Margaret Murney Glenn, C.S.B., of Boston,
Massachusetts
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The
Mother Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
Miss Margaret Murney Glenn, C.S.B., of Boston, Mass., a member of the Christian Science Board of Lectureship, delivered a lecture entitled "Man's Unity With God as Revealed by Christian Science," last evening, under the auspices of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Mass., in the church edifice, Falmouth, Norway, and St. Paul Streets.
The lecturer was introduced by Bliss Knapp, C.S.B., First Reader in The Mother Church, who said:
Friends: Your presence here this evening indicates your interest in the subject of Christian Science. We have a feast spread for us, and I am sure it is the desire of everyone to get as much benefit from it as possible. Perhaps another's experience may help you to make the most of it. I recall a young woman who had been given up by the physicians with consumption, and then turned to Christian Science for healing, but apparently to no purpose. She spoke to me at the close of a lecture on Christian Science in a western city, with the query, "Why do I not get my healing?" I replied that if she would come to Christian Science, not for the sake of her healing, but rather to gain the truth, and nothing but the truth, her healing would be inevitable.
When next I saw that woman some years later, it was at a Wednesday evening meeting. She referred to the answer I had given to her query, and then she testified that her complete healing came as she approached Christian Science in the right way. In gratitude for all she had gained in Christian Science she is today ministering to the needs of others as a Christian Science practitioner.
As you listen to the message our lecturer has for us this evening in the way this young woman I have referred to learned to approach Christian Science, for the sake of the truth and nothing but the truth, I am sure you will be amply repaid for coming.
We are happy to welcome back to this platform one who has already endeared herself to this congregation. She is a member of the Board of Lectureship of this Church, and it is with great pleasure that I present to you Miss Margaret Murney Glenn, C.S.B., of Boston.
The lecturer spoke substantially as follows:
Christian Science reveals that a scientific, indestructible unity exists between God and man, and that, man's health, intelligence, and perfection are dependent upon, and the result of, this unity. The first chapter of Genesis, in its account of the basic realities of creation, affirms throughout this inseparability. Its opening words, "In the beginning God created," and its statements as to what constitutes creation, indicate the co-existence of God and man. Note that the four words "in the beginning God" do not complete the thought, for the verse definitely states "in the beginning God created." To interpret this word "beginning" as a starting-point for God, who is infinite Life, or for man, who is the eternal reflection of God, would be illogical, therefore unscientific. Such a theory would presuppose a period of non-existence for God and man. The statements of the first chapter of Genesis do, however, serve as a beginning, starting-point, or foundation for all scientific thinking with regard to God and the universe.
The days of creation mentioned in Genesis do not imply a lapse of time between one creation and another, as is commonly believed, but they show forth the orderly unfoldment to the human mind of God's perfect, eternal creation, a creation that was never fragmentary, but forever complete. This same method is used in describing any human creation or invention. For instance, suppose that you were to describe an automobile to some one who had never seen such a thing. Would you not, begin with its parts, the chassis, engine, steering gear, et cetera, and explain the nature and function of each? Thus, step by step, or day by day, as the Bible puts it, would be unfolded to the consciousness of the ignorant one the complete idea of what constitutes an automobile. The automobile, however, would remain unchanged in its completeness before, during, and after this explanation. So in the first chapter of Genesis the details of God's creation are unfolded to the human consciousness, which is ignorant of the ideas of divine Mind. And man, who is Mind's complete image and likeness, is thereby described. Man, like the automobile, remains unchanged in his completeness before, during, and after this description.
The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes (Science and Health, p. 306), "If God, who is Life, were parted for a moment from His reflection, man, during that moment, there would be no divinity reflected. The Ego would be unexpressed, and the Father would be childless, no Father." God could not possibly be without a creation to manifest the fact that He is the Creator. The creation, on the other hand, could not possibly be separated from the Creator, for it would lose its identity, its very Life. To illustrate: The principle of mathematics must have numbers to express it, and numbers can have no existence apart from the principle of mathematics which governs them, denotes their character, purpose, quantity, and relationship. The numbers are never the principle and the principle is never the numbers, but these express the principle and co-exist with it. Thus God is never man, nor is man ever God, but man expresses God. Man as the image and likeness of God is as essential to the divine Mind that created him, as God is to man. If any of you here are ever tempted to believe that you are useless or unnecessary, remember that God needs you to express His love, His plan, His purpose. To believe that we are unnecessary is to accredit God with being unintelligent, for it would not be intelligent to create a superfluous, unnecessary, or burdensome creation. God needs each one of us to manifest His own wonderful, glorious selfhood or Being, and for His pleasure we are and were created. We are essential as man to the perfection of His universe.
