Violet Ker Seymer, 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
Violet Ker Seymer, C.S.B., of Boston, Massachusetts, a member of The Christian Science Board of Lectureship, delivered a lecture entitled "Christian Science: The Logical Interpretation of Life," last evening under the auspices of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, in the Church Edifice.
The lecturer was introduced by George Channing, C.S.B., First Reader in The Mother Church, who said:
Friends:
We have come here tonight, you and I, each with his own sense of need. If we have come in very truth with thought open to understand the loving message about to be given, we may be sure our need will be supplied. For Christ Jesus has promised to the weary and heavy laden rest, and his only condition is to come unto him. (See Matthew 11: 28).
That same Christ which impelled Jesus to speak that promise is ever present, hence is in our midst tonight. The lecture we are about to hear will make plain that fact, for this lecture is based upon the teaching of Mary Baker Eddy, the God-ordained Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, who revealed the truth that the Christ is always present. Hence, in the coming of our thought to the perception of this truth, we shall be in line here tonight to receive the blessing we need.
The Christian Science Mother Church, which has arranged this lecture as a gift to you and me, lovingly welcomes us all.
The lecturer spoke substantially as follows:
This is an age of daring research into hitherto unexplored realms of stratosphere and ocean depths. Mary Baker Eddy wrote in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 268): "Thought has brought to light with great rapidity many useful wonders. With like activity have thought's swift pinions been rising towards the realm of the real, to the spiritual cause of those lower things which give impulse to inquiry." Is it any wonder that in the ever-expanding realm of research in temporal ways more should be learned about Christianity and its eternal ways? We need to explore the realm of Spirit, God, divine Mind, which radiates spiritual beauty beyond all intellectual brilliance. The deeper the problem, the higher we must look for its solution.
Religious superstition is wont to assert that it is easy to do wrong and difficult to do right; easy to be impatient, difficult to be serene; easy to be sick, difficult to be well; easy to be weak, difficult to be strong; easy to be hard, difficult to be loving. All this is a misinterpretation of life, a perversion of true logic, because in doing right and resisting wrong we have God's law with us, and, as Paul said, "If God be for us, who can be against us?"
Many of us long to know how to interpret life; how to escape from sickness and sin, confusion, distress; how to surmount obstacles; how to see beyond slavery to liberty. We want to make the highest and happiest use of life for ourselves and others. Christian Science enables every zealous student to achieve this. It is not a beautiful theory to be blindly adopted. It is the Science of Christianity to be intelligently practiced.
Christian Science develops the spiritual understanding whereby we discover that absolute good alone is real. The word "real" as used in Christian Science signifies that which is spiritual and everlasting. The word "unreal" signifies that which is material and temporal.
Our first necessity is to reason logically from a correct premise. If the premise of our reasoning is material, conclusions drawn from it are blinding and binding. If our conclusions are drawn from the premise of Spirit, God, they are enlightening and liberating. Christian Science upholds the divinely logical reasoning which illumines the human pathway with heavenly light.
In Science and Health we find this statement (p. 418); "Truth is affirmative, and confers harmony. All metaphysical logic is inspired by this simple rule of Truth, which governs all reality." Jealousy, infidelity, disease, sorrow, suffering, these have no place in God's creation. Whoever sides mentally with the liberating logic of Christian Science enters a new realm of thought in which righteousness and dominion, health and harmony, joy and purity, are the rule, not the exception.
In the Bible, God is referred to as Spirit, Mind, Truth, Love. Other synonyms for Deity also used throughout the writings of Mary Baker Eddy are Life, Soul, divine Principle. These synonyms, which form the basis for absolutely true thinking, unfold to humanity the immutable power of God, good. As a result, thousands of individuals, spiritually awakened, morally regenerated, physically healed, are leading useful and happy lives.
Mrs. Eddy's chief work, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," published over sixty-six years ago, blesses every home and heart into which it is welcomed. Its author writes (p. 110) that, in the footsteps she took in her search for scientific revelation, the Bible was her only textbook. Every student of Science and Health gains fresh inspiration and practical benefit from his daily study of the Bible.
