Footsteps Of His Flock®

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.

* * * * * * * * * *
For the week of October 13th through 19th in 2024.
There were no CS Monitors printed on Sunday October 15th in 1916.
* * * * * * * * * *

Forgiveness

Written for the Christian Science Monitor
October 13, 1916

There are few topics of such interest to humanity in general as that of forgiveness. Men believe in the reality of evil, and in consequence fall into sinful practices, with the inevitable result that reaction sets in calling for the redress of the wrong committed and demanding “forgiveness” for the misdeed. The question has perplexed mankind in every age; and many and strange are the attempts which have been made to cancel the debt which the false belief of evil piles up against the believers in it. Christian Science goes to the root of the matter, and by teaching the truth about God, that is about infinite good, it exposes the claim of so-called evil, thereby enabling men to see the true meaning of forgiveness.
Now it is necessary to begin with, to understand something about God’s nature in order to have a basis for correct reasoning. Christian Science declares, as already indicated, that God is infinite good. This declaration has to be accepted in its entirety; and it means that good alone is real, since God is infinite. Good is omnipresent and good is omnipotent. It follows that no other real power exists differing in its nature from good, opposing good anywhere, or capable of neutralizing the activity of good. This, of course, is diametrically opposed to prevalent beliefs which maintain that evil is as real as good, that the presence of evil is as universal as that of good, and that evil is not only capable of neutralizing good but of actually dominating the situation, getting the upper hand at times and assuming the control. It staggers the human mind to be told that evil is unreal. Even many who have admitted, unthinkingly no doubt, that God is good hesitate to accept the conclusion which logically follows that evil is unreal. But the spiritual fact remains, standing out with the indelible distinctness of absolute truth and forever silencing the lie that evil is real. That is what Mrs. Eddy discovered.
How then, it may be asked, does Christian Science teach that evil should be viewed? Christian Science looks upon evil as false belief, as mortal error. It places evil in the same category as every other fallacy. Suppose a man said that he could construct a circle out of a straight line which could not be bent. What would be said about his position? That he was laboring under a delusion, a misapprehension, a false belief. Suppose a child on being asked how many three added to two make, replied six; what would be thought of the answer? That it was a mistake, an error, a false belief. Both the man and the child might believe strongly and persistently in what they said, but that would not make their mistake in the slightest degree more true. And the belief in the reality of evil is entirely analogous to these errors. Good is infinite because God is good; and no reasoning from a material basis can ever make the belief of evil a reality.
A human being, however, may believe very strongly in the reality of evil; or to put it somewhat differently, he may believe very strongly that good is not omnipresent, that good is not always present. And so believing he may fall directly into what goes by the name of sin, which may take the form of jealousy, envy, hatred, revenge, lust, or any other form of evil belief having its origin in material sensuousness. When this seems to take place, what inevitably happens? Punishment follows, suffering follows. And what causes the suffering, the punishment? Is it God? God is infinite good. Reality alone is known to God; but evil or unreality does not exist, and has no reality for Truth to know. If God punished evil in the way commonly believed, He would be cognizant of so-called evil, and it would thus be part of His consciousness and so eternal. What then is the explanation? It is that the belief of evil is itself synonymous with suffering. The belief carries with it its own certain punishment. Writing on page 497 of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy gives as one of the tenets of Christian Science: “We acknowledge God’s forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts.”
The forgiveness of sin, then, takes place, scientifically, only as the belief that evil is real is destroyed in human consciousness. A man might be, in the eyes of the world, a heinous sinner because of his delight in practicing his evil beliefs, and there would be no pardon for him until he turned to God, that is to good; as he allowed good its rightful place, the belief in evil would be destroyed in proportion to his spiritual understanding. It is spiritual understanding perceiving the allness of good, “that casts out evil as unreal”; and the casting out of evil is the forgiveness of sin. Thus it is, as Mrs. Eddy says on page 5 of Science and Health, that “Sin is forgiven only as it is destroyed by Christ,—Truth and Life.”
It will be apparent that God does not forgive sin merely because He is entreated to do so. Such a view betrays an entire misapprehension of the nature of Deity. But does it not explain why men have often struggled perhaps in vain to get rid of some particular form of sin? Many a time they may have pleaded with the intensest earnestness to God to forgive them for those deeds which may have blackened the past for them and to free them from the tendencies of the desire to repeat the offense against righteousness; but often in vain. The explanation of the failure lies in the fact that they have been making evil real, have been believing that evil has power, and place in which to act, and that it is known to and permitted by God. Such a false consciousness needs correction before forgiveness or deliverance can be experienced by it. But what a bright hope Christian Science brings to all mankind. It does not come with curses to a man, but speaks to him in language as simple and tender as true, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” Good is omnipotent, and evil in reality is without power or presence, evil is a false belief of the human mind. The moment the truth begins to be apprehended, the meaning of forgiveness becomes plain.

