The New Birth

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5      St. Paul speaks of the new birth as “waiting for the
         adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” The
         great Nazarene Prophet said, “Blessed are the pure in
         heart: for they shall see God.” Nothing aside from the
         spiritualization — yea, the highest Christianization — of
10    thought and desire, can give the true perception of God
         and divine Science, that results in health, happiness, and
         holiness.

         The new birth is not the work of a moment. It begins
         with moments, and goes on with years; moments of sur-
15    render to God, of childlike trust and joyful adoption
         of good; moments of self-abnegation, self-consecration,
         heaven-born hope, and spiritual love.

         Time may commence, but it cannot complete, the
         new birth: eternity does this; for progress is the law
20    of infinity. Only through the sore travail of mortal mind
         shall soul as sense be satisfied, and man awake in His
         likeness. What a faith-lighted thought is this! that
         mortals can lay off the “old man,” until man is found
         to be the image of the infinite good that we name God,
25    and the fulness of the stature of man in Christ appears.

         In mortal and material man, goodness seems in em-
         bryo. By suffering for sin, and the gradual fading out
         of the mortal and material sense of man, thought is de-
         veloped into an infant Christianity; and, feeding at first
30    on the milk of the Word, it drinks in the sweet revealings


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1      of a new and more spiritual Life and Love. These nourish
         the hungry hope, satisfy more the cravings for immor-
         tality, and so comfort, cheer, and bless one, that he saith:
         In mine infancy, this is enough of heaven to come down
5      to earth.

         But, as one grows into the manhood or womanhood
         of Christianity, one finds so much lacking, and so very
         much requisite to become wholly Christlike, that one
         saith: The Principle of Christianity is infinite: it is
10    indeed God; and this infinite Principle hath infinite
         claims on man, and these claims are divine, not human;
         and man’s ability to meet them is from God; for, being
         His likeness and image, man must reflect the full
         dominion of Spirit — even its supremacy over sin, sick-
15    ness, and death.

         Here, then, is the awakening from the dream of life
         in matter, to the great fact that God is the only Life;
         that, therefore, we must entertain a higher sense of both
         God and man. We must learn that God is infinitely
20    more than a person, or finite form, can contain; that
         God is a divine Whole, and All, an all-pervading in-
         telligence and Love, a divine, infinite Principle; and
         that Christianity is a divine Science. This newly
         awakened consciousness is wholly spiritual; it emanates
25    from Soul instead of body, and is the new birth begun
         in Christian Science.

         Now, dear reader, pause for a moment with me, earn-
         estly to contemplate this new-born spiritual altitude; for
         this statement demands demonstration.

30    Here you stand face to face with the laws of infinite
         Spirit, and behold for the first time the irresistible con-
         flict between the flesh and Spirit. You stand before the


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1      awful detonations of Sinai. You hear and record the
         thunderings of the spiritual law of Life, as opposed to
         the material law of death; the spiritual law of Love, as
         opposed to the material sense of love; the law of om-
5      nipotent harmony and good, as opposed to any supposi-
         titious law of sin, sickness, or death. And, before the
         flames have died away on this mount of revelation, like
         the patriarch of old, you take off your shoes — lay aside
         your material appendages, human opinions and doc-
10    trines, give up your more material religion with its rites
         and ceremonies, put off your materia medica and hygiene
         as worse than useless — to sit at the feet of Jesus. Then,
         you meekly bow before the Christ, the spiritual idea
         that our great Master gave of the power of God to heal
15    and to save. Then it is that you behold for the first
         time the divine Principle that redeems man from under
         the curse of materialism, — sin, disease, and death.
         This spiritual birth opens to the enraptured understand-
         ing a much higher and holier conception of the supremacy
20    of Spirit, and of man as His likeness, whereby man reflects
         the divine power to heal the sick.

         A material or human birth is the appearing of a mor-
         tal, not the immortal man. This birth is more or less
         prolonged and painful, according to the timely or un-
25    timely circumstances, the normal or abnormal material
         conditions attending it.

         With the spiritual birth, man’s primitive, sinless,
         spiritual existence dawns on human thought, — through
         the travail of mortal mind, hope deferred, the perishing
30    pleasure and accumulating pains of sense, — by which
         one loses himself as matter, and gains a truer sense of
         Spirit and spiritual man.


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1      The purification or baptismals that come from Spirit,
         develop, step by step, the original likeness of perfect man,
         and efface the mark of the beast. “Whom the Lord
         loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom
5      He receiveth;” therefore rejoice in tribulation, and wel-
         come these spiritual signs of the new birth under the law
         and gospel of Christ, Truth.

         The prominent laws which forward birth in the divine
         order of Science, are these: “Thou shalt have no other
10    gods before me;” “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
         These commands of infinite wisdom, translated into
         the new tongue, their spiritual meaning, signify: Thou
         shalt love Spirit only, not its opposite, in every God-
         quality, even in substance; thou shalt recognize thy-
15    self as God’s spiritual child only, and the true man
         and true woman, the all-harmonious “male and female,”
         as of spiritual origin, God’s reflection, — thus as chil-
         dren of one common Parent, — wherein and whereby
         Father, Mother, and child are the divine Principle and
20    divine idea, even the divine “Us” — one in good, and
         good in One.

         With this recognition man could never separate him-
         self from good, God; and he would necessarily entertain
         habitual love for his fellow-man. Only by admitting
25    evil as a reality, and entering into a state of evil
         thoughts, can we in belief separate one man’s interests
         from those of the whole human family, or thus attempt
         to separate Life from God. This is the mistake that
         causes much that must be repented of and overcome.
30    Not to know what is blessing you, but to believe that
         aught that God sends is unjust, — or that those whom
         He commissions bring to you at His demand that which


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1      is unjust,—is wrong and cruel. Envy, evil thinking,
         evil speaking, covetousness, lust, hatred, malice, are
         always wrong, and will break the rule of Christian
         Science and prevent its demonstration; but the rod of
5      God, and the obedience demanded of His servants in
         carrying out what He teaches them, — these are never
         unmerciful, never unwise.

         The task of healing the sick is far lighter than that
         of so teaching the divine Principle and rules of Chris-
10    tian Science as to lift the affections and motives of men
         to adopt them and bring them out in human lives. He
         who has named the name of Christ, who has virtually
         accepted the divine claims of Truth and Love in divine
         Science, is daily departing from evil; and all the wicked
15    endeavors of suppositional demons can never change the
         current of that life from steadfastly flowing on to God,
         its divine source.

         But, taking the livery of heaven wherewith to cover
         iniquity, is the most fearful sin that mortals can commit.
20    I should have more faith in an honest drugging-doctor,
         one who abides by his statements and works upon as
         high a basis as he understands, healing me, than I could
         or would have in a smooth-tongued hypocrite or mental
         malpractitioner.

25    Between the centripetal and centrifugal mental forces
         of material and spiritual gravitations, we go into or we
         go out of materialism or sin, and choose our course and
         its results. Which, then, shall be our choice, — the sin-
         ful, material, and perishable, or the spiritual, joy-giving,
30    and eternal?

         The spiritual sense of Life and its grand pursuits is
         of itself a bliss, health-giving and joy-inspiring. This


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1      sense of Life illumes our pathway with the radiance of
         divine Love; heals man spontaneously, morally and
         physically, — exhaling the aroma of Jesus’ own words,
         “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
5      and I will give you rest.”




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Love is the liberator.