it was a remedy for rheumatic affections, shortening of tendons, bad effects from chagrin and anger, diseases of the eye, ear, nose, etc., and shake it up to the highest attenuations where there is no salt, or the salt had lost is savor, and with this suppositional drug I have cured a patient in a collapsed state of typhoid fever.

The highest attenuation I ever reached in homeopathy was not to medicate the sugar of milk, and with this harmless dose I cured an inveterate case of dropsy. This was my last material medicine. I then took a step forward, not from matter to mind but from mind to Mind, for I had learned that homeopathy was the stepping-stone to metaphysics, if only homeopathy would say there is nothing in a name, and mind is more potent than milk coagulated.

Here is a figure; I never thought of it before; the infancy of metaphysical healing was at a period of milk, when the poison was going out of remedies, and mind was coming into them. Again, the opposite of this gentle origin is the Cerberus at the gate, the malpractice of mental healing, the dog that guards Hades according to mythology, and according to Revelation, the dragon that was wroth with the woman and stood ready to devour the child as soon as it was born, but the child was caught up into heaven; it was an immortal idea of Truth that reaches its own element of harmony, and triumphs over envy and lies.

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.” We have spoken of the power of Mind; we will now instance the application of this power morally; say upon a thief. A friend to humanity seeks to reform this victim of sin; first, with reason according to the intellect; second with spiritual truth addressed to the sentiments; third, with Love that remonstrates, explains and woos, till he says to the thief, “You have made no gain by stealing, but a terrible loss, for that matter hath no treasure to compare with the jewel of honesty, and if you lose this gem of mind you can gain nothing; money is less than manhood; the cup is poisoned that you drink.” The wrong doer reflects, feels at first a slight twinge of self-accusation, is slightly uneasy; finally he questions his own heart, and flees before his inquiries, his friend now persists saying, “The measure ye mete shall be measured to you again full and running over; God holds the scales of justice and they will be rightly adjusted, He will balance your account; you are weighing against yourself. O let not the beam tremble and tip on the side of wrong, for thence will follow despair and doom. Now look up, your redemption draweth nigh.” The transgressor is aroused, the dream and delusion of gain by stealing departs, he sees his madness and seeing it, reforms and is saved.

That friend was a sound missionary, he gave the angels joy, and if he received no acknowledgement on earth, it was only because he was nearer angels than men, and so must wait for his reward in heaven. Mind is a tribunal, and it decides the case from the evidence before it, the mental pro or con of sin or sickness determines the facts; it makes the sin or the sickness.

The student of metaphysical Science who decides not to be an honest man, will abandon this mental method of cure sooner or later, for he ruins his own prospects, adulterates his medicine, and a poisonous mind is worse than a poisonous drug wherewith to treat disease. You say, “Is it not a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, Truth, that proves itself?” Yes, unless you are honest and it should be metaphysics, and the protection that Truth affords, can save us from the dishonest, with the power it holds over error. The mental malpractitioner is a moral leper cast out by metaphysics, and that is why “this dragon is wroth with the woman” and charges her with the sins he commits.

Truth hath its own glorious realm, calm, serene, steadfast; and error cannot ever reach this eternity of Soul. Our beautiful earth reflects a glorious Mind whose raiment is shining. Soon she will be clad in soft emerald sheen with breath all fragrance, and cheek all bloom. May is the beauty of the year, is the best type of all the earth, her beauty dimples in the sunbeam, is cloistered in the buds voiceless; as Mind it comes forth a fairy nun to woo creation with the womanhood of wisdom.

From earth we look higher, and try the stars, not as the Chaldee to read in their effulgence the fate of men, but to ask of mystery a token, if in their midst Mind hath its forms and personifications of thought as here, and we ask till tired fancy flees to more familiar things, and fold her drooping wings below the skies. Then forced by the hydraulics of Truth up higher, we at last take no thought about the raiment of matter, and Mind puts on her own white robes washed through suffering, and made white in the blood of the Lamb, tears wrung from innocence. Our Father hath then arrayed us in His own shining garments, and behold a greater than Solomon is here.





Death

Because the phenomenon of death has divided into many the plane of human experience, it has generally been imagined that in some way it is a door to heaven, harmony. Not only that, it has been generally accepted by the mass that there is nothing better of human experience possible than the degrading earth spectacle of today, only bearable because of the greater part being hidden from individual sight.

This is utterly untrue. The best men and women of humankind have not been yet seen by us, and never will be until we rise above our present mind level, not by death but through the gates of Life.

The highest plane of human consciousness is but ethereal. That which has been called solid substance is now proved to be not in matter; while matter proves to be merely the ultimate concluding phase of every false material conception of eternal realities.





Catholicism — Protestantism Christian Science

The first holds barbarous pictures of cruelty in mind, and carries out its ideal. Instead of liberality and universality, it is absolute despotism. It would cause Jesus Christ to abdicate for the Pope, and his reverence to have full power to sin and libitum, and teach others to do so.

Protestantism is susceptible of breaking each of the Ten Commandments, and teaching others so to do; and then by appeal to the Catholics’ deposed sovereign to obtain pardon, and be welcomed into heaven through the religious law of chancery. Insolvent, unable to be a good man himself, God is expected to justify him, because God is good and pays the debts of sin, so that the sinner can pass on without punishment.

Christian Science is susceptible of being made the repository for all the sins of the other two religions in marked face and form, whereby the most aggravated and exaggerated and liberated powers of evil have full sway.

Each religion defined by what the words include is right; but fatally wrong and wronged in its interpretation by the world, the flesh and the devil, — the three-in-one of error, opposed to the trinity of Life, Truth and Love.

The woman has cast into these three measures of iniquity, the leaven that is fermenting them. Therefore, they, inherent in mortal mind, take vengeance on their destroyer. Alas for the masquerade of their friendship, of their gratitude, of their honesty, of their virtue, and especially of their humanity towards this woman. Does one human heart love her? No! It is all a farce. The carnal mind hates her, and deserts her, lies about her, steals from her, mocks her, betrays her, nails her to the cross and spits on her, saying. “come down from the cross.” Then parts her seamless robe that has not one ridge of the three religions as interpreted by this trio of error — and casts lots for it. Rending it into rags it picks up the shorn glory and decks itself therewith in harlequin jacket. Not one of these three religions — misused — is the Rock on which Christ, Truth, builds the church against which the gates of hell cannot prevail. And the last one is named the final one; therefore, it holds the most relentless war against the woman.

(From Mrs. Eddy’s personal notebook written in her own handwriting. Book No. 117)





Let The Tree, etc.

Let the sick test the validity of these statements thus: note their state of health after listening to the declaration that disease is real, to the descriptions of the dying agonies of the immortal Christ, who was tempted in all points as we, yet without sin; and sin is all that can bring suffering, and it would be an unjust law that would attach penalties to our best deeds. This is but the human misconception of mortals that should pass away and all pictures of disease, of sin and death should be displaced, and effaced from the camera of the human mind, and the divine image and likeness reflected as the Scriptures declare, and man in His image.

I have seen a relapse that recurred from an image drawn upon the human mind. I have proven this fact by visiting a patient whom I had seen but once and healed of pleurisy, and was called to visit the next day the same patient and found her suffering from relapse. Examining her mind for the cause, I found her physician of the old school, who had failed to heal her, upon hearing that she was restored, had called from curiosity to see if it was so and had talked over her case, describing the condition of the lungs, the pleurea, etc. After seeing this as the cause, I immediately removed the picture from her mind, and the breath came naturally and the pain was gone.

This case cited is one out of hundreds handled in the same manner, and with the same results. Let a patient attend church and listen to a sermon describing the suffering of Jesus on the cross, and declaring the reality of death and disease, and depicting in a manner to excite the emotions, the sufferings they occasion, and if that patient catches the preacher’s mental picture, it will produce a relapse of his disease, This has been proven in thousands of cases of disease.

The M.D. and the D.D. impart these pictures of disease through a law of mind as directly and certainly as they impart a sense of the duty of man to keep the Ten Commandments, and obey the law of God. And this despite the teachings of our great Exemplar, who not only taught how to cast out of mind and hence out of the body, devils, evils, sin and sickness, but he practiced it, and left it as his command and example. He raised the dead, he cast out evil and said of the woman sick whom “Satan hath bound,” Luke 13:16, that indicated that the spinal difficulty from which she had suffered many years was caused by the human mind, and not matter, and he proved his diagnosis to be correct by healing her through Mind, and not matter.

Again Jesus declared more than once in the Scriptures, he that believeth in me shall never die, and he demonstrated the truth of that saying; he gave to the priests and rabbis his body to be crucified and said to them: You cannot destroy it, and in three days I will prove this great fact to you; and he did as he said. He appeared to his disciples, and showed them the selfsame body that had been crucified and buried; but they, having not laid off the old superstitions wholly, were reluctant to believe it, although they saw it, and urged the past and present superstition that, because he had died, he must be a spirit, while Jesus knew and declared the very opposite.

Had our Christ this divine knowledge, understanding, and declarations of these great facts of human existence, to which he devoted his life and gave himself up to their efforts to prove their theory of killing him, and thereby demonstrated his own knowledge that they could not kill him nor change his body, in its conditions and manifestations, so long as he maintained this attitude of mind? He even called their attention to this great fact by showing the prints of the nails in his hands, and the scar from the spear thrust, all of which had healed so quickly under the direction of his own thought.

Now what is our remedy for these contagious diseases carried on through the images of mind? One remedy is mental vaccination, the only instance in which vaccination is tolerable. Take the fine point of Spirit, whose edge is Truth, prick the human affections, then inoculate with divine Love, and leave the human mind with this divine Love circulating throughout all the system of thought, and the liability to the contagious diseases called sin and sickness will cease. And this result would not be supernatural, it would be the law of Love demonstrated.

It is the law of paganism that would sacrifice in the name of God, a human victim to appease the wrath of God, or to propitiate for their own sins. These glaring crimes are misnamed manifestations of love, and of the laws of God, Who taught this inconsistent blasphemy? Jesus the Christ never taught it; he untaught it, and said, “woe unto him, through whom it cometh” !





Jesus Method

Have we a Christianity that follows the example of Christ? We have no history of his talking disease, diagnosing it, or describing any suffering but those that were mental, and short sentences in reference to those he bade the sickness hold its peace, and come out of him. This in direct proof that disease is caused by mind. So its remedy is not in talking it, but forbidding the reports of nerves, saying, hold your peace.





Sermon

John 21:5

“Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No.”

According to the gospel narrative St. Peter was an impulsive man, and at times morally vacillating; he tested as well as rewarded the wonderful patience of his Master. He was the spokesman for the twelve disciples, and his mental activity and sudden strength stormed the citadel of other minds, dispossessed them, and they capitulated. It was thus that his more moderate brethren fell into his temptation, and went back to their nets. When the Master was no longer with them to rebuke and lead on by his calm courage and moral grandeur, the tension was great, and the scoffs of men, and their struggle with self seemed to overpower them, and they yielded to their rule.

In the days of their true Leader’s prosperity, they left their several vocations, changed the channels of their lives socially and religiously, with the hope, no doubt, of following him spiritually in word and works. Now, when ambition to see the kingdom restored to the Jews was blasted, their leader no longer a victor, but vanquished, slain and silent as the sepulchre where they had laid him, they who had followed him for worldly prestige or power, turned away, weary of the strife. They had not suffered enough to enjoy the life of their Lord. It took stripes, imprisonment and mockings to atone for their dire actions, and bring them in humility to the foot of their Master’s cross, where they could say, “I count it all joy that I am found worthy to suffer for Christ.”

In his palmy day, when the full-orbed glory of divine power — healing the sick and raising the dead — shone as the very Shekinah in their midst, and the anointed of his Father rode triumphantly into the city that stoned the prophets, his disciples appeared to follow him; but when the pall of crucifixion was enshrouding them, and the Master bade them watch with him one hour, they slept. When they would wag their head directingly and the finger of scorn was pointed at them, their pride overcame their pity, and Peter profanely denied that he knew him. This was the hour Jesus spoke of to that disciple to prepare him to meet it as befitted a true follower of him, but he doubted him and replied impertinently that it was not so. This was the hour when the loving Godlike Jesus should be tempted by the power of death and the grave, and worse than they, the malignity of his foes, contrary to human law, should engirdle him on every hand, and voluntarily surrender his body to their brutal cruelty, and listen speechlessly to the impious taunts of maudlin hypocrites.

The scene with which our text is connected opens on the shore of the sea of Tiberius, the sea of Galilee. The night was dark, the clouds hung loweringly over the dark abyss of waters, the silence was profound; nought was heard but the startled call of the lone night-bird among the boughs along the outskirts of the pebbly shore. The silence is broken by approaching footsteps, and we behold seven men with sad, dejected countenances, seven disappointed, mistaken men walking slowly to the dull dark shore, They have with them the paraphernalia for a fishing voyage, and there lies the old leaky boat so long unused; but they enter it again, fasten their light to the bow; hang their net to the stern, and launch into the dark depths of waters; they go backward and forward in the darkness, even as Job said of his experience, “I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him.” The very fishes avoided them. They would not be caught in their company. They will not be duped by dupes, They toiled all night but caught nothing. They whom Jesus called away from their nets are now ensnared in them. The teachings of Jesus that had made them fishers of men are cast aside. The allurements of the world have won them into by-paths. They had promised to Christ more than they had given; hence their present loss.

The disciples must have realized this in the vain toil and remembered how great a thing it was to be made fishers of men, able to draw all men after them; to heal the sick and reform the sinner; and comparing this great gift with the fallen senser of getting gain where there was only loss, they turned their boat toward the shore. It was the darkest hour before the dawn. This high resolve saved them. The Christ had not departed from them, but they had left him, and lost him because they would not watch and work in the hour of his crucifixion.

In the days of his prosperity they followed him afar off, and forsook him when they lost the hope that he would restore the kingdom of the Jews. Lessoned by their afflictions, they would now retrace these false footsteps with the preparation of heart. At his moment of self-surrender and consecration they hear from over the dark wave the loving call of their Lord asking, “Children, have ye any meat?” They answered him, “No.” And he said, “Cast the net on the right side of the ship and ye shall find.”

But this was the point to be gained to know which was the right side, was it a material or a spiritual life that they should seek and strive to attain more devoutly than they had done? Here man’s extremity was God’s opportunity, and the students of Jesus chose for the first time without a single consideration of self, the right side, the spiritual side, and now they could trust the loving Father to crown their labors with rich reward. This was the same as saying, “We are now convinced of our folly and will return and follow Christ nearer and more faithfully than we have done.” So the impulsive Peter leaped into the cold wave, not attempting this time to walk over when his Master was not by his side to help him, but he was willing to beat the wave and swim for the shore to work, watch and pray until he himself had risen so as to behold the risen Christ, and gain a higher sense of Truth and Love. This could not be done when he sought Truth, not for the loaves and fishes, but for Truth’s sake, and willing to bear that cross before receiving its crown. Thus prepared for a blessing, he found it, and lo, the barley loaf and him on the shore.

Christ, the Truth of Life, always gives us enough to begin with when we are ready to serve Him. We shall know the Truth when we are ready to receive it, and then the Truth shall make us free. Now they were willing in the day of his power to work with small support, they would now begin with one fish and one loaf to work who once had baskets full left of their supplies. They could sup with the Saviour with humbler terms than they would once.

The last less that Jesus taught his students was the most advanced, and this was that lesson, repentance, humility, self-consecration. This was our Lord’s last supper with his students, and it commanded a higher experience than the feast of the passover to remind his people of the passage of the Israelites out of the Egyptian bondage. It was his last human act that showed the divine love for men in a higher sense. It was the disciples first and last spiritual supper with their great Teacher. This supper with their Lord was the perpetual passover; it pointed the way to everlasting victories, the final destruction of sin, sickness, death, victories spiritually made through that which held no fellowship with material modes, the crucifixion of the flesh, and the faith that cometh by works, the demonstration of the divine Principle that governs man in the order of Science.





Matthew 15:24

“But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Jesus taught and ministered almost solely to the Jews. Their religion was a sterile formalism; they were seeking spiritual eminence by impossible means. The church was unwilling to accept Jesus as a leader in their religion, for he was the most arch reasoner, rationalist, and preached a bold heterodoxy. The church clung to a creed; the basis of their religion was matter and personality; their rites took the place of spiritual love and power; a person to save them, was more than a saving Principle that exalts man’s life and demonstrated Deity. In place of their religion of matter, the Judean prophet asked for a religion of Mind.

The church worshipped only the person of God and formed this person of a finite belief; then it sought to kill God in the person of Jesus. Jesus taught that God is a divine Mind, too liberal, unselfish and universal to be individual; hence, person was but one of its myriad expressions. Jesus taught salvation as a recompense, not a gift, and this great and grand truth wrought out salvation; for only the most exalted minds were inclined to seek it, and they would love it at the start, and continue this love through the bitter ordeal it must pass up to its glorification; hence, this impartiality of salvation.

The leadership of Jesus marks out the way of Christian Science. It is as if he said to us, “O children of earth, you are pursuing impracticable ways of spiritual growth. The Christianity I teach and practice is disenthrallment from servile sense; it makes man one with God in sympathy; being and volition.

Jesus so understood Love; he could trust himself to its benignant sway; and thus it was he gained that ascendancy of soul that harmonizes man with the eternal Soul, and reveals Life as eternal, for life is learned in no other way.

If Soul sinned it would die. In every land and in every age, there was never an individual unfolded into preeminent manhood, but through the noble ordeal of self- immolation. He or she must have renounced individual choice in the interest of universal principles. He must have been just in reverence for justice, true for truth’s sake, and virtuous because he was pure.

The only way into that eminent domain of character, where Principle rules a man, is by self-surrender.





On Sulcer’s Lecture

The depths, breadths and heights of Christ’s Science are becoming quite familiar to the neophytes who are especially represented by our able lecturers sent from the Board of Lectureship, but there are places, attitudes of thought and laws of Mind that are yet unexplored by them. One of those places I will make as plain as language can make metaphysical facts, and as these can become apparent to the present highest stage of metaphysical investigation by the students.

In that most able lecture on Christ Science delivered by Dr. A. A. Sulcer of California, he refers to the objections raised on this subject, and especially to those of a reader of my books, who questioned the soundness of my explanation of cause and effect, and their relative pertinacity; that is, “How can the body manifest the actual type of disease that the individual thinker, or patient, has not believed that he possessed?” I answer, “It cannot, but the patient does not know what he believes, nor the effects of the hidden belief, nor its origin; but the practitioner who has the case should comprehend all these through a law of the divine Mind, and the natural law of no vacuums.”

Truth is infinite; if something is supposed to exist apart from infinitude, and somebody believes that something is a reality, the remedy for this case is for the practitioner to be so in rapport with the divine law of infinity that the error unseen by the finite thought, and yet existing as a finity and error, is distributed and dissolved.

Then you ask the practitioner, did he know what he destroyed, and he would answer as the astronomer answered upon saying there was a certain numeral that must be found in his calculations of the eclipse, and he could only find it by stopping thinking, and then it was suggested.

The explanation of this is that the infinite being all, whatever seems to obscure it, if mortal mind will cease its flutterings, will by a law of infinity be suggested, and the error when discovered is destroyed.





Communion Address

Touch a rock with your fingers, and the evidence of its being substance is but the opinion that mortals entertain of solids. Change this opinion in a dream, and the rock would disappear. Dreams interpret all phenomena of mortal life, for this so-called life is but a dream, a dream soon told; and waking from this dream we learn that Life and man are immortal.

Job says, “How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is the dust (matter), who crumble to pieces as if moth eaten?” God not man; the Principle, and not the idea; shall answer this question, and then return to the First Commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” We ask, “What is this Me; is it Spirit or matter?” The Scriptures declare that, “God is Spirit.” Thence it follows that His command is, “Thou shalt have no other mind or substance but Spirit,” and this defines a rock whose substance is Truth, The Rock of Ages.

Here Christian Science translates your sense of the material into the spiritual sense of the universe, including man. Divine Science is the original language of Spirit, also “the new tongue” that St. Mark alludes to. When touching the subject of signs following it explains miracles as no infraction of divine law, but fulfilling it. Science translates matter into the original meaning of Spirt, whereof the prophet declared, “It shall no longer be known in Israel.”

(The remainder of this article is similar to Miscellaneous Writings 121:17 to 123:16, ending with the sentence, “The Christian’s God is never angry, never absent, ever-loving, and ever nigh; too pure to behold iniquity.”)





Sketch Of My Own Knowledge Of Dr. Quimby

Mr. Eugène H. Greene went to Quimby’s son, George, in Belfast, Maine, and asked him if he had his father’s manuscript, and he replied that he had. Then he asked him why he did not publish it, and he replied, because they were in advance of the times. Mr. Greene asked him if there were no other extant, and he answered there were not; he had all of his father’s writings.

Mr. Edward H. Hammond visited this Mr. George Quimby and asked him similar questions, and he answered in substance as before, to Mr. Greene. Mr. H. then asked him to sign his name to his answers and he did.

Mr. E. A. Thompson, who was a patient of Dr. Quimby’s at the time I was his patient, certifies as follows (affidavit).