Every child in the Christian Science Sunday School is taught the basic truths of Scripture and how to use them in connection with his thoughts and his behavior, his schoolwork and his recreation, his health and his safety. Speaking of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy writes (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 336), "Wherever one ray of its effulgence looks in upon the heart, behold a better man, woman, or child." A ray of solar light knows nothing of clouds or darkness, for it is never separated from the sun. The ray, shining in at your window, is the evidence to you of the presence of the sun. God, good, is omnipresent. Your every response to right and your every resistance to wrong is the evidence of spiritual light in your consciousness.
Christian Science lifts from an individual the gloom of condemnation and shows him how to make a fresh start when the pages of his life seem to have been sadly blurred.
The principal of a school looked compassionately at a little boy brought to her for correction by one of the teachers. Examining his page of sums covered with mistakes, the principal tore it up. Looking kindly at the child, she handed him a clean page, and said, "Now you can make a fresh start!" Christian Science bids you start afresh; bids you reason henceforth from the perfect premise and conclusion, perfect God and perfect man; bids you interpret life metaphysically, not physically. No mistake is real or irreparable. As divine logic permeates your thinking, discord gives way to dominion, the dominion of divine Truth.
Jesus reasoned spiritually from premise to conclusion. Hence his denunciation of evil and his affirmation of the all-might of God, divine Principle. He varied his manner of teaching according to the mental attitude of receptivity or resistance which faced him in his work among men. But the basis of his teaching and ministry was always the same — the reality of good, the unreality of evil. His was the power of Christ, Truth, which knows no error. Christian Science likewise stands for this one and only Christ, pure Christianity, consistently logical, wholly redemptive.
In the Glossary of Science and Health (p. 583), "Christ" is defined as "the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error." Since Christ is the manifestation of God, Christ is the manifestation of the omnipotence of good. The power of Christ met with incredulity in the days of primitive Christianity, even as it does in our day, especially where ecclesiasticism prevails. The Apostle Paul wrote, "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain." But today "Christ is risen." Christian Science, the Science of Christ, is being more widely recognized and demonstrated.
The ability to heal sickness and destroy sin is not a personal ability. It is the demonstration of Christ, invincible Truth. Doubt, incredulity, fear, moral weakness, and all other arguments of defeatism, are lies. They are illogical, anti-Christ suggestions, from which the power of Christ, Truth, stands ready to free each and every one.
Christian Science is not humanly sentimental, it is Christianly scientific. It is the life line leading one out of the maze of confusion into divine guidance.
In the late war, a private estate was loaned for the care and training of blinded soldiers. On either side of the paths cords were strung, along which the men ran their fingers, thereby finding their way from the main building to their workshops. Truth is the life line which provides for perpetual progress.
However often we may be tempted to believe in something discouraging, or something falsely alluring, something contrary to God and His image, we must hold faithfully to Truth's life line. That which is good is provable. Evil is scientifically proofless. Christian Science brings to humanity the true idea and proof of sonship with God.
Referring to Christ Jesus, Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health, p. 170): "The best interpreter of man's needs said: 'Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink.'" No "balanced diet," no quota of calories, bring to human consciousness the nutriment of Truth. The nutriment of absolute Truth diverts human thought from pleasurable or painful concern for physical needs and awakens a new and fruitful interest in spiritual needs. As we nourish our consciousness through the study of that which is divinely true and upbuilding, we experience more and more the vitality of Life, God, the vigor of Christ, Truth, and the harmony of Soul, which, as Mrs. Eddy states in her work "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 230), "silences the dyspepsia of sense."
We should turn our thought away from a personal sense of victory or of defeat, and hold to Truth's unchallengeable supremacy. No circumstance can prevent a faithful student of Christian Science from demonstrating the truth he understands, although he may occasionally need the help of a practitioner in maintaining his true witnessing. The office of a Christian Science practitioner is not that of an intermediary between God and man. It is that of one who acknowledges the oneness of divine Mind and its ideas. The declaration of Jesus, "I and my Father are one," expresses man's everlasting relationship to God, the only creator, and consequent immunity from sin and discord.
