UNITY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE,
By Reverend Mary B. G. Eddy, discoverer and founder of Christian Science.
Read by Judge S. J. Hanna, editor of the Christian Science Journal, before the Parliament of Religions of the World's Congress Auxiliary of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.
[Copyrighted.]
To the World's Parliament of Religions:
Every step of progress is a step more spiritual. The great elements of reform are not born of human wisdom; they draw not their life from human organizations; rather is it the crumbling away of material elements from human reason; the translation of law back to its original, Divine Mind, and the final unity between man and God.
The footsteps of thought, as they pass from the sensual side of existence to the reality of Scientific being are slow, but the guardians of the gloom are the pillars of His presence which impart hope and grandeur to the intellectual wrestling and collisions, as we drift into more spiritual latitudes.
The improved theory and practice of religion and medicine are mainly due to the people's improved views of God. As a finite sense of Deity, based on material conceptions of spiritual Being, yields its grosser elements, we shall understand and obey His laws.
The Hebrew term which gives another letter to the word God, and makes it Good, unites Science and Christianity; whereby we learn that Good is universal, and the Divine Principle, Life, Truth, Love. This Triune Good is reached through goodness,— through Mind instead of matter; Soul instead of sense, understanding and demonstration.
It is the false conception entertained of Spirit, based on the evidences obtained from the material senses, that forms its Deity out of the worst human qualities, else of wood and stone. Such a theory has overturned empires in demoniacal contests over religion. Proportionately as the people's opinions of God have been dematerialized and unfinitized, has their Deity become no longer a personal tyrant, or a molten image, but universal Life, without beginning or ending, Truth without a lapse or error, and infinite Love. This more perfect idea of the Divine Being held constantly before the people's mind, must have a benign influence upon the character of nations as well as individuals, and will lift man ultimately to the understanding, that our ideals form our characters, and "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he". The bow of Omnipotence already spans the moral heavens with light, and the enlarged spiritual thought meets the material thought like a promise upon the cloud, while it inscribes on the minds of men a rational religion founded in Christ.
In Christian Science God is infinite supreme Being, the only Mind or Spirit, Life, Substance, and Soul. The only law or Intelligence of the universe. God's individuality is unknown, and thus a knowledge of it is left either to human conjecture, or to the eternal unfoldings of Divine Science. God is personal in its scientific sense but not in any anthropomorphic sense.
The dual Christ Jesus was the mediator between humanity and Spirit. Physical causation was put aside, from first to last, by this original man Jesus. To him the statement that Truth is real, necessarily included the correlated statement that error is unreal. The Adamic race bent the knee to matter; they served Spirit. His affections were pure; theirs were carnal. His senses drank in the spiritual evidence of Being--health, holiness, and Life; theirs absorbed the material evidence of sin, sickness and death.
To the materialistic As Written: materialsitic Thomas, looking for Mind in matter, and to the evidence of the material senses, more than to Soul, for an earnest of immortality,--to him Jesus furnished the proof that he was unchanged by death. To this disciple nothing save a sense of matter could make existence real.
Our Master said "I am the way, the truth and the life". Truth will become theresurrection and the Life only when it annihilates the belief that Mind can be fettered by matter and that death can be the master of life. Not death, but the understanding of Life, makes man immortal. Man would be annihilated, were it not for the spiritual man's indissoluble connection with Spirit, God.
In his resurrection and ascension Jesus showed that the fleshly man is mortal, and not the real essence of manhood; and this unreal mortality disappears in presence of the reality. Understanding little about the divine Principle which saves and heals, mortals get rid of sin, sickness and death only in appearance, These errors are not thus really destroyed, and must therefore cling to mortals until, here or hereafter, they gain the true understanding of God, in the Science which reveals the grand realities of His Allness.
Jesus' unchanged physical condition, after what seemed to be death, followed by his exaltation or ascension above all material conditions, shows unmistakably aprobationary and progressive state beyond the grave. Jesus said: "These signs shall follow them that believe; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover".
Jesus' promise was perpetual. Had it been given only to his immediate disciples, the Scriptural passage would have read you, not them. The purpose of his great lifework touches universal humanity. His miracles understood illustrate an ever-operative divine Principle, Scientific order and continuity.
The Scripture reads: "So God created man in His own image". Few persons comprehend what Christian Science means by the word reflection. The Scientific definition of this word interprets Jesus' sayings in the seventh chapter of Saint John's gospel. It will reconcile Christendom to the four toughest points of Christian Science, namely: The unreality of matter, the unreality of evil, the unreality of sickness, the unreality of death.