Mr. J. A. Dresser, a patient of Dr. Quimby at the time I was his (Q’s) patient, soon after the death of Dr. Quimby, wrote the following letter to me, and in a newspaper article Mr. D. wrote in 18 — that himself and I (then Mrs. Glover) were students of Dr.

Quimby, and I learned of him Christian Science. Mr. A. J. Swartz of Chicago and Mrs. Philbrook (see C. S. Journal)

Dr. Quimby was a magnetic physician. (mode of practice etc.) His portrait hung in the window of the Banner of Light office in Boston with this inscription, Dr. P. P. Quimby, Magnetic Doctor. (Mrs. Easton’s testimony) (See copyright suit with Arens).

In Arens’ reply to Mrs. Eddy’s Bill of Complaint, he said in substance, that she was not the originator of the matter outlined in his books but one Quimby was. He was unable however, to prove this or any other points of his defense, and the case was decided in Mrs. Eddy’s favor, etc.





Mark 14: 23

“And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, etc.”

We are here today not to commemorate the life or death of our dear Master by partaking of bread or drinking wine, but to seek communion with his spirit that we would make our own. In communion with Christ, bread and wine can only stand for the thoughts they express, and I ask only your kind and thoughtful attention while I shall endeavor, briefly, to discharge the office of their interpreter.

Could I only give you a new and vivid sense of the faith and love, the greatness and truth of which they tell, you would receive an exhilaration and conscious nourishment that no material element can supply. Then would you understand what our communion service is designed to be, and what it is to commemorate Jesus in spirt and in truth.

The word, sacrament, comes from the Latin sacramentum, which means the oath whereby the Roman soldier bound himself in allegiance to his general, and this was not ritual service.

The conviction hourly deepens in my mind that the essential value of Christianity is not in doctrine, formal observances or mere moral precepts, but in the great fact that it gives us in a human person a revelation, not of anything preternatural, but of our own nature in its highest earthly development.

That which bloomed out of the life of Jesus, filling the world with odor of divinity, was the ensample for man, and this coincidence of the human and the divine must yet appear in our lives. It may take a longer life than that of mortals to quicken it into vitality. Buried deep it may be from human sight, and lie dormant for thousands of years, like the wheat found in Egyptian tombs, but in the Father’s house, — the many chambers of Soul, — it must sometime fully disclose its identity with the spirit of Jesus. Heaven only knows what searching methods, what agonies, what ages of crime, what revolutions, may be required for this imperishable germ of greatness and goodness, to struggle up to freedom.





A Letter

Am I not the window through which God has let in light to this period? Then who shall shut out this light by disobedience to His voice, speaking as I know that it is through me as I dictate this advice?

Shall a lawyer take the place of God’s mouthpiece? Jesus said, “Woe unto you lawyers, for you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men.” Again it was said of Jesus, “This is my beloved son, hear ye him.”

The spiritual idea, the second teacher of Christ, is speaking to you now of the power of God to carry the Church in Boston safely through this crucial hour on to the consummation of what He designs, namely, a church He through me rescued from your enemies, namely, a lot of land where you could build a place for worship “under your own vine and fig tree.” And this is God’s hour for testing your trust in Him whether your faith be greater in Spirit than in matter, in ways not understood, than in those mortals map out.

Remember this, my earnest warning — Pray no more tribute until you know what you are contributing to.

As ever your loving Leader,

Mary Baker Eddy





Geometry, etc.

“This is Life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” — John 17:3.

is, not shall be — knowing me.

  1. Geometry, etc.
  2. Scripture quotation.
  3. The straight way to knowing Jesus.

To know Jesus aright is not to know him solely as a personal man and a personal Savior, but it is to know his character, to know the meaning of his commandments, and to love him as he commanded, namely, by keeping his commandments. To know him is to know how he healed the sick; how he walked the wave and commanded it; how he turned the water into wine, and multiplied the loaves and fishes without meal or monad; and how he rolled away the stone from the door of the sepulchre and overcame death, and the grave. Geometrically and divinely scientifically the way to know him is straight.

Nov. 5, 1897





The Spirit

Always be gentle and just, but he who is just will not always be understood as gentle. “God loveth those whom he chasteneth.” Justice is gentle, though it seem severe. A gentleman is always just, and injustice is always ungentlemanly.

One little word in kindness spoken, A token or a tear,

Has often healed a heart that’s broken And made a friend sincere.

The final lesson the lesson which consummates progress, is this: When I rebuke a student, if that student receives it gently, and recognizes its justice, if he is thankful for it he will continually progress.

When under the rod and sorely chastised, if we have faith in the love that is dealing with us, and know it is God, and we are gentle under this rod, we have won the guerdon of all the lessons of human life.

The letter alone without a due proportion of the spirit of Christian Science, almost inhumanizes a mortal; it chastises his material mode of love, of feeling, or being either kind or true, and if he has not gained the spiritual sense of those, there is nothing left to him but the knowledge of a false sense of goodness which he must either loathe and lose the false sense of goodness, or else, having it, be consciously false to himself, and of necessity false to others. “To thine own self be true and it must follow as the night the day thou canst not then be false to any man. — Shakespeare





Sermon

Col 2:21, “Touch not; taste not; handle not.” Subject: A mother in the flesh and a Mother in Spirit.

The fleshly mother teaches her child not to put his hand in the blaze of gas that looks so pretty to the infantile eye, streaming up as by magic from a tiny jet. “Touch not,” she says to her child. “Now, mind, ‘this is medicine in the wine cup,’ the doctors say. So is liquor and quinine, and your father drinks that; but it would kill you; taste not.” She says, “You must creep, baby; it would bend your little limbs to walk too soon. You must sleep, baby; it makes you cross and sick to lose your nap, etc., etc., etc.”

The Mother in Spirit: “Oh, my God, tell us what are our tasks; show us one millionth part of what she shall do; be that to direct the middle-aged man or the man with hoary hairs, or curb the youth borne on by the headstrong currents that will drown him, or drive him away from God.” This Mother, pale with the momentous impulse to say something when she should, must speak, begins by saying, “I know you will despise my uncalled-for warming. I know you cannot see that I know more than you do.”





A Fragment

May the thousands of the beloved students who are following in this line of light accept my deep gratitude therefor.

Jesus was the Messiah because he loved God and hated iniquity (Bible). Who can destroy the evil they know not, are blind to? None but the infinite Good. Jesus tempted in all points as we, yet without sin. (Bible)

Jesus said, What man goeth to war and sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost whether he is able with 10,000 to meet him that cometh against him with 20,000? (Bible). He called upon his disciples to watch with him and had they obeyed him, it would have spared the severest experience of the last nineteen centuries. History has proven that our Master’s individuality was not lacking.

(Fastened to the above is the following:)

I am daily healing the sick and comforting such as mourn, etc., etc.

Subject: FAITH

Hebrews 11: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

In Greek the primitive signification of the verb whence the term faith is derived, is to bind, draw, or lead — the term meaning something which makes fast. The English language defines faith, the assent of the mind to the truth of what is declared by another, resting on his authority and veracity, without other evidence.

In theology, faith means a belief in the Scriptures, of the being and perfection of God, of the existence, character, and doctrines of Jesus as both man and God. The historical, or speculative, faith is little distinguished from the belief of the existence and achievements of Alexander, or Caesar.

Evangelical faith is the assent of the mind to the truth of divine revelation on the authority of God’s testimony, accompanied with a cordial assent of the will, and approbation of the affections, and dependence on the merits of Jesus for salvation.

Divine Science, or what we term Christian Science, gives the signification of faith as understanding, not merely a trust in God, but the clear sense of God’s trustworthiness as Life, Truth and Love, and these three one, and the divine Principle which, understood, we shall not only obey and love supremely, but utilize. This faith, or understanding, draws and binds man to the divine nature; it reveals God’s omnipotence, the all might of the divine Principle, and how this Principle understood must, at length destroy all sin, sickness and death.





Personality Under The Mask Of Impersonality

A SENSE of sinfulness merely awakened is a sense of others’ sin. The beginning of regeneration brings our “God be merciful to ME a sinner.” A glimmering of the truth of impersonality brings out the sense of personality. While one lives undisturbed in the general consciousness of personality, personality is relatively peaceable and innocent. When the vipers’ nest is uncovered the inmates writhe and sting. When personality is uncovered it becomes aggressive. Its pretended attacks on personality in others are an effort at self-preservation — an evasion, a trick, contrived to satisfy the demands of awakened but as yet uninstructed sense, The distress over the manifestation of personality in others, is its writhings in ourselves; its aggressive manifestation through us are really its fighting back. Growth towards impersonality consists in the destruction of these manifestations in ourselves. All effort at destruction of it outside of ourselves is a shirking of our own problem.

Sometimes the letter of Christian Science is used for gain or notoriety. Then personality changes from it unconscious form to hypocrisy. Dishonest, perverted personality becomes so impersonal as to steal what it can of Christian Science without acknowledgment of its Founder. This dishonesty shelters itself under the declaration that Truth belongs to no one, and cries out against personality, while it fills columns of the daily papers with advertisements of itself. The thief of material things reasons in the same way, on a lower plane. He says the possessor of what he wants has no right to it, and that he is keeping others out of their own.

The Robert Macaire, pistols in belt, that voices the thieves’ morality from the stage where unconscious mortal mind looks on at mimic presentations of itself, is the type of the higher evolution of mortal mind that comes out on the stage of liberated mind, perverted to evil, and preaches “impersonality” while it steals, and perverts what it steals.

The honest student of Christian Science makes loyal acknowledgement both to the source of Truth and his Messenger. “A just acknowledgement of Truth and what it has done for us, is an effectual help. Casting aside moral honesty, for the mistaken policy of dishonesty, betrays an ignorance of Christian Science, that must unfit one to heal or to teach.” From the Christian Science Journal, Vol. 7, Page 315.

There is no evil, but you are in the sense of evil, and your problem is to work out of it. From the Christian Science Journal, Vol. 7, Page 314.

These inquires are coming from the “four quarters,” — For what purpose has Mrs. Eddy relinquished certain lines of labor in the field of Christian Science and called others to the work? Is she writing her history? or completing her works on the Scriptures? She is doing neither, but is taking a vacation, her first in twenty-five years. She is taking no direction of her own or others, but her desire is that God may permit her to continue to live apart from the world, free from the toil and turmoil in which her days have been passed for more than a quarter century.

She has no desire to write with the pen her own history. Those who know her best may write it after that God has written it with the diamond point of Truth.

The world is not ready for the translation of the Scriptures into the “new tongue.” The old tongues are not sufficiently confounded for this; the babel is not yet complete. The confusion of old tongues must precede the diffusion of God’s idea and the understanding of its Divine Principle and demonstration. From the Christian Science Journal, Vol. 7, Page 161.





From Bliss Knapp’S Book Pages 126 & 127

The case named of rupture is considered very difficult, but God says all things are possible to Him. You have only to rouse yourself from a stagnant sense of God’s power and presence. . . . Never yield for a moment to doubt or dismay. . . God is perhaps trying you as He has tried all his own, and if you stand the test, all at once you will come into the kingdom of our Lord, a clear and abiding sense of your power to heal. Only be faithful over a few things and he will make you ruler over many, and then you will enter into the joy of your work. Rupture is only a thought of matter, but there is no matter and man’s entire substance is Spirit. Rouse yourself from the dream of matter, and pluck the beam out of your own eye; help others and you are helping yourself; help yourself and you will help others. You know what I taught you is true. Now do not let the enemy sow tares while you sleep — be awake, and watch. Deny with all boldness that you cannot heal, for to admit it is dishonoring God, since He it is who heals, worketh through us, and we must see that we reflect Him — reflect the divine power. I know, my dear students, the way is the way of our Master, full of crosses and crowns. I have more to meet than my students, so much more, you cannot conceive of my cup. But still I drink it, thankful that I am found worthy to suffer for Christ.

Work right on, dear Mrs. Knapp, take pay for your labor, for the laborer in this cause is worthy of his hire, and God has employed you and He will pay you sure.





Humbug Homeopathy — Like Cures Like Allopathy — Opposites Cure Opposites

While the physician of King Louis 11th was giving him for a remedy, the blood of babes and the gizzards of three common crows ground to powder, the M. D.’s were consulting with amazing subtlety whether the crude humors and black bile contained man’s spirit, or the dry humors and yellow bile.

Plato said a function of the intellect is in the liver, that thoughts are in the liver, and modified by the bitterness of the bile.

As foolish for the sick to place their faith and hope in homeopathy as in snakes’ charms, divination, the laying on of hands, or animal magnetism.

Martin Luther told the people that if you run a stick through three toads and apply it to a pestilential tumor, it cures it.

John Wesley attributed his cure to a brown plaster made of an egg.

Jahr’s new Manual of Homeopathy says that chalk or carbonate of lime in the decillionth of a grain will cure 125 different diseases. But ten thousand such doses are drunk in every swallow of water.

Dr. Tulley in 1830 wrote, “Bleeding the sick slays annually more than the sword.” George Washington in his last illness had 90 ounces of blood taken from his veins in 12 hours, and took in the same time 20 grains of calomel.





Son

Was a name given by teachers to their scholars — Solomon says my son, etc. In the original texts a month was called the son of a year. Romans; As many as are led by the spirit are the sons of God.

Sons of God, in the Hebrew, is employed in the sense of good men. The evangelist says, “who hath given us the power to become the sons of God” — It is employed also to designate evil men — in Psalms: “Oh! ye sons of men how long will ye love vanity?”





Personality

The greatest mistake of a lifetime in the flesh is mortals’ mistaken views relative to personality. Why is this so? It is because it was the first and foundational error. In the language of Shakespeare, “it hath the first and primal curse upon’t, a brother’s murder.” Faintly, dimly, indiscriminately, selfishly, murderously in regard to this primeval error.

When launching the little voyager, Retrospection and Introspection, on the troubled waters of mortal mind, I labored and prayed, but it was through my prayer only and not to any personality I prayed and labored for the enlightenment of every starless spot on the disk of mortal mind.

Murder in the first degree. Murder in the second degree. Murder in the third degree.

“Ye are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own for he is a liar and the father of it.”

Close. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.”





Unity

The method of error, to divide and conquer, prevails like an epidemic in the Field, and no office is high enough to be beyond its reach. That is why I have taken a hand in church affairs and intervened. I have been called a pope, but authority has been forced upon me by necessity. Why, the Board had five dear churches under discipline at one time, and to what end? Good people do not change at once from good to evil, any more than bad from evil to good. And who of us can cast the first stone? Our organization is made up of members, and if we do not understand this, must it not disappear from the face of the earth? It is not simple? When one sees that Christian Science is the Way and the only Way, he is ready for church membership, and there is no other requirement. Then one’s ability to heal the sick through Christian Science and this alone, shows his position as a Christian Scientist. Not the cries of Lord! Lord! and not the bowing to ecclesiastical despotism; but by their fruits ye shall know them. (Part of letter referred to on page 343 of Miscellany)





Probation After Death

In Romans 6:23 it says “the wages of sin is death.” In Revelation it says, “they are they on whom the second death hath no power.” Then they must have died first because of sin, and after that death, through probation have grown out of sin into life eternal, where there is no death.

Jesus did not make the way of spiritual man in Truth, — that was already made and intact; but he explained, taught, and demonstrated the way for material man. He said, “The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins.” “The works that I do shall ye do.” He proved the power of material man to destroy error through truth, and that man should be material in belief until all sin, sickness, and death were destroyed. Also he shewed the way through Truth to destroy all error, and that error was not destroyed by the death of man, but the death of belief, and the resurrection of the understanding. Not that understanding could be buried, except to belief. He proved that the spiritual mind and body are one, and that one was Mind. Also that the material body and mind are one, and that one belief, He proved that mortal mind is as wicked after death as before it; hence the belief is as material, and body and belief are one.

A sense of God’s omnipotence brings the sense of His omnipresence, If we see His power we shall have it. It will be with us, for God is everywhere and nothing beside Him is anywhere.

When the disciples asked when should the end of world be, he answered, “No man knoweth, not the son but the Father.” Then how does theology dare say that men do know it, for man dies, that is the end of the world with him?

Mr. B. says, “If there is no sin, what did Jesus come to save?” “And if there is no sickness what did Jesus come to save?” He came to save from the illusion of belief that sickness and sin are real and God-given.

(on a small piece torn) who spared not the consuming tares, but destroyed them; who, when a man sees his sins and begins to weep over them, brushes not his repentance with false pity, but ripens it with warning and instruction.





Religions And Christian Science

“Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me.) to do thy will, O God.”

The oriental logic, magic, religion, and Brahm are but the perpetuation in changed forms of Jehovah, and necromancy, as described in the Old Testament. Every sentence of occultism impressed on thought as either true, or useful, is so much additional error for mortals to finally grapple, and overcome, otherwise it will destroy the health and advancement of the individual. Knowledge obtained from the senses makes man believe that cause and effect exist in matter; the unchristianizes thought, for it deflects from God, Spirit. If this knowledge includes human ruling powers, — the mind of men, — it is indeed diabolism, even as our missionaries declare it. Occultism is one of the highest attenuations of matter, and this I name the flesh, or evil, and homeopathists agree that the most attenuated potions of matter are the most potent.

The Hindoo prophet, or Yohis, will tell you that matter is illusion, and then interpret his philosophy, and religion, through matter, alias illusion. Looking at this thing our Master asked, “Do men gather grapes of thorns?” Can men make illusion profitable, or demonstrate Truth by error? The Hindoo prophet avers that brain matter is the channel for intelligence, therefore matter must maintain the intercommunion between his deity and of the Hindoo adept. His hypotheses demand that we look inwardly for all enlightment. But Christian Science demands, as did St. Paul’s Christianity, that we look outwardly for divine power and away from human consciousness. St. Paul argues against introspection whereby to work out the salvation of men, and says to be absent from the body and to be present with God.

The Hebrew lawgiver illustrated with good intent, and effect, the possibility and efficacy of controlling human belief through divine power. He uncovers its abuses by demonstrating the uses of truth which, from the beginning, error has sought, and is still seeking to simulate and mock.

The hypnotic illusion enters not at all into divine metaphysics. Moses’ serpent became a staff, something to rest upon, even the basis of a divine edict. His demonstration over the walking stick went to prove the nothingness of matter, in contradistinction to the material means and hypotheses of occultism, looking through a crystal, and dieting for power to play on the imagination. His second demonstration showed the effect of Truth on the senses, by which he healed leprosy. It all served to show the nothingness of matter, and emphasize the primitive truth that all is Mind, there is no other substance, or intelligence. The truism predicated of understanding, Moses utilized and disassociated with mere magic. His were scientific experiments made not with a humanly liberated intellectual force wherewith to make wonders, but to illustrate the power of divine Mind, the real Principle of all “mind flow,” aerial navigation, and the fallacy of ancient and modern “sympathetic physics,” or suppositional mind in matter.

The Old Testament dispensation has passed, and this period is the new advent of the Gospel, Christ’s Healing, whose words and works shall not pass away. The shocking Jewish materialism held that blood is the life of man.





Marriage And Offspring

The wise man saith, “When I was a child I thought as a child, etc.” The wisdom of this and of every period is temperance, to wait on the divine energy’s development of moral strength and human possibilities. To push a fact to its ultimate sometimes so injures the predicate as to lose instead of to gain time in the unfolding of God’s plan.

The absolute in divine Science is a infinite fact approachable in time by degrees; its ultimate eternity, its footsteps are time. Marriage and offspring are mortal conditions which take their origin in the human, and not in the divine Mind. It is a great and solemn question how far to press the divine facts of being, and their manifestations, into present human experience and practice.





Argument (1)

If thy liver offend thee, cast it from thee. There is no liver, for there is no matter.

There is no stomach, no sour stomach, no pneumogastric nerve, no connection between brain and liver, and there is healthy digestion. There is no pain; matter is not pained, and Mind is Love, and Love is not pained.

There is no paralysis of rectum, nor abdominal muscles, nor of the colon, nor in mind, for there is no mortal mind. Action belongs to God; it cannot cease. There is no evil, no hate, no sin; mortal mind is not affecting you. God is the only Mind and you reflect God; and there is no other you. Wake, wake to know this. You control mortal mind; it does not control you. There is no body; Mind is all; you reflect God, and God governs all, and mortal mind does not exist.





Argument (2)

No fear, God, Love, is all, and everpresent, and the everpresent help. No metastasis.

No pain; no disease changing forms, and the last worse than the first. No animal magnetism; all is Good; there is no matter, no mortal mind. We have dominion over the earth, over the body, and over all evil. Good is supreme, evil is unreal; good is all, there is none besides God, Life, Love, Truth, holiness. These are right here, and no other consciousness is here, no other mind, no other power. Mrs. Eddy can help herself; she does help herself, and we do help her.

God worketh with us. God is all, and governs all. There is no arsenic, mercury, Rhus radiant, no electric poison, no belief that there is. We know if they take any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. God has said it.





Mark 16: 16, 17, 18

We will consider briefly: A material religion and a spiritual religion. History gives startling records of the transient nature of all systems, civil, political, or religious, not based on right foundations. And the right has always been based on the spirituality of their foundations, and their superstructures, and has advanced accordingly as each has risen above the material method, to one more spiritual, and taken a basis in the higher motives, and affections of man.