The inseparability of God and man was revealed to Moses when he recognized God as the great I AM, the Ego, or Mind of man and the universe. Almost immediately after this revelation, fear, discouragement, and a sense of personal responsibility tried to enter Moses' consciousness and whisper to him that he was not the creation or manifestation of the I AM, but that he expressed all the "I am nots" possible. The material senses argued to him thus, I am not able to lead the children of Israel, I am not able to convince them of this truth, "I am not eloquent." Perhaps some of you have had these same arguments come to you. Perhaps discouragement has whispered to those of you who are in business, I am not successful, I am not making good; or perhaps, if you are an actor, fear has suggested, I am not able to act well because I am afraid of the public and the critics; or if you are a mother the suggestion may have come, I am not loving, patient, or wise enough to bring up my children properly; or if you believe yourself to be a sinning mortal it will say, I am not good enough to be one with God, His reflection. But all of these fear-thoughts are based on the belief that man is not God's image and likeness, and that God is not present; in other words, that He is not the I AM. When these fears, or "I am nots," assail you remember what occurred to Moses when he took these things to God in prayer. It was revealed to him that within his own consciousness, as God's image and likeness, he had the power to overcome all these suggestions by the understanding of Truth; that he could handle the serpent of fear, discouragement, and opposition to good, and that, understanding the one Life, he could heal the sick. And when Moses was afraid to trust his own demonstration of God's power and presence and of man's unity with God, even then he was not left comfortless, but was shown that his need would be met through the cooperation of his brother-man.
This wonderful name, I AM, also conveys a sense of God's presence and the fact that He is the one, infinite Being, here and now. There is no futurity in this name I AM. In Christian Science, heaven, health, joy, abundance are present realities. They manifest God as I AM. Man's unity with God is as true now as it ever will be and a Christian Science treatment is based on this fact. If it is going to be true next week or next year that some one will be intelligent, harmonious, or healthy, it is most certainly true today, for Truth is always true. The earth was round long before it was discovered to be so; in fact, it was always round. Man as the image and likeness of God always has been and always will be harmonious and perfect, not as matter, but as God's spiritual idea. If one were not to discover this truth until next year, it would nevertheless remain a fact, a fact that Christian Science has been revealing and proving to mankind for little over half a century. Mrs. Eddy clearly sets forth this fact in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 188), when she says, "Man is as perfect now, and henceforth, and forever, as when the stars first sang together, and creation joined in the grand chorus of harmonious being."
Jesus stated clearly that he had not revealed the whole truth to mankind and he designated the character of the complete revelation. He said it would come as "the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." Certainly this was no person, but the intelligence of Truth, which should be in our consciousness and dwell with us. Then Jesus further says that this spirit of Truth, the Comforter, or Holy Ghost, "shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." This Comforter or Holy Ghost is Christian Science.
The material senses which constitute the world certainly cannot accept this "Spirit of truth," or Christian Science, but to intelligence, love, honesty, logic, reason, and justice, to the spiritual senses which each one of us here possesses, this truth is clear and demonstrable. And above all, it comforts. If we believe we are limited, poverty-stricken, or lacking, Christian Science proves when properly applied that God in His love maintains man in harmony and plenty, if we are lonely, unloved, unhappy, Christian Science, this spirit of Truth, demonstrates that such a conception of man is untrue, and it restores our spiritual sense of man, which reveals him as beloved of God and man, surrounded by friends, joyous and free. Should we seem to be separated from a loved one, Christian Science comforts us with the truth that God's love fills all space and that we cannot feel sorrow or grief in the presence of Love's tenderness, affection, and strength, which satisfieth. And because this spirit of Truth is a Science it is demonstrable, for we can always prove Truth to be true.
