Tell me, O thou when mywhere thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one

that turneth aside by the flocks of they companions?

If thou know not, O thou fairest among women,

go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock,

and feed thy kids beside the shepherds’ tents.

(Song of Solomon)

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The ways of Christianity have not changed. Meekness selflessness and love

are the paths of his testimony and the footsteps of His flock.

(Rudimental Divine Science by Mary Baker Eddy)

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THIS COUNTRY IS A TRUE REPUBLIC

“With regard to the election (for president), it is simply the test that this country is once again putting itself as to whether America is really the land of equal opportunity, which is the true Republican ideal, or the Democratic concept. Equality would reduce all to a common level, whereas equality of opportunity lifts all to the very highest if he will avail himself of the opportunity to go forward. I cannot go into this subject fully because it is far reaching . . . This country is not a Democracy; it is a true Republic.

Letter written 12/7/1932 by Herbert W. Eustace.

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For the week March 31st to April 6th in 2024.

The Christian Science Monitor was not printed on the Sunday, April 2nd in 1916.

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THE PROMISED LAND

Written for The Christian Science Monitor

March 31, 1916

ONE of the things we soon become acquainted with in Christian Science is that in the reading of the Bible the substitution of consciousness for place clarifies and gives force to the context and tends to bring out the spiritual meaning. An instance of this occurs in the last verse of the twenty-third Psalm, and Mrs. Eddy, on page 578 of “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” has brought out the practical meaning of the verse most admirably in the following paraphrase: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house [the consciousness] of [LOVE] for ever.”

The same consideration applies to such passages as “Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart”; and, again, “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” Westerners are apt to forget that, in reading such Bible statements, they are dealing with the figurative language of the east and that the use of such figures of speech came naturally to the dwellers in Palestine in ancient times, just as it comes naturally to westerners today when they have become familiar with the Bible metaphor.

A passage which should occur readily to the mind of every Bible student is that where Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you.” “Heaven” writes Mrs. Eddy, on page 291 of Science and Health, “is not a locality, but a divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal, because sin is not there and man is found having no righteousness of his own, but in possession of ‘the mind of the Lord,’ as the Scripture says.” And on page 196, “Sin makes its own hell, and goodness its own heaven.” In this way a far deeper meaning is given to the Scripture passages than could be obtained from the usual material interpretation, and anyone who thinks for a moment will consequently see the vast significance prefigured by the phrase, “the promised land.” Just as the latter represented to the children of Israel the end of their journeyings and strivings, so its spiritual type may be said to signify man’s real being, that state of mind where all consciousness of evil is obliterated.

It is the teaching of Christian Science that, since God is Spirit and like produces like, creation is spiritual and perfect, and that man, as the idea or expression of divine Mind, is, in his real being, spiritual and perfect also. The testimony of the physical senses, which would claim to deny this, can only present a false sense of creation and of man’s true being, and it is in proportion as the truth of being, dawning on mortal thought, is dispelling the illusions of those senses that mankind is journeying onwards towards the promised land, the absolute realization of man’s true and perfect selfhood.

Just as every sort of discouragement arose to tempt the children of Israel to abandon their search and to return to the fleshpots of Egypt, so the suggestions of evil would claim to obstruct the path of the student of eternal verities; and just as the Israelites were commanded, according to the figurative language of the Scriptures, to wipe out utterly the nations that barred their entrance into the promised land, so the seeker after man’s real status will find that he has to blot out from his consciousness all those suggestions of the carnal mind which would claim to keep him in bondage to matter and to shut him out from the harmonies of Spirit.

It is noteworthy that those two men alone who declined to be daunted by the obstacles in front of them were adjudged worthy to obtain admission to the promised land; and so those alone who decline to accept the suggestions of the senses at their face value can hope to escape from the thralldom of these senses. The world is ready to admit the logic of the position taken up by Christian Science, but then, how, it asks, are we to account for the origin of evil? Surely Christian Scientists are not prepared to deny the evidence of the senses and to maintain, that evil does not exist! This, however, is just exactly the position of Christian Science. Assuming, as does orthodoxy, the goodness of God, His omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, they are not prepared to throw their logic overboard and to admit the reality and power of evil, but rather deny the reality of evil on the basis of the allness of good, and, by this very realization and in proportion to its clearness, are able to destroy the manifestations of evil. In taking this course they are but following the example of the Master, who never troubled about the origin of evil but destroyed it.