Statement

For the benefit of my readers I report verbatim one of my Mother’s hometalks to me noted down by her private Secretary, Mr. Frye. For twelve years this faithful servant has been her bookkeeper and amanuensis, with marked integrity and steadfastness, after the first few mistakes which occur in learning any business. None but a cowardly blasphemer would have ventured to breathe abroad in London relative to a good man what uttered in Boston would have caused her arrest. It sometimes seems to me most strange, and diabolical, that to tell the beauties of holiness is less spontaneous and natural than envy and ill will towards men. For this reason I dare declare that the whole of Adam’s race is behind my Mother’s charity, and uplifting life, with its effects on others. And ofttimes I think of this with such awe as the children of men may feel, standing at the door of the mansion wherein dwelleth the archangels.

Ah, brother Scientists! Take this hateful human offal called envy, mad ambition, killing another man outright in order to live yourself — lay it on the altar of sacrifice; there take a coal from the burning incense of Love, and set fire to this filth so that it consume away in smoke. Thus may this obnoxious error die to return no more, wondering about like a dog seeking for a bone, and howling if he be not satisfied.

Ebenezer J. Foster Eddy





My First Knowledge Of Quimby

I was never lukewarm, but always fervid. I had not found all that I desired in the orthodox church, and I examined spiritualism with disappointment. Homeopathy was my last step in medicine, and Quimbyism was next in healing; but here I found not Christianity; yet I lauded his courage in believing that mind made disease, that mind healed disease. Here my loosened pinions took upward flight, and I lauded Phineas P. Quimby as an advanced thinker, and healer, with my native superfluity of praise when praise was due. Yet lacked I yet something, the one thing needed, and my health again declined. Then came the accident and injury called fatal, and the Bible healed me, and from Quimbyism to the Bible was like turning from Leviticus to St. John in the Scripture, and I forever dropped the thought that he had given; even that the mind, and human, made disease and healed it — and gained the great rediscovery that God is the only Healer, and healing Principle, and this Principle is divine, not human. The remnants of Quimbyism took flight forever, and I struggled to wipe out all remaining faith in the power of human will to enslave me, or to deceive me into a false freedom. Turning from Quimby to the Bible for help in time of trouble was more marked than turning from matter to Spirit, from Leviticus to St. John in the Scriptures for the way of salvation.





Fragments

Lo! I come to do thy will, etc., in the volume of the book it is written of me.

In view of the different sects, Gnostic, Stoic, esoteric, Pharisee, Sadducee, and Gentile, our Master said, Many shall come in my name, and shall deceive many. Today this prophecy is fulfilled. The inclination of mortal mind is towards the mental poles, the long night and sunless day, the flitting drifting snows, and that mighty mass, the icebergs of intellect. Whereas Christianity turns thought to the tropics, to the central warmth and verdure, luxuriance, and glow of divine Love, holding man forever in his orbit, by the forces, by the omnipotent centrifugal, and centripetal power of Truth.

My esteemed student, Mr. Edward Bailey, has been my assistant for the last six months in Christian meekness and patience, sowing the seed of Truth. I now have the pleasure of introducing to you Rev. Mr. Adams from Cal. as the assistant Pastor. He has been a member of the Wesleyan Society in England 15 years, and for 20 years a clergyman. Now forgetting those things that are behind, and pressing forward to those that are before, he comes before us today an orthodox Christian Scientist.

We all know, yet how feebly, the might of human influence through words and thoughts, that the loftiest superstructure ever reared by man is his highest and purest ideal, supported and defined by Science. This is the building not made with hands eternal in the heavens. I have now the pleasure, etc.

Neither have the floods of error ceased; its troubled sea still overflows. Sin will flood the eye and the earth until Divinity is seen to flow through its own channels of harmony, and the Science of God and man to mean Principle and man as one.

Today the prophecy is fulfilled: The inclination of mortal mind is towards the mental poles, the long night and sunless day of matter, human hypotheses, mystery, and man-made doctrines, the fleeting and drifting snows of thought, its cold engulfing waves, that mighty moving mass, the icebergs of intellect. Whereas Christian Science attracts human thought to spiritual tropics, the central warmth, verdure, luxuriance, and glow of everlasting Life, holding man forever in celestial climes and harmonious orbit by the centripetal and centrifugal forces of Mind, the all-power of divine Love.

Hold on and persist for good, because there never is a hopeless situation. When error meets with resistance, it begins to be scattered. Where a situation seems unbearable, it is because error is letting go.

God is your only Mind, Divine Love is caring for you. No mortal mind can stop the functions of being. God holds them intact and eternally. You are awake to the truth; you see it; realize it; and no mortal mind can hinder you from realizing it. There is but one Mind. Truth, Life and Love govern all your thoughts and annihilate all that is unlike them.

Meet animal magnetism without a fight. There is no animal magnetism that can reverse the currents of Truth in my consciousness by irritation or inflaming the mucous lining.

A truly grateful heart is always sure of safety.

God is with us in this and every crucial hour, when we are with Him. Mind plans every detail of our affairs; nothing can obstruct the path of Truth, — the only path in our consciousness.

Truth is peaceful and certain. It leads us with a loving hand. The voice of Truth never pains or causes any despair or doubt to him whose affections are fixed on God. The realization of this rule will enable you to detect and uncover the enemy. (Sent to Eugene H. Greene’s class).

Mortal mind had no intelligence to direct; presence to manifest; nor power to convey an attack on man, who is always hid with Christ in God.

I have been slowly learning not to hurry; not to worry; and I have also learned while here not to be afraid, for God governs.

My thought can never harm anyone else; the thought of another can never harm me; neither can I harm myself by my own thought.

Troubles hang down their heads before a brave heart, dear. To Kimball: You do not have to give up anything except error.

When error puts its heel on me, I wait until it lifts. Let go. What if there seems to be a seeming obstruction?

Being is one and cannot war with itself; and there is nothing outside of it to strike a blow.

All a Christian Scientist needs in order to remove mountains, is the occasion, for God furnishes the power.

Meet error as it approaches. Do not wait until it is upon you.

The vehicle of our Master’s healing was Mind. The medicine or curative property it contained was Truth, and his directions for taking it obedience to God. The force of one thought is proven superior to another when a high sentiment conquers a low propensity. (From the Boston Glove, Dec. 2, 1878)

God never made a malicious mentality or an evil personality named “So and so,” who can be an agent for malice or hatred or any destructive thinking toward me. He made only a spiritual idea which reflects only love toward me.

What your mind says in regard to your body is all you have to change in order to be well.

A skyrocket is not one until it is fired. God governing Himself, governs you. Mortal mind is an eel.

Ridicule is the most acute treatment you can give A. M. Christian Scientists consume each other.

As long as you believe in evil at all, you will have to continue with specific claims.

The actualities of good are always at work in my consciousness, and will by the law of cancellation blot out all evil.

Our individual identity is spiritual, not material and of course it is forever the coexistent and coeternal image of Spirit. Hence it is without beginning or end. The material personality is not our individuality; hence it is not the reality of our being. This material error named person or mind in matter begins and ends because it is error, and not the truth of man in any respect.

Pleasant View, Concord, N. H.

Nov. 17, 1903

To my household at Pleasant View:

The rules of this house do not permit of evil being spoken, thought or heard. Love rules this and every hour. M. A. M. is without power, powerless. Darkness is nothing.

Mind is All, God is All, and His voice is heard in all places. God judges and His judgment is sound and righteous. Know this now and every hour. No theosophy, no mal. an. mag. to lie or hear a lie. God reigns and loveth whom He chasteneth.

No work is done until I say it is, and no student will forsake his post in any moment.

God is Love, Love is All. Truth reigns.

Mother.

M. B. G. E.

(This was sent to all the workers)

Dec. 29, 1896

Accept from me a white robe, even as your life presents the fit wearing thereof in the night — When darkness seems to surround you, take hope, know that His robe, white and righteous, clothes you, and is the light that emits light.

With love.

Mother.

Mary Baker Eddy





John 10:21

“These are not the words of him that hath a devil.

Can a devil open the eyes of the blind?”

DEVIL: this term signifies in pulpits, generally, a wicked angel, the tempter of the human race. The word comes from the Greek, Diabolis, signifying a calumniator, or accuser; in Hebrew it is called, Abaddon; in Greek, Apollyon. It is likewise called Belial, which is a Hebrew word, and signifies one who is good for nothing. In John 8:24 he is called a liar. In Rev. 12:9 he is called the old serpent, and some of our able commentators say he conveyed himself into the serpent, when he tempted Eve; that he is surprisingly subtle, his strength is superior to ours, his malice is deadly, his activity and diligence are equal to his malice.

Again the commentator says, that he might the better succeed, he addressed the woman. But we think his success less with woman. What is a devil? Jesus answers that question in that saying, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?

The brazen serpent called Saraph was raised upon a pole, that the people bitten by serpents, by looking upon this image might be presently healed.

The term blind is rendered variously in the Scriptures — in John 9:1 it signifies such as are deprived of eyesight, as in the following passage: “As Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth.”

In Exodus 23:8 it relates to those who will not discern between right and wrong, reading thus: “The gift blindeth the wise and perverteth the righteous.”

In Deut. 27:18 it refers to those who through simplicity or ignorance are misled, seduced by pernicious counsel, and reads thus: “Cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander out of the way, and all the people shall say, Amen.”

In II Cor, 4:4 it signifies such as reject Truth, not withstanding the clear discovery that someone has made of the way and method of Truth, whereof the apostle saith, “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds. “When referring to deceitful teachers, blinded by their own interest against any conviction, Isaiah said, “Who is blind but my servant?” and when referring to envy. “He that hateth his brother is in darkness and knoweth not whither he goeth because that darkness hath blinded his eyes,: Rev 3:17 when referring to such as are self-conceited, puffed up, reads “And knowest not that thou art miserable, and poor and blind.”





Definitions

Omnipotence: English; Infinite power applicable only to Deity.

Latin; from omnis, all, and potens, power.

Omnipresent: English; Universal, unbounded presence.

Latin: Omnis and presens, all present.

Psalms 116:13

Among the Jewish rites was this one, for the master of the feast to take in his hand a cup of wine, and solemnly bless the Lord for it; then give it to all his guests for every one to drink in his turn.

Matthew: My bread cometh down from heaven. I have a bread to eat that ye know not of. It is not meet to take the children’s bread and give it to the dogs.

Out of Asher his bread shall be fat.

Lev. The bread of their God do they offer.

Psalms. Thou feedest them with the bread of tears. Thou satisfied them with the bread of heaven.

Prov. The bread of deceit is sweet to a man. She eateth not the bread of iidleness.

We lessen the sin, sickness, and death of mortal man by keeping before his thought the more perfect model of immortal.

When Solomon wakened in part from the dream of the senses to behold it vanity, he saw the sure foundations.

O my beloved, thou art in the clefts of the rock in the secret.

To escape the ills of heredity — What is man? Man is the image and likeness of Spirit, therefore, he is not matter; he is not heart, blood, bones, brains.

If thou hast never tasted the holy peace which descends upon the simplest thought when we fervently realize man’s relation to God in our spiritual, harmonious and eternal existence; if no gleam from Spirit brightens thine earthly way; if the harsh contact with worldlings is never soothed by the healing touch of divine Love; thou hast studied to little purpose, and the foundations of true happiness are not unsealed to thee. But the light breaks in upon thy dream, the bodyguard, the grand reserve of Soul, comes as a sunbeam to brighten the way, and reassure the model of your being, which is to buy out the state of mortal man. Your latent power comes to remind you of what surrounds you.

The 6th chap. of John has the most metaphysical and scientific statement of being that the Bible contains.

The very reason which would lead us to reject a miracle in our day gave it credibility in other days.

A miracle as a blind appeal to the mortal sense without the use of reason, was adapted to the earlier periods of human history.

What is a miracle?

Duality of Scripture.

The question between Jesus, his students, and the world lies all the way between the spiritual, or the material interpretation that was given to his words and life.

What was the bread of the miracle? What the bread of Moses?

What the bread of Life? What is the work of God?

Jesus said, This is the work of God, the good work, that ye believe on him whom He hath sent. Here is the dual meaning of Scripture: 1st the man as a person; 2nd the idea man.

Ye seek not because of the miracles but because ye did eat. In Hebrew Spirit is rauch. In Greek pneuma.

Spirit of the beast that goeth downward, Spirit of evil, Spirit of good, Spirit of the wind, Spirit of a sound.

Spirit of wisdom.

Spirit of understanding. Spirit of knowledge.

Spirit of prayer.

Spirit of prophecy.

Spirit of pride.

Spirit of covetousness. Dumb spirit.

Luke speaks of a woman who had a spirit of infirmity.

In Hebrews 4:12, it speaks of dividing asunder of soul and spirit.





Divisions Of Schools

The Manichees were the followers of Manes, a Persian, who tried to combine the oriental philosophy with Christianity, and maintained that there were two supreme principles, the one good, and the other evil, which produce all the happiness and calamities of the world. The first principle, or light, was the author of all good; the second, or darkness, the author of evil.

The Hebrews formulated (1) The aerial heavens where the birds fly, the winds blow, and the showers are formed. (2) The firmament wherein the stars are disposed.

(3) The heaven of heavens, or the third heaven, wherein is God’s glory, the temple of His majesty; in the words of the prophet, “The habitation of His holiness, the place where His honor dwells.” Isaiah, speaking of the overthrow of the Medes and Persians writes, “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!”

It is very evident the Hebrews acknowledged three heavens. We read in Genesis, “God called the firmament heaven,: in Ezekiel, “I will cover the heaven, and make the stars dark,: in Jeremiah, “He hath stretched out the heavens by his understanding:” Kings, “Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee.”





Soul

Rev. 16:3

“. . . and every living soul died in the sea.”

This word soul, especially in the style of the Hebrews, is deemed by critics very equivocal.

Some of our most able commentators say this term is taken for that spiritual, reasonable and immortal substance in man, which is the origin of his thoughts, of his desires, of his reasonings, which distinguishes man and woman from the brute creation, and which bears some resemblance to its divine creator.

The sentence in Genesis 1:24, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature;” in Hebrews reads, “the living soul.”

The Scripture that saith “the life of the flesh is in the blood," reads Hebrew, “the soul of the flesh.” Again soul is taken for the whole person, as in Genesis where it reads, Abram and Lot took with them “the souls they had gotten in Haran,” that is, the servants they had purchased, etc. In Psalms it is taken for the life of man. David spoke of “delivering the soul from death.”

Again it is made to signify death, or a dead man, where in Numbers it reads “some were defiled by the dead body of a man.” In Hebrew it reads by “the soul of a man.” Again soul is used for affection, inclination, appetite, as in Genesis where it reads, “if it be your mind” — in Hebrew, “if it is agreeable to your soul.” In Proverbs it speaks of the full soul loathing the honeycomb.

In Exodus it says, “ the soul that sinneth shall die.” And in that text the Revelator writes, “and every living thing died in the sea.” Cassell explains this text as referring to the commencement of the naval war in 1793 that lased over twenty years, in which all the ships, maritime commerce and power of the papal nation were swept from the sea by the English fleet.

Our views of these comments:

Angels: God’s thoughts, purity, justice, mercy. Vial: retribution.

Earth: materialism.

Sea: thoughts, simply unformed beliefs, the solutions of mortal mind.

Rivers: channels of thought, the direction thought takes in forming decisions. Blood: a symbol of suffering.

Sun: a symbol of Mind or Soul. Beast: sensuality.

Euphrates: fountain of Truth; metaphysical Science. Dragon: subtlety, malice.

Spirits of devils: mesmerism.

“Behold I come as a thief.” The still small voice of Truth.

Material commentators on the Scripture say the Revelator refers to the rivers of the Rhine and the Upper Danube, their valleys being the region of the conflicts between the French and Austrian armies.

The vial poured out on the beast was supposed to be Rome, the seven-hilled city.

The river Euphrates it was thought meant the empire founded by the Euphratean horsemen of the sixth trumpet, a section of wealth and political power that gave great advantages to the Mohammedan religion.

Armageddon: the scene of ancient conflicts and slaughters. Angels: women with wings on their backs.

No comments are made on the sun.

Euphrates signifies the good and abounding river, the largest, longest, and most important river in Western Asia. The annual inundation of Euphrates and the great hydraulic works ascribed to Nebuchadnezzar to control this inundation have their metaphysical correspondence in the efforts of the pulpit to put down religious inquiry and, if possible, stereotype God.

SUN

It is thought to be the sun that the Phoenicians worshipped under the name of Baal; the Moabites under the name of Chemosh; the Amorites by that of Moloch; and the Israelites by the name of Baal.

Sun, an object of adoration and worship to the greater part of the people of the east.

CLOSE

Materiality is an atom of dust thrown into the face of spiritual immensity.





From A Scrap-Book

“The higher order of intellect with which one is brought in contact, the less one has to fear; true goodness is all charity, and true genius is the least presumptuous.” good true





Principle And Practice

The nature and position of mortal mind are the opposites of immortal Mind. The so-called mortal mind is belief and not understanding. Christian Science requires understanding instead of belief; it is based on a fixed eternal and divine Principle, wholly apart from moral conjecture; and it must be understood, otherwise it cannot be correctly accepted and demonstrated.

The inclination of mortal mind is to receive Christian Science through a belief instead of the understanding, and this inclination prevails like an epidemic on the body; it inflames mortal mind and weakens the intellect, but this so-called mortal mind is wholly ignorant of this fact, and so cherishes its mere faith in Christian Science.

The sick, like drowning men, catch at whatever drifts toward them. The sick are told by a faith-Scientist, “I can heal you, for God is all, and you are well, since God creates neither sin, sickness, nor death.” Such statements result in the sick either being healed by their faith in what you tell them — which heals only as a drug would heal, through belief — or in no effect whatever. If the faith-healer succeeds in securing (kindling) the belief of the patient in his own recovery, the practitioner will have performed a faith cure which he mistakenly pronounces Christian Science.

In this very manner some students of Christian Science have accepted, through faith, a divine Principle, God, as their savior, but they have not understood this Principle, sufficiently well to fulfill the Scriptural command, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel.” “Heal the sick.” It is the healer’s understanding of the operation of the divine Principle, and his application thereof, which heals the sick, Just as it is one’s understanding of the principle of mathematics which enables him to demonstrate its rules.

Christian Science is not a faith cure, and unless human faith be distinguished from scientific healing, Christian Science will again be lost from the practice of religion as it was soon after the period of our great Master’s scientific teaching and practice. Preaching without practice of the divine Principle of man’s being has not, in nineteen hundred years, resulted in demonstrating this Principle. Preaching without the truthful and consistent practice of your statements will destroy the success of Christian Science.

Copyright, 1918, by the C. S. Pub. Society; renewed 1945





Life

John 14:6 — I am the way the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

1st. What is the “I” referred to in the text? 2d. Is Life both matter and Spirit?

3d. What is Life?

4th. What is death, and what is the condition of man after death?

1st. The “I referred to in the text is not a person, it is a Principle. It is not a man, it is God. Jesus said, “The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself.” Jesus was a man; he first became obvious to the personal senses as a babe whose infant wailings blent with the bleating of the goat and the lowing of the kine, in a remote Judean province. In Josephus’ time there were several individuals by the name of Jesus — (the fleshly)* Jesus was not Christ; Christ was but another name for God, and it was an honorary title bestowed on Jesus for his great goodness. In the original texts the term God took its origin from the work good, — hence the term Christ Jesus, a good man.

*Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 332:32.

In the passage, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” the “I” alluded to is God — the divine Principle of the man Jesus and was that which guided his way in Science. To this divine intelligence the different periods have affixed the terms Deity, Jehovah, Christ, and God. These terms should be understood to express God as divine substance and intelligence that belong not to man neither to a person; but are an infinite Principle. The gross materialism at the commencement of the Christian era, required a very spiritual man to teach a divine Principle and to show by his own demonstration what this Principle is and the results of understanding it..

Jesus was the man for the age; he could best explain Life as God, but his rules and their illustration was misinterpreted. The God-Principle of the man was not understood; had it been, they must have admitted that Jesus’ demonstration proved his Principle, and his Principle explained his demonstration. Truth and Life understood cast out error, heal the sick, raise the dead, and this demonstration brings to light the Truth of Life and the Life of Truth. One fact in Jesus’ history is clearly apparent, namely, that his Principle, rule, and method of healing were Mind not matter, that he required not drugs, dogma, or doctrine to aid his work.