Scholastic theology, medicine, theosophy, Darwinism, in fact all the other "isms," are based on the belief that man is unlike God. They are not founded on the true, logical, and scientific statements in the first chapter of Genesis, but use the Adam-dream or allegory as the basis of their statements. These theories that man is a sinner, but can be made holy; that man is sick, but will be healthy; that man has evolved from a protoplasm and monkey up to a state where he has some animal tendencies combined with manlike qualities, or that man's soul can embody itself in an animal, these unique theories leave God without any manifestation or expression of Himself while man is supposedly experiencing these strange things.
It is from such false reasoning and education as this that we all need to be freed. Christian Science with its perfect logic, its love, its healing power and comfort is delivering us from bondage to the darkness and ignorance of such theories. This tender, loving spirit of Truth reveals God as Mother as well as Father, and this revelation is essential to humanity's welfare, health, and comfort. In the first chapter of Genesis it reads, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." But the Adam allegory, which is a complete reversal of the true statements of God's spiritual creation, given in the first chapter of Genesis, interprets that statement as though it read, "Let me create man in my image and after my likeness," and as though this "me" were a male God. Having only a male God or Creator made woman's existence a little difficult to account for, but she was there and something had to be done with her. In a dream impossibilities seem possible and logical, for a dream has no Principle governing it, so in the Adam-dream, Adam's rib was made woman's noble origin! Later in Genesis we read this remarkable, not to say amusing statement, "that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair." Of course, if God is only masculine woman cannot be His likeness, but if the divine Us is both feminine and masculine, both Father and Mother, we have a complete God and a complete creation, or image and likeness. This likeness can never be physical, but mental and spiritual, that is, in character. Through Christian Science, then, God's complete parenthood as Father-Mother is revealed.
Some nations have an incomplete, warlike sense of God, a God to be feared, because wrathful and afflictive. This limited concept of Deity manifests itself in a lack of appreciation of the tender, compassionate, constant, pure thoughts which constitute womanhood as God's image and likeness. Women in these countries have a secondary and subservient place to men, due to the prevailing false, limited concept of God as Father only. Over the portal of a western co-educational college are engraved these wonderful words, "The measure of a people is its estimate of woman." A nation, a state, or an organization which is not based on love, tenderness, protection, and mercy, as well as on strength, honesty, and integrity, on the Motherhood as well as the Fatherhood of God is not in line with progress and will prove incomplete and unsatisfactory. When we all acknowledge Love as our Mother God there will be no more strikes between employer and employee, no more selfishness and slander in politics, no wars between nations, and we shall rejoice in all men as forever loving and beloved, as the manifestation of our Father-Mother God.
The Master knew God as divine Love, or Mother, and he manifested this love through his tender patience with his disciples when they misunderstood, denied, and betrayed him; through his compassion when he restored to the widow her son; through his marvelous purity when tempted by the adversary; and through his redemption, not condemnation, of the sinner. He proved that not only is God complete as Father-Mother, but that each individual man reflects or manifests God.
It remained for a woman to further reveal God's nature and man's oneness with God. Some have questioned the fact that this revelation has come through a woman, but does not this questioning emanate from the world's concept of a God as Father only, a concept which does not recognize the tender, pure, loving, gentle, womanly qualities as Godlike? If these are Godlike why should not this revelation of God's Motherhood come through a woman's understanding of God? Even from the standpoint of her limited human qualities, who is better fitted to reveal man's holy, pure, Godlike nature than she who has borne, cherished, loved, forgiven and understood men through the centuries?
Even Jeremiah perceived that this would be the case when he wrote, "For the Lord hath created a new thing in the earth, A woman shall compass a man." And indeed that is exactly what a woman has done; she has compassed the infinite, spiritual, pure nature of man as God's image and likeness. Not only did Mrs. Eddy reveal the real man's nature, but she made it possible for every man to understand and demonstrate this spiritual nature as his own and only real being.