Mrs. Eddy beheld the consistency of the teachings of Christ Jesus. She grasped the basis of his undeviating loyalty to God upon which rested his healing ability. With the utmost courage and unselfishness she devoted the last forty-five years of her life to elucidating the Science of being in behalf of all humanity. She brought to human consciousness the spiritual facts of righteousness and health and how to prove them in human experience. In 1879 she established the Christian Science church. In the year 1881 she obtained a charter for her Metaphysical College in Boston, Massachusetts, and in seven years taught over four thousand students.
Only the power of God could have guided this lone woman in her voyage of discovery into the realm of infinite Mind and its imperishable substance, into the realm of divine Love and universal perfection. Mrs. Eddy never sought recognition from a personal standpoint. With selfless love and devotion she worked to bring to humanity the recognition of God's law, which bestows upon each one of us the right to express our God-given health and intelligence and joy. Her name is undying, even as the revelation of real being which she brought to the world, in accord with Scriptural prophecy, is undying.
The foundation of the first Christian church was laid when the twelve disciples of Jesus witnessed the healing power of their Master and were taught by him to heal as he did.
On page 98 of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes, "The way through which immortality and life are learned is not ecclesiastical but Christian, not human but divine." The purpose of the Christian Science church is to demonstrate the healing, regenerating, comforting power of pure Christianity in behalf of all humanity. Only the ceaseless spiritual growth of every member of the Christian Science church can bring to the world the ever-unfolding fruitage of pure Christianity.
On every church member devolves the necessity of proving and improving the measure of his spirituality through the healing and regenerating power of Christ, Truth, exercised in his own behalf and that of others. Thus will the testimonies of healing be multiplied at the Wednesday testimonial meetings in all Christian Science churches. Thus will the spiritual attraction of the Christ, the spiritual idea of divine Love, be found irresistible, in accord with the words of Christ Jesus, "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."
Christian Science releases us from the false doctrinal sense of religion as well as from irreligion. Heathenism is supposed to consist of disbelief in God and the worship of idols. But is there not a degree of heathenism in the false concept of Deity which leads men to worship and fear the physical body?
Even as righteousness is God's law for man, so also is health. Righteousness and health, being manifestations of the divine Principle, are indivisible and invariable. Healing in Christian Science is described as follows in the Preface to Science and Health (p. xi): "The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus' time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation." It is not, then, the physical body which we should watch, but rather our consciousness, holding it steadfastly and solely receptive to that which is divinely true.
The binding beliefs of sin and sickness are destroyed in human thought and experience through the power of Christ, divine Truth, which holds man in everlasting freedom. When a certain sick man was laid at his feet, Jesus discerned that the scribes were questioning his statement regarding the forgiveness of sins. Therefore he said: "Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk?" Christ Jesus, always true to God and man, found it equally easy to free those who were receptive, from the unreal fetters of sin and disease. The result as recorded in the Bible in this case was that "immediately he arose, took up his bed, and went forth before them all." Good is omnipresent and omnipotent. The attitude of hostile witnesses did not prevent Jesus from proving his power as God's witness. Under all circumstances it is in accord with God's law that righteousness and health shall be brought into human evidence.
All Christian Science practitioners have the opportunity to prove that no disease or sin is incurable.
Recently I met a woman who had been healed of epilepsy through Christian Science. For many years she had suffered from major attacks, as often as ten in a week, and for seven years she had never ventured out alone. During her first visit to a Christian Science practitioner's office her attention was drawn to the assurance of protection in the ninety-first Psalm.
At the end of a few weeks of Christian Science treatment, combined with her study of the Bible and Science and Health, this woman was completely and permanently healed. She subsequently held a position in Government offices for eighteen years, and she is active in the Christian Science church. This healing took place over thirty-five years ago.