Sleep

Written for The Christian Science Monitor
October 14, 1916

THE poets, on the whole, have been great materialists, and that, it is to be supposed, is the reason why men in every way so unlike as the authors of “Hudibras” and “Queen Mab,” have seen so clearly the invisible link between sleep and death. The alternative would be to credit them with a peculiarly metaphysical insight, for only the materialist or the metaphysician could so clearly see the connection: the one from the very depths of his belief in matter, the other from the clearness of his perception of the unreality of matter. Thus Homer sings, in the Iliad, of “Death’s brother, Sleep” whilst, on page 65 of her Poems, Mrs. Eddy writes, “Ah, sleep, twin sister of death and of night!”
The ubiquitous man in the street of Emerson does not, of course, realize what matter even hypothetically is. To him it is “lumps of stuff,” such, for instance, as Dr. Johnson’s paving stones. Yet, four centuries before the Christian era, Plato was contending against the view which still appealed to the common sense of Dr. Johnson twenty-two centuries later, and which goes on appealing to the Dr. Johnsons of today in spite of all the arguments of Bishop Berkeley or Lord Kelvin. As a matter of fact, however, all that even the idealism of natural science has accomplished has been to insist that matter is unreal inasmuch as it is a mental phenomenon or a manifestation of energy. This, be it said, only makes the human mind more material than granite, or energy more solid than pig-iron. The reality, in short, is shifted back from the phenomenon of granite or pig-iron to the noumenon or cause of human mind or energy. Consequently the man who sees sleep and death as states of mind is more purely a materialist than the man who sees in them the physical action of matter. Thus Homer writing of “Death’s brother, Sleep,” or Shelley telling of “Death and his brother Sleep,” though their psychology is separated by centuries, are just as completely materialistic in their philosophy as the great doctor in Fleet Street, or the man in the streets of Concord.
The true idealist then is not Plato, is not Berkeley, is not even Lord Kelvin. It is any follower of Jesus of Nazareth who understands his teaching sufficiently to imitate, in some degree, his healing works, for these healing works are the miracles or signs which Jesus himself gave in demonstration of the truth of his metaphysics, and which, in turn, he demanded from his followers. The idealism of Jesus, however, differed fundamentally from that of Plato, or Berkeley, or Lord Kelvin, in that it denied the reality not only of the material phenomenon, but logically and uncompromisingly of the material noumenon or cause. Jesus stated this, indeed, in the language of his day, in the east, in the most unequivocal terms. “That,” he said, to Nicodemus, “which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit,” and this the writer of the Fourth Gospel, speaking of all those demonstrating spiritual perception, paraphrased in the famous passage, “Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Now, in exactly the same way that Jesus contrasted matter and Spirit, he used sleep as a synonym for death. “Spirit,” he said, to the disciples, “hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have,” whilst he also told them that Lazarus slept, meaning by that that he was dead. There was, however, this abysmal gulf fixed between the teaching of Jesus and Homer, that whereas the Greek and his successors have regarded death and sleep as equally real, Jesus knew that one was as supposititious as the other, and that both were counterfeits of spiritual ideas, and so unreal.
