Fallibility Of Human Concepts

20    Evil counterfeits good: it says, “I am Truth,” though
         it is a lie; it says, “I am Love,”—but Love is spirit-
         ual, and sensuous love is material, wherefore it is hate
         instead of Love; for the five senses give to mortals pain,
         sickness, sin, and death,—pleasure that is false, life that
25    leads unto death, joy that becomes sorrow. Love that is
         not the procurator of happiness, declares itself the anti-
         pode of Love; and Love divine punishes the joys of this
         false sense of love, chastens its affection, purifies it, and
         turns it into the opposite channels.

30    Material life is the antipode of spiritual life; it mocks

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1      the bliss of spiritual being; it is bereft of permanence and
         peace.

         When human sense is quickened to behold aright the
         error,—the error of regarding Life, Truth, Love as
5      material and not spiritual, or as both material and spirit-
         ual,—it is able for the first time to discern the Science
         of good. But it must first see the error of its present
         erroneous course, to be able to behold the facts of Truth
         outside of the error; and, vice versa, when it discovers
10    the truth, this uncovers the error and quickens the true
         consciousness of God, good. May the human shadows of
         thought lengthen as they approach the light, until they
         are lost in light and no night is there!

         In Science, sickness is healed upon the same Principle
15    and by the same rule that sin is healed. To know the
         supposed bodily belief of the patient and what has claimed
         to produce it, enables the practitioner to act more under-
         standingly in destroying this belief. Thus it is in heal-
         ing the moral sickness; the malicious mental operation
20    must be understood in order to enable one to destroy
         it and its effects. There is not sufficient spiritual power
         in the human thought to heal the sick or the sinful.
         Through the divine energies alone one must either get
         out of himself and into God so far that his consciousness
25    is the reflection of the divine, or he must, through argu-
         ment and the human consciousness of both evil and good,
         overcome evil.

         The only difference between the healing of sin and the
         healing of sickness is, that sin must be uncovered before
30    it can be destroyed, and the moral sense be aroused to
         reject the sense of error; while sickness must be cov-
         ered with the veil of harmony, and the consciousness be

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1      allowed to rejoice in the sense that it has nothing to mourn
         over, but something to forget.

         Human concepts run in extremes; they are like the
         action of sickness, which is either an excess of action or
5      not action enough; they are fallible; they are neither
         standards nor models.

         If one asks me, Is my concept of you right? I reply, The
         human concept is always imperfect; relinquish your human
         concept of me, or of any one, and find the divine, and you
10    have gained the right one—and never until then. People
         give me too much attention of the misguided, fallible sort,
         and this misrepresents one through malice or ignorance.

         My brother was a manufacturer; and one day a work-
         man in his mills, a practical joker, set a man who applied
15    for work, in the overseer’s absence, to pour a bucket of
         water every ten minutes on the regulator. When my
         brother returned and saw it, he said to the jester, “You
         must pay that man.” Some people try to tend folks, as
         if they should steer the regulator of mankind. God makes
20    us pay for tending the action that He adjusts.

         The regulator is governed by the principle that makes
         the machinery work rightly; and because it is thus gov-
         erned, the folly of tending it is no mere jest. The divine
         Principle carries on His harmony.

25    Now turn from the metaphor of the mill to the Mother’s
         four thousand children, most of whom, at about three
         years of scientific age, set up housekeeping alone. Certain
         students, being too much interested in themselves to think
         of helping others, go their way. They do not love Mother,
30    but pretend to; they constantly go to her for help, interrupt
         the home-harmony, criticise and disobey her; then “return
         to their vomit,”—world worship, pleasure seeking, and

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1      sense indulgence,—meantime declaring they “never dis-
         obey Mother”! It exceeds my conception of human
         nature. Sin in its very nature is marvellous! Who but a
         moral idiot, sanguine of success in sin, can steal, and lie
5      and lie, and lead the innocent to doom? History needs it,
         and it has the grandeur of the loyal, self-forgetful, faith-
         ful Christian Scientists to overbalance this foul stuff.

         When the Mother’s love can no longer promote peace
         in the family, wisdom is not “justified of her children.”
10    When depraved reason is preferred to revelation, error
         to Truth, and evil to good, and sense seams sounder than
         Soul, the children are tending the regulator; they are
         indeed losing the knowledge of the divine Principle and
         rules of Christian Science, whose fruits prove the nature
15    of their source. A little more grace, a motive made pure,
         a few truths tenderly told, a heart softened, a character
         subdued, a life consecrated, would restore the right action
         of the mental mechanism, and make manifest the move-
         ment of body and soul in accord with God.

20    Instead of relying on the Principle of all that really
         exists,—to govern His own creation,—self-conceit, igno-
         rance, and pride would regulate God’s action. Expe-
         rience shows that humility is the first step in Christian
         Science, wherein all is controlled, not by man or laws
25    material, but by wisdom, Truth, and Love.

         Go gaze on the eagle, his eye on the sun,
         Fast gathering strength for a flight well begun,
         As rising he rests in a liberty higher
         Than genius inflated with worldly desire.

30    No tear dims his eye, nor his pinions lose power
         To gaze on the lark in her emerald bower—
         Whenever he soareth to fashion his nest,
         No vision more bright than the dream in his breast.