To search for the origin of evil is just as fruitless as to endeavor to determine how the sun goes round the earth. Surely it is more profitable to know that, however much the physical senses may deny it, the earth itself moves round the sun. Jesus, speaking of the devil or personified evil, said that “He . . . 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.” Thus Jesus described evil and its phenomena as false, unreal, and demonstrated this falsity by his miracles. Christian Science shows how necessary it is for those who would follow his example to go to work on exactly similar lines, remembering his promise, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

It will thus be seen that in order to gain admittance to the promised land, to “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” we shall have, first, to recognize the unreality of the testimony of the physical senses, and then to destroy this testimony on the basis of our spiritual understanding. Only thus can we gain that dominion over evil which God has given man and which was exemplified by Jesus in his ministry. Many seem unwilling to take so radical a step, and thus continue in the wilderness of material and discordant thinking. A constantly increasing number of people, however, have got tired of the wilderness with its many disappointments, and little by little, spurred on by present attainment and the hope of future victory, are pressing on towards the promised land of spiritual freedom.

GOD HELPS THOSE WHO HELP THEMSELVES

Written for The Christian Science Monitor

April 1, 1916

WHEN Algernon Sidney, in his Discourses on Government, made use of the well known proverb, “God helps those who help themselves,” he merely put in his own words a saying which was used first, so far as we know, in the Athens of Æschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. It is just one of those epigrams which have become almost banal with repetition. But in the fifth century before Christ, most of the proverbs which are almost tiresome today had all the freshness of youth, and “Heaven never helps the men who will not do something,” which was the immediate form in which Sophocles introduced the epigram to the people of the City of the Violet Crown, if they did not know it before, entered the vocabulary of the world then, and has remained there ever since.

There is an element of truth about those old proverbs which has lasted down the centuries, due to the fact that they reflect a metaphysical outlook of which their coiners were altogether unconscious. To the Athenian of Sophocles’ day heaven represented very much what it does to the Greek of today. It was, that is to say, the abode of the gods, and so it came naturally and normally to be regarded as a metaphor for the gods, just as it is nowadays for God. When, therefore, the Greek of those days, like the Elizabethan, or the Frenchman of the Grand Age, or the American of the Revolution made use of the phrase, he merely meant that God demanded some display of activity on the part of those who came to Him with petitions; in other words that, as the Apostle James insisted, faith without works was dead.

Students of Christian Science have learned to recognize God as Principle, and so they have found the full metaphysical meaning of the phrase which to its earlier and later users was always clouded with anthropomorphism. Principle unquestionably helps those, and, for that matter, those only, who help themselves, that is to say who learn scientifically to understand it, so as to base their theory and demonstration upon it. For, as Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 22 of Science and Health, “Final deliverance from error, whereby we rejoice in immortality, boundless freedom, and sinless sense, is not reached through paths of flowers nor by pinning one’s faith without works to another’s vicarious effort.”

Not one of the greatest exponents of the Christian religion, from the Evangelist Mark down to the day of Mrs. Eddy, has ever attempted to gloss over the fact that the life of the true Christian must, in the very necessity of things, be one continuous struggle with evil in its myriad phases. Good is infinite. Consequently evil, counterfeiting good, claims to be infinite also. “Evil in the beginning” Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 60 of “Miscellaneous Writings,” “claimed the power, wisdom, and utility of good; and every creation or idea of Spirit has its counterfeit in some matter belief.” The Christian warrior, then, stands begirt with foes. Every single human thought which enters his mind is laden in some degree with error. Every physical phenomenon on which his eyes rest counterfeits in some varying degree of error a spiritual reality. A constant deluge of suggestion flows to him from the fountain of all evil, the mortal mind. So, unless he knows how to protect himself, scientifically, against all this, he may experience that overwhelming sense of impotence which came to Paul, when he wrote to the Church in Rome, “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” Is it any wonder that the founder of the Christian faith should have declared, “I came not to send peace, but a sword”; or that Mrs. Eddy should have written, on page 324 of Science and Health, “It is a warfare with the flesh, in which we must conquer sin, sickness, and death, either here or hereafter,—certainly before we can reach the goal of Spirit, or life in God.”