There is no mistaking what Jesus thought about sleep. Not only did he describe it as death in speaking of Lazarus, but in the parable of the virgins as in the actual incident in Gethsemane, he defined it as the hypnotic influence of materiality. In just the same terms, Mrs. Eddy exposes sleep for what it is, when she writes on pages 306-7 of Science and Health, “The parent of all human discord was the Adam-dream, the deep sleep, in which originated the delusion that life and intelligence proceeded from and passed into matter.” Sleep, then, is the expression of pure matter, that is of human mind or energy, as manifested in the birth or death of matter. Jesus knew perfectly well that neither the sleeping forms of the virgins, nor those of the disciples in Gethsemane were anything but material phenomena of which the cause, on the relative or physical plane, was the hypnotism of sensuality of sleep. “The allegory of Adam,” Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 17 of “Christian Healing,” “when spiritually understood, explains this dream of material life, even the dream of the ‘deep sleep’ that fell upon Adam when the spiritual senses were hushed by material sense that before had claimed audience with a serpent.”
In the case of sleep and death the distinction between the two is, as in the case of all purely relative conditions, one of degree; and by relative, of course, is here implied any condition neither absolute or spiritual. Sleep is a necessity to the human being who believes in death, because sleep and death are degrees of the belief of life as material, and so finally having a beginning and an end. If a man knew life to be eternal he would know it to be spiritual, and so never to need what Butler describes as the restorative of sleep, since it is impossible for a finite material action to affect an absolute spiritual condition. Jesus taught the exact contrary of the Butler philosophy. “This is life eternal,” he said, “that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” In other words, he taught that the true restorative of the human frame was the understanding of spiritual Truth, or the Christ, which would overcome the necessity for sleep.
Jesus, moreover, proved this throughout the entire length of his ministry. The demonstration of the Science he taught lay in proving that the physical laws, which make a man sick, which demand the oblivion of sleep, and which ultimately cause him to die, were not laws, but an ignorance of true law or the Christ. A man who suffers from insomnia believes in some physical law of sickness, but if he could grasp, even partially, the fact that life is eternal, the fear of insomnia would be broken, and he would be able to sleep. If he really understood the law of divine Principle expressed in eternal Life he could, of course, go much further than this, and do without sleep at all. This is truly what is implied in the Gospel saying with respect to Jesus, “And in the day time he was teaching in the temple; and at night he went out, and abode in the mount that is called the Mount of Olives.” It was in the night vigil, on the Mount of Olives, that Jesus found the restorative of Life which enabled him to teach the next morning in the temple, because it was there he restored his understanding of the Christ. “The foxes have holes,” he said, “and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.”

