it. Neither does it diminish his obligations to God, but shows the paramount necessity of meeting them. Science takes naught from the perfection of God, but ascribes to Him the greater glory.
When man resigns his claims as a creator, blends his thoughts of existence with those of his Maker, and works only as He works, man will no longer grope darkly, and cling to earth because he has not tasted heaven Longfellow was thus thinking when he wrote: —
And the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touch God's right hand in that darkness,
And are lifted up and strengthened.
“Putting off the old man” and his deeds, mortals thereby “put on immortality.”
Who that has felt the loss of physical pleasure, has not gained stronger desires for impersonal joy? The aspiration after these comes even before we find what belongs to Wisdom and Love. The loss of earthly hopes and joys has brightened the ascending plane of many a heart. The pains of sense quickly inform us that its pleasures are mortal, and that joy is spiritual.
The sinner believes himself happier for wrong-doing, and the saint that he suffers for doing right. Both inferences are false. They are the cobweb conceptions of material sense, — transient forms of error flitting before mortals, only to sink into rapid oblivion.
Would existence be to you a blank without personal friends? Then the time cometh when you will be solitary, left without sympathy and alone; for this vacuum is to be filled with God, spiritual Truth, and Love, impersonal instead of personal Good. When this hour of development comes, even if you cling to a sense of material joys, Divine Love will force you to accept what best promotes your growth. Friends will betray, and personal enemies will encompass you; but the lesson will be sufficient, for “man's extremity is God's opportunity.” Thus He teaches mortals to lay down their personal treasures, in order to gain the Principle of right, and thus learn the divine way in Science.
The pains of sense are salutary, if they wrench away the pleasurable beliefs of sense, and transplant the affections from sense to Soul, where the creations of God “are good, rejoicing the heart.” Such are the footprints in Science, whereby Truth decapitates error, and mortals gain a higher individuality and destiny with every succeeding step.
Man must follow Jesus' sayings and demonstration, up to the very throne of perfect and eternal Mind. Thus the beliefs of matter will disappear, and the ideas of Spirit will crowd upon us with their beatific presence, flooding humanity with light.
Spiritual understanding lifts man above mortal frailty, as he crosses the barriers of time, into the vast forever of Life. Only that which co-exists with God can reflect Him and be His idea. Every object in the material universe will be resolved into thought, whose substance is Mind, not matter, and is included in the generic term man, of which woman is the highest species.
The late Louis Agassiz, by his microscopic examinations of a vulture's ovum, strengthened my conclusions as to the scientific theory of creation. Mortal belief claims to create, but the immortal idea alone represents the Truth of creation. Man is more than an individual form, with a mind inside of it. He reflects Infinity, and includes in this reflection the entire universe of God's creating. Professor Agassiz was able to see in the egg the earth's atmosphere, the gathering clouds, the moon and stars, while the germinating speck of embryotic life seemed a small sun.
Mortal mind, examined through the microscope of metaphysics, presents more hues than are to be easily detected upon its surface, — colors borrowed from many mental sources; but finally every tint must disappear in the dazzling effulgence of supernal sunlight, where the robes of Spirit are “white and glistering,” like the raiment of Christ.
Even in this world, therefore, “let your garments be always white.”
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