He only insisted on making the fount pure to make the streams pure; he argued that mind must first be right to set the body right, that we should know the Principle of man, and better understand God — yea, that we should have the Science of Life, for without it the demonstration of Life or Truth can never be made. Science demands a healthy mind and a healthy body, — and mind healthy because it is imbued with truth, and the body healthy because it is governed by this mind. The entire tenor of Jesus’ teachings were first to set thought right with the Truth of being; 2d. To govern the body by it. Believing that God is a person, hinders the understanding of this divine Principle and its demonstration. We cannot demonstrate a person, therefore a person is not the power that heals the sick in Science; we can ask a person to doctor our sicknesses and to forgive our sins, and that is all we can do, but we can do more than that with a Principle, we can work it ourselves to this result, and following its divine rule, with (it) we can destroy sickness, sin, and death, and this in accordance with the Scripture, “Work out your own salvation. . . .For it is God which worketh in you.” Truth destroys error even as light destroys darkness. Sin, sickness, and death are error; they are beliefs and this fact found out will at length destroy them Truth evolves life as a result of itself, for Truth is immortal, and the truth of life would destroy death. But this understanding comes slowly; even to learn that matter has no sensation is quite a task, although this simple proposition is self-evident.

In the text, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me,” we naturally ask, What is this way referred to? The way to harmony and the demonstration thereof is through the understanding of its Principle by which we can produce the harmony. A person believed in is insufficient, — the way, therefore, for this is Science and no man cometh to the Father, that is, can understand the Principle of being except through Science. Through Science alone can we learn Life and demonstrate our understanding of it with Life and not death.

The Scriptures tell us that, “Perfect love casteth out fear,” but this first commandment is our very last resort; we are even taught to fear God when it is Science to so love goodness that we possess the power of good to heal and save. If we understood God, we should have no cause to fear Him; we should know that He never punished a man for doing good; never made a law to produce softening of the brain because of overmuch humanity, or perfect love, and the fear of such a law and the consequences thereof, would be cast out by a correct idea of God. We may talk to you of metaphysics, its divine Principle, rule and application, once every week, but this gives you little insight into the Life through which we learned metaphysics and through (which) you must learn it. This weekly service, however, may point the way like a milestone, — that is all. The apostle says, “How shall they hear without a preacher” And how shall they preach except they be sent?’ Paul knew that a theoretical drill, and the grinding of scholastic mills, are not the preparation for a moral teacher. He knew that inspiration cometh from Truth, from the Spirit, and not the letter. A child God-drive is more capable of uttering Truth in its sweet simplicity and the power of Love than a merely manufactured theologian; hence the Scripture, “Out of the mouth of babes . . .thou has perfected praise.” We all shall know when the Truth is at work in Science, for it will heal our sicknesses and stop our sins. In the exact proportion that we understand Truth will it heal us mind and body, and in the proportion that we adopt error will it produce sin, sickness, and death.

2d. Is Life both matter and Spirit? Life is so considered; even the scriptures referred to it thus in the dark ages of burnt offerings and sacrifices. See Genesis 9:4, “But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.” But this was ritualism, a materialistic religion which deluged the earth with blood. In the gospel of the more spiritual Christianity, we learn Life oppositely. In Romans 8:6 we read, “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” Isaiah 38:16, “O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit.” Romans 8:2, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” II Timothy, “. . . Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

Our conceptions of Life as Spirit come of Science, and they exalt the aims, consecrate the motives, and purify the affections; but our conceptions of life as matter debase, subjugate, and make mortal. The only evidence we have of material life is furnished by the five personal senses, and what are these senses, but matter? Nerves and brains are as directly matter as a shoe-string, or a jelly. Through optics, olfactory, or tympanum, we can obtain not the slightest sense of Deity; we can neither see, hear, taste, nor smell Life, therefore it is self-evident that Life dwells not in that through which it is impossible to gain the least idea of Life.

Anatomy would have it that blood and nerves inform us correctly regarding a man’s life, when it is plain that Life is Spirit, and that matter can take no cognizance of Spirit. Again, we say nerves recognize life and life is organic, but how can nerves feel or recognize life more than a stone or any form of matter feel it or take cognizance of it? The only life the personal senses recognize is through mortal mind and a belief of structure that accident may destroy according to another belief. Life is Spirit and never matter, nor can it be structural, since it is infinite. Again we say, nerves recognize life as beginning and ending, even from the fading flower to the falling world, from the death of the grass to the death of a man. But while nerves are thus falsely testifying of life and death, something is ever saying, “I live, I am, and what is more I am learning that Life is Mind and not matter, and that Mind forms its own ideals of all things; that mortal mind peoples the vegetable, animal, and mineral kingdoms with creations of its own, giving to each and all its own mortal outline, form, and color, while the formations of immortal Mind or God are indestructible, harmonious, and eternal.”

The side of nature which seems to the senses matter is but the veil that hides the reality of being; the visible universe is but the picture of the mind’s ideas, the expression of thoughts, the hieroglyphic record of the art and meditation of Diety. In the words of Starr King, “There is not a planet that wheels a tiny circle around its controlling flame, not a sun that sheds its steady radiance upon the dark depths of neighboring space, not a comet that rushes through its excentric track, not a constellation among all that hang like fantastic chandeliers upon the dome of heaven, that is not the visible statement of a conception which dwells in the Omnipotent Mind. It is through the silent command of Mind that the morning light bursts like a wave of glory over the orderly universe.”

3d. The materialist feels the ground to be solid beneath his feet, but the Scientist feels with more certainty the solidity of Truth. The eternal permanent side of things is unseen by the senses. A man may have just as much life as he pleases, if he goes to work right. By understanding life we accumulate it even as the muscles grow by use; we have just as much life as we have of Truth, goodness, virtue, etc.

What is life? Is it Spirit? What is Spirit? God. What is God? Mind, — unerring, infinite, and eternal Mind. But is God the life driven like an insensible nail in and out of matter? Does matter master Life, God, and Life, God, have nothing to say for itself? Do we ask the consent or refusal of Mind to be born a babe, or to die an old, decrepit man? Is not the protest or acquiescence of mind on such important events heeded less than the whine of a dog at your door? But Science does not thus reckon the prerogatives of Mind; rather hath it crowned Mind with Life, might, majesty, and immortality.

I am not a Pantheist to believe that God is in matter, when the less material a man is, the nearer he is to Spirit, God, and when divested of all matter, and never until then, this divine Principle will enfold him in bliss and glory. Health, life, and morals will never reach their maximum until we relinquish the belief that matter has aught to do with Life. In physics we say, life is imprisoned within its own formations, that Life is subject to germination, growth, maturity, and decay; but here the ancient question presents itself, Which is first, the egg or the bird? the flower or the seed? If the egg is first, whence came the egg, and if the bird is first, what is the origin of the bird? If there were no flower, whence came its seed, for you say without the seed there can be no flower; although the Scripture informs us He made every plant before it was in the ground. Mind, and Mind only, is the creator. Science impresses deeply the lesson that there is a causal power and stability in the world of Mind, and its creations, of which the material is only the transitory show; everything we touch or see is but the shape and color of a thought that lies behind. We learn in metaphysics that life is in the thought instead of the thing it has expressed, and that this thought hath immortality only in proportion to its correctness; that Life never enters its own formations, for Life is infinite; that Mind never enters the limits of its own thoughts, for Life and Mind are one.

I am glad there is buy one God, but one Life, and this one is shadowed forth in order, beauty, and goodness. I am glad that evil hath no life or immortality, that mortal pain-giving sources are but the things of belief, dreams and not realities, the vagaries of the mortal, and not the immortal thought; and that this shall sometime be learned and the body be free as the pinions of a bird, and every sense of weakness or of pain shall disappear.

4th. What is death and what is the condition of a man after death? This question* has met with its reply in the foregoing answers to other questions, but if metaphysics are made more apparent by a treatise on death, by dealing with nothing as if it were something, we will allude briefly to this unexplored mystery of sense. Do we need a more impressive revelation of the fact that Truth and thought alone are permanent, than the bare conception of the death of matter? For we know there is in reality no death, that Mind cannot die, and all that is eternal is Mind and its ideals. But the age may not be ready to accept this fact, it never is ready to accept at first the facts of a Principle. But for all this, we must repeat the facts all the same, until they are understood. The pains and pleasures of the body are but beliefs entertained by mortal thoughts, for matter can neither suffer nor enjoy. If mind says, I am happy, the result will be happiness, and vice versa, for nothing can talk above mind. The clay cannot reply to the potter, Why has thou made me thus? Matter cannot say, I am weak; I am sick; I am wretched; I am dying or I am dead. True erring or mortal belief can say this of what it names matter, but matter cannot say it. Matter is as much alive when we call it dead as it ever was; and as dead when we call it alive.

*See also Miscellaneous Writings, page 42.

There is no death, mind cannot die, and matter has no life, hence there is nothing left for death to claim. Paul saw this and said, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.” He regarded the pangs of death as merely a mortal belief, a suffering of the thought, and not of the body, and that mortal thought had made this law of suffering.

Some loving heart hath said, Shall we know each other there? — and where is that radiant shore, shall we not seek it and weep no more? Since ever we investigated metaphysics and traversed in freedom the realm of Mind, we have been careful not to overrate our discoveries, or to state what we had not first understood. We have not demonstrated the actual state of man’s existence beyond the limits of the observation of our senses and only as we reason from deduction is it possible to define this state. Any hypotheses beyond this conclusion, presupposing the condition of the departed is fully understood, is a vain conjecture, unsupported by reason or revelation.

From facts apparent to the understanding and gathered from the Science of Soul we know that man is immortal, and that the shadow we call death is but a phase of mortal belief. No change has been wrought when we say, “My friend has just died;” that friend is saying in the full consciousness of existence and with its same surroundings, — I never died. It was but a dream I had; for life is going on with me the same as before. I am not spirit; yet I am as much flesh and bones as I ever were (was); the only change to me is, I cannot communicate with my friends, — and why? Because they do not understand me now. They call me spirit, but I am not; they say I died, but I did not; they do not know what I am, where I am, or what I am pursuing. I shall not be spirit until I lose all limits; they have lost their evidences of me through their personal senses, because they have said I changed, I died; their mistaken views of life have parted us; their belief that life ended with me or took upon itself a new form, has prevented their understanding the reality of my present existence — hence our separation through these opposite beliefs and our opposite conditions as the result thereof. Further communication between us is impossible, until their belief changes through the footsteps that mine has done and becomes like mine. This change will be named death, but that is their belief of it, not ours who have rent the veil that hides the mystery of a moment.”

Yes, we shall know each other there; we shall love and be loved; we shall never lose our identity, but find it more and more in its order, beauty, and goodness. Men claim to know that pain is a fact, although it is unseen; they need to know that peace and bliss are greater facts and that this world is the veil of brighter glory that lies beyond it.

So flit before memory the different stages and states of existence, the error gradually disappearing and Truth coming to be understood. Let us rejoice that Life like an opening bud is unfolding to our consciousness the bliss of being, for Thine are all holy things, O Life, strong and divinely free, bearing the bereaved the gifts of wisdom and of chastened love; still brooding o’er them with a dovelike wing, immortally endowed for liberty. Patiently wait all ye who have parted from some earth-idol, remember that naught but broken music flows from joy that is sublunary, but hope hath its higher goal. We shall know each other there. A happier oracle, a clearer understanding, an unwavering light will friendship then become Life’s fuller music will give forth rejoicing tones when heart meets heart, where all lovely gifts and pure are laid upon befitting shrines. Joy hath a living fount, a bliss forever. The heart hath vainly sighed, What shall the future be? This is the future: heaven will be thine, but when its Life shall come no man knoweth, not “the son but the Father.” Our sins are not forgiven (until forsaken),* here or hereafter; for every sin there is a just measure of misery, and death cannot advance our joy, nor make us wiser, better, or more pure. The Science of all being must be learned ere this is won. Bliss is not the boon of one brief moment. After the veil has dropped, we have to learn the same as now our way to heaven, by slow and solemn footsteps, for no man cometh to the Father but through Truth and Love.

*Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 201:20, 497.9. Copyright, 1918, by the C. S. Pub. Soc; renewed, 1945





Notes From A Sermon

Entitled

The Lord is my Shepherd

The lesson of the hour is Jesus’ humanity.

A revelation in a human person of nothing preternatural, but of our own nature in the highest earthly development.

The marked change is that new interest is awakened to the human side of the life of Jesus.

The age despising the simple and craving the marvelous, insists on such views of the offices and works of Jesus as feast only the faculty of religious imagination.

As in the legend of his visible, bodily ascension, so the spiritual idea of him early passed into a cloud.

But it is essential to the power of Truth that as a man Jesus should be thoroughly understood.





The Fate Of The Apostles

All the apostles were assaulted by the enemies of their Master, They were called to seal their doctrines with their blood; and nobly did they bear the trial. Schumacher says:

St. Matthew suffered martyrdom by being slain with a sword at a distant city in Ethiopia.

St. Mark expired at Alexandria, after having been cruelly dragged through the streets of that city.

St. Luke was hanged upon an olive tree in the classic land of Greece.

St. John was put in a cauldron of boiling oil; but escaped death in a miraculous manner, and was afterward banished to Patmos.

St. Peter was crucified at Rome, with his head downward. St. James the Greater was beheaded at Jerusalem.

St. James the Less was thrown from a lofty pinnacle of the temple, and then beaten to death with a fuller’s club.

St. Bartholomew was flayed alive.

St. Andrew was bound to a cross, whence he preached to his persecutors until he died.

St. Thomas was run through the body was a lance at Coromandel, in the West Indies.

St. Jude was shot to death with arrows.

St. Matthias was first stoned, and then beheaded.

St. Barnabas of the Gentiles was stoned to death by the Jews of Salonica. St. Paul, after various tortures and persecutions, was at length beheaded at Rome by the Emperor Nero.

Such was the fate of the apostles, according to the traditional statements; and, though we cannot authenticate them all, we at least know that the hatred of the world to these men and their teachings was sufficient to render the account not very improbable.





Interview

From the N. Y. Herald of May 5, 1901

The arms of her father’s family in regular heraldic emblazonment hung in the library. They carried two mottoes, “Tria juncta in uno” and “Aut vincere aut mori.” It can be used as well for Christian Science as for any fighting cause, this “conquer or die,” and Mrs. Eddy uses it , not wishing it, however, to be confounded with “kill or cure,” which Mrs. Eddy’s disciples joyously hand over to their foes, the M. D.’s.

I have told the Herald already how great are Mrs. Eddy’s hopes for the future of the Church of Christ, Scientist, finally embracing all who believe in Christ under the healing wings of her faith. Born of the joy at seeing such phenomenal increase of her adherents, the spread of her cult in foreign countries, and all who believe in her faith, believing in her, the exaltation of prophecy is natural enough. On the more real question of expanding the government of the Church ot suit its growth she had this to say: —

“The problem is not so much as to the form of the government as providing an authority that will ever keep its spirit true to the Christian Science doctrine, a monitor more than a master. I have made rigid by-laws for the government of the Church, and every one has been necessary, but they need to be administered in gentleness and forbearance as well as in firmness with the erring. I have always been motherly to my Church, instead of dictatorial, as has been falsely said”

“When you organized your Church, Mrs. Eddy, did you give up healing and take a living from the Church?”

“My Church and my book work made heavy demands on my time, but I refused any fixed salary from my Church, only accepting a small dividend on the contents of the contribution box. More than that, I have given to the Christian Science Publishing Society all the profits from the periodicals that I own. From my own means I helped the poor and indigent in my Church when the dear Church was too poor to do it.”

“Did you accept renumeration for your services as a healer after founding your Church?” “While it was possible for me to minister to the sick without neglecting my great work, I did it without remuneration, save in two exceptional cases. I do not object, however, to others receiving means from their labors for their maintenance, because the ‘laborer is worthy of his hire.’”

It was a question concerning the great preponderance of women in the ranks of her church members that drew from her the statement that she would be succeeded as ruler directly by a man. This avowal is important, because the secrets of her rulership — if secrets they may be called — have been intrusted almost exclusively to her secretary, Calvin A. Frye, although it is quite imaginable that another should be designated, of broader cast of mind, Mr. Frye retaining possibly his secretaryship.

But the question of woman in her Church fascinated her, and she returned to it with gusto.

“Woman,” she said, “has the finer spiritual nature. She more readily takes the impress of Christian Science. If, as you say (I leave all statistics to the publication department), there are 13,000 woman, against 5,000 men, out of a book total 18,000, it shows that their minds are more receptive; their enthusiasm greater at the beginning of a struggle, but in the strength of man lies the power of carrying it on,”

I look on man as the designate of the Word, but, to my view, the idea of race is superior to the idea of sex. Indeed, may we not look forward to a human condition, when perfection is nearer, wherein neither male or female shall be known, and the race may reproduce itself otherwise than now?”

It was difficult, of course, to follow this line of argument with a lady, who, in her book, “Science and Health,” founds such a hope on a theory of life in an apiary, which would deprive the queen bees of “the customary presence of male companions” — a lady who scorns Agassiz because he “virtually affirms that the germ of humanity is a circumscribed and non-intelligent egg.”

From that point to the Christian Science simple scorn of mere everyday scientists it was an easy transition. She characterized doctors as “False teachers looking into matter. not into mind, relying on drugs instead on God for healing, and making their fears into laws on the subject of disease.”

“But, if, as you say, Christian Science wholly rejects the germ theory of the propagation of certain diseases, what is your theory of them?”

“They are fears, sin, mortal illusions shared by the people in general. Cast out fear. Call in the Divine Love and the diseases will be no longer infectious, for they will not exit.”

Mrs. Eddy, however, far from counselling any sensational opposition to the State’s health law, advises submission, but in that case fervor must be doubled and more heart reliance placed on Christian Science. Medicine appears to be the only science to which Mrs. Eddy is really opposeded. Healing, she thinks, may be accomplished by the most ignorant person, without the slightest knowledge of anatomy, provided the heart is sufficiently pure and the mental attitude is correct.

She makes a really beautiful application of her approval of the other physical sciences, for, to her mind, they tend to lessen the handling of matter by mankind.

Machinery doing so much now, man’s time is by so much more free to examine the sources of Life. Science that makes living finer, more ethereal, using the finer fluids of the universe, is really bringing everybody nearer to Cristian Science.

Talk on this and other points of the attitude of Christian Science toward what most people consider the great sciences proved fruitless, always turning back to definitions of Mrs. Eddy’s religious belief, often striking and sometimes beautiful in expression.

“On what is Christian Science based?” I asked at last.

“I can tell you on what I based my conception of religion and on which, so far as in me rests, I have laid its foundations, in Christian Science: —

The Ten Commandments. “The ninety-first Psalm. “The Sermon on the Mount.

“The Revelation of St. John the Divine.”

“I am a Theist, I must confess,” says Mrs. Eddy smiling.

“In our services,” she went on, a little reluctantly, “we have some slight forms of ceremonial, but in conformity with the simplicity of our belief there will be a gradual abandonment of even the present slight forms.

“Why, Mrs. Eddy should not others who take the same attitude to disease effect cures as well as Christian Scientists?”

“Their basis is false. I am not to deny any cures; but those who place their reliance on mind instead of on God in their mind are erring in the same degree as doctors who dose with drugs. Medicine has no effect in the cure of disease; it can have none. The willing of it, the trust in it, helps. Those who have pirated from my books are not honest to begin with. Those who mix mind cure with drug cure, as many do, I am told, are hypocrites. They create dissension and unlovingness. Can anything based on such evil have a permanent place? Belonging to the Church of Christ and observing its law, one must live the godly life. Without such guidance from God how can cures be effected?”

“Does Christian Science take any attitude on the broader political questions?

Does it, for instance, lean toward the higher socialism?”

Mrs. Eddy thought over this before replying and said cautiously: —

“We are not indifferent to forms of government, but we support the best in each. A church to be universal must in many things be neutral about forms of government and at the same time support what is right to support.”

This had the vague sound, but Mrs. Eddy found vent at last in one of her rapt speeches, delivered always with wide open eyes, looking into the air, and as if the words were dictated to her: —

When all men are one in the Church of Christ, the perfection of life and the perfection of government under the application of the Golden Rule will come. It will all be simple, natural, without clash or combat, all over the world in a divine brotherhood.”

On personal matters Mrs. Eddy was naturally more reserved. There are questions one could not well ask or press upon a lady in her own house, She reads much, she says, and keeps abreast of the thought and the doings of the times. She reads several newspapers and subscribes to seven monthly periodicals.

“Do you like novels?”

“I skim over a great deal. They often say of me here, “She knows more about it, naming some book, than we who have read it through’ “and the thought seemed to tickle her, for she smiled and smiled over it.

“And what works do you prefer?”

“I will tell you the book and writers that I have loved best. They are — Young’s Night Thoughts, ‘Alexander Pope’s poems, Felicia Herman’s poems, Ruskin’s works, Robert Browning’s poetry, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poetry and essays and Amos Bronson Alcott’s works.

“Dear old Mr. Alcott,” she continued, “how well I remember him coming to me at Concord in the dark days when every one seemed to be assailing me for my book, which had just been published. ‘Do not give way,’ he said to me ‘You are on the right path. After all your book is transcendentalism, and that is the true road,’

“I have no regular hours for work or sleep,” Mrs. Eddy went on, “I drive out every afternoon but often I begin writing in my bed at three in the morning and work till six. I work without fatigue. When I sleep, I sleep like a child. I am always at work, which is my pleasure, when awake. I, of course, take interest in my house and my flowers, but there is always much work to be done, and I can neglect nothing, but work or sleep as the spirit calls. I have taken no drugs of any kind in twenty-five years.

“Do you approve of the theatre?”

