III.CREATION.
Thus God the heaven created, thus the earth, —
Matter unformed and void. Darkness profound
Covered the Abyss; but on the watery calm
His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspread,
And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth,
Throughout the fluid mass, but downward purged
The black, Tartareous, cold, infernal dregs
Adverse to Life. — Paradise Lost.
The eternity of Truth is changing the universe. Thought expands into expression, as mortals shake off their swaddling-clothes. “Let there be light” is the perpetual demand of Truth and Love, changing chaos into order, and turning discord into the music of the spheres.
Progress takes off human shackles. The finite must yield to the Infinite. Advancing to a higher plane of action, thought rises from the material sense to the spiritual, from the mortal to the immortal, and from the personal to the impersonal. All things are created spiritually. Mind, not matter, is the Creator. The Divine Principle, not person, is the Father and Mother of man and the universe.
Who is it that demands our obedience? He who, in the language of Scripture, “doeth according to His will, in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him What doest thou?”
A form or a person is not equal to this infinite Love and Wisdom. A finite or material sense of God leads to formalism and narrowness, freezing the heart of Christianity.
The theory of three persons in one God (that is, the Trinity or Triunity) suggests a heathen god rather than the one ever-present I AM. “Hear Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.”
A limitless Mind cannot proceed from limits or personality. Finiteness cannot present the idea or person of infinity. A mind that originated from a finite source, or from a person, would be limited and finite. Infinite, impersonal Mind is the Creator, and creation is the infinite idea of His Mind.
That God is material, no man should affirm. The Bible represents Him as saying: “Thou canst not see My face; for there shall no man see Me, and live.” We know Him only as divine, as Life, Truth, and Love. Let us then obey and adore in proportion as we apprehend these qualities, and love Him understandingly, warring no more over a person, but rejoicing in the affluence of Deity. Then shall religion be of the heart, and not of the head. No longer shall theology be tyrannical and proscriptive from lack of love, — straining out gnats and swallowing camels.
The everlasting I AM is not bounded, or compressed within the narrow limits of physical humanity or mortal concepts. What the person of God may be is of small importance, when compared with the sublime question, What is Infinite Mind, or divine power?
If Mind is within and without all, then all is Mind; and this classification is scientific. If so-called matter is Substance, then Deity, matter's opposite, must be shadow; and shadow cannot produce Substance. From this it would follow that Spirit is not the Creator, and that matter is self-created. This heterodoxy ultimates in the belief in a bodily Soul and a material Mind.
A personal mind manifests all manner of error, and thus proves the material theory incorrect. Who hath found finite life or love sufficient to meet the demands of human want and woe, — stilling the desires, satisfying the aspirations? Infinite Mind cannot be in a finite form, or it would lose its infinite character as inexhaustible Love, eternal Life, omnipotent Truth.
It would require an infinite form to contain Infinite Mind. Personal man cannot be its image and likeness. A mortal, personal, or finite conception of God cannot embrace the glories of limitless, impersonal Life and Love. Hence the unsatisfied human craving for something better, higher, holier than this lower belief affords, and the insufficiency of that belief to supply the true idea.
The mythical theories of creation, adopted by mortal minds, are vague conceptions, affording no foundation for accurate views of the Immortal Mind, discerned apart from all bodily creations. Materiality cannot be made the basis of any true idea of God.
Mind creates its own likeness in idea, and this idea is very far from the supposed substance of non-intelligent matter. The Father of Mind is not the Father of matter. Personal sense would translate spiritual ideas into material beliefs, and say that person, instead of Principle, is the Father of the rain, “who hath begotten the drops of dew,” and bringeth “forth Mazaroth in his season,” and guideth “Arcturus with his sons.”
Mortal man has made a covenant with his eyes, to belittle Deity with human conceptions. Being in league with personal sense mortals take limited views of all things. Eye hath not seen Spirit, nor ear heard His voice.
With the microscope of Spirit you may discern the heart of humanity, and so comprehend the generic term man. Man is not distorted, for he reflects the Infinite; nor is he an isolated solitary thought, for he belongs to the sum of Infinite Mind.
God created all in the kingdom of Mind, when He expressed in man the infinite idea, forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless source. We know no more of man's personality, as the true divine image and likeness, than we know of God's.
The Infinite Principle is represented by the infinite idea, or man, and the senses have no cognizance of either; but human capacities are enlarged and perfected, in proportion as humanity gains the true conception of man and God.
Mortals have a very feeble and imperfect idea of the spiritual man, with an infinite range of thought. To him belongs eternal Life. Never born, and never dying, it is an impossibility for that man, under the government of Eternal Science, to fall from his high estate.
If man was once perfect, but has now lost his perfection, then mortals have never beheld in man the outlines or reality of the divine. The lost image is not man. Jesus understood this; and therefore said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
To Jesus man was the true image of God. Christ's divine sense threw upon mortals the truer reflection of God. He lifted their lives higher than their poor models of thought would allow, — thoughts that presented man as fallen, sick, sinning, and dying. His understanding of scientific being and divine healing must include a perfect Principle and idea — perfect God and perfect man — as the basis of every thought.
Drawing our conclusions about man from an opposite standpoint, from imperfection instead of perfection, we can no more arrive at the true conception or understanding of man, and make ourselves like unto it, than the sculptor can perfect his outlines from an imperfect model, or the painter depict the form and face of Jesus by holding in thought the character of Judas. Truly is it written: —
Sculptors of men are we, as we stand,
With our lives uncarved before us,
Waiting the hour when, at God's command,
Our life-dream passes o'er us.
If we carve it then, on the yielding stone,
With many a sharp incision,
Its heavenly beauty shall be our own,
