pain and pleasure, life and death, holiness and unholiness, mingle in one phenomenon called man. But man is the image and likeness of God, of Life, Truth, and Love, spiritually conceived and created. All the vanity of the Gentiles can never make one hair white or black in science that lays the axe at the root of the belief that Life or Mind is in the body, to cut it down either through a belief of death or the understanding of Life.
Admitting God the only Mind and Life leaves no occasion for sin or death, turns thought into new and healthy channels, to the contemplation of immortal things, and away from the person to the Principle of man; whence we learn his science, and how to be perfect even as the Father, the eternal intelligence, is perfect. Because Life is God, it must be eternal. And there is but one God, and therefore but one Life, and this is self-existent and forever—the “I am” that was and is, and nothing can destroy. Christ, Truth, is “the resurrection and life,” for it destroys the error or belief that Mind is buried in the body, that Life is in what is termed matter, and subject to death. The figurative tree of knowledge is represented in the Scripture as bearing the fruits of sin, sickness, and death. Then ought we not to judge this knowledge, that is conveyed through the senses material, as dangerous to partake of, for the Scripture teaches that “the tree is known by its fruits.”
[ 36 ] The resistance to these cardinal points of metaphysical science will yield in the proportion that mortal man yields to immortal man, sin to holiness, sickness to health, and a belief to the understanding of being. We had sanguine hopes of the immediate acceptance of metaphysical science until we learned its vastness, the fixedness of belief, and mortal mind's hatred of Truth. Until the scientific relation of God to man is perceived, we shall never reach the demonstration of scientific being in its small beginnings, such as healing the sick. Exchange our standpoints of Life and intelligence, from what is termed matter to Spirit, and we shall begin at once to gain the perfect Life, through the control of Soul over sense, and receive Christ, Truth, in Principle and not in person. This point must be achieved before harmonious and immortal man is understood and demonstrated. It is highly important, in view of the vast amount to be accomplished before the final recognition that Life is God, Spirit, to gather our thoughts in this right direction to-day, that in time we may prepare for eternity, and this finite belief give up its error.
If the Principle of being, its rule and demonstration, are not in the least understood before what is termed death, we shall rise no higher in the scale of being at that point of experience, but shall be as material as before it, seeking happiness through a material instead of a spiritual sense, and a selfish and personal motive. This error will bring its reward in sickness, sin, and death, so long as it continues here or hereafter; and it will continue as long as the belief remains that Life and intelligence are in the body. If the change called death destroyed the belief that pleasure and pain commingle and proceed from [ 37 ] the same source, namely the body, then were happiness achieved and permanent at the moment of dissolution; but this is not so, for they that are filthy shall be filthy still. Every sin and error possessed at the moment of death continues after it until the death of that error and not the death of matter. If we became Spirit at once after what is termed death, we should be sinless and in bliss; but we become spiritual only as we forsake sin; and the murderer killed in the act of killing has not forsaken sin, and is not more spiritual simply because he believes his body died, and has learned that he never died with it, and his thoughts are no better, purer, or more loving, and they make his body as material as his thoughts. Progress comes of experience: the ripening of mortal man through suffering will drop his false sense of Life and intelligence as aught but God here and hereafter, and it will drop like the stone to the ground. The old man and his deeds will be put off with it, and he will understand that nothing is immortal that is sensual or sinful, and the death of sin is all that can make Life real or eternal to him. The so-called pleasures and pains of what is termed personal sense perish through anguish, and they must be destroyed before the actual of being can be attained. Mortal man is at ease in error, else he would cease to sin; and he must lose that case to part with his sin. How long before he learns this here or hereafter, how long he must suffer the pangs of amputating error, will depend on the tenacity of his beliefs. When remembering that God is our only Life, and feeling the false consciousness of Life in the body, we may tremble for the days in which to say, “I have no pleasure in them.” That sin is pardoned, or happiness universal in the midst of sin, or that the so-called death [ 38 ] of the body can free from sin, or that God pardons sins not outgrown, are grave mistakes. We know “all will be changed in the twinkling of an eye when the last trump shall sound;” but the last call of wisdom comes not until we have yielded to every other one of its calls in the growth of Christian character. While man is selfish, sinful, sensual, to conclude that the last call of wisdom has awakened him to glorified being is preposterous.
“As the tree falleth, so shall it lie;” as man goeth to sleep, so shall he waken; as death findeth mortal man, so shall he be after death. The error of thought never enters dust; no resurrection from the grave awaits mortal mind, no final judgment; for the judgment of wisdom is that process of spiritualization going on continually, by which mortal man is divested of all material error, and there is no spiritual error, for Spirit is God and cannot err. When the final fault is destroyed, the last trump has sounded which called the battle with sin, “but that hour no man knoweth.” Here prophecy stops, but science sees beyond the grave the certainty of eternal being. Universal salvation must rest on progression: it can never be attained without it. Heaven is not a locality, but a state in which body and mind are harmonious and immortal because all sin is destroyed.
There is as much substance and intelligence in the mountain mirage that seemeth what it is not, or in the face reflected from the mirror, as in mortal and material man that is not the image of God. So far as this statement is understood it will be admitted, and the true idea of God, in other words the real man and the new man, as Paul has it, will appear, and the old man, or material belief, disappear.
[ 39 ] The time has come for a belief in the person of God to give place to the better understanding of the science of the divine Principle, named God, through which to gain man's harmony and immortality. Hitherto theology has interpreted God as a personal Saviour instead of a saving Principle, and employed matter instead of Spirit to heal the sick; but as progress compels the change, we shall seek not of a person but a Principle the remedy for every ill. To seek Truth through or of a belief is to ask the changing and erring to explain the immutable and immortal; and to call a belief Truth is an ignorance with grave consequences. A belief can neither explain Principle nor demonstrate it. To understand, instead of believe, what relates most to the happiness of being is essential, to understand Truth, gives us faith in it, and, because God is Truth, to understand Him is better than all burnt offerings. The Master said, “No man cometh to the Father (the Principle of being) except through me.” Was this “me” the man Jesus, or Christ, the Truth and Life of that man? Jesus answered this question by saying, “I and Father are one,” and “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
We learn of metaphysical science that the Trinity is the divine Life, Truth, and Love; the only true substance and intelligence. They are one in essence, in office infinite; even the three in one, which constitute all that is Principle, and creates all that is real. The Holy Ghost is divine science, revealing and explaining this divine triad, and is referred to in the Scriptures as the Comforter that leadeth into all Truth. Christianity is the understanding of the divine Life, Truth, and Love, and the demonstration thereof. Jesus was the son of a virgin [ 40 ] mother, by whom scientific being was so far understood that she knew God was the Father of man, and man the offspring of a divine Principle. Jesus was the name of the man, and Christ but another name for God, the Principle and creator of that man. The signification of God in the original text being “good,” the term Christ Jesus may be rendered as good man, or God man. His spiritual origin and divine demonstration of the Father richly entitled him to that sonship in divine science.
Christian science was first introduced by Jesus; he explained and demonstrated it, healing the sick and triumphing over sin and death. His works were based on a divine Principle that he understood and could teach, and they can be demonstrated on no other basis. The leading points of this divine science