If you would know the truth about your health, consult Spirit, not matter. For you to consult physiology in regard to your health would be to deny your God-given spiritual dominion over whatever is unreal, lawless, godless. And this false dependence would prevent you from helping others. "Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed." Hold to Truth's life line! Keep to the "straight paths," in which divine Love holds you spiritually erect. In divine Love there is no fear, no oppression; in divine Mind's idea no vacillation, no infidelity. Righteousness, health, and vigor — these are the birthright of all the children of God. None can actually stray beyond the omnipresence of Life and Love, for in the infinity of good there is no "beyond."
Mrs. Eddy writes (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 260): "The spirit, and not the letter, performs the vital functions of Truth and Love." These "functions of Truth and Love" are never subject to obstruction, weakness, or loss of control. Man is the idea of divine Mind, and as such his whole being is governed by Spirit and spiritual law. In divine Mind there is nothing accidental and nothing dangerous. In other words, there is always order. Under the law of divine Mind there is always a definite purpose for each one, and safety in its accomplishment. Healing in Christian Science is the understanding and utilization of God's law and loving-kindness.
A Christian Science practitioner was called to the bedside of a woman who was in an apparently desperate physical condition. The practitioner knew nothing of this woman's circumstances and she seemed too ill to utter a word. As the Christian Scientist sat silently by the bedside, realizing the presence of God, and man, these words from Science and Health came to her thought (p. 454): "Human hate has no legitimate mandate and no kingdom. Love is enthroned." Over and over again she dwelt on this great statement, realizing more and more clearly the healing presence of divine Love and its expression in loving-kindness. She stayed with the woman until she was assured of the establishment of harmony. Still no word had passed between them. On her return some hours later, this woman was sitting up in bed, and greeted the practitioner with these words: "What have you done to me? I cannot hate any more." Then followed the story of a minor quarrel with her neighbor which had developed into resentment and hatred. The appearing of divine Love in her quickened consciousness was the end of the hatred, and the end of the hatred was the end of the sickness.
It requires vigilance to be a Christian Scientist; vigilance in acknowledging that God, good, is the only real existing presence and power; perseverance in proving that intelligence and unquenchable joy are available to us in so far as we seek and find them through our individual reflection of the one Mind, the one Life, the one Love.
Misled by man-made creeds and doctrines, many well-meaning individuals school themselves to submit to sickness, poverty, sorrow, believing that these afflictions are in accord with the will of God. This is a perversion of fact. God's will is liberation now from sin and disease, sorrow and mortality; liberation now from dishonesty, envy, and poverty; liberation now from fear and incapacity: liberation now from domestic tragedy.
Jesus taught his disciples to pray, "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven." He taught them to preach the gospel, to heal the sick, to cast out devils, and to raise the dead. He fed the multitudes and provided for the tribute money. It is never in accord with God's will that man should be sick, sinful, or impoverished. The law of God is God's will in operation. To understand and obey this all-wise and beneficent will is to find the way of heaven on earth.
It is never the will of God that anyone should have a bad temper. Yet some people keep on losing their temper, as the saying is. Evil is senseless; good is divinely sensible. Why not be truly sensible and once and for all lose your belief in a bad temper, together with other obsolete mortal beliefs contrary to the divine will? Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health, p. 265), "The truth of being is perennial, and the error is unreal and obsolete." From this standpoint of absolute Truth, God, materiality, sickness, sin, and death are obsolete, now and forever. Evil is actually nonexistent. In divinely logical thinking there is harmony. Spiritual progress is God's law for each one of us, and nothing real stands in the way of its fulfillment.
What did Jesus mean when he said, "Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him"? He meant that one should promptly prove the unreality of evil. An adversary is defined in part in Science and Health (p. 580) as "one who opposes, denies, disputes, not one who constructs and sustains reality and Truth." An adversary is not a person; it is the temptation to believe in the reality of evil and to take a personal view of discord. The "adversary," false material belief, must be dealt with promptly and scientifically. Do not procrastinate in resisting any temptation to accept the fiction of evil. Promptly detect and reject it. In dealing with the "adversary," be vigorous, not lenient; be honest, not evasive.