* * * * * * * * * *
No CS Monitors were printed on Sunday October 15th in 1916.
* * * * * * * * * *

Spiritual Understanding

Written for The Christian Science Monitor
October 16, 1916

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE thoroughly establishes the proverb, that “understanding is a wellspring of life unto him that hath it.” What particularly distinguishes Christian Science from other religious systems is that it gives an understanding of God which is at once clear, explicit, and scientific, whereas they, as a rule, substitute belief for unwavering faith, and too often blind credulity for the understanding of the absolute truth.
It is through spiritual sense that God or Truth is known. The so-called physical senses convey no information whatever to a man about God. They purport to tell him about matter, about the phenomenal, about material sensation; they are in fact, these so-called material senses, all there is of matter and the phenomenal. Spiritual understanding is just the understanding or knowledge of Spirit. And Spirit is another name for God, as Truth, Life, and Love are also names for Him. So that spiritual understanding comes to be the accurate knowledge of God and His attributes, obtained through spiritual sense of which Mrs. Eddy writes on page 209 of Science and Health: “Spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God.” Christian Science declares that God is infinite in every phase of His being; and then it deduces, by a logical process which is irresistibly correct, the spiritual truths about His nature, about His creation; and at the same time as these truths become revealed, whatever the human mind believes to be true, but which may perhaps be entirely false, will stand exposed for the fallacy it is. The higher the spiritual understanding of Truth possessed by a man the greater is his power to detect the false ring of untruth; and the clearer his spiritual understanding of Truth, the more readily can he distinguish between what is absolutely true and that which is only relatively true. Thus, for example, when it has dawned on the human mind that since Spirit is infinite, all that is real is spiritual, and that, consequently, matter is unreal, the human consciousness learns that only that which pertains to Spirit is absolutely true and that what is associated with material belief can only be relatively so.
Spiritual understanding, as Mrs. Eddy discovered, is the most precious asset which any man can possess. It is the remedy for every human ill. Jesus of Nazareth possessed it in overflowing measure. That is why he could heal all manner of sickness, cast out every type of evil belief, and raise those who had fallen into the deep sleep of death. Jesus knew the Father so well, that is to say his consciousness was so full of Truth and Love, that when an erroneous condition of mind seemed to present itself before him for healing, his spiritual understanding of Truth destroyed the false belief and the healing took place. It was his understanding, for instance, of the infinite activity of omnipresent Mind which enabled him to heal the false belief of inaction typified by so-called paralysis. Whenever he detected the material lie against Truth, which apparently was causing the trouble, he realized the spiritual truth which the lie was counterfeiting and thereby reversed the error of mortal mind, liberating the human mind from its burden. What Jesus the Christ knew, Mrs. Eddy rediscovered; and Christian Science is the Science of Christian healing.
On the first page of the Christian Science textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” Mrs. Eddy, striking the chord which echoes throughout all her teaching, says, “The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God,—a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love.” What is brought very forcibly home to those who understand something of Christian Science is the fact that it is only through spiritual understanding that the faith Mrs. Eddy refers to can be obtained. Spiritual understanding gives human beings a faith which is entirely different from mere belief, because it is based on absolute knowledge. Only faith of this description can heal the sick as Jesus healed sickness. It is powerful to do so because, being based on the absolute truth, it never doubts. Unquestionably the Master was cognizant of this when he said: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Knowledge or spiritual understanding of Truth begets that faith in Truth which can remove the error, whatever it may be, from human consciousness.
Spiritual understanding is denied to none who seek after Truth humbly and with purity of purpose. The desire that is unselfish reaches the throne of grace, in other words, divine everpresent Principle. “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you,” are words which convey to all the promise that the goodness of God is not an especial gift to exceptional people, but is within the right of every one to obtain. Surely this is what humanity desires. The world famishes for the truth, but too often feeds on the husks of its own material beliefs. Just think how numbers of people are the unwilling slaves of the so-called material laws which mortals have formulated to explain certain of the conditions which bear heavily upon them and often seem well-nigh to crush them. There is the belief of heredity which tells man that certain traits of temperament, character, or physique may be propagated from generation to generation, perhaps carrying suffering with them to remote years. Spiritual understanding proclaims the glad news to all who may seem to be suffering from such a belief that God’s laws are perfect and that they never produce aught but harmony or health. This understanding destroys fear, and, if clear enough, will heal the erroneous condition. Again, it is the spiritual understanding of good which destroys the belief of sin. Christian Science teaches that God is good; and since God is infinite, good is the only omnipresent reality. What goes by the name of evil among mortals, is but a false belief in the absence of good. But evil must be recognized, through the spiritual understanding of good, to be exactly what it is,—false belief. And then the so-called power of evil, which appears to become active to human consciousness as sin, is seen to be no real power because it has no reality. “In proportion to our understanding of Christian Science, we are freed from the belief of heredity, of mind in matter or animal magnetism; and we disarm sin of its imaginary power in proportion to our spiritual understanding of the status of immortal being.” (Science and Health, p. 178.) Spiritual understanding is indeed “a wellspring of life unto him that hath it.”