That which led Mrs. Eddy to the discovery of Christian Science was her own healing accomplished by prayer, after the physicians had given her up. For three years she studied the Scriptures in her endeavor to discover the laws underlying this healing as well as those of Jesus and the prophets. This work, stupendous as it was, could not compare with the task of conveying this discovery to others. This she accomplished first by healing all kinds of incurable diseases, then by teaching those healed the Science which brought about their healing. After this she gave to the world this wonderful Science through her books and preaching, and finally she protected her revelation by the establishment of her Church according to By-Laws in the Church Manual. That a woman of her day and generation could be emancipated enough to succeed in a popular line of work would have been very remarkable, but that a lone woman, without means or position, could succeed in establishing a religion which ran counter to the currents of popular opinion and doctrine is truly a marvel. Only the courage born of mother-love would have dared to brave the conflicts which resulted from her sharing with others her great discovery. Her own life, happiness, and comfort she willingly sacrificed in order that her brother-man should be able to prove his unity with God and thus be saved from the illusion that he is one with mortality, fear, hatred, lack, and disease.
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." This she did daily, as witnessed by those who lived with her. She was daily and hourly laying down, or giving up, all that constitutes mortal life, its fears, selfishness, self-righteousness, resentment and revenge, and hourly manifesting more clearly that Love, which, according to Paul, "suffereth long, and is kind; . . . envieth not; . . . is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things, . . . never faileth." Mrs. Eddy was truly a Mother in Israel, protecting, guiding, leading, educating, and loving all who desired to know and practice this Science which revealed the at-one-ment of God and man.
Most of us have been taught that prayer is a request to God to make a sick, sinful, unworthy mortal Godlike. Even God cannot make good come out of evil, "a clean thing out of an unclean," an immortal out of a mortal. All that God does and is accords with reason. Then the question arises, How can we reconcile this corporeal, limited, sinful mortal with the Godlike man? Christian Science answers that it cannot be done. Christian Science separates a sinful, corporeal mortal from the holy, pure, loving sons of God, and John says, "Now are we the sons of God." But those who believe a mortal to be man, may think it very egotistical to claim perfection, holiness, oneness with God, as our heritage. Can we magnify God's creation too much? And does not the magnifying of God's creation entail the minimizing of all that is opposed to God?
Christian Science minimizes all that is unlike God by reducing it to nothingness. It calls all that is evil, hateful, malicious, or limited unreal. Mrs. Eddy writes that Jesus' "prayers were deep and conscientious protests of Truth, of man's likeness to God and of man's unity with Truth and Love" (Science and Health, p. 12). The Christian Scientist's prayers are also protestations of Truth, for they not only affirm man's unity with God but they deny any power, presence, or personification to evil, thus fulfilling Jesus' injunction, "Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay." Affirm and deny. We are apt to think that a self-righteous person is the only kind of egotist, but this is not the case. The sinner believing that he can enjoy and do things which God cannot enjoy or do, is claiming a selfhood apart from God. It is this egotism of sin that Christian Science destroys by revealing God as the only Ego, the All-in-all, the I or Us, and man as His reflection. This eliminates evil as a power, a person, or a place. This does not mean, as some are inclined to think, that Christian Science condones sin. On the contrary it destroys sin by proving it to be unreal. Admittedly, you cannot destroy something real or true, for Truth is indestructible.
Throughout the Bible are examples of this affirmative prayer. Jacob prayed this prayer of affirmation when he was about to meet his brother Esau, whom he feared. On two occasions Jacob had deceived Esau and the latter had been not only resentful and angry but had also envied Jacob his inheritance of good. The result of Jacob's prayer was that he saw God face to face, realized man's oneness with divine Love, and thus recognized his own true nature and that of his brother as the manifestation of God. He thereby denied the existence and personification of envy, anger, hatred, and revenge. This prayer found utterance in Jacob's loving greeting to his brother, "I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God, and thou wast pleased with me." This affirmation that man is the expression of divine Love, or as Jacob put it, "the face of God," eliminated the belief in, and fear of, an enemy. This kind of prayer is as effective in forgiving one's enemies today as it was in Jacob's day.
David declared: "I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not wickedly departed from my God. . . . Therefore hath the Lord recompensed me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his eyesight." David could not have been referring to himself as a mortal, for history records that he had sinned grossly. He had seen how unlike God and man these acts were, and he had put off the old man with his thinking; in other words, he had repented, and was healed. Only because he realized the utter nothingness of evil was he able to make the correct and scientific statements about, himself, which I have just read you. If any here are tempted to think of themselves as limited, unworthy, sinning, or suffering, let them pray in this manner, protesting man's unity with Truth and Love, and denying any attraction to, or connection with evil, let them do this and they will find themselves as free, healthy, harmonious, joyous, and upright as they were in the beginning, when God created them, and "the morning stars sang together" for joy.