Be prompt! Do not retire for the night brooding over some phase of discord and self-deception. Do not wait until tomorrow to dismiss the error which presumes to interfere with your steadfast true witnessing, your steadfast confidence, your deep gratitude.
In true witnessing there is vision, not obscuration. In Spirit and spiritual understanding there is no "adversary" to alarm or allure. Christian Science leads human thought out of the doldrums of duality into the demonstration of individuality. "Choose you this day whom ye will serve." Actually, you cannot choose anything but the real, because only the real exists. Hold to your premise and conclusion, the divine logic of perfect God and perfect man.
Until one's realization of perfect God and perfect man is so complete that the belief in evil is blotted out, it must be persistently denied. In the epistle of James we read: "Let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay." At present we seem to need both the "yea" and the "nay."
A Christian Scientist was once called to see a man who appeared to be sick. Silently and occasionally audibly he affirmed truths as they came to his thought. Evidently these truths were not realized, as there was no improvement in the man's condition. At one time he stretched out his arms and said wearily, "I believe in Christian Science; but, oh, why is it I cannot respond to its healing power?" That awakened the practitioner. Silently but vigorously he denied the suggestion of the "adversary" that this man could not respond to the healing power of Christian Science. Simultaneously these words from Science and Health came to him with great conviction (p. 489): "Corporeal sense defrauds and lies." The same instant that evil was denied the man said with a sigh of relief, "The suffering is all gone." He went to sleep and awakened practically well.
In Scripture we find many references to angels. As understood in Christian Science, angels are true thoughts, revealing wisdom, inspiration, true confidence, safety, also obedience and purity in testing times. Every time you have resisted the temptation to think or act wrongly, you have entertained an angel. Every time you have overcome fear and preserved your poise as God's witness, you have entertained an angel. We need never lack true thoughts. In Hebrews we read. "Ye are come unto mount Sion, . . . and to an innumerable company of angels." However often old temptations recur or fresh temptations appear, you can always dismiss them as false. In the words of the Psalmist, you can declare, "Let them be as chaff before the wind: and let the angel of the Lord chase them."
According to Scriptural records, Jesus prayed very little audibly and accomplished very much practically. He left to his followers that which is known in our day as the Lord's Prayer. Of this prayer Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health, p. 14), "The Lord's Prayer is the prayer of Soul, not of material sense."
Prayer in Christian Science lifts human thought above the religious superstition which beseeches a supposedly distant God to give us something which we believe to be good and which we think we lack. Intelligent prayer includes thankfulness for everything that we have by right of obedience to the divine law of perfection.
Christian Science quickens the spirit of prayer, not set prayer, not selfish nor audible prayer, but the prayer of true desire, spiritual confidence. From the first moment the bud of spiritual desire begins to unfold in your consciousness, Christian Science develops and nourishes this desire all the way to its full flowering. Everybody is praying when he seeks and finds and follows the righteous course, in accord with divine guidance, which banishes doubt.
Prayer is the ever-unfolding recognition of the divine nature — your genuine nature. Genuine prayer, loyally maintained, silences doubt, fear, self-will, and brings to human consciousness the peace of surrender to the divine will. This surrender is not submission to discord, but its conquest.
Should we sometimes be haunted by the fear of failure, loss of courage, loss of spiritual vision and confidence, we should all the more resolutely, all the more confidently, follow the advice of Paul, "Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving." Watching with thanksgiving means watching with the certainty that our watching and its full reward are sustained by the divine Principle, Love, and the law of perfect being. Prayer is not expressed by the lips, but in the glow of thankfulness abiding in the heart.
As we understand even in a measure that God is omnipotent Love, we find in the realization of divine mercy liberation from that which is unmerciful, even cruel.
Late one night a Christian Science practitioner was called to the bedside of a young girl who had recently taken up the study of Christian Science. He knew her to be gentle and loving. She lay there speechless, her young face drawn with suffering. In place of this picture of cruel discord, utterly incompatible with the law of divine Love, came the realization of divine Love's tender mercy. Mrs. Eddy states (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 162), "God's mercy for mortal ignorance and need is assured." In a little while the appearance of suffering faded out and she fell into a peaceful sleep. Several hours later she awakened perfectly healed, and went happily about her daily duties. The understanding of God's law brings heaven to earth. Hasten heavenward! The divine Mind is your mind by reflection, yours in all its divine authority, all its purity, all its glory.