It is when a man takes up this sword, and engages in this warfare, that he begins to help himself and to receive the immediate help of God, Principle. He discovers that he has enlisted under the banner of omnipotence, and understands why Wendell Phillips was able to say, “One on God’s side is a majority.” Principle is an ally who never deserts you; a counselor who never misleads you; a protector who never fails you. When God helps you, and Principle does help you, the very moment you begin to act and live in accordance with Principle, you find your true protection. This protection is not a continual shoring up against an infinity of supposititious evils, but a recognition of the metaphysical fact that the only power is Principle, and the only activity Truth. All of which means, since Principle and

Truth are only synonyms for God, that God, Principle, is All-in-all.

Divine help is, surely, and must be, spiritual understanding, for it is in the exact proportion in which a man grows in understanding that he grows in power of demonstration. This understanding is not, of course, intellectualism. Pure intellectualism is a mere expression of material sense, and is utterly incapable of spiritual demonstration. Understanding, on the other hand, is a spiritual knowledge of God, and a knowledge of God is, and must be, a scientific knowledge of Principle, or it is nothing. A man helps himself, then, as he labors to obtain this knowledge, and, in the ratio in which he obtains it, he finds that God helps him, for he is able to demonstrate the availability of Principle from the understanding of which comes divine protection.

When a man once understands how to protect himself from evil, and is willing to take full advantage of that protection, his advance through the gate which is strait and along the way which is narrow is assured. He has not got to stop every moment of the day to convince himself that every one of the myriad of material phenomena or illusions which present themselves to his physical senses are unreal and powerless. Such a proceeding would prevent his ever advancing by reason of the very counterfeit infinity of the suggestions and temptations presented to him. What happens is that his metaphysical sense grows so clear that these suggestions become incapable of finding a lodgment in his consciousness, or these temptations of becoming a part of his desires. Little by little, as he learns the unreality and powerlessness of evil, he becomes insensible to malicious or material suggestions of any kind. They run off him, if they ever reach him, as unconsciously as the duck sheds the water from its back. He has, in short, helped himself, and God, Principle, has helped him.

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The Christian Science Monitor was not printed on the Sunday, April 2nd in 1916.

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THE ROCK OF TRUTH

Written for The Christian Science Monitor

April 3, 1916

THE parables of Christ Jesus recorded in the New Testament are without parallel as the utterances of wisdom and spiritual knowledge. Brief they may be, but to the point always. With no unnecessary redundancy of words, in simple allegory, they picture to the human consciousness the effects of Truth upon that consciousness with those inspired touches that characterize every one of them. The Master was about to conclude the sayings which had so astonished the people, the teaching which is known as the Sermon on the Mount, when he sought to bring home its importance to his hearers. “Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them,” he said, “I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock.”

Now what was the rock upon which the wise man had been instructed by Jesus the Christ to build the structure of his life? It was the truth about God and spiritual man. Throughout his great lifework the Prophet of Nazareth was engaged in the herculean task of breaking to pieces the most cherished beliefs of the world and constructing in their stead a system of divine metaphysics based altogether on the absolute nature of Truth, Life, and Love. Had he gone no further than theory, there would have remained little of even that to us now; but Christ Jesus stopped not at the theoretical; he in fact knew that in the absolute, theory coincides with knowledge, and consequently the Master proved time and again his knowledge of Truth to be true by destroying in the minds of men that which is untrue or unreal; he could destroy the error of sin as readily as the error of disease, and he could feed a famishing multitude of people as readily as he could calm a storm at sea,—and always by the same method, always by his spiritual understanding of Truth. What a rock of refuge this knowledge was to him! The crowds surged skeptically around him, even while he was actually healing their sick and depraved; but he could always withdraw himself in thought, to realize the truth and shelter there. “Truth is the rock of ages,” writes Mrs. Eddy (Science and Health, p. 380), “the headstone of the corner, ‘but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.’”