Truth and Human Needs

Written for The Christian Science Monitor
October 17, 1916

EVERY human need is met by Truth. To know this by experience is to realize the method and discern the way of salvation as taught by Christ Jesus and as repeated in the demonstrations that are daily being made by the students of Christian Science. But before attaining to that, one must get some idea of what is meant by Truth. Capitalized, as it always is by Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, when used as a synonym for God, it stands for immeasurably more than when that word is used relatively and refers merely to the things of time and sense. What every man needs—and, indeed, what most men are seeking for—is that absolute Truth which, as the consciousness of all good, all that is perfect and harmonious, is the Saviour of the world. Unfortunately the need is not always seen to be very pressing until sickness, or sorrow, or death appears; while the search is often in an entirely wrong direction or upon a faulty basis.
When Christian Science raises the standard of Truth, the perfect ideal, the self-existent, self-creative infinite Mind, it does not present to humanity that which towers to an impossible height beyond human reach, but that which is always and everywhere present, and available at any moment for man’s redemption.
And here it is that we can be assured of that certitude which to many seekers for peace seems to be a will-o’-the-wisp—ever eluding apprehension and comprehension, and never mentally tangible enough to be of any practical purpose. Doubt has its use if the doubter is conscious that it is only a negative condition, and is animated in his pursuit of happiness and health by the thought that man’s right is not to be buffeted by every wind of doctrine, but to be able to plant his feet firmly on what is the truth as revealed by God. Questionings come to every thinking man, and they must be honestly and successively met. Because one does not apprehend the truth quickly, and it seems too elusive to be mentally grasped, is no cause for discouragement. Neither should one be dismayed if, under the “encircling gloom” of mortal vision, the very heavens of Truth and Love seem to be blotted out. The main thing is to possess the confident assurance, based not only on the divine Word, but on all human experience that has been transformed by Spirit, that God is, and that “he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”
This conviction of final emancipation and victory over error must come, not as the result of mere hypothesis or intuition, not as the product of mental meandering through the mazes of philosophy or natural sciences or even scholastic theology, but through faith advanced to spiritual understanding which is knowledge. It is no use saying that knowledge of Truth is unattainable; there is not a single valid argument of reasoning to sustain such a dictum. The effects of Christian Science as seen in its redemptive and healing works form a body of evidence that God, Truth, can be known, which is indubitable and unassailable. It is nearly two thousand years since humanity was privileged to see the truth thus understood and demonstrated, as it is in this present age. That only a comparatively small minority of mankind believe this now would be amazing, if one did not remember how easy it is for mortals to follow the line of least resistance, and to be beguiled and deluded by false appearances.
The student of Christian Science is sometimes blamed because he steadfastly refuses to believe in all that he sees, and because he is confident that it is possible to know the truth about God. But he knows perfectly well, frequently by bitter experience, that seeing is not believing. The things that he wants to see and understand are the things that are unseen to mortal eye. All his work is mental, not material. While he lived on the surface—believing life and intelligence was in matter, and that therefore matter was as eternal as Spirit—he was the victim of his own ignorance and false beliefs. When he awoke to this fact, the “sea of cloud” dispersed, and the way began to be luminous with the light of Truth. Then he began to know. Certitude, he saw, was his birthright. He now claims, because it is an essential part of Christian Science, that God as infinite good does not hide Himself from men; that He does not dwell apart from the real man in realms unseen and impenetrable to man; nor is He so transcendent that it is impossible to understand His nature; otherwise the world would have had the revelation of His will and the demonstration of divine power made through Christ Jesus.
Because of this, the spiritual objective of Christian Science is one of absolute obedience and reliance upon Truth, whose very omnipresence in the universal supremacy of Spirit means the destruction of every illusion of mortal sense included in the beliefs of sin, disease, and death. This is the freedom of the truth. In a passage on page 103 of her textbook, Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy explains that this freedom does not mean what mortal thought clings to so tenaciously, that is, a knowledge of evil as well as of good. “On the other hand,” she writes, “Mind-science is wholly separate from any half-way impertinent knowledge, because Mind-science is of God and demonstrates the divine Principle, working out the purposes of good only.”
Here is the solution of the enigmas or problems of life. They appear to be hopelessly insoluble, looked at humanly; indeed life itself is a stupid puzzle, if one tries to understand it by the light, such as it is, of human reason. All you see, if you do that, is certain material effects—effects that picture the universe and man as a combined riddle and the creator as incomprehensible. With the spread of the Science of Christianity, the enigma is seen to be but a temporary mental obscuration. There never was a truth-seeking man who, in proportion to his sincerity, his humility, and his faithfulness, did not find the truth coming to his consciousness as a steady ray of light, purifying and uplifting his understanding, and giving to him that larger sense of Truth which in time becomes the key to the knowledge of how the sick are healed and the sinner reformed by the operation of spiritual law. Who doubts this? Let him apply the spiritual test—found in one of Mrs. Eddy’s most forceful and fruitful maxims: “Truth is revealed. It needs only to be practiced.” (Science and Health, p. 174.)