An infinite God can only create through reflection, since nothing can act or appear outside the focal distance of Infinity.
Compare man, before the mirror, to his Divine Principle, God. Call the mirror Divine Science, and call man its reflection. Then note how true, is the reflection to its original. As the object before the mirror can neither be separated from its own image, nor reflect its unlikeness, so God cannot be separated from His reflection neither can His image and likeness lose perfection. The reflection of God is inseparable from Him, and as immutable and eternal as God Himself. Mortal man has made a c covenant with his eyes to belittle Deity with human conceptions.
What, then, is the material human personality which suffers, sins, and dies? It is not man, in the image of God, but man's counterfeit, announced by the serpent( in the name of the Lord) as the likeness of a sinner to God! and the reality of sin, sickness and death! Saint Paul refers to this original sin as the flesh, alias matter, warring with Spirit and unreconciled to God. Therefore this man does not reflectt God, and is illustrated by the optical line of incidence, which takes always the opposite direction from the line of reflection.
Again, according to scripture man lives, moves, and has his being in God, but man is not absorbed in Deity, and Deity is no more in His reflection than man is in the mirror, or the sun in the ray of light which goes out from it.
As we gain the evidence in Science that man in God's image, is the only real man, the evidence before the senses of man's deflection disappears and proportionately as the fact appears to the consciousness of the mental healer that man lives, moves, and has his being in God, the reflection of this thought will restore the sick, reform the sinner, and, carried to its ultimate as Jesus did carry it, must destroy the last enemy called death.
What is this material personality which suffers, sins, and dies? It evidently is not man, in the image and likeness of God. It is sinning and sick mortals misnamed man.
The Christly Nazarene, when speaking of the origin of mortals, startles the human thought with this verdict: "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginningAs Written:begining, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it." John 8, 44John 8:44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. .
Referring to mortals, Job said:
What then are they who dwell in houses of clay,
Whose foundation is in the dust,
Who crumble as if moth-eaten?
Usage classes both evil and good together as mind; therefore, to be understood, Science classifies sinful humanity as mortal mind,--meaning, by this term, the flesh opposed to Spirit,--human error and evil, in contradistinction to Truth and Good. Human hypotheses are awry when they attempt to draw correct spiritual conclusions from matter. Finite sense has no true apprehension of infinite Being. The minutiae, distinctness, and grandeur of all individualities are maintained in the reflection of t the one all-inclusive individuality, even as the principle of music is reflected in harmony and sustains it.
If mortals caught music through the ear--a material sense--they would lose it again. To be master of chords and discords musical science must be understood. Left to the decisions of the five senses music is liable to be misapprehended, and run into discord. So man, not understanding the Science of Being, and thrusting aside his divine Principle as incomprehensible,-- seems to be real and right but is not, and subjected to the same material senses which express discord instead of harmony. A sick and sinful mortal no more expresses man than discord, music.
Mortal man calls himself something because the immortal man is something. This error saith "I am as real as Truth although I am not true, I am man although not in God's image, I am the likeness of Spirit although I am both mind and matter". Now if this be so, and man is both mind and matter, the loss of one finger would take away some quality and quantity of the man.
The annihilation of man or his individuality through the understanding which Science confers is impossible, and more absurd than to conclude that individual musical tones are lost in the principle of their grand harmony. Each sin that is overcome takes mortals one step out of the false consciousness called mortals, until every step is taken, when the perfect man forever intact is brought to light.
We tread on forces. Withdraw them, and creation must collapse. Human knowledge calls them forces of matter, but Divine Science declares they belong wholly to Mind, are inherent in Mind, and so restores them to their rightful home and classification.
The compounded minerals or aggregate substances comprising the earth, the relations which constituent masses hold to each other, the magnitudes, distances, and revolutions of the celestial bodies, are of no real importance, when we remember that they must all give place to the spiritual fact, by the translation of man and the universe back to Spirit. In proportion as this is done, will both man and the universe be found harmonious and cosmology be understood.
Molecular substances, geological calculations, yea all the paraphernalia of speculative theories, based on the hypothesis of life and intelligence resident in matter, will ultimately vanish, swallowed up in the infinite calculus of Spirit.
According to the law of optics how transient a blessing is material sight, when a wound on the retina may end the power of light and lens! Only the sight or sense of God and His universe can never be lost. Whatever is governed by Him is never for an instant deprived of the light and might of intelligence and Life, We are sometimes led to believe that darkness is as real as light; but even natural science affirms darkness to be only a mortal sense of the absence of light, at whose coming darkness loses the appearance of reality. So sickness, sin, and sorrow are the suppositional absence of harmony, and flee with the phantoms of the senses before truth and Love.