Truth is eternally the same; Truth is a synonym for God. Spirit is Truth; so that all that is absolutely true is spiritual. Men readily enough admit the instability of material things, but they do not so readily admit the fact that, since God, or Spirit, is infinite, and thus all that is real, what they call matter cannot also be real: matter is the supposititious antithesis of Spirit. Unless it be spiritually understood that Spirit, or Mind, is infinite and that Mind’s ideas are the only realities in existence, the truth is not being apprehended and to mortal sense the “rock of truth” is not present to shelter and protect. But, says some one, you are denying the existence of matter as real substance; you are refusing to believe what the physical senses are constantly telling us is true, that matter is substantial, that it is subject to material laws, and that it acts and is acted upon continually. Exactly so. Christian Science denies that so-called matter is either real or substantial or that it is governed by law. True always to the fundamental postulate that God, Spirit, or Mind, is infinite, Christian Science maintains that Mind is the only reality there is. Infinite Mind is expressed in infinite idea; and what is called matter is nothing but an erroneous or false or finite concept of the spiritual idea. Further, Spirit being infinite, spiritual law, which is the self-expression of perfect Mind, is the only law there is; so that what goes by the name of material law is nothing but an erroneous or finite belief which seems to associate itself with the primary false belief that matter is real.

How can this teaching, it is asked, prove to be a rock to anyone? The best refuge a man can have at any time is the truth. Even if you take the affairs of the world, is there a greater security to be found anywhere than in the truth? To hide behind a lie is not only cowardly, it is the most wretchedly uncomfortable position possible for any human being to creep into. If this can be said of purely relative truth, how immeasurably stronger is the position of a human being who has gained some understanding of the truth which is absolute, which has nothing whatever to do with the relative, the material, the finite, or the transient. All the unrest and dispeace of the world is due to mankind’s trying to live in what it thinks is true consciousness, but which actually is an erroneous mental structure erected on fabulous mental quicksands.

It is not sufficient, even, to believe that Truth is true. Truth must be known and understood to be of the greatest value. Belief in Truth is undoubtedly far to be preferred to believe in error, but belief never can take the place of knowledge. What would be thought of the position of a man who said he believed that three fours made twelve, but that he did not know for certain? One would have grave doubts as to his trustworthiness where figures are concerned. And it is the same with the deep things of God. Belief has to grow into faith, and faith has to ripen into spiritual understanding before mankind can find itself on the rock of Truth.

The Psalmist wrote: “For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion; in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock.” It is in “the time of trouble” that Truth seems to aid humanity most. Indeed, it is because mortal man does not know Truth that trouble comes upon him. But the remedy for every woe lies in Truth. There is never a sorrow so sad that Truth, which is Love, cannot reach it and change its gloom into the joy of the risen Lord. There is never a disease so deadly that Truth cannot reach to the error of belief which is causing it and destroy it utterly. There is never a sin so heinous that Spirit cannot displace the material credulity which is at the root of it, and, displacing the falsity, cause the dawn of purity to break up the darkness of despair. There is no limit to the might of Mind. Mind is omnipresent and is available every moment for every human need. As the author of Science and Health so finely puts it (p. 494,) “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.”

The spiritual understanding, then, of Truth, Life and Love as infinite, is the rock of refuge for humanity. The illusions of mortal mind may seem to human sense very real at times, but spiritual understanding enables men to deny the reality of physical sense or so-called material power. Truth, Life, or Love, understood, displace in human consciousness the false beliefs of matter, death, and evil, and in the same proportion elevate human character and bless human existence. To lean on material belief is to shelter from the storms of the world behind a shadow; to spiritually understand and acknowledge Truth is to rest as by a rock ‘in a weary land.’ It was David who sang after his deliverance: “The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; the God of my rock; in him will I trust.”