“That is a delicate question. Much of what is seen at the theatre is not to be approved of — only that which is elevating. I say this for many of the theatrical profession and dear good people, ‘stars’ even, are loyal Christian Scientists, but I must say what I have said.”

“The opera?”

“We love music; it is heard in all our services. I would say the same of that as of the drama. Th lifting, elevating, bettering music we must love. Where it is allied to the stage in ways not elevating I cannot approve.”

“As to dress and adornments and fashions, all that goes to beautify life and make us more pleasing in the sight of man and God is to be approved where it is not carried to vicious extremes.”

Mrs. Eddy rose and showed me some curious and valuable miniature paintings, some of the Dutch school. One, a fine head of Christ on the cross, suggested Correggio in the flesh tints and flesh treatment. Another was a Holy Family in the Fra Angelico style by a Dutch painter. A third was an antique on wood, Christ falling under the burden of the cross. They were presents to Mrs. Eddy from Lord Abinger. A fine miniature on ivory of Queen Victoria enclosed in a beautiful little casket of polished cairngorm stone set in gold was a recent present from some wealthy believers in Scotland. She referred with great pleasure also the Lord Dunmore, who often visits her at Pleasant View with his family. The thought of her aristocratic converts pleased her immensely. Like Moore, she evidently “dearly loves a lord.” Her apparently most genuine pride and pleasure were, however, in a letter that has been received by the leaders of her church in London from the Home Office in Whitehall acknowledging on behalf of King Edward VII, a receipt of a set of resolutions.

“Look,” said Mrs. Eddy, reading in a grandiloquent tone, ‘I am commanded by the King to convey to you hereby His Majesty’s thanks for the Loyal and Dutiful resolution of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, London.’ You see, it acknowledges the existence of the Church of Christ, Scientist. A royal acknowledgment. That is very important.”

On the margin of her copy of this interview, by the words “dearly loves a lord,” Mrs. Eddy penciled in the margin, “Many times she has dismissed a Lord at her door to help a poor widow in her debility.”





Items From Pleasant View

From the notes of Gilbert C. Carpenter

True prayer is the understanding that, as God’s children, we must have always possessed every good thing, and the ability to make it manifest.

Error cannot use manifest mortal mind or body to perpetuate itself, or to depict its images of fear.

Jesus said, “Stretch forth thy hand.” Apply thine understanding and you will see God’s work already done.

“And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” Dematerialization of thought and its expression.

“The word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” We have Science and Health and its Author.

Lifting thought away from the body, rolls the stone away from the tomb. Mary, the embodiment of demonstrating truth, will remove the stone from the tomb.

Every day — every hour — your work increases in effectiveness and power.

Ye read the Scriptures for in them ye think ye have eternal life; for these are they that testify of me. Jesus was the exemplification of God’s being. The Bible was the expression of Christ’s being. Every effort to reverse Science and Health is only an attempt to reverse Mother’s thought. You cannot separate Science and Health and Mother.

There are no senses outside of the individual sense of God. You are a liar and the father of the lie. I see right through you.

Man is simply the idea of God individualized; so this spiritual idea forgiveth our sins and healeth our diseases by our becoming this idea.

Close up your work, It stands fast. It is finished. Nobody believes a lie and never did. I don’t.

The only way to get at anyone is to get at them through God.

Perfect Love casteth out fear. If we love God, we love the idea. If we love the ides, we love God. Cannot love one without the other. And that Love giveth perfect peace, rest, and healing.

The only power of a mental assassin is to destroy itself. God is right here.

Heaven is right here. No lies can enter there.

She has never suffered; she could not. Does God know all? Then does He know that you suffer?

Don’t excuse error. To justify self is to perpetuate the lie of material sense.

In our earlier experiences we strive to produce harmonious matter — at ease in sense. In Science matter gives us no rest or harmony. We reach our basis of harmony in Mind only.

We are not to be satisfied without a demonstration.

There shall be no delay in writing the article requested by me. It shall not be published until I have seen the proof and passed on it, There is as much in when a thing is said as in what is said. It should have appeared in this Sentinel. It shall not be delayed another issue.

Mother is not a sinner. So the whole world cannot hold her that she must be punished.

There never was anyone through whom a belief of mortal mind power can come.

We don’t believe it, no one believes it, it is not self-perpetuating; has no principle, parentage, origin, power of expression or transference. It cannot get anyone to transfer it.

Everything I have done has been done by overcoming evil with good.

We see the flower before we behold the seed. We learn our lessons before they are voiced to us. The solution of the problem always come before the problem. That is how God’s work is finished. Rest comes before sleep.

Eternity is the ultimate of friendliness.

Are you unfitted through unbelief for doing your task?

Theosophists cannot reach us through another person and hypnotize us into thinking we feel their beliefs.

God does the healing and we are the channels through which the recognition of it comes.

Love is reflected to man and reflected back to God. Blessings follow obedience even from a channel.

A false witness in our own consciousness which saith, “Out of Spirit a new material body can be created.” Jesus said, “Spirit hath no flesh and blood as ye see me have.” me.

We don’t believe it and we don’t believe that we ever believed it.

It is only my belief that there is such a belief as interference and that it can touch

Darkness on the face of the deep — fear and belief that light has an opposite — the belief that God has an opposite.

God is here. She is one with Him. She knows because He knows, and she always has known it.

In God are to be found all beauty, color, fragrance, light, harmony, rest, wisdom, love, perception, understanding, form, the all-seeing eye, all hearing ear, all the sense of man, all substance, all creation, all consciousness, all mind pictures, all memory, all assimilation, digestion, action, strength.

The higher the attenuation of evil, the less truth with it; so the easier to destroy.

The understanding that there is no death because there are no pictures of old beliefs, no duality of matter and mind, of life and death, of good and evil, of truth and error, of material and spiritual life, and no thought transference.

I can’t make God govern His own idea, any more than I can prevent Him or anyone else can prevent Him from doing it.

Mr. Carpenter, write her to go to God. I cannot confer certainly on this subject.

He can.

Or is it that you think slightingly of His infinite goodness, forbearance and patience, unaware that the goodness of God is gently drawing you to repentance?

That one who has on the robe of rightness — right thinking — that enable him to see the union of God and man, Love wedded to its own idea — united to God.

Was not Jesus ‘crucifixion accomplished by hate more as an example for those who should follow him to prevent them from following in his footsteps?

It does not open our thought to the attack of error to deny it. Dear Brother Greene:

Your dear class made our beloved Leader a visit yesterday, and behold a miracle: they fed us reciprocally, instead of mentally demanding us to feed them. Send students through the world with such a heaven-born unselfish love and behold the lump is leavened.

Caution them not to lose this most sacred hold on salvation — a true sense of God’s prophet, but to radiate it.

Our Leader enquired most carefully and interestedly about the class and how they enjoyed the visit, and when I was able to tell her their thoughtful attention of her time and sacred seclusion, seeming to appreciate what she was doing for them, she held up her hands in amazement and gratitude, and it cheered her dear heart and filled her with joy and hope, She also spoke of the grand message that was sent with the beautiful flowers which gave her joy and felt that it rang true.

Oh — did the students but know the privilege of the hour and God’s call to them, they would strive to put on their wedding garments and be ready to behold the bridegroom. When the world can come to Pleasant View in the spirit in which these dear ones came, God will welcome them.

Yours in the same Truth.

Gilbert C. Carpenter

Jesus saith, “Destroy this body and in three days I will raise it again.” Mrs. Eddy says, “If you will stay with me, in three days I will be well.”

After Paul’s vision he was blind. Truth inverted.

The higher Jesus went spiritually, the more discord apparently was manifested — but to the five senses only.

Jesus robbed error of is personality, which caused it to be self-destroyed. The devil came out of the belief of personality and entered into the swine, the belief of animality causing self-destruction.

Demand of yourself to know what is right.

Because Love fills all space there is no room for old beliefs. Because Love is the same yesterday, today and forever, there is no relapse. Because the image reflected is always the same, the reverse of Truth is Truth.

Your relation to God is fixed in divine Science, unchangeable and eternal, and you are conscious of that relation.

The first death is the simple belief that matter has a beginning and so must have an ending, that it goes out through sickness and age.

The second death is the effort of sin — malicious animal magnetism — to kill us by putting out our sense of God. Jesus must have destroyed the simple belief of death time after time, but the cross where his sense of God crossed swords with evil — malicious animal magnetism — and for a moment faltered, was the overcoming of the second death, and as he had overcome the first death, the second hath no power.

Now, Mother, dear, you have overcome years ago the first death. You are now proving to the world that the second death hath no power. And that you do not have to go through it.

There is but one Mind, God, and there is no communicable disease that can be transmitted from one to another in this house.

It is the easiest thing in the world to help each other.

We have no human belief of ourselves through which ignorance, fear and human will can play.

Mother says after talking to you and Mr. Kinter, she opened Science and Health to page 272, pars. 3,4.

Christian Scientists shall daily accentuate God’s law in knowing that it is supreme and that obedience thereto brings immediate and permanent health, happiness and success.

First and second death: Fear not them which kill the body but, are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Antidote. To know we are conscious of God’s love and power and it never can be taken from us.

Jesus was the highest human concept of the Christ.

Our consciousness is cognizant only of the things of God and believes only that testimony.

Your work is not reversed. My atmosphere carries health, harmony. An evil mind is a false belief — nothing to it. It is only a lie — no truth in it.

Gen. 8:20, 21. Smelling — that recognition that goes up from the sacrifice on the altar of Truth of our pure sanctified thoughts, our highest demonstration of Truth — our first fruits.

Tasting — satisfaction in the words of Truth.

For which of these things do ye stone me? Jesus wanted to find out which were his best works.

One Mind — the only Mind — that Mind is power, harmonious action, Love etc.

No sex in Love — no male or female.

A bunch. Matter is but an expression of the thought. Take the bunch out of thought and matter will not express it, for there is no such thing for matter to express. There is but one Mind, one thought, and in that thought there are no bunches.

God’s idea of us is the only idea we can have of ourselves.

The belief that there is a talking serpent or that serpent can talk is all there is to error. belief.

No real thing that separates us from the love of Christ — only ignorance and Sunday, Sept. 3, 1905. Mrs. Eddy opened to Eph. 4:9. Easiest thing in the world to help Mother. Stop the mental argument and she is healed. Jesus cast out the devils who knew him. She is a channel only for Love — a transparency. We see her as she sees us. Mother can see that her own prayers are effectual. She cannot be robbed of the results. Science and Health, page 385.

No suffering for the sins of others. The only power of evil is to destroy itself. Bury it. The statements of Science and Health are true — cannot be reversed. Every statement in Science and Health heals the sick. Whatever error tries to do, it destroys itself. Every effort it makes to perpetuare itself destroys itself. To claim existence destroys it.

Never leave your argument in the negative. Leave it so there is nothing left but good. Then we will accomplish something.

The 23d. day of June,1905. A remarkable sunset sky in the east at 7:30. Azure blue. The sun began to set in distinct rainbow colors with fleecy clouds tipped in gold. Mrs. Eddy said: “A sad day ending in brilliancy.”

Sleep is mesmerism. True sleep is being unconscious of matter and the consciousness of God; this rests us for it is a type of true spiritual unity.

Don’t see things — Eddy.

Error tries to prevent us from radiating the truth that God pours into consciousness.

Paul when he told of his old life and conversion to truth, they bound him; but when he said he was born free — free before he was born — the fetters came off him. Never being in bondage, he could not be again.

Matter is only a misconception of Mind.

Every effort of the leader of this gang blesses us, makes our way easier, give us better health and a shorter way to heaven.

Is there any life, truth, intelligence or substance in matter? No. Is man a creator? No.

Which is the worse thing, pleasure or pain in the senses? Pleasure. Is pleasure in the senses sin? Yes.

Are you a healer of the sick? Yes. Are you a healer of sin? Yes.

Can you be a sinner and heal sin? No.

Can you be a sinner and teach Christian Science? No. Is the connubial relation sin? Yes.

Can you be a Christian Scientist and maintain it now, for honesty is Christian Science’s first law?

Can you uphold the old marriage relation, which is only legalized lust, and be a Christian Scientist?

When I first came into Christian Science, I never had another menstruation period.

Suffering due to sin. The dropping off dependence on material things should be painless, for is it wrong to do right and can we suffer for doing right? It is sin that makes us suffer. It is all mental.

Thinness and thickness are both fear. A fat man is only an overblown fear — a sudden fear — and thinness is a shrinking fear.

Theosophy claims that the sick are suffering from sin and therefore we can’t help them; that they must work it out themselves. Theosophy claims to see through and read unopened letters. It also claims that we cannot think of the infinite, that we cannot think outside of ourselves. We cannot suffer, neither can others be made to suffer for our work.

God.

Ask yourself daily what shuts out of my thought a conscious communion with I go to prepare a place for you. Our place is prepared for us, and in that place we find refuge when hard pressed, if we will.

God is supreme and dominant in His own universe, and fills the hearts of His own children.

We show our love for God by loving His reflection.

For God so loved the world, etc. Our new-born spiritual consciousness must be given to the world, even though beaten and crucified.

Prodigal son: man taking his gift of intelligence, wisdom, etc., from God and using them for his own pleasure, dipping into the senses, etc., until they are dry. We must turn from our conception of man, so that Truth may form and fashion us anew.

The power of God is infinite, positive, and His law is immutable. When we become a channel for that law, we cannot reduce it or take it out of its groove.

We don’t talk and uncover error enough. Error says, don’t talk about me, talk about God.

Our spiritual consciousness is like a balloon. It rises spontaneously. The anchors that we throw out are all that hold us down, namely, fear, belief that it will not rise, love of staying on the earth, selfishness, sin, egotism, anxiety, self-depreciation, self- aggrandizement; love of place and power, laziness, inaction, zeal without knowledge, faith in matter and its laws.

The second death is the effort of malice to rob us of our absolute faith and pure trust in an absolute good God.

When we see our ideal in our brother, it heals him instantaneously.

Our ideal of her is her ideal of us. Our ideal of her is our ideal of ourselves. The focus of ideas is when we all have the same idea.

Eating the body is partaking of the Christ ideal. Drinking the blood is leaving all for Christ.

Perfect health is heaven because it is the ability to resist every claim of error. We demonstrate through a sense of lightness, hope, buoyancy.

The never crucified Jesus Christ; they only crucified their conception of him in their own hearts; and it is in their heart’s testimony that they have perpetuated it. We must separate ourselves from peoples’ idea of us. Our idea of ourselves is not their idea of us.

We learn the nature of evil by what it claims of truth. Pure Mind is the law of annihilation to its opposite.

Because there is no belief of fear, there is no fear of belief. Evil cannot use anyone to perpetuate a dream.

Heaven in the heart of one means heaven in the heart of all. Look up to God and the work is done.

Defeat is to acknowledge defeat — the only defeat there is. We don’t see or believe evil about any one else.

We have no individuality apart from our brother.

Every channel is God’s. Has anyone forgotten God’s love? Consciousness is a respondence of divine actuality.

How can anyone believe a lie when God is infinite Truth?

The idea of God is the universal idea which is the universal consciousness. We must radiate the universal idea. The idea is the conscious reflection of God, the identities being the sons and daughters and the universe. The idea is first seen, them impinged, then it brings light and radiation instantaneously and is seen in universal consciousness.

God’s law outshines and outthunders the arguments of error. Rays must be taken out of the darkness; then the darkness disappears. Then error stripped of its externals is self-destroyed.

Mother says, “The argument or work is not mine but God’s, and increases in power on up to eternity.” Error claims, “Worse for my work.”

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. “Hitch yourself to my idea.” Look into the glass; see God reflected; it is yourself.

Science and Health, page 515.





Miscellaneous Fragments

God.

Do not try to heal your patient by a lot of negations. Bring out the omnipotence of

Life must be manifested in the present sense of body.

Return of old beliefs comes from mental malpractice and mesmerism. There never was an old belief; never was a return of an old belief. There is no mental malpractice. You must break that law.

If we are spiritually-minded enough not to need knocks to make us grow, we won’t get them. So to be clear enough and good enough to prevent these claims, and frustrate them, is the only way.

Cross swords with error, and win your way into heaven.

Stop thinking any circumstances or person is to blame for your failure, shortcomings or growth. God is your Friend and Deliverer.

We must so abide in God that no form of hypnotism can influence; or man or devil move us. Evil suggestions coming to my consciousness can mean nothing, if met by Christ, Truth, who casts out devils.

Hate is a form of the death argument, sapping. Love is Life-sustaining.

A return of consumption is prenatal mesmerism.

God is All-in-all, and you are in good. Love is the Deliverer from all bondage of belief.

God is with you always, even unto the end; so the only helper there is, is with you always. God is your only strength, your only reliance, your only Life. Just try to keep in thought that Mind is All; there is no reality in matter. As this is true, Mind cannot be disturbed.

If you had all the money in the world, you would have nothing in the world. Mind is riches. You have no fear of money. You cannot pray to money. It could not even hear you.

There is no mental sluggishness, or apathy. The Word of God, or statements of good, is as powerful as it is quiet, and heals in every case.

Christian Science is God with us. You will have a secret sense of security in divine Love if you put away fear, and you can do this if you wholly acknowledge God as all.

Jesus said, “The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life.” And by the words of Life that is Christian Science you are healed.

Relax your thought. Your body is held tense, rigid by your tense thought of self. Let go; you are living in Love; you govern your body through Mind, and you know that man’s true selfhood is no slave, but master.

Mortal mind says there are many kinds, phases, or claims of blood disease.

There is no such disease for man is perfect.

Mortal mind cannot poison man.

Under the law of Love, hatred, envy, malice are powerless — cannot act.

In disposing of error, handle Roman Catholicism. It is an illusion utterly as regards God, Christ, man and Christianity.

To claims you know nothing about, handle all claims of heart failure, anxiety, Activity of heart is immortal, eternal, ever-active.

Declare the government is in God’s hands — leave it with God. Bring down every error that tries to bring down your business.

There is no hurry or rush. There is time for all things. Declare you have no abnormal appetite.

Declare that the claims of defamation, or censure, or antagonism cannot hinder your work, or injure your health, and your affairs. Good is all power.

Be alert and persistent in claiming your perfection, and realize your God-given ability to maintain your perfection of thought. His angels have charge over thee. These angels — good thoughts — come to hold thee up.

In handling the claim of mental malpractice you must destroy the belief in personality. You must destroy the belief in envy, malice; destroy the belief in laws of malpractice, The one evil is mortal mind.

There is no doctor’s law, but it is the universal law of mortal mind you need to handle. The physician only recites to you the law laid down to him.

Mortal mind cannot act through prenatal mesmerism. There never was any heredity of belief. Handle mental environment of patients.

Always handle fear of death. Declare for strength and vigor. There is no form of life that can feed on or infest the flesh of man.

There is no failure of man’s facilities, strength or vitality — no sexual disease of any kind that can manifest itself, There is no claim of poison, mental, vegetable or animal.

Your treatment is not void because it is the truth you are declaring. Handle you own fear, that you cannot be an avenue for fear.

See that the healer is free from sin.

The action of man is eternal. Handle well abnormal growth, imperfect action. Mind is eternal.

It is not Christian or scientific to speak of your strength returning slowly, for God Almighty is your strength, and God has never been absent. You know this, and are perfectly active now, well now, strong now.

Love is the milk and meat, and as you hunger and thirst after righteousness, you are filled “… for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

One needs to protect himself from his own false beliefs alone; therefore the only wrong thinker, or mental malpractitioner, there is or can be is one’s self. The beam in one’s own eye is the whole of evil.

Of what does our human concept consist, and who created it? All our warfare is located within the confines of our thought. Evil cannot be located, because it can- not be confined.

When you see error, you must destroy the seeming power for all, as well as for yourself.

The healer is God. The healing is through Christ The treatment is through God with us.

Know the Truth, and stop listening to lies.

When the suggestion comes to you that you cannot do any one thing, declare you can positively, persistently. God, good, works through you.

A Christian Science treatment cannot enter a consciousness to do its work when error is persisted in.

Some claims are not the result of sinful thoughts.

Give no thought to your body, but every thought to Truth, and know that your Father-Mother Love watches over you, and gives power to your every act.

Love knows no poverty, but peace and plenty.

The law of God is that you can help yourself, and others always.

You are always in the presence of the one Power, and under this presence nothing can or does harm you.

Nothing can reverse the Truth, for Truth is All.

Life, Truth and Love are one, the only one, and you are the manifestation of that one now.

Disease has no duration, no purpose, no life, no truth, and your body has of itself absolutely no power. Read, and study, and know that you are spiritual now.

There is no man-made thing; man is not a thing made, but is God’s man now. When thoughts are clouded by hate, resentment or error, Truth cannot thrive.

Keep your windows clean. If there is any resentment or hate in your heart, stay at home, pull down the shades, and was your windows till you cast it out.

Christian Science lives in grandeur, strength, health, peace and all good. All action is in Mind.

When we are pushed into tight places, and facing the most severe problems, we are gaining big steps in our lessons and progress.

Mrs. Eddy said when raising one who had seemingly died, she had never seen so clearly the truth of Life eternal, and the perfection of its manifestation.