The subtle material elements are beyond the cognizance of the five senses, and are known only by certain effects commonly attributed to them.
One of the following statements must be true: that everything is matter; else that everything is Mind. Matter and Mind are antagonistic, and both have not place and power. The scriptural definition of God as All-in-all establishes forever this verity and reveals the infinite meaning of the eternal One--not two. In order to be understood, the founder of Christian Science has classified whatever is opposed to Divine Mind as a mortal mind, and matter as the subjective state of mortal mind. But Mind being immortal, there is no mortal mind hence there can be no matter.
The Revelator had not passed the transitional stage in human experience called death, when he saw a new Heaven and a new earth. The Revelator was on our plane of existence, while yet beholding what the eye cannot see. This testimony of Holy Writ sustains the fact in Science, that Heaven and earth, to one human consciousness,--or that consciousness which God bestows,-- may be spiritual; while to another, the vision is material. This shows unmistakably that what we term matter and Spirit indicate only states and stages of consciousness.
Christian Science is not the shibboleth of a sect, or the cabalistic insignia of a philosophy. It is no more supernatural than is the science of numbers; although departing from the realm of the physical, as it must, some may scruple its right to the name of Science. But the fact remains that all Science is Mind, not matter, and because Science is not human it must be Divine.
The Principle of Christian Science is God; its practice is the power of Truth over error; its rules demonstrate Science. Mind is one,--including noumena and phenomena, God and His thoughts. Mind is the centre and circumference of all Being, the central sun of its own universe, infinite systems of ideas, therefore Mind is Divine and not human.
The first rule in Christian Science is, "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me". The second is like unto it, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself". To demonstrate these rules on any other than their Divine Principle is impossible.
The universal brotherhood of man is a principal factor in Christian Science. Having one God is having one Father; and this Scientifically establishes the brotherhood of man. The first commandment of the Hebrew decalogue, understood, unfolds the true Principle of the brotherhood of man, and the impossibility for God's children to have antagonistic minds and so war one with another. United in their Divine Principle they practice divinity, and so fulfill the scripture; "Be ye perfect even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect."
Science reverses the seeming relation of Mind and body as astronomy reverses the human perception of the movement of the solar system and makes body tributary to Mind.
Christian Science explains all cause and effect as mental and not physical. It lifts the veil from Soul and body. It shows the Scientific relation of man to God, disentangles the interlaced ambiguities of Being, and sets free the imprisoned thought; so that we may know in Science that the universe, including man and his divine Principle, is harmonious and eternal. [*]Archival Note: The following text was later added by the author or another annotator to the document in the margins.(omit if requisite this paragraphAs Written:par.)[*]Archival Note: End margin text.
The universe, like man, is to be interpreted by Science from its Divine Principle, and can then be understood; but when explained on the basis of physical causation and evidence drawn from the material senses the universe like man, is, and must continue to be, an enigma.
The definitions of law, material law, as given by natural science, represent a kingdom necessarily divided against itself; because they portray law as physical, not spiritual, and are therefore in contradiction to the divine decrees, and violate the law of Love, wherein nature and God are one, and the natural order of Heaven comes down to earth.
If there are material laws which prevent disease, what then causes it? Not divine law, for Christ healed the sick and cast out error, always in opposition, never in obedience, to physics. Nerves carry a changed report over the body, according to the changed belief.
Mesmerism, hypnotism and animal magnetism are but the subtle modes of error, the voluntary and involuntary action of illusion.
[*]Archival Note: The following text was later added by the author or another annotator to the document in the margins.?[*]Archival Note: End margin text. Which was first Mind or medicine? The divine Mind was self-existent, and "made all that was made". Then Mind was first and made medicine, and that medicine was Mind. Omnipotent Mind could not possibly create a remedial power outside Itself. If Mind is first chronologically, is first potentially, and must be first eternally, then give to Mind its place in Metaphysical Science. Inferior and unspiritual systems of Therapeutics may try to make Mind and matter coalesce; but this is impossible.
Health is not a condition of matter, nor can the material senses bear reliable testimony on this subject. Mortal mind uses one error as a medicine for another. It antidotes the effect of one poison by another poison. On the same basis that it quiets pain with morphine, it appeases malice with revenge. But this is false reasoning not Science; it is the "tree of knowledge" known by its fruit.