The Omnipotence of God

Written for The Christian Science Monitor
October 18, 1916

MEN have a tendency to take the greatest truths upon their lips often without more than very feebly apprehending their significance. For example, among Christian people what is commoner than to hear the expression: God is good? And yet, is it not the case that many have never given more than the slightest thought as to the scientific meaning of what is one of the greatest spiritual facts known to men? Again, is there a Christian in the world today who will not agree that God is infinite? They cannot deny the truth, because if they did they would be denying the very existence of God Himself, and so would find themselves in the dilemma of believing in the error of many gods.
Christian Science shows how tremendously important it is that the truths about God which have been revealed should not merely be admitted in a thoughtless way, but should be pondered by men until their meaning has begun to be spiritually understood and the bearing of the truths on the experiences and the problems, the motives and actions of mankind recognized. The importance of the discovery of Christian Science lies to a great extent along this line, for, as Mrs. Eddy proved beyond all doubt, it is the spiritual understanding of Truth which is the sovereign panacea for every ill that flesh is heir unto. When the Discoverer of Christian Science saw, through spiritual perception, that God is good and that God is infinite, she drew the inevitable logical conclusion that good is omnipotent, and as a corollary that so-called evil is powerless. To quote Mrs. Eddy’s own words, as given on page 469 of Science and Health: “We lose the high signification of omnipotence, when after admitting that God, or good, is omnipresent and has all-power, we still believe there is another power, named evil.”
Mortals have so habitually looked upon evil as real, have so habitually given it power in belief, that many are apt to smile when Christian Science presents the truth to them. But Truth remains rigidly and eternally the same. God is always good, even if millions of human beings should seem to ridicule the fact. Not one single spiritual truth alters in the everlastingly divine Mind. Men may be oblivious to the spiritual truth, may even spurn it when it is stated to them; but that does not affect the truth in any way; it only shows the poverty of human credulity. It should be no light task, the examination of the great facts of spiritual being. They are the spiritual sustenance of men; and, more than that, they are the healers of the human consciousness and the human body from all erroneous beliefs. God, then, remains infinite good; and this forces the conclusion that evil is unreal, since nothing except good dwells in infinity. What is evil then, it may be asked? Christian Science teaches that what is called evil is a false belief entertained by mortals that God is not omnipresent. Get closer to the question. Good is omnipresent. Good is everywhere because God is infinite. If the human consciousness knew this, it could believe in nothing else; but through its ignorance of spiritual reality, it accepts the false belief that there exists a power the opposite of good and accordingly it may experience any form of so-called evil. If the eyes be taken from the divine heights, they wander in the valleys of mortal belief. If they are turned towards infinite good, they will lead a man along the Master’s way.
Christ Jesus understood that God is omnipotent. It was that knowledge which enabled him to pass through the mob when they would have taken him. No matter how strongly the multitude believed in evil, he knew that good alone is power. It was the knowledge of good which made him the best man who ever lived and the greatest physician who ever healed the sick. It was the knowledge of good which, to human sense, cast the halo around his serene brow and brought about the transfiguration on the mount. Transcendental! Some speak of it so; but Jesus the Christ owed all his power to heal the sick, to regenerate the sinner, to quicken the dead, to communicate with those who had long ago left the sphere of earthly activity, to overcome in his own consciousness the belief of death, to the scientific and absolute knowledge he possessed of his Father, God, infinite good. Men possess the same Mind of Christ as they know good. Christian Science imparts and fosters this knowledge. It is spiritual sense that enlightens them; and men should be true to this sense from the moment it gives them their first glimpse of good as omnipotent.
Perhaps it will be apparent that so far as mortals are concerned the understanding of God as omnipotent, tends to change human consciousness in the most radical fashion. Spiritual understanding enables a man to differentiate between the real and the unreal. He, it is true, may feel to begin with as if he understood the truth in a very theoretical way; but as he puts what he knows into practice and demonstrates for himself that evil beliefs are destroyed in proportion to his fidelity to Truth, he gains in confidence and persists in his efforts to hold his thought in agreement with spiritual facts. Thus he progresses; good becomes more and more evident to him as omnipresent and omnipotent, and he finds himself becoming a better man mentally and physically than he was before. How often, too, has not the truth that good alone is real healed the sorrows of the heart? Maybe the outlook has been clouded by the mists of fear, fear as undefined as false beliefs always are; in despair, perhaps, the sufferer turns to Truth, and, behold, God is with him; the presence of omnipotent good has never been away from him, that presence which alone is real. Thus he recognizes the errors into which he has been betrayed by material sense, and sees that evil is nothing but a false belief of the carnal mind and that fear is the child of this false belief, as unreal as its fictitious parent. And as he becomes conscious of the truth and the omnipotence of good is recognized, peace takes the place of fear. “God is everywhere, and nothing apart from Him is present or has power.” (Science and Health, p. 473.)