There is too much apathy of breaking the claim of mental malpractice. Be systematic about handling that claim every day. When you recognize the false laws, you must know that Truth can and does destroy them.

There is only one lawgiver and one government.

All reflection is good, and I do reflect health, Life and that everlasting. Animal magnetism is error of any kind; thought externalizes itself.

Mind moves the joints; they do not move themselves.

If anybody hates you, you will find it out; if you realize the nothingness of the claim, you will learn that there is no hatred to harm you, except the hatred you are harboring for others.

When we master hatred and resentment, we can remove mountains. Pray to be delivered from hating, and all evil, and help to lift the load from mankind as well as for yourself.

Don’t be afraid to handle animal magnetism; know that its claims are false — work of contagion — of fear.

We must all sooner or later work out our own salvation. No one can do our thinking, or demonstrate for us.

We have the glorious revelation that the right idea about anything destroys the false belief about it as truly in Christian Science as in mathematics.

The right idea is our Savior. Don’t reject it, but let it direct your thought and acts every moment, and it will console you, supply your needs, heal you and bring you into union with God consciously, and you will know God and yourself aright. “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” Jesus. The only antidote for error is the right idea on the same subject. We need to watch over our thoughts, and be more alert and detect these suggestions, and reject and destroy them. Look them squarely in the face, and know they cannot master you.

When anything goes wrong, get to work in the realm of thought, and fearlessly meet and destroy the claim; appropriate the blessing which Truth gives you.

A paralyzed arm is neither person, place or thing. It is only a false belief.

When you lie down to sleep, know that you have self-control, and the everlasting arms are about you, and nothing can intrude into your quiet sanctuary — your peace and quiet.

You say you cannot sleep. Why not rather say that you rest in God who does not sleep? You need no sleep. Realize this, and the fear that you will not sleep will disappear, and you will sleep. It is the assurance of knowing that makes us master of the situation.

Harmonize your thoughts, and every part of your body will respond in perfect functions. Your harmonized thought makes a harmonized reflection.

It is not Christian Science that fails, but the faith to demonstrate it.

Fear is mesmerism, and mesmerism is no thing, and must be disbelieved in — rejected — destroyed. Your body can never give you occasion to be afraid, and no mesmeric wave of fear can touch you, when you guard your thought in the truth.

When experiencing a belief of pain, do not waste time in handling a belief of pain. Declare against the erroneous claim of malicious animal magnetism, and the belief will cease.

Error tries to blind us, to make us think we haven’t enough understanding to demonstrate.

Instead of being bound for the grave, we must know we are on the eternal road of Life that has no sense of death. No evasion of the subject is possible, We must know that we can never die. We have to know this some time, and now is a good time to begin. We do not need to sorrow because of the seeming death, but rather rejoice that we know the way out.

If we say we cannot do this or that, we are not giving divine Love a chance to be expressed through us — but closing the channels.

Persistently declare the truth about everything error is lying about, knowing the declaration of truth breaks the claim. It is always positive and effectual. Declare yourself into heaven in every treatment, and out of error. Know that divine Mind is always true and lies not. Error has no mind to emanate from. Do not dally with the subject. Our delivery depends upon how we cling to God and His idea, and how fast we stop believing lies. Declare the truth as vigorously as you would slip out of perdition into heaven.

Jesus had a perfect fleshly body; then he went a step further and demonstrated by an enlarged understanding the Christ, or perfect spiritual man.

By making movements, we make a move to represent the highest perfection we can. God won’t be displeased if we try to move toward perfect being.

A treatment does not need to be but two words, if you know it.

Some people say they cannot treat unless they know the cause. Nothing hasn’t any cause.

Stand guard against the effort of evil to cause things to happen that will fill you with grief, wrath, or fear, and thus shut out your sense of the allness of God.

Keep the joy of Christian Science, and a well-grounded hope in your success. Remember as Truth progresses, error grows more subtle and aggressive, but it does not become something. It always remains an illusion, and is always met and destroyed with the understanding that divine Love is the only power.

Each individualized consciousness is ever in touch with all other individual thought — the universal Christ consciousness. John 17:21.

If you know the truth just once about yourself, you are free. It remains with you if you accept your freedom.

Man cannot change his true self if he would. He cannot undo God’s work.

As a teacher examine yourself, and build on a solid foundation. Do not go forth in your own name, but you will teach what God has taught me, and what I, His poor servant, have taught you.

At one time Mrs. Eddy ordered a dress made and while making it, the dressmaker prayed to be sweet, pure, true and grateful, so that the dress would be a proper raiment for our Leader. She loved the dress and wore and wore it until finally it became shabby. So she ordered another one made just like it. This time the dressmaker having trouble with her own help, and was irritable and cross. Mrs. Eddy could not wear it. “I cannot feel happy in it. Take it away.” Yet it appeared to be exactly like the old one.

Mrs. Eddy said that she had the coffin in Christ and Christmas made big and black on purpose, so that students would look at it until they ceased to be afraid of It — then they could see it as nothing.

It is said that Mrs. Eddy lived for a year in a barn, with hardly more to eat than crackers and pears, A neighbor said, “I don’t know what that woman is doing in that barn, but she is certainly a saint to be able to do it.”

“Perhaps it may soften the hearts of some of my students,” was Mrs. Eddy’s comment when she sent the rocking chair in which she sat when she wrote Science and Health to The Mother Church.

Mrs. Eddy restored a patient’s eye-ball, after it had been put out by a hot cinder.

When she was asked why it was necessary to restore the eye-ball if Mind is all that sees, she said. “I anticipated that you would ask that question. Science restores the standard of perfection that mortal mind calls for. If it had not been restored, no one would have believed him, when he said that he could see.”

One day Mrs. Eddy told the workers in her home to go to their rooms and “Stick to the truth of being.” They worked all day on that thought.

Practicality is needed; theory is not. I am astounded at the need I find of practical Christian Science.

Until we can handle the weather, we will not be able to completely overcome our belief of a mortal body.

Mrs. Eddy said, “I am sorry to have to stop and work on the weather, for when I do this, it is so long before it rains again. Elisha made it rain, but I cannot.”

Mrs. Eddy made a comment about the teaching that was being done by Ursula Gesterfeld and others in the Field, “Though they may teach from my books, and use my words, still if it is done with the wrong thought back of it, the truth of God becomes a lie in their mouth.”

Jesus could talk with Elias and Moses because he knew that they never died.

Mrs. Eddy said that we could see Mr. Kimball (after he died), if we were right.

Human will never accomplished anything, even though it was done in the name of good.

To one who was ill, “My dear, that is not in your body; it is in consciousness, and you can take it out.”

For every concession to material methods, I have gone into the wilderness and suffered my way out.

Mrs. Eddy said, “If you can handle all the error in the Roman Catholic church, all right; but I can’t.”

A carpenter who was working on Christian Science Hall said he must stop work because he had rheumatism. He said his mother had the same trouble. Mrs. Eddy asked him if he had to be a dumbhead, just because his mother was one. He was healed on the spot.

Mr. and Mrs. Baxter lived outside of Boston. In class Mrs. Eddy said to Mr. Baxter, “If one of your children was very ill, what would you do?” He replied, “I would say, God is All.” There was a long pause. The she said, “Very well, Mr. Baxter, tomorrow when you come in town, don’t take the street car.”

One of Mrs. Eddy’s students was very irritable over having to do so much domestic work. She said she didn’t have time for so much material work. Mrs. Eddy smiled and said, “I didn’t know there was any material work.”

Mrs. Eddy had a cook who showed resentment and egotism. She held herself above menial labor, and thought she had enough understanding of Christian Science to do higher work. Mrs. Eddy could not eat the food she cooked. Her comment was, “I cannot eat it. It is poison.” The cook was sent away. The one who took her place loved to serve Mrs. Eddy, and she ate the food she prepared and relished it.

One of Mrs. Eddy’s favorite references was, “The good you do and embody gives you the only power obtainable.”

Captain Eastman, one of the early Directors, was a gruff and seemingly unpolished character; but Mrs. Eddy saw in him qualities that others did not see, among which was sterling honesty. Once the Directors discharged him from membership for immorality without consulting with Mrs. Eddy. When she heard of it she sent for him.

What took place during the long interview, no one ever knew; but when he left he had a letter to the Directors directing them to reinstate him, saying that he was one of the best students she had. This may be the case referred to on page 140 of Bliss Knapp’s book.

One day while out driving Mrs. Eddy noticed a piece of soft fur under the harness of one of the horses. When she asked what it was there for, she was told that is was to protect a chafed place on the pony’s shoulder. When the pony was unharnessed after the drive, the place was healed.

Mr. Tomlinson reported that Mrs. Eddy said that the great desire of her heart was that the branch churches should reflect the one Mind.

If you would be a good healer, study the life of Jesus.

Mrs. Eddy told Clara Shannon that she foresaw much trouble ahead for Christian Scientists. “Tell them never to get into the courts,” she said.

A student was sitting in Mrs. Eddy’s room working one night, because there seemed to be a special need. Mrs. Eddy looked so white and frail lying in bed, that the student became frightened and thought, “What an awful thing it would be if Mrs. Eddy passed on in her sleep while I was sitting here.” Instantly Mrs. Eddy woke up and commanded sharply, “Grace, go straight to your room.”

A student was watching Mrs. Eddy drive by. After she had gone, her five year old grandson, who was by her side, started to sob and to say, “I want to be good. I will never be bad again. When you call me I will come. I will do all you want me to do. I want to be a good boy.”

When Mrs. Eddy’s carriage came to the railroad tracks and the train could be seen coming in the distance, she made the driver wait until it had passed by. Mr. Frye said, “But, Mother, we had plenty of time to cross before the train came.” She said, “Ah, yes, but malicious animal magnetism would have liked nothing better than to stop my carriage on the tracks.”

In Science the Word of God is pure, cleansing every channel, removing every obstacle or obstruction, and passing through all by reason of its purity.

Mrs. Eddy hunted for her glasses one day in front of Mrs. Gilbert Carpenter. She said, “I have three pairs, but when I have my spiritual sight I do not need them.”

From a Biographical Sketch of Mrs. Eddy By Hon. Henry Robinson.

When asked who would manage the great work, take charge of the great Cause of Christian Science in the future, Mrs. Eddy answered: “That question has resolved itself into a fatal mistake. I do not (she said) carry on the work myself. It is only through the influence of the Lord that I do it, and the Lord is the one who will carry it on. There is no more speculation on how the work will be carried on in the future than there is on what the future discoveries in astronomy will show, or what will be done in the nebula, Why it is an infinite subject. So, speculation is void. My life had been such a demonstration of this that it would amaze you.”

Definition of Christian Science by Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Science was discovered in Boston, Mass. A.D., 1866 by the Rev. Mary B. G. Eddy; author of Science and Health, etc. Christian Science is the explanation of Truth, reducing to human apprehension and demonstration the infinite Principle, divine Love, God — manifested in the annihilation of sin, sickness, and death. Christian Science is Christ Science, or Emmanuel knowledge, and involves the ultimate of all reason, revelation and inspiration. This church is built on the spiritual interpretation of the Scriptures. In Christian Science God is demonstrated as infinite Love, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent Spirit — the only Life, substance, and intelligence, and man as His idea or reflection. This at-one-ment of man with God, Jesus demonstrated Christian Science unites Science with Christianity, basing its scientific character on demonstrable Truth. In theology it worships God as eternal Love, the universal Father and Mother, thereby establishing the brotherhood of man. This scientific creation is the infinite expression of infinite Love, entirely spiritual. Its medicine is the divine Mind. The ultimate of Christian Science is the establishment and recognition of spiritual harmony; to this end it heals the sick and sinful as Jesus did. In logic Christian Science is indisputable. In demonstration of the power of Mind over matter, it is mathematical, irrefutable, and Biblical. The foundational truths of Christian Science are, the reality and allness of God, the unreality and nothingness of matter; the spirituality of man and the universe, the omnipotence of good, the impotence of evil. The demonstrative actuality of Christian Science essentially distinguished it from all other religions of the age.

Mrs. Bailey reported that Mrs. Eddy told her to work for a patient right up to the point of passing on. But she said, “When they are in the vestibule, we must loose them and let them go.” Mrs. Eddy gave this thought as the reason she could carry on and act so happy after her husband, Dr. Eddy, died. She also wrote to Henrietta Chanfrau on Nov. 29, 1905; “Arguments for those passed from mortal sight must follow the Scriptural Golden Rule. It is not permitted in Science to continue work for them longer. This only hinder growth spiritual and animal magnetism grows thereby. When will students gain higher views in Spirit and cease making arguments lest the Cause come into grave consequences therefore?” She also said, “If we will refuse to believe them gone and think of them as when we could see them, we will help them to become adjusted to their new environment wherein no confusion or sorrow will come to mar their new experience. God’s dear love for His children is so deep and far reaching that He does not afflict us. It is our mistaken sense of Life that brings the pain and sorrow. You say that she is dead, we buried her today. That is not true. You buried your belief of her and will some day resurrect it. The only reason why we cannot see our friends who have passed on is because of the limitation which mortal mind has put upon itelf.”

Once when the students were gathered at Mrs. Eddy’s home, Eldora Gragg saw Mrs. Eddy come down the stairs with her arm around a student who had at times made trouble, and acted in a disloyal way. She had even said things against her Leader. Later someone remonstrated with Mrs. Eddy for treating her with such marked consideration and affection, by saying, “Don’t you know, Mother, what she is saying about you?” Mrs. Eddy replied, “If I were to shut her out, I would close the very door that makes it possible for me to heal her.”

Mrs. Eddy said in substance that we can determine our need for human possessions by the measuring rod of their usefulness to us in understanding and demonstrating Christian Science.

From the Christian Science Sentinel, page 901, Vol. 39: On a paper Mrs. Eddy wrote, “I never wrote this in a letter or letters.”will have no foundling children. . . “

It is report that Mrs. Eddy wrote Science and Health in two weeks, writing as fast as possible, and dropping the sheets on the floor. Then in the evening she would gather them together and put them in order. Then she took up the task of rewriting them. When asked why she had to rewrite them, she replied that she translated from a language unknown to anyone. One asked her to speak in that language and she did. When asked is she understood, the questioner said, “Not a word.”

Adam Dickey expressed approval of what Mrs. Eddy had been writing, and she said, “God wrote that.” He replied, “I know He did, for I felt it.” Mrs. Eddy said, “I believe you did.”

Years ago I and the material world parted. I preserve this distance only in matter, In Spirit I am coming nearer to you and to all with unseen presence, truth and love.

Mrs. Eddy to Joseph Mann, “Have you been good to yourself today?”

The distemper of pride is more dangerous than smallpox. It is the greatest pox in the land. Its postulate leaves the ugliest scars.

Mrs., Eddy said to Dr. French, “The person isn’t touched by death. He is simply throwing off a phase of material consciousness — human consciousness — and that phase has got to meet another phase, and another, till the divine appears; then comes the immortal and eternal man. Now, I hold that man existed eternally and never had a beginning and never had an ending. Why? Because in our dear Bible we learn that God made man in His own image and likeness; that image is God, Spirit, we all agree, do we not?” Dr. French, “Yes, Mrs. Eddy.” “Then we have got two positions there in common; that God is Spirit and God is infinite. Then can you get anything outside of the infinite?” Dr, French, “No.” “Now I have got you.” (Mr. Streeter and Dr. French laugh). “Now there comes in the image and likeness of God. There is God and man eternal.”

Jesus was not ashamed when he hung on the cross.

Mrs. Eddy in reading Matt. 25:12, said, “God cannot know evil, because there is nothing in evil to know.”

God pays with interest. You will not get any interest until you pay what you owe.

God blesses you in paying your debts, and the sooner you pay them, the greater the blessing.

When John Lathrop was at Pleasant View, Mrs. Eddy heard him denying some form of error quite vigorously. She said, “Don’t deny that way audibly unless you can prove it.”

Our church laws are as absolute in their power and legality as a law of the United States.

Mrs. Eddy said her rule was not to have pets because they could not work for themselves, and animal magnetism would use them to take up her time, when she needed it for more important things. “God created the animals ‘after their kind,’ and their kind will take care of them.”

In 1907 Mrs. Carrie S. Whitaker went to Concord N.H., and walking towards Pleasant View, met Mrs. Eddy’s carriage. The carriage drew near enough for her to see Mrs. Eddy and to hear her say, as she looked toward her, “Waiting, waiting, and heaven is all along the way.”

Letter to C. W. Chadwick of Dec. 25, 1905: “Beloved Student: I beg to thank you for your excellent article, The Naturalness of Spirit.‘ Press on; you are highly commissioned, and well armed for the strife and victory over false sense, for joy giving and receiving, since all natural law is the energy of infinite Spirit that has no competitor, and that reigns from necessity. All human hypotheses are dependent on this independent process and are solved alone by divine Intelligence. Affectionately yours, Mary Baker Eddy.”

A student speaking about another student said to Mrs. Eddy, “She isn’t good for anything; she is nothing but a little bundle of paint and powder.” Mrs. Eddy replied, “Save the powder.”

Mrs. Eddy said to Adam Dickey, “If I were to pass through the belief of death now, I would still be here,”

We are proportionately as successful in the temporal as we are progressive in the spiritual.

Mrs. Eddy said to Laura Sargent that in her early experience in Science she felt as if there was a high mountain before her. She was lifted to its top, and from there she looked in every direction and saw nothing but good. Everything was beautiful and glorious. But after she had taught two students, she had to descend to go into the depths, in order to learn what animal magnetism was. Jesus never had this experience. His spiritual birth saved him this.

We must meet the error that comes to us, but we meet it with the Truth that they have brought, i. e., our experiences.

The Christian Science church is the one institution that will preserve Christian healing for the world, and save it from its devouring disorganizers.

Mrs. Eddy once said to a student, “Do you have to tell everything you know?” Mrs. Eddy instructed the Bible Lesson Committee that the lesson on “Man” should always meet the belief of age.

I am well and younger than ever before. The foam of earth’s billows has left its white waves on my hair, but what of that if the heart is hopeful, and not tired of the strife.

You might as well try to put God in your pocket as to put Science and Health into a formula.

I heal you because I heal myself.

Do not expect to tune yourself up in a moment.

The midnight call means the unexpected call to demonstrate Christ in the midst of darkness.

Mental malpractice is king of the realm of evil, but we are not its loyal subjects; hence the fact that we have our freedom, and must and will maintain it.

The mesmeric nature of matter is the veil of flesh which hides spiritual life.

M.A.M., R.C., cannot, with its subtle, evil influence, make me dormant, stupid or drunken, cannot reverse the action of good, cannot impel my mind into error of thought or action.

I am awake. I cannot be glamoured. There is no hypnotism. I can see the need and meet it, for it is God that worketh with me. God has a plan for all His children, and it is a gracious plan. I have my place in His plan. I have my work in His plan, and malicious mental malpractice can neither hinder nor prevent me from seeing a full, complete and perfect manifestation of what God’s plain is for me here and now.

If you find you do not readily heal yourself, know that mental malpractice cannot argue arsenical and mercurial poison, with a view to mental assassination through the stomach and blood.

Calvin Frye went into Mrs. Eddy’s room suddenly and saw her suspended above her chair. As he stood speechless, she said, “Don’t be afraid, Calvin, I am all right,” Then she settled down into her chair.

Mrs. Eddy called a student to her home for an interview. She asked her, “Do you know how to handle electrical poison? If you do not, you can be of no service to Mother, and might as well return home.”

She said that her students had not treated her as she had treated her husband, Dr. Eddy, with untiring, unceasing efforts until the case was ended.

She said, “It will rest with The Mother Church and its branch churches to keep the light of this healing truth burning, and to keep the textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, before the whole world until that period of danger shall have passed.”

On the last day (of one of her classes) Mrs. Eddy paused and raised her finger in the way she did occasionally to emphasize a point, and said, “If you remember nothing else I’ve told you, I want you to remember this: There is one infinite God and one infinite man expressing that God.”

Once the First Reader of The Mother Church went out to feed the pigeons on Commonwealth Ave., each day. Mrs. Eddy wrote to him asking him how one who held the important office of bringing Christ to humanity could find the time to feed pigeons.

Time is our enemy. It is often a symptom of a desire for something. The beauty of holiness is unselfed love.

As fish are surrounded completely by water and derive their food supply therefrom, so man is surrounded by Love, supplied therefrom. II Kings 25:30.

Think the rule and forget the things and do unswerving thinking.

James 1:21-27. A perfect statement of Christian Science. I could or would not add nor take a word from this.

Judge Hanna wrote to Mrs. Eddy: “I saw at this time a duality of nature I had never witnessed in a person before.” Her reply was, “You caught me perfectly. It is just my dual state which you so graphically portrayed. I have given you two lessons that I could not have given in a class, and they will not lose their effects in time — nor in eternity.”

My motive in what I have written is as unselfish as my daily, lonely, toilsome life.

Never be too confident that you will not be made to do something against your will and wish.

