Through Christ I have dominion over my every thought and word.
6. I am the beloved son in whom the Father is well pleased.
7. Of a truth I am the son of God.
8. All that the Father has is mine.
9. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.
10. I and my Father are one.
11. My highest ideal is a perfect man.
12. My next highest ideal is that I am that perfect man.
13. I am the image and likeness of God, in whom is my perfection.
14. It is written in the law of the Lord, "Ye are gods, and . . . sons of the Most High."
15. These are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name.
Lesson Three
Manifestation
1. As a rule, religious people are not scientific. They think that religion and science are separated by a gulf, and that the scientific mind is spiritually dangerous. Science, to them, is associated with Darwin, Huxley, and other students of natural law who have been skeptical about the accuracy of the Bible from the standpoint of natural science, and whom, because of this skepticism, they brand as infidels. Hence it has come to be almost heresy for a good Christian to think about his religion as having a "scientific" side.
2. By science we mean the systematic and orderly arrangement of knowledge. This definition does not confine science to the facts of the material world. There is a science in Christianity, and it is only through the understanding of this science as a fundamental of Christianity that the Christ teachings can be fully demonstrated in the life of man. To fail to understand the science upon which spiritual understanding rests is to fail in nearly every demonstration of its power. Paul says: "I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also."
3. There is a gulf between the high spiritual understanding and the material manifestation. It is only by bridging this gulf that science and religion can be reconciled. The bridge needed is the structure that thought builds. When Christians understand the science of thinking, the power of thought to manifest itself, and how the manifestation of thought is accomplished, they will no longer fear material science; when material scientists have fathomed the real nature of the living force that they even now discern as ever active in all nature's structures, they will have more respect for religion.
4. Both the religionist and the physicist incorrectly hold that the Bible is a historical description of man's creation. Beginning with the very first chapter of Genesis, the Bible is an allegory. It is so regarded by the majority of Hebrew scholars, and they certainly ought to know the character of their own Scriptures. Paul was a Hebrew, and thoroughly versed in the occultism of spiritual writings; he said, referring to the story of Abraham and Sarah, "Which things contain an allegory." Hebrews almost universally claim that the story of the Garden of Eden, Adam, Eve, and the serpent is symbology.
5. In the face of these facts, it seems strange that orthodox Christianity should insist that the Bible is a literal history. It is this literal viewpoint that has stood in the way of true spiritual understanding. Read in the light of Spirit, the 1st chapter of Genesis is a description, in symbol, of the creative action of universal Mind in the realm of ideas. It does not pertain to the manifest universe any more than the history of the inventor's idea pertains to the machine that he builds to manifest the idea. First the problem is thought out, and afterward the structure is produced. So God builds His universe. This is explained in the 2nd chapter of Genesis, which says that God "rested . . . from all his work," and yet there were no plants of the field, "and there was not a man to till the ground." "And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."
6. Only through perception of the mental law by which ideas manifest from the formless to the formed can we understand and reconcile these two apparently contradictory chapters. In the light of true understanding everything is made plain, and we discern just how Divine Mind is creating man and the universe: first the ideal concept, then the manifestation.
7. The six days of creation, as described in the 1st chapter of Genesis, represent six great ideal projections from Divine Mind, each more comprehensive than its predecessor. The final climax is reached in the sixth degree, when that phase of Being called man appears, having dominion over everything, or every idea, that has gone before. This ideal man, who is made in the "image" and "likeness" of Elohim, is the epitome and focal center around which all creation revolves; hence the one important study of man is the mind of man. In mind is the key to all mysteries, both religious and material. When we know how mind manifests from the ideal to the so-called real, we are no longer in the dark, but have that Truth which Jesus said would make us free.
8. There is but one man. On the spiritual side of his being, every man in the universe has access to that man, eternally existing in Divine Mind as a perfect-man idea. When man appreciates this mighty truth and applies it in his conscious thinking, all manifestation becomes harmonious and orderly to him, and he sees God everywhere.
9. A right understanding of the divine law of creation reveals man as a necessary factor in God's great work. Through man, God is forming or manifesting outwardly that which exists in the ideal. In order, then, that the creation shall go on and be fulfilled as God has designed, man must not only understand the law of mind action in his individual thought, but he must also understand his relation to the universal thought. Not only must he understand it, but in his every thought he must consciously cooperate with divine ideals. Jesus understood this law and repeatedly claimed that He was sent of God to carry out the divine will in the world. This commission is given to every man, and man will not have satisfaction in life until he recognizes this universal law; until he becomes an obedient, willing co-worker with Divine Mind.
10. Spiritual man is I AM; manifest man is I will. I AM is the Jehovah God of Scripture, and I will is the Adam. It is the I AM man that forms and breathes into the I will man the "breath of life." When we are in the realm of the ideal, we are I AM; when we are expressing ideals in thought or in act, we are I will. When the I will gets so absorbed in its realm of expression that it loses sight of the ideal and centers all its attention in the manifest, it is Adam listening to the serpent and hiding from Jehovah God. This breaks the connection between Spirit and manifestation, and man loses that spiritual consciousness which is his under divine law. In this state of mind the real source of supply is cut off, and there is a drawing upon the reserve forces of the organism, the tree of life. It is in this experience that man is described as being driven out of the Garden of Eden, or the paradise of Being.
11. Every idea projects form. The physical body is the projection of man's idea; we carry the body in the mind. The body is the fruit of the tree of life, which grows in the midst of the garden of mind. If the body-idea is grounded and rooted in Divine Mind, the body will be filled with a perpetual life flow that will repair all its imperfect parts and heal all its diseases.
12. When man realizes that there is but one body-idea and that the conditions in his body express the character of his thought, he has the key to bodily perfection and immortality in the flesh. But "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." The "flesh and blood" here referred to is the corruptible-body