In Christian Science, when man is alluded to as God's image and likeness, this does not refer to a mortal, but to God's spiritual creation, which is always one with Him and forever manifests the divine Mind's thinking. A mortal is merely a false concept of the real man. A false concept of anything or anybody never affects the actual state of that person or thing. If you were to believe that a person had three thumbs instead of two, that false concept would not change or influence the fact that he had only two thumbs. Even so, the false, material concept of man, as subject to sickness, sin, and death does not make man subject to these material states. The real status of man is discovered by acquainting ourselves with God, who is imaged forth by man.
Mrs. Eddy's definition of God is as follows: "God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love" (Science and Health, p. 465). Man, then, manifests or expresses this incorporeality, divinity, dominion, and infinity. Mind and its ideas are inseparable and essential to each other. Mind must have ideas to express it and ideas must be created or thought by Mind. According to Webster an idea is a real likeness or representation. What then would be some of the ideas which constitute man? Intelligence and strength are qualities which represent Mind; freedom is an idea of Spirit, for Spirit can know no limitations nor bounds; purity, inspiration, health are ideas that image forth the nature of Soul; invariability, justice, law are spiritual ideas which have their origin in Principle; eternality, activity, spontaneity are Life's ideas; immutability expresses the Rock, Truth; and Love manifests itself through such ideas as generosity, joy, inspiration, beauty, courage, and understanding. These are but few of the wonderful ideas which the spiritual man includes in his being or consciousness.
Christian Science teaches that this ideal man, this true nature of every individual man, is the Christ. Jesus proved more scientifically than any one else that this ideal man, or Christ, is the only real man. Mrs. Eddy writes (Miscellaneous Writings. p. 189), "The meek Nazarene's steadfast and true knowledge of preexistence, of the nature and the inseparability of God and man, made him mighty." This knowledge and its demonstration also earned for Jesus the title of Christ, or the Godlike man. The numerous proofs which Jesus gave of the spiritual man's oneness with God were for the purpose of revealing to us our true nature as God's image and likeness. These proofs were evidence of God's universal and eternal laws, and were not a personal dispensation to the human Jesus. According to Christian Science these proofs were Jesus' atonement, for they manifested man's at-one-ment with the Father. It is incumbent upon each one of us to follow in the footsteps of the Master by daily proving our at-one-ment, with God, good. Vicarious atonement is as impossible, unreasonable, and unsatisfactory as would be the proving of mathematics by proxy.
Jesus proved that the ideal man, or Christ, is one with infinite Mind and therefore manifests infinite intelligence, when he taught in the synagogue, never having learned, and when he knew the thoughts of those about him; he established the fact that man is one with divine Love, by blessing and healing his enemies; he revealed man's unity with divine Principle by never erring in thought or deed, by walking over the waves and feeding the multitude, for these events were not miracles but the result of divine laws emanating from God as Principle. He never indicated that God had made man ill, but he cast out the devils that were claiming to make man unlike God. These devils were not persons, but evil thoughts, thoughts of fear, discouragement, hatred, disease, and death.
The Bible often refers to the devil as the adversary and Mrs. Eddy defines the adversary as "one who opposes, denies, disputes" (Science and Health, p. 580).
The adversary is also the accuser, for it not only denies man's oneness with Truth and Love, but it accuses mortals of being identical with matter, sin, limitation, disease. This accuser has to be put down in exactly the same way that an accuser before the law has to be refuted by bringing evidence that his charges are unjust and untrue.
It has been said of Christian Scientists that they claim they are well when they are sick. This is, however, not the case. If an innocent man were charged with a crime and you were listening only to the testimony of the false witnesses against him, in your ignorance you might think that the man was telling an untruth, when he declared his innocence. After he had proved himself guiltless you would agree that he had been innocent even when you believed him to be guilty. So it is with the Christian Scientist. He knows that man, as God's image, is innocent of sickness all the time that you may be listening to the false witnesses, the material senses, that claim to be able to see and feel that he is sick. He has to protest his innocence or health, because he knows it to be true, until the accusers or the personal senses are silenced.