To the Bible Lesson Committee, March 14, 1897. I have read the Sunday Lesson for April 1st., and note one failure. I do not know who prepared the lesson, or rather selected the quotations from Science and Health. In the Quarterly on page 3, paragraph 4, the Scripture from St. John contains this clause, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven.” The correlative selections from Science and Health never touched that point which is left so obscure in the Scripture. Please see S. & H., page 34, para 3, beginning at line 11 of this paragraph which throws such light on that personal claim of our Master’s and would clear it for everybody. With love, Mother.

Judge Ewing was told, when he was called to lecture in Lynn, that some town rowdies had planned to attend, and that when he spoke of Mrs. Eddy, they were going to hoot and howl, and try to break up the lecture. He decided, therefore, to start his lecture with a tribute to her. He did this and no storm followed. At the close of the lecture he took a train to Boston, and went up to Concord the next morning. When he saw Mrs. Eddy she said, “I want to thank you, Judge, for what you did for me last night.” With much surprise he asked her who had been to see her before him, to tell her about it.

She replied, “I both saw and heard you.”

“How should I dress?” a student asked Mrs. Eddy. “Dress as gaily as the flowers, but mind you, keep as modest.”

A student was pouring out a tale of woe. Mrs. Eddy said, “He maketh the clouds His chariot.”

Intelligence is at the helm and carries with it all action. No material condition ever stopped the flow of divine Mind.

When Mrs. Eddy wrote Science and Health she said, “This will heal.” When she wrote Miscellaneous Writings she said, “This will teach.”

My thoughts form my face and its expression; hence their variation. No photographer has caught the expression of my highest thoughts, nor the thoughts of my highest expression. It cannot be done. My expression lies in my works. Preen your wings for the highest altitude and attitude.

We never can know who is in reality a Christian Scientist until he is tested under fire; then what is left are dregs unfit for use till purged and purified, or they are qualities that evil cannot destroy and are held by the power of God. Human will, sensuality, self- blindness, is about all that is left of the individual. Only the very opposite of these is all that constitutes the individual, much more the Christian Scientist.

I am honestly ready to do what God wants me to do.

A picture of The Mother Church was shown to Mrs. Eddy. She said it was a fine piece of work, adding, “I’d rather hear of a good case of healing than see the most beautiful building in the world.”

Mrs. Eddy was doing some special mental work. A painter had been hired to paint the front hall. She had him stopped, and his paint pot and ladder stayed right there in the hall for two weeks until the work was done that she had to do.

Mrs. Eddy called Judge Hanna, Alfred Farlow and Henry Nunn for an interview. She expressed her dissatisfaction over some matter in strong terms. Judge Hanna and Mr. Farlow accepted the rebuke with humility, but Mr. Nunn seemed surprised.

Suddenly she turned to him and said in a gentle voice, “My dear, I know this is pretty strong meat for you, but you can stand it.” Immediately she returned to her denunciation of their lack of wisdom.

Mrs., Eddy told a student who had a cough that she was going to give her a treatment. The student continued to cough for twenty-fours before she was healed, Mrs. Eddy asked when the cough stopped. Then she said, “I asked you because I just wanted to know how long the tenacity of error prevented the healing from being manifested.”

Do not feel that your evil is more than another’s. Take two balloons, one with 80,000 feet of gas, another a toy one. A knife jabbed into each will fix both in the same way, and with one application. (Said to be from the C. S. Journal).

The tendency of the desire for the sweet companionship of the opposite sex is divinely natural. Remember primarily the individual was equal and wholly satisfied, He was God’s image and reflection, Father-Mother. Learn not to condemn this longing, because it is about the only thing in a human being that indicates his divine entity. In the beginning man and women were one, and mortal mind made the separation. Therefore the constant longing for completion.

God’s law is the law which controls the universe. It is the one all-governing law, What then is any seeming change in administration? There can be no basic change, for the basis of true government is God’s law, operating through His infinite capacity to conduct, direct, and control everything that really exists.

All things that the Father hath are mine, means just what it says. Now this does not mean a human sense of greatness, but consciousness of Mind that gives power and dominion.

Poisonous influences from people’s thoughts are nothing when you prove them to be nothing. Go right on and keep you thought on the real. Never for one moment look back at the past. It was a lie, it never was, because God was not in it.

Three lines of arguments given to students for work: (1) Does not miss any points. Does not forget anything. Does not become confused. That he is able to do the very best. That there shall be no delay. That he shall not consent to any delay. (2) He knows he is doing wrong. He knows he has no funds. God has stopped him and knows better. (3) The opposite party will drop this now and forever. They see the sin and impossibility of trying to do it; they see the consequences to themselves.

I can but take you to the portals.

One day Mrs. Eddy said to a student: “Are you working?” He began to tell of his hours of study and work. She said, “When you see old age, do you declare that Life is eternal activity, beauty and joy?” When you see the leaves falling and hear the wind blow, do you declare that there is no change, decay or cold? When you see deformity and disease, do you declare that man is made in the image and likeness of God?” The student answered, “Mrs. Eddy, I am not working.”

The radium of Spirit permeates, penetrates, dispels and disperses every false belief of accumulated impurity and morbid secretion. The circulation of the Christ, Truth in human consciousness removes all obstructions, neutralizes all poisons and opens the way for the perfect harmonious action of Truth to be made manifest here and now. This is the Truth; it cannot be reversed.

I cannot be mesmerized to doubt the Word of God.

God forgive me for having any doubt, fear or lack of faith that all things are possible with Thee.

Christian Science is mentalizing the universe. It is touching human consciousness here and there and changing it, and the human mind does not know what is producing the change.

Mrs. Stewart said to Mrs. Eddy, “Your son is God’s idea, only he doesn’t know it.” Mrs. Eddy replied, “He does know it.”

Mrs. Eddy told Mrs. Hulin that Kennedy was the second student to whom she taught Christian Science. He was born a Roman Catholic. Not long after he had been taught and started to practice in partnership with Mrs. Eddy, he began to pervert her methods. When she remonstrated with him, he said he would kill her, and that he would see her in the poorhouse first. She said that she had been able to rise above all his attacks upon her, but that she had not been able to prevent him from influencing others.

To Annie M. Knott, June 16, 1896. You alone and all mortals are responsible for mortal conditions. They make them and they yield them up. Why do they give up what is so dear to them? Because they know not yet how to retain them as reality.

When Mrs. Eddy sent Calvin Hill to search for helpers, she directed him to seek out her own students first, and, if they were physically fit, to call them. She said, “They are the ones I want. I know what I have taught them, and can awaken that and make use of it.”

Aug. 7, 1906. Now let me say — that mental malpractice must be met daily by all the students; met by your mental protest that breaks the so-called law of a lie, or you are liable to be affected by this lie all unconsciously. Dear one, remember this. Our Master said, “Had the goodman of the house watched, his house would not have been broken open.”

If I understand you to mean by your immortal Mind, God, which is the only eternal Mind, then I can answer, yes, you can get replies to questions of Science from Him; but that answers come from your growth and not instantaneously, for God is not a person, but the divine Principle which you must understand in order to be answered by this.

To F. J. Fluno, M.D., C.S.B.: Many thanks for the sweetest picture of a baby of flesh that eve was taken. It looks like a cherub, the image of an artist’s thought. You must not love it too much; remember it is a thing of mortal as well as of immortal Mind, and transfer your love from the little sweet personality to the idea you would embody in this lovely child. Then you can build thereon for time and eternity, a child that is God’s pure and undying thought. May heaven bless you three, husband, wife, and child with the highest experience on earth.

The romance of human experience is when we are aware of the presence and power of God working in and through us. (To Clara Louise Burnham).

All Merciful, how faint, unfed is every heart. Give us this day our daily bread in knowing what Thou art.

When the question of the worthiness of workers came up, Mrs. Eddy said, “God appoints and He disappoints.”

Unless you go straight on as though nothing had happened, you are not watching with God.

Man reflects the divine perception, intelligence and memory.

At one time Mrs. Eddy leaned on Mr. Mann’s shoulder and said, “I am so homesick for heaven.” At another time she said, “We must become naked.”

When a student asked Mrs. Eddy why he felt more error in Boston than elsewhere, she said, “Because error locates Truth.”

When Mrs. Eddy was reviewing Prof. Hering’s first lecture, she indicated that she liked the part were he handled matter. She said, “Scientists are not handling matter sufficiently. They are too glamoured of it.”

A student asked Mrs. Eddy why she did not progress faster. Mrs. Eddy said that she did not completely shut the door on error, but left it open a little crack in order to peek in and see what error was doing.

Letter written by Adam Dickey Oct. 25,1908: I am not at liberty to quote our Leader verbatim, but my sense of the points you enquire about after talking with her on the subject is that, when we can awaken ourselves out of the belief that all must die, we will then have reached a point where death means nothing to us, and we will then be able to bring back all that death claimed to have taken away from us.

In other words, we will be able to reproduce the presence of those who thought they died, whether it was ten minutes ago, or ten years ago. However, when that time comes, death will not appear to us what it now seems to be, and it is hard to predict even in the light of Science just how things will appear to us under changed conditions.

On page 72 (Science and Health) the author is trying to explain the impossibility of evil being communicated from the departed to mortals, and incidentally remarks that good may come to us in this way. Thought on the other side of the grave is not different from thought on this side. Edward Kimball is not dead, and has not stopped his Christian Science work. In fact, he knows he has not died and he still teaches and holds Association meetings. Good, therefore, may flow from him to his students through the efficacy of enlightened thought. That evil can flow from the departed to mortals is the false belief. That good may thus flow is the spiritual fact.

Part of a letter to Thomas W. Hatten written April 20, 1897. My precious child: Do not be troubled like Martha of old over anything. Do not be disheartened over failure, when at heart you are as faithful as Abraham. We all are to be tried, and proved, as by fire. Now darling, there is but one Mind; no other mind exists and therefore an evil so- called mind cannot, does not affect you or your business. Keep the First Commandment so sacredly and know there is but one Mind. Keep the Ten Commandments; do not let your affections rest for a moment in forbidden directions — but, dear one, have but one God, one affection, one power. The senses that lie are nonsense. There is no sensation in wrong directions.

Major got a spike in his foot and the coachman told Mrs. Eddy that he could not be used that day. “Have him at the door at two o’clock,” was her rejoinder. He protested, “But Mrs. Eddy, you don’t understand.” She silenced him by saying, “Be at the door at two.” The carriage was there at two, but Major was walking on three legs. She went up to him and said, “You have been listening to stable talk.” He was healed at once.

Mrs. Eddy said to a student, “Remember that God worketh with you.” The student replied, “Oh, if I could only know that; but it seems as if God knew nothing about my trouble.” Mrs. Eddy replied, “Your understanding of Christian Science is God working with you.”

A student claimed that Mrs. Eddy told her that once she prayed to God to give her everything so that she might give it to all mankind; but He showed her that was incorrect. She prayed for Him to give everyone everything.

Mrs. Eddy showed that there were three ways thought could be moved under the belief of passing on: to make one laugh, cry, or become angry. Once when Calvin Frye appeared to be in the throes of dying, Mrs. Eddy tried to make him laugh and cry, but did not succeed. Finally she ordered him to do something in a stern voice, and he said, “I won’t.” At that point she knew she had saved him.

In class Mrs. Eddy asked, “If you had a good Christian man come to you for treatment, would you expect to heal him right off?” When the class answered yes, Mrs. Eddy replied, “No, you would not, until you had broken up all that old sense of goodness or false theology.”

What I say today may not be true tomorrow, or else there would be no progress. I am an old woman now, and I have never found it wise to argue with a lie.

In the margin of Weymouth’s translation opposite I Cor. 13:5 Mrs. Eddy wrote: “If students brood over wrongs, like an old hen who broods over her eggs, they are sure to hatch out something.”

When asked to perform a work, a student said, “I will try.” Mrs. Eddy said, “Don’t ever say that to me again, for you leave the door open for error to get in. Say, ‘I will.’”

Does a day dream differ from a night dream? When you awake in the morning, you say I dreamed so and so last night, and it seemed so real, I thought it was true, but when I awakened I saw it was not true. This life is a dream until we awaken in the soul sense. You don’t talk to a dream in matter. You awaken yourself out of it.

When Jesus made a concession to sense and was baptized, he immediately went into the wilderness and suffered out of it, although God was just as willing he should be baptized as that he should go into the wilderness, because he could not learn the lesson in any other way.

“Coffee is the American’s rum and tea is the Chinaman’s opium. To even sip it is to sip poison into your system. Can you afford to do that?” When she found students differentiating between coffee and tea she said, “How dare they question or claim any difference between tea and coffee when I don’t?”

Make thought thin enough to be a transparency for truth.

That which heard the baby cry, made the baby cry; and that which silenced that which heart the baby cry, never heard the baby cry.

If you go up with your patients, you go down with them.

Resolve your occupation or business into mind; then make it a channel for activities of good. Any evil in the past cannot act as present consequences, nor claim those consequences of evil to be indestructible, for God knows no evil, and it has no presence.

With the sword of the Spirit, God cuts from me the lies of animal magnetism, mesmerism, clairvoyance, esoteric magic, materia medica, religious anarchy, theosophy, atheism, aggressive mental suggestion, mental malpractice, thought transference, telepathy, Darwinism, Gesterfeldism, false science, and all other pretentious forms of error. None of these counterfeits can harm me, mentally, morally, spiritually, financially, or socially — through employees, business associates, publishers, creditors, debtors, friendly or unfriendly, competitors, rivals, friends or foes, Scientists or non-scientists. Neither can they harm me in any way, in any manner, in any degree or to any extent whatever, through my correspondence, telegrams, telephone messages, advertisements, leases, contracts, business successes or failures. They cannot plant the lie of limitation on me, my agents or my company. God reigns over all, through all, in all, above all. This omnipotent goodness is a living palpitating presence, before which the error of mortal mind, personal sense and human belief must fall into nothingness — dust.

One day Mrs. Eddy told Clara Shannon to lock the back door. When she saw how many were going in and out, she decided to follow out the order by acting as doorkeeper, without saying anything to Mrs. Eddy. So she remained at her post locking and unlocking the door for three days. Finally she saw the door handle turned stealthily; so she opened the door suddenly, and there stood a strange woman who very sheepishly tried to explain her presence by saying that she wished to inspect Mrs. Eddy’s refrigerator. Clara dismissed her by saying that it was no different from any ordinary one. The next morning Mrs. Eddy told Clara that she need no longer keep the door locked. Clara never told Mrs. Eddy the incident concerning the strange woman.

When Mary Landing visited Mrs. Eddy, the latter put her arms around her and said, “Always remember, there is no Mary Landing. There is no Mary Baker Eddy.”

When a student treated a patient for tuberculosis, Mrs. Eddy said that that was only the decoy. “Would you treat a cat with an arched back for curvature of the spine? No, for fear.”

Watch that you do not lose your love from the attacks of hate. Better lose life in matter than love for God and man. This is why our dear departed are better blessed than those that remain if they are returning evil for evil.

Let our finite judgment never settle on who is troubling us, and never defend ourselves against a person. Rather ask what is troubling, and then meet the what.

Mr. Park, “Your memory for names and dates is much better than mine.”

Mrs. Eddy: “You could do it if you tried. It is all a question of the triump of Mind over matter. You could do it all if you tried.” Sentinel, Vol. IX, page 804.

Love divine speaks to the struggling heart. Your travailing Mother knows this with bitter tears. (To Henrietta Chanfrau)

Did Mother sense a little tear in her child’s eye today? Let no one steal your joy.

Dearest child, Mother knows how hard to bear are the words of the unrighteousness ones who would steal and kill the lambs. But truth shall be thy shield and buckler; put it on! Lift up thine eyes to the feast of Love prepared for all of us, and rejoice that in this hour of trial for our Cause “no parting wounds the dove.” (to Chanfrau)

Arguments to discourage Christian Scientists:

  1. Christian Scientist shall not believe that they can heal the sick, or that Christian Science can heal.
  2. They shall not believe that they can handle mesmerism; they shall not recognize mesmerism.
  3. All the work of Christian Scientists shall be and is reversed, and is a law of reversal — an enactment.
  4. Christian Scientists do not want to handle malicious animal magnetism, aggressive mental suggestion, mental assignation.

From Vol. 14 of the Journal, page 28; “God will, does, help all who watch and pray and strive to enter the path of righteousness. Therefore trust this divine Love, and be of good courage to war with sin and follow in the footstep of His flock.”

It may discourage pleasure seekers to tell them they need more Christian Science than opportunity to have a good time.

Mrs. Eddy told the Whitcomb family to work for life harmonious and not for life to be manifested, when the father passed on.

It is a law of metaphysics that the truth relating to health and being, when brought to bear upon mortal mind, acts favorably on the body.

We will see the idea and its identity when thought is spiritualized. Where did sin come from? Where did discord in music come from? When error is handled it becomes a battle axe.

A single wrong thought harbored makes one a partner with animal magnetism and opens the door to the bondage of evil.

Declare without thought of material organs, my stomach is already perfect in God, and so on with other things and know that all is Spirit and spiritual. There is nothing the matter; a belief of fear is all that frightens and disturbs you. The false belief will flee before the right idea. Thought will govern; therefore declare the right idea.

Know that electricity has no power to send any poison through the pneumogastric nerve. Deny all kinds of mental poison. Mental poison is the mental atmosphere of conflicting human opinions and beliefs. We much handle the serpent and know its arguments are false and powerless, since one Mind alone is real.

May the allness of God, Love, and the nothingness of aught else serve to cover the question of your protection, and the allness of Good, and the powerlessness and non-existence of evil be the reality of your thought.

In beginning with a patient one must see the spirituality of his being, and then be fortified to deny the beliefs with understanding. If you were in a house that had caved in, you would keep on working until every timber was removed which kept you from freedom; so you must see all that holds the patient is removed and has no power to hold. Man is free, and freedom is the God-given birthright.

God’s law is justice and Truth, which is strength and the law of extermination to envy or evil, which is weakness. There is no law of suggestion or evil that can cause me to be unfaithful or disobedient to our Teacher and Leader, or to the cause of Christian Science. Ignorant or malicious minds cannot make me believe that I can be made an avenue for error to come to me, or go from me, for there are no malicious minds. God is the only Mind; so there can be no other minds affecting me. Lies have no other power, nor has envy, jealousy, hatred or avarice. They cannot be made use of to harm me or mine. Love is omnipotent, all-seeing, all-powerful, All-in-all. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as in heave, and earth is heaven.

You cannot fall out of divine Love, and in it nothing inharmonious can touch you.

Give me wisdom and spiritual sense, and silence worldliness and pride. If you knew the sublimity of your hope, the infinite capacity of your being, the grandeur of your outlook, you would let error destroy itself. It comes to you to give it life, the only life it has. You prolong its life by giving it a temporary sense of life, and as we gain more and more clearly the realization of the infinitude of God and the consequent non-existence of anything else, we shall be able to rest in quietness and confidence.

Work every day to know that the belief of impossibility has no power over you. Know that it cannot possibly affect you in any way, and can never for an instant hinder your demonstration, whether you are working for health, peace, joy, or any mental quality, thing or experience. Know that you are conscious of the possibility and realization of all that is good and true.

If we do not heal morally, we had better not heal at all. Our work for the sinner is to destroy his belief of sin in our sight.

She said today that mesmerism was found out. “It was a big bubble and had ‘busted.’ We had been fooled,” and how she laughed about it. She laughed like a girl.

Mrs. Eddy’s message to the Normal Class in 1887: Think alone in your rooms of all I have said, and let the seed take root before stirring it.

Watch Prayer: Pray all the time. Pray this way: Love, just take me in. Give me one Mind, one consciousness, and make me love my neighbor as myself. All is Love, peace, harmony. Heaven is right here. Love reigns. There is no strife.

Peace, be still. Truth has destroyed the error. Love has destroyed all hate. All is Love, peace and joy. After praying, be willing to be fitted to receive the blessing you ask for.

God made them male and female from the beginning, but His creation was not physical. He made qualities and formations of character, which shall ever remain thus, as the reflection of God, the Father and Mother of the universe. Not that God is male and female in person, two in form, but as including in Himself all the qualities of Mind. When we understand this, we shall have no outlined personality, but shall have individuality all the same, This is absolute Science wherein there is but one Mind, and this Mind is the unity of masculine and feminine and neuter, as Mind — as infinite Mind, not finite. Here is the union again of man and woman, not personal, but impersonal, not physical but mental, not finite but infinite. This must be so in the reflection of God, for He is neither finite nor physical, and, if we reflect God, we must become like Him in our consciousness.

Who in your midst can instruct you into higher spheres of influence? Can a student teach another of my students beyond what they find in my books? Your closet is the best place whereby to learn from divine Love your duty to yourself and others. More silent prayer and watching is the need.

One need not experience or go through suffering to learn Science, any more than a child needs to go to the blackboard and work out an example incorrectly first, in order to find the correct way. There is no obstruction to thought, no barrier to its expression.

Impersonal evil cannot use me (one) as an avenue through which to express any discord. There is no evil, This hourly declared will keep me invulnerable from error. You have no faith in evil, you have no power to do evil, or to cause others to sin. You cannot take away from me my mind or any one of its functions. There is no power in evil. God is the only power.