The sick are more deplorably lost than the sinful, if the sick cannot rely on God for help, and the sinful can. It is plain that God does not employ drugs or hygiene, or provide them for human use, else Jesus being the Way-shower would have recommended and employed them in his healing. Mortal mind determines the nature of a case; matter has no intelligence wherewith to do this; and the physician improves or injures the case, in proportion to the Truth or error which influences his conclusions.
If God had instituted material laws to govern man, disobedience to which would have made him ill, Jesus would not have disregarded those laws by healing in direct opposition to them, and in defiance of material conditions. When we remove disease in Christian Science by addressing the mortal mind, giving no heed to the body, we prove that mortal mind creates the suffering. The issues of pain or pleasure must come through mind; and--like a watchman forsaking his post--we admit the intruder, forgetting that the divine Mind can guard this entrance.
What is termed matter, being unintelligent, cannot say, "I suffer, I die, I am sick," or "I am well." It is mortal mind which speaks thus, and appears to make good its own claim. To mortal sense sin and suffering are real; but immortal sense includes no evil or pestilence. And because it has no error of sense, and no sense of error it is immortal. Cast the sickness out of mortal mind and it disappears from the body; cast out the sin from this mind and the sin ceases.
It was Scientifically established that leprosy was a mental creation and not physical when Moses first put his hand into his bosom, and drew it forth white as snow with the dread disease, and presently restored his hand to its natural condition, by the same simple process. Then God said: "It shall come to pass, if they will not hear thee, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter". And so it was in the coming centuries, when Jesus showed his students the power of Mind to cast out evils, and diseases; and healed the sick and destroyed sin, by one and the same metaphysical process.
Christian Scientists and the popular Religious sects unite in the premise of their doctrines but separate somewhat in their conclusions. Both agree there is but one God, also that He is Good and Omnipotent. Then the Ecclesiastic and the Scientist part in their statement of God's power,-- wherein it is found that the Ecclesiastic believes in three intelligent powers instead of one. The first power is good, an Intelligence called God. The second power is evil, the opposite of good. It cannot therefore be intelligent, although so called. The third power is called the real man, a supposed mixture of the first and second powers-- a conglomeration of Intelligence and nonintelligence, of Spirit and matter, of good and evil. Such theories can never stand the test of Science.
Let us remember that if Good is omnipotent, evil is impotent. There is but one side to omnipotent Good,-- it has no evil side; there is but one side to reality and that is the good side. If God is All and in all, that finishes the question of a good and a bad side to existence. You will gather the importance of these sayings when sorrow comes for "sorrow endureth but for a night and joy cometh in the morning." The dream is sickness sin and death, and your waking from it, is the reality, even the triumph of Soul over sense which Jesus taught and demonstrated.
Take the side you wish to carry and be careful not to talk on both sides. You are the attorney for the case whatever it be, and will win or lose according to your mental verdict. The old Latin proverb is true "that thou seest, that thou beest."
We are in the midst of a revolution; physics are yielding with a struggle to Divine metaphysics; mortal mind rebels at its own bound aries; weary of matter, it would catch the meaning of Spirit. The only immortal superstructure is builtAs Written:bulit on Truth; her tower rises slowly, but it stands. A newold truth welling up from the Infinite is a miracle to the age but it should not seem like the great pyramid of Egypt, unintelligent, a miracle in stone!
If thought is startled at the strong claims of Science for the supremacy of God, or Good, and doubts them, ought we not, contrariwise, to be astounded at the vigorous claims of evil, and doubt them, and no longer think it natural to love sin, and unnatural to forsake it,-- no longer imagine evil to be everpresent, and Good absent? Truth should not seem as surprising and unnatural as error, and error should not seem as real as Truth.
The following are the Tenets of Christian Science Churches:
[*]Archival Note: The following text was later added to the document by the author or another annotator, disrupting the surrounding thought.[copyrighted][*]Archival Note: End floating text.
1. As adherents of Truth, we take the Scriptures for our guide to eternal Life.
2. We acknowledge and adore one Supreme God. We acknowledge His Son, and the Holy Ghost, and man as the Divine image and likeness.
We acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin, in the destruction of sin; and His present and future punishment of "whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie". We acknowledge the atonement in proof of Christ's unity with God. And the way of salvation, as demonstrated by Jesus casting out evils, healing the sick, and raising the dead,--resurrecting a dead faith to seize the great possibilities and living energies of Divine Life.
3. We solemnly promise to strive, watch, and pray for that Mind to be in us which was also in Christ Jesus. To love one another, and, up to our highest understanding to be meek, merciful and just, and to live peaceably with all men.
This address is from the pen of the Reverend Mary Baker G. Eddy, the discoverer and founder of Christian Science.