Christian Science shows that "the accuser of our brethren is cast down." The suggestions which have so long deceived mankind by making mortals believe that man is not one with God, these suggestions have been proved untrue. When the woman taken in adultery was brought to Jesus, he rebuked the personal sense of man which claimed that it could bring false witnesses against the purity and nobility of man's womanhood. Through his love and purity Jesus detected the guilt of the woman, but he also knew that sin was no more a part of man, than the dirt on a child's face is part of the child. And just as a father and mother would not condemn their offspring but rather cleanse it, so Jesus, knowing that the Creator never condemns His creation, cleansed the stain of sin from the woman's consciousness. And as he realized the unreality of the hatred, condemnation, injustice, and sensuality which were accusing the woman, these qualities of thought, with their personifications, withdrew from the presence of his love. He then asked the woman, "Where are those thine accusers?" Where were they indeed? Certainly not in the presence of God, good, nor in the presence of God's manifestation, the ideal man and woman. In fact, they had no presence.
Before I knew of Christian Science I was proud of the fact that I was honest with myself. The only self I knew was this mortal selfhood and I was aware of its imperfections. When I was dishonest, unloving, envious, covetous, or unfair, I honestly admitted to myself that these faults were mine, but I did my best to keep my neighbor from knowing this fact. Of course, many hours of self-condemnation, self-pity, and discouragement resulted from this method, but it was the best I knew. When I became interested in Christian Science I read these words in our textbook: "Know thyself, and God will supply the wisdom and the occasion for a victory over evil" (Science and Health, p. 571). Gradually I perceived that what I had been calling my selfhood was not my selfhood at all, that it was merely a mortal sense of man and I realized that I had to know myself as God, my Father-Mother, my Creator, knew me, for He had created or thought me and only that which He thought could be the truth about me. I saw how futile it was to analyze an erroneous sense of anything or anybody, and I began to be acquainted with my true being as God created it.
As I followed this line of thinking, various faults of character which I had heretofore not only admitted, but also claimed as mine, began to disappear from my consciousness and I had the courage and confidence to battle with the others which were still claiming me, for I began to perceive the unreality of a creation separate from the Creator. If the adversary is accusing any one here today of being hateful, unforgiving, sorrowing, sinful, irritable, or unhappy, let him know himself as God knows the real man, pure, perfect, happy, joyous, sinless, spiritual, healthy, and free; let him rejoice in himself as divine Love rejoices in him, as understanding, forgiving, gentle, tender, good, and true; let him praise himself as created for the glory of God; and this thinking will dispel the illusions of sin, disease, and death that would try to call themselves man, when they are really man's opposite.
In "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 86) Mrs. Eddy thus beautifully expresses this thought: "Art thou still unacquainted with thyself? Then be introduced to this self. 'Know thyself!' as said the classic Grecian motto. Note well the falsity of this mortal self! Behold its vileness, and remember this poverty-stricken 'stranger that is within thy gates.' Cleanse every stain from this wanderer's soiled garments, wipe the dust from his feet and the tears from his eyes, that you may behold the real man, the fellow-saint of a holy household."
Our true being, the real man, often seems to be a stranger within our gates, our consciousness, whereas a sinning, discordant, discouraged, sorrowful, sick mortal, whose falsity we are told to note, seems much more familiar, much more a reality, much more constantly with us than this stranger. Let us, therefore, cleanse every stain of sensuality, hatred, greed, ambition, and unkindness from our thought of man; and let us refuse to accept as true every false concept of man as a sinner, separated from, or unlike God, besmirched with beliefs of malice, hatred, lust, pride, and let us wipe away the dusty Adam beliefs of man as born in and of matter, limited by age, disease, and lack. We can then dry the tears of sorrow and grief caused by injustice, hatred, ingratitude, and misunderstandings, these tears which claim to blind us to the presence of the real man, joyous in his oneness with God. Thus shall we know ourselves, and others, no more as strangers, but as the sons of God, whom we rejoice in, understand, and love.