In answer to the question, What is the treatment for sciatic nerve? Mortal mind names nerves. There are no nerves, no nerve centers to feel or be felt. God is All. Evil cannot make a talking serpent. Rise out of such a belief. M. A. M. cannot handle Christian Scientists to lie or to believe a lie.

There is no wakeful dream, no sleeping dream. Mind is All.

Mrs. Stetson asked, When the truth has been declared and the belief does not seem to yield, what should we do then?” Mrs. Eddy answered, “You must trust God,”

In the early days in my work in Christian Science, I never had what you would call “easy” cases; but they were all handled by Love. Nowadays I find students complaining about “difficult” cases. I don’ know what they mean. Is not God an ever-present help in trouble? Then hold to that, and turn your back on everything unlike Him!

When truth is seen, error is unseen. Handle arsenical poison.

Preaching in Christian Science churches must carry the Spirit.

Students must rise to see the nothingness of matter. Growth spiritual can be attained in no other way.

God has called you into His vineyard. Will you battle with the evil one?

This is the testing time for all of us.

Love, love, love. This is the healing way.

“Let all the earth keep silence before Him.” Do you know what this means? Your Mother in Israel has had to walk all the way to the land of Christian Science to find the way. Demand of every lie of mortal mind silence before the truth you declare.

In the wok of Science all have stern duties to perform. But the only way is through love.

Life, Truth and Love, Mind Spirit, Soul — all these express God. My dear ones, when, Oh! when, will you realize what these mean?

Rise to an absolute consciousness that God is All-in-all, and the clouds will disappear. This is Christian healing.

Students love to talk about God, but they will not handle the serpent. They take up all sorts of arguments and claims, but they will not handle serpents. Yet the Scriptures tell us, “They shall handle serpents.”

The mesmerists storm and storm against the walls of Zion; yet they shall never prevail. Declare one Mind, one God, one Truth.

Only the pure in heart shall see God. M. A. M. lies in wait; yet Truth stands at the door and knocks.

Mesmerism of many minds cannot hinder or stop Christian Science healing. Declare this every day.

The devil I know is better than the devil I don’t know.

The man throws a stone at you. The devil throws a man at you. Get the devil off and leave the man alone.

In answer to your question — Yes. The demon schemes of the mesmerists are destroyed only by honest, pure hearts — by love unceasing — and by denials stern and firm. You are one of my best pupils, and you know the truth. Now let the sins of others weigh no more upon your heart. (To Chanfrau).

Handle the serpent of age. No belief of cyanide or mercurial poisoning.

Free use of all faculties. Love is All. No hate, no darkness of malicious mesmerism. One Mind.

“For Thine is the kingdom.” Do you know what this means? Mother will tell you. It is to live Love, Life, Truth as spiritual sense teaches us to do. The malicious malpractice that has covered your steps for so long has darkened your thought to Mother and to the Cause. Rise up. (To Chanfrau).

Many would speak truth but who will demonstrate it?

Christ wore a crown of thorns as easily as a seamless robe. How? By demonstration of his oneness with divine Love. Handle the serpent which hisses at the heel and the animal magnetism will be silent. No fear. All is harmony.

Discouragement would have us believe we do not reflect the one intelligence, that we are too dull to comprehend simple Truth, thus tempting us to give up the talent we have to an unreal master, forgetting that by putting this little understanding into practice, we must surely gain more. Discouragement is impatience, haste to tread where we have not conquered, to occupy a place we have not proven our fitness to fill. Impatience is doubt — doubt of God’s willingness to help us, doubt of His presence and power, doubt of His love, when we are told “God is Love.”

I long for music spiritual with healing in its wings — only thus can my hymns reach hearts ready for them. (To Chanfrau).

All I ask is Christian Science demonstrated — sound and true. When will the students give up the letter for the Spirit!

In reaching it is right to tell your students who I am, but never forget the Christ. Animal magnetism handles so many teachers nowadays, forgetfulness of Jesus causes the serpent to hiss at the heel. Centuries may pass before the world knows me as I am, but Mother knows you do. (To Chanfau).

How many want to be teachers, when healing founded the Cause. . .

Healing the sick is your work and mine; when others will learn this I do not know. (To Chanfrau).

Christian Science brings down blessings supernal upon the path of earth.

Those who serve the Cause are numbered and sanctified in His spirit. (To Chanfra).

Take up at once the so-called Christian Science Lecturers that they do their duty to their God and their poor unworthy Leader and Friend. A city that is set upon a hill cannot be hid, and the life of their Leader must be shown as it is. Never did I neglect Jesus in my sermons in the first days of Christian Science; now they must not forget me. (To Chanfrau).

Mother thanks you for the lovely picture, but sense, not Soul is in every line. Earth has no joy nor harmony subline as heaven. Pictures of sense cannot give the bliss of Love, Truth and Life demonstrated. Truth alone casts out animal magnetism. Basking in sense cannot heal the sick.

Be of good cheer. Mother works with her little one to overcome the tempter’s snare — illusion of sense and earth. The workers faithful to their trust will be counted among the jewels of heaven, tried and true. Is not this goal worthy of all? Forsake ties of sense and He will give you treasures priceless in His kingdom.

FIXED RULES AT PLEASANT VIEW

  1. When Mother names the error to be handled it shall be taken up exactly as she names it — not one word is to be changed.

  2. Students working in Truth shall not undertake to handle M. A. M. by naming the person handled till I say to do so. Error is impersonal and Mind knows all, is All-in-all.

  3. Workers shall not allow M. A. M. to draw off their fire nor turn them from their tasks. Truth is not reversed in its effect. Love governs every hour.

  4. Students shall not admit of the evil nor question their Leader’s words, but must follow her in Truth to declared to effectually erase the work of animal magnetism.

Rise up and defeat the evil one in the gates. The hour of deliverance is at hand and all must do their duty as Christian Scientists to defeat the evil that tries to find entrance here. Love, Mind, Truth rule this and every hour. Error is not met by prayer alone, but by fasting.

March 24, 1907. This hour is going to test Christian Scientists and the fate of our Cause and they must not be found wanting. They must forget self and remember only their God and their Wayshower, and their duty to have one God and love their neighbor as themselves. I see this clearly that the prosperity of our Cause hangs in this balance.

Truth provides all refreshments, pleasure and joy.




ARGUMENT FOR TRANSGRESSORS

One Mind; Truth controls all. You are set free in the Love of God and you cannot make nor believe a lie. Truth declared is not reversed. It does appear and is manifest. No return of old beliefs. No M. A. M. to work through R. C., hypnotism, mesmerism, or theosophy, demonology, or old theology to hinder the work of the Cause of Christian Science. Divine Mind govern every hour and evil is powerless.

Christian Science demonstration is accomplished by humble and contrite hearts ready to do His will on earth.

Do you know why I asked you to come here, all this long way? I wanted to see one who had been a student of Christian Science before she was born on this plane of existence!

What is the Anti-Christ? Dear ones, I could tell you much concerning that; but that must not be now. Some things must wait till you can bear them. I cannot tell you what Ant-Christ is. You could not bear that now. But I can tell you how to avoid it. Beware of self-love!! Beware acknowledging God and His Science, but all the while loving yourselves more!

Ingratitude is the sun total of all evil. Gratitude is spirituality.

Divine Love will eventually cause each one of us to turn and find in Him what we have ever vainly looked for in each other.

Joseph Mann gave a little boy a puppy in Mrs. Eddy’s name — a child that she had become attracted to, because he waved sweetly at her each day when she was taking her drive. When the family learned in whose name the puppy was given, they were angry. The mother asked him to leave. Later he found that they belonged to the Roman church. When he told Mrs. Eddy she said, “You did the best you could, dear; now leave it to Mother. “ She took up the thought of the family, and sent the boy a Bible with her name written in the front. She said, “Joseph gave him a dog, and he returned. I sent him a copy of the Bible and that stayed. When we try to reach them in the human, God rebukes us, but when we send His Word, that heals them.”

Mrs. Eddy rebuked her dressmaker concerning a dress by saying, “When you dress me, you dress God.” Then she said lovingly, “God clothes us all, dear.”

When Mrs. Eddy received word that a prominent student in the West had passed on she said, “If I had been there, I could have saved him; but God will give him greater works to do, and then I can help him.”

When she was rebuking the household after a secretary had made mistakes in preparing a letter, she said, “You are trying to do God’s work — let Him do it.

One day after Mrs. Chanfrau had made some spoon bread for Mrs. Eddy with which she was delighted, she said, “My child, you did your Mother a great service yesterday, but today you must handle theosophy as though your life depended on it; for it does!

When the Mayor of Concord sent Mrs. Eddy some find strawberries, she did not appear to be interested in them. Consequently the cook made a luscious shortcake and served it to the family. When Mrs. Eddy was told about it, she called the household together and asked, “How many of you ate of those strawberries?” When all said that they had eaten them, she said, “Could you not see what the enemy is trying to accomplish? Now you are all touched with the animal magnetism trying to reach this house! Now Turn your thoughts away, and let me handle the work myself, and alone from now till sunset, while you all correct your own thinking!”

Once John Salchow cut his face with a meathook from eye to chin. Mrs. Eddy healed him at once by declaring: “Error cannot do something quickly which takes Truth a long time to undo!”

One morning when talking with her household she said, “You are the faithful remnant. My old students are my worst trial, but you are the faithful remnant. God has preserved you sound. May you merit His mercy and continued love.”

One morning she said, “If I had a student here at Pleasant View who was about to pass on, what do you think I would do with him?” The household started gave various answers. When all had finished, she said, “I would let God heal him, and then send him away.” The tone in which she said the last words carried so much depth of feeling that all were moved deeply.

Once Mrs. Eddy healed Calvin Frye by saying, “Calvin, rise up! They are trying to kill your Leader!”

One day as Mrs. Eddy was about to take her drive, she said to Calvin Frye, “What are you wearing, Calvin?” He answered, “Why a new suit I bought, Mother.” She said, “Calvin Frye, when God tells you to get a new suit do it, but He will never tell you to get one!” At once Mr. Frye left the room and refused to drive with her for two days. After the third day all was well again, but he never wore the suit in Mrs. Eddy’s presence again.

When Mrs. Eddy was attacked to the point where the whole household was grieving, Mrs. Eddy sent them the message: “To my household: Grieve not! Rise and handle the serpent — remove its fang by removing the desire to attack. Truth prevails. Mind is All. Love is with you. Mother.”

When the attacks on our Leader grew to the point where the men in the household were aroused, John Salchow stepped forward, determination and righteous anger in his bearing and face, and said, raising his fist in the air, “Mother, if they were men, they would never do a thing like that. I’m telling you here and now that I’ll go to New York and find that reporter, and give him the beating he deserves!” There was silence for a moment; the Mrs. Eddy, who had been looking at the carpet, suddenly looked up and said, with a slight twinkle in her eyes, “And I really believe you could do it, John, I really do!” Then she showed the household how to handle the error impersonally, and said, “God blesses righteous anger, but righteous prayer is still more precious in His sight.”

From Mrs. Mims: “Mother, let me tell you this. (Judge Hanna speaking). In the place where I stand, all the machinations of evil that are conceivable to the human mind are hurled at me, in volleys. Sometimes for days the world is as black as night to me, and only when I can see you as the Revelator for this age do I get a ray of light. Every argument that the ingenuity of evil can suggest whispers to me, trying to hide you from me, and I have no relief, no safety, except when I see you as you are — the Revelator of this Truth.” Mrs. Eddy replied, “My dear children, if you had not seen it, I would have had to teach you this. I could not have avoided telling you that when my students become blinded to me as the one through whom Truth as come to this age, they go straight down. I would have had to tell you.”

Sex is a lack of mental confidence.

Jan. 25, 1890 in Calvin Frye’s handwriting: From daily baths she entirely stopped bathing, and never bathed for seven years. One of her students who roomed with her one night said upon retiring, “Oh Mrs. Glover, how sweet you smell;” to which she replied, “Why I use no cologne.” “No I don’t mean that,” was the reply, “but how sweet and clean your person is.” Mrs. Glover said, “Well, now I will tell you I have not bathed for seven years.” “Oh, don’t tell anyone that,” was the reply. “for if you do, people will think you the dirtiest person that ever lived.”

From page 355 of the sixteenth edition of Science and Health: “We need a clean body and a clean mind — a body rendered pure by Mind, not by matter.”

In speaking to Mrs. Chanfrau about obstetrical work, Mrs. Eddy said, “I can tell you one thing, dear. Never handle the belief of birth — no birth, no death, etc. — during the time the mother is in the belief of labor. If you do, the functions will stop and such a declaration is mental murder. After the birth has taken place, you can take up along this line; but never while the condition is apparent.”

In reference to Christ and Christmas, Mrs. Eddy said, Everything in that book is just as God told me it should be.”

“Henrietta (Chanfrau), you don’t go to the circus, do you?” “When she admitted she had been in the past, Mrs. Eddy said, “Don’t ever go there again!” That is no place for a Christian Science student, for there is animal magnetism in its very wickedest form!”

When Pauline Mann sent a gypsy away from Pleasant View, who asked to read fortunes, Mrs. Eddy said, “I am surprised she didn’t let her tell her fortune. It is interesting sometimes to know what mortal mind has to say about us.”

When Henrietta Chanfrau was able to resist the Earl of Dunmore’s daughter’s invitation to go to London to work there, Mrs. Eddy said, “I am so glad you stayed here. So many students feel the glamor of foreign places, but when they get there, they forget Mother and Science. I could tell you of many students who have gone trough that furnace, and I am glad you are spared from the burning.”

When Mrs. Chanfrau told Mrs. Eddy that her adopted son was seeking a following in Philadelphia by boasting of his close association with her, she said, “I have tried to help him in every way I can, but nothing seems to work out right.

Some people live on history and reputation, but the Christian Science student lives on works. By their fruits ye shall know them.”

Once Mrs. Eddy said to Josephine Woodbury, “Why do you come here and tell me all this? Do you think I am a priest in a confession-box? Go somewhere else to justify your sins; don’t come to me!”

Once when Mrs. Stetson was having dinner with Mrs. Eddy and her household, the former told many stories of her successes, the wealthy students that she had, and the lavish gifts they had made her. Mrs. Eddy at the head of the table listened quietly, giving no hint of approval or disapproval. It was a study in contrast, On the one hand was this woman of fashion with flashing wit and brilliant conversation, while on the other was a little woman dressed conservatively, radiating simplicity in every movement, sitting quietly as though she were the humblest worker among the group. When everyone was rising from the table, Mrs. Stetson was expressing gratitude for the many gifts her students had showered upon her. At that moment, when there was a pause in the conversation, Mrs. Eddy quietly said, Yes, dear, God gives us many gifts, but it is His correcting rod we need most of all.”

Mrs. Eddy said of Judge Hanna, “In the law everything is fixed and settled, but in Science the Truth is always fixed, and it is animal magnetism that tries many avenues of approach. This gives the Judge so much to meet because he is so settled in his ways.”

When some workmen were repairing the drains at Pleasant View, Mrs. Eddy had a great deal to meet in her work one morning. When she saw the men, she asked what they were doing. When Mr. Frye told her, she said, “Send them way at once.” Then she said, Animal magnetism attacks through many doors. It is necessary that we find workmen who are friendly to Science and its Discoverer.”

Once Mrs. Eddy said of Pleasant View to Mrs. Chanfrau; “Henrietta, if ever I go away from here to another house it will to be delivered up to my enemies!”

When Mrs. Chanfrau asked Mrs. Eddy is she should take elocution lessons to help her in her new work of reading in the Philadelphia church, she said, “A Christian Science reader tells the congregation that she takes the Bible and Science and Health as her only textbooks. Will you stand before them and lie?”

When Mrs. Eddy asked Mr. Kinter to take charge of the grounds at Pleasant View for a few weeks, while the superintendent was away, she said, “Do you suppose you can do that work without letting the door open to error?” He answered seriously, “I’ll try, Mother.” As quick as a flash she came out and said with a great sense of finality, “Don’t try; do it!”

Once Henrietta Chanfrau found Mrs. Eddy on her knees on her upper porch, praying aloud, over and over again, “Lord, dear Lord, keep my students straight!”

Taking the course of least resistance is what makes rivers, and some men, so crooked.

Animal magnetism can find no channel, except an unguarded consciousness, through which to act.

To know the what, when, and why of error, is to destroy error.

Mortal mind assumes a power to hinder that it does not possess. Nothing can keep us from our birthright. Our worst enemies are the best friends to our growth.

Failure to hold on to the Truth, means fear of letting go of error.

Unwillingness to give up sin implies fear of not gaining something satisfactory in the place of it.

Once Mrs. Eddy wrote in her diary, “Today I worked for Australia.” Later she received a letter from a lady there who said that she was suddenly healed of a serous physical condition. Mrs. Eddy looked up in her diary, and found that the date corresponded with the date of this lady’s healing.

One of Mrs. Eddy’s maids was always anxious to hurry to church each Sunday. So one Sunday when she was bustling about getting ready, Mrs. Eddy stopped her and made her sew on a button, so that she missed the service entirely.

When Mrs. Eddy insisted on visiting a circus, she stood in front of the lion’s cage. As she did so, the lion began to roar and run about the cage. She looked right at it until it quieted down. Then she said, “That is what I came for.”

Catholicism is brotherly love, while Roman Catholicism is the Pope’s intention. Roman Catholicism is a false conception of Catholicism, a false conception of true theology. No cloister, circles, Jesuitism, priesthood, Papal power or school of cardinals or bishops can be a channel through which mortal mind can work or rule upon my consciousness or the consciousness of any individual to bind or hold you, or him, through ignorance, fear or superstition. No Roman Catholic prayer or prophecy or anathema nor curse can dim, deaden, darken or confuse your consciousness, nor blur the Christ image in your thought. There is no God in any prayer of condemnation — no Christ in it — no Truth in it, and therefore, there is no power in it and you cannot fear it. There is no power or rule or government or control apart from God. There is no power or belief of power that can hinder you from any right achievement. Remember your efficiency and capacity are unlimited, and no effort of evil to reverse the words and works of Christian Science can hinder your success. All ability, all achievement, all accomplishment, are possible to men because they are man’s. It is the law of man’s being from which he cannot escape, even if he would, to know all that God, Mind, includes and is.




CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

Think twice before you speak, and when you reprove, reflect first on what to say and be gentle and kind in your manner and words.

Answer no questions that you do not understand fully how to answer aright, but say, “I will refer you to Science and Health; all questions in Science are answered there.

Speak no ill of anyone.

Name no persons as malpractitioners when speaking of animal magnetism, and be sure you do not frighten your students or patients over animal magnetism.

Find out before you take a student whether he is fit to enter this field of labor and be trusted at present with so much power.

Address your letters about Mrs. Eddy, all home matters, getting a home, etc., to Mr. Frye. June 19,1890.

(Read these every morning and every night.)

Scripture: “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.” Rom. 12:18.

“Leave off contention, before it be meddled with.” “A soft answer turneth away wrath.”

“The fruit of the Spirit is love,, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.”

“Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

Dec. 2, 3:30 A.M., 1891 — from dictation of Mrs. Eddy to C. A. F.

  1. The Principle of Christian Science is Love.
  2. The effect of Love is to destroy all sense of corporeality.
  3. Whatever tends to diminish the sense of love and increase the sense of corporeality diminishes the understanding of Christian Science and the demonstration of the Principle which is Live and Love.

The war.

  1. The fight between the world, the flesh and the devil.
  2. Their weapons, hatred and personality.
  3. Whatever diminishes the sense of love and increases the sense of personality casts your influence on the side of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and helps evil to destroy the idea of good. In other words, to kill the person who represents in the highest degree this idea and so to shut out the true sense of love.

Moral.

Watch and be sure that your love is increasing and your false sense of personality is diminishing, and make everything that you say and do tend to produce this effect.

A strong sense of the false personality retards the growth of yourself and of those around you, the same as a strong sense of a disease would prevent your healing and prevent your patient’s recovery.

Error cannot find you because it needs a mortal or a mortal mind, and you are neither of them.

A student was housecleaning, and feeling that what she was doing was just a menial task, that amounted to very little. Mrs. Eddy must have felt her attitude, because she came in and placed an object exactly where it belong, and said, “Whatever is necessary is sacred.”

In an article entitled, “Liberty,” by George W. Wilson in the Christian Science Sentinel, Volume XI, page 866, the following sentence occurs: “Liberty is opposed to slavery, subjection, or bondage of every nature whatsoever, and perfectly understood it means a complete independence form external causes or motives, wherein thought remains unbiased by rules and dogma.” In the margin of her copy of this Sentinel Mrs. Eddy wrote, “Then Science is lost, Science has a rule for all things, but it has no dogma.”

The vigor of harmony, the kingdom of heaven, is within your consciousness, and flesh and blood and bones are not in this kingdom — this true consciousness. All is Mind. Your arm is only as and what you think of it. Be wise and walk only where your footsteps are sure, and your wisdom equal to the hour, to the steps to be taken. Malicious animal magnetism is but a dream! It has only nothing of its own; do not give it suppositional something. There is no Armageddon. God, Love, is all there is. Choose ye this day.

October 9, 1890. In her changes on “Adam” last eve, she felt she was showing the world the origin of evil and the nothingness of error.

Truth never yields; so error must.