THE ACCOMPLISHED FACT

Written for The Christian Science Monitor

April 4, 1916

FACTS are realties. They cannot be produced out of nothing. They cannot be created, as the word created is ordinarily used. They can, however, be discovered, realized and acknowledged. The universe is an accomplished fact. The real universe of God’s creation does not await creation. It already has existence, being, actuality. In commenting on the first verse of the second chapter of Genesis, Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 519): “Thus the ideas of God in universal being are complete and forever expressed, for Science reveals infinity and the fatherhood and motherhood of Love.” The sum total of God’s ideas constitute the universe, and this universe is an accomplished fact. It only remains for us to discover its nature in order to be able to enjoy that nature to the full. Mrs. Eddy points out that it consists of ideas. It is therefore ideal, or metaphysical, hence neither material nor physical. Needless to say such teaching is directly opposed to prevalent views. True, there have been at different periods of human development, and there are today, philosophers who perceive that we are living in a world of ideas, but judging by the practical results of such opinions, the most enlightened of savants do not realize that these universal ideas are really expressions of the divine Mind and not of physical force, so-called.

Christian Science, in explaining the nature of the true universe as metaphysical and not material, has at the same time given the true explanation of Jesus’ acts in controlling the elements, in stilling the storm, walking on the water, presenting himself suddenly in the midst of his disciples after the resurrection without regard to walls or distances. If the universe is not material, then it is amenable to spiritual law, and a true follower of Christ can, and should learn to mitigate the obnoxious activities which it presents, or its attempts to limit man’s right activities.

Elsewhere in the Christian Science textbook (p. 527) we read: “Man is God’s reflection, needing no cultivation, but ever beautiful and complete.” What more can humanity desire for its complete reassurance? Not only the universe at large, but man in particular, is an accomplished fact, complete and perfect. It would follow from this that man does not need to be saved and healed, but that his perfection only needs to be realized. Just here is where the student of spiritual things finds himself on difficult ground, unless the distinction between God’s man and mortal man has first been clearly stated and understood. Reverting always to the source and origin of all being as the only means of judging of the real creation, the student will ask himself the question, What is God? Evidently his understanding of the nature of the real man must be based upon a due appreciation of God’s qualities and attributes. Is God material? To state this question is to answer it. For it is impossible to associate matter with God who is Spirit. Material origin, law, presence, or limitation are obviously incompatible with the divine nature which is unlimited in power and spiritual in essence. Therefore, deducing the nature of the real man from the nature of God, we reach the conclusion that man is not material, but spiritual. Again, it needs no argument to show that God is invisible, that He cannot be apprehended by physical sensation. Then His man, who is an accomplished fact, is equally invisible and therefore outside the range of physical perception altogether. At this point the reader may be inclined to think that such a man must be wholly problematical and visionary, but if such a thought comes, he can rest assured that God’s man is no more nebulous than God Himself, but is thoroughly substantial because eternal and indestructible. Is this real man beautiful? Assuredly, because beauty is a divine quality, belonging necessarily to the harmony, poise, and completeness which are of God. Moreover this divine man is perfect now, and so needs no salvation, no healing, no rescue from outward situations, from grief, tyranny, dementia, doubt. He obeys constantly, with never a moment’s deviation, the injunction Jesus gave to his followers, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” God’s man is thus an accomplished fact in perfection.

But humanity does need to be saved and healed. This counterfeit belief of man, which is not made in God’s image and likeness, which is the untruth and unreality about man, cries out for salvation from its own miseries and woes and limitation. To this mortal image comes the divine with infinite compassion, and spiritual understanding, and behold, the false lays off some of its falseness and accepts some of the truth, surrenders some of its animal propensities and adopts some of the characteristics of the invisible, perfect Christ, who comes in the name of the Father-Mother God. Thus the process of salvation and of healing follows the lines laid down by the Messiah and echoes David’s declaration: “I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.”

Yet the real man continues perfect, as the Father which is in heaven is perfect, co-existent with God, and is ever an accomplished fact from which nothing can be subtracted and to which nothing can be added. Hence the note of joy in David’s declaration, and the sigh of relief in the experience of every student of Christian Science as the reality of existence dawns upon his consciousness, the perception that the work of creation is done. Behold it is finished, is a statement every seeker after God may make with confidence, both in regard to the universe in general and also specifically of every object in it. The flowers are finished, the trees, the birds, the animals, the glory of the landscape, the virtue of man, liberty, gratitude, bliss, love—all are accomplished facts. To the false material sense these objects of creation may seem to come and go, may take on different forms, may be apparently materialized, in reality they are all without exception component parts of God’s creation. They are accomplished facts which express the divine perfection.