Divine Mind interprets everything from its own standpoint of infinite good, and this is the only standpoint the intelligent thinker accepts. It is well to maintain this standpoint, should the "adversary" tempt us to believe that our early enthusiasm and zeal have waned, that we do not feel the same inspiration and joy in our study as we did formerly; in short, that we have grown slack and are believing in lack of some kind. Agree to disagree with this adversary! Hold to divine logic, perfect God and perfect man. In the understanding of Truth and the inspiration and reflection of divine Love there is always newness, always renewed zeal. Solar rays know no obscuration, no waning of their radiance drawn from the sun. For the sun's rays there are no off days. Why accept the anti-Christ suggestion that there are off days when joy seems absent, and inspiration waning? On the contrary, "the way will grow brighter 'unto the perfect day'" (Science and Health, p. 496).
The Psalmist writes, "I shall be anointed with fresh oil." "Fresh oil" includes renewed reflection of divine Love. We add to our inspiration through its multiplied use. Staleness, one of the arguments of the "adversary," does not deceive one who is using the "fresh oil" of spiritual inspiration to banish self-pity, to banish the inclination to blame the behavior of others for his dejection. Reject dejection! It is unreal. Every one of us is divinely able to exchange "the spirit of heaviness" for "the garment of praise"! Happiness and dominion are the reflection of divine Love.
Since divine Principle is synonymous with all-encompassing divine Love, there is no barrier between God and His creation. It is illogical to believe in estrangement.
The true interpretation of creation heals the distressing misunderstandings which divide friends and relatives, business associates, nations and races. The disciple John wrote, "My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth." These words were uttered centuries ago, but God is still Love.
In the human recognition of the infinity of good, lies the certainty of permanent peace among the nations.
War, the evidence of unbridled ambition, territorial greed, merciless motives and methods, is unleashed. War is hate let loose; it obtains first in the thoughts of men and then breaks out visibly. War between nations is aggression let loose on an unprecedented scale, and this aggression cannot be met passively. The motive behind the struggle is what counts, and every intelligent thinker realizes that in the long run the victory of right is certain. There is in reality no material creation in which the so-called carnal mind can work havoc. There is only the spiritual creation in which order reigns. War is the evidence of the material senses. The spiritual facts of being are intact.
The better part of humanity cherishes righteous motives, and these motives will ripen into right achievement through the power of spirit and spiritual understanding. Humanity needs to learn that evil, the common enemy of mankind, is unreal and impotent, and that good, derived from God, is its common friend, and is omnipotent. The day dawns when intelligent, co-operative work is destined to supplant selfish strife; then nations, no longer fighting against one another, will unite with one another in the establishment of universal peace.
Men are deceived into believing wrong to be right and right to be wrong; hence the development of hardness and self-justification. The remedy for hate and war is spiritual enlightenment, a love of truth so absolute that it resists the deception of hate and fear, resentment and revenge, mad ambition and rivalry. In divinely logical thinking from premise to conclusion lies the way of peace for all the world.
Urged on by human ambition, men of old resolved to build the tower of Babel, whose top might "reach unto heaven." Confusion, the result of egotism, ensued, so that these deluded builders could no longer understand one another's speech. The babel of tongues expresses the babel of materialistic ambition and rival aims.
In the government of nations and their joint conferences, more than high-sounding phrases veiling selfish purposes, are needed. Men need to learn, and are destined to learn, the pure language of Spirit, which interprets divine truths to human consciousness and translates them into human experience. Shakespeare wrote: "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." The reconciliation which Christian Science is bringing into the experience of individuals through the reflection of divine Love is destined to be established in behalf of the whole human family. Already there are signs of the coming of world liberation in place of world domination.
In spite of the present cataclysm, men of vision foresee the coming of a higher sense of government, resulting in unification of effort for the good of all.
A Christian Science practitioner told me of the healing in less than twenty-four hours of what is medically regarded as an incurable disease in the case of one who for years had borne a grudge against a near relative and for years had refused to see him. She was healed of the disease overnight when she gave up hate and learned that one can be restored to health in Christian Science only by understanding and expressing divine Love, in which there is no hate, therefore no enmity, no estrangement.
In behalf of all humanity we should deny the assumption of hate and its wrecking consequences, and affirm the fact of Love divine and universal. This is not a dream; evil is the dream. Spiritual awakening is heaven on earth. True witnessing silences false witnessing. Large-scale true witnessing is what is needed today and this need Christian Science is supplying.
True thinking constitutes protection. Mrs. Eddy writes (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 210), "The right thinker abides under the shadow of the Almighty." Man is the reflection of divine perfection, and in that reflection is eternal harmony.
Ill-will, or self-will is a warmonger on a small and large scale, but there is in reality only the one perfect and unifying will of God, good. The divine will is expressed in intelligence, wisdom, peace, and harmony. Peace on earth means universal good will.
Day by day, in Christian Science, the understanding of God's will is releasing individuals from the scourge of sin and sickness, and it is destined to destroy the scourge of war for humanity as a whole.
If you seem overwhelmed by world events, refresh yourself again and again with this scientific truth stated in the first chapter of Genesis, "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." The scientific way to help the world situation is to cherish more truth in our consciousness and to express more love, where before we may have been indifferent, critical, reproachful, resentful, revengeful. Remember, "Human hate has no legitimate mandate and no kingdom" (Science and Health, p. 454).
Christian Science, God's law of unadulterated good, is humanity's liberator. Universal Love is all-encompassing. In the infinity of Spirit there is no matter. In the eternality of Life there is no death.
Triumphantly opposed to destructive human warfare is the Christian warfare, in which the triumph of Spirit over belief in materiality and conflict is assured.
In the book of Revelation we read of the "tree of life" as opposed to the belief in a supposed "tree of knowledge of good and evil" mentioned in Genesis; in other words, the belief in both good and evil — the belief in duality and conflict. There is no such tree. Of "the tree of life," it is written that "the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."
In Revelation we also read, "Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven." Evil has no place anywhere. Heaven is the understanding of real being. Angels are spiritual thoughts bringing illumination to human consciousness. Belief in evil cannot prevail in human consciousness, for the reason that God, divine Principle, cannot fail.
In human history, we find peace and war alternating, but in the one spiritual creation, peace reigns eternally. Peace is the everlasting manifestation of divine Principle and its supreme rule. The standard of God is the standard of spiritual man and the spiritual universe. The everlasting facts of Life, Truth, and Love are intact. The same Christ, Truth, which enables students of Christian Science to triumph over adversity and feuds in their individual experience is destined to triumph in the world's collective experience.
Hold your thought to the supremacy of good and observe its gradual ascendancy in human consciousness today. The shepherds of old, one Christmas night, held their gaze to the East, anticipating and beholding the dawn. Hold your gaze to the rising sun of righteousness, with healing in its wings for all the world.
Where are the gods of mythology, Mars, Minerva? Nowhere save in human imagination. Where is the God of man-made creeds, who is supposed to know evil and impose sickness and suffering on His children? Nowhere save in doctrinal superstition. Where is the God of Spirit, the God who is infinite Love, the God of reality? Everywhere!
In her work, "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," pages 278 and 279, Mrs. Eddy writes: "The Principle of all power is God, and God is Love. . . . God is Father, infinite, and this great truth, when understood in its divine metaphysics, will establish the brotherhood of man, end wars, and demonstrate 'on earth peace, good will toward men.'"
Christian Science reveals to humanity the logical interpretation of life, the law of perfection, the way of freedom. In Science, and Health we find this rousing statement (p. 174): "Truth, is revealed. It needs only to be practised."
[Delivered April 27, 1942, in The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, and published in The Christian Science Monitor, April 28, 1942.]