Usefulness to Truth

Written for The Christian Science Monitor
October 19, 1916

THE familiar passages at the end of the ninth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, in the New Testament, reading “And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God,” gives us renewed meaning when we consider the exact statement of the original Greek—“No man who has put his hand to the plow and turns back, is of any use as a worker in God’s kingdom.”
The difference in translation is not great. The point that he who looks two ways is not fit for the kingdom, stands clearly in each. The phraseology “is fit for,” however, does not convey just what may be found in “is of any use.” The former may leave us thinking, unless we think beneath the surface of the words, about fitting ourselves to receive the kingdom. The latter leaves no doubt as to our own usefulness to it.
And this is just the question Christian Science drives home to the Christian; of what use is he to “the kingdom of God”? Many of us are given to believing that the kingdom of heaven will benefit us. Few of us yet realize that this kingdom comes that we may benefit others. True, heaven blesses all. But he who looks to get blessings rather than to give them, does not quite enter heaven, however good his theories may be about it. Through the gate of service heaven is found, and when it is all found and sin and pain shall be no more, perfect service, divine Love, God, expressed by man to man, shall surely constitute heaven’s entirety.
For what is divine Love, but constant service? Not, as all well know, the personal service which panders to the senses; but the unselfish serving which truly loves another’s actual welfare and helps it on. It has well been said that divine Love is infinite consideration. Think, if you will, of the measure of your devotion to the interests of some one you love. Think further, of such unselfed devotion extended to all men, all creatures. Think of it quickened and made daily purer by a growing understanding of the divine nature, and that divine nature reflected by you. Contemplate our state if every one of us truly burned with zeal to promote the holiness and happiness of every other one of us. Thus you glimpse, at least, infinite consideration, and grasp something of divine Love in action, divine Love reflected by man for the welfare of all men. And this, carried to full demonstration, would truly constitute the whole of heaven; for God, maintaining man and universe in complete harmony, is heaven. The human heart can grasp no greater.
This kingdom of heaven, seen as possible by the pure in heart, is, by the teaching of Christian Science, brought close at hand. Not in the future, but now, we are to become of “use as a worker in God’s kingdom,” for where God is, heaven is; and he who even begins to understand and obey God now, has some measure of heaven now. Too long has the theology of the world taught earth here and heaven elsewhere; trouble here and salvation by and by. God is just as good as He ever will be; man, in Truth, as God knows him, the direct opposite of matter, is just as spiritual, just as immortal, as he ever will be. The whole question of salvation lies in reversing popular belief. Instead of a sinning man to be saved and a mortal man to be made immortal, it is discovered that this sinner never can be saved nor this mortal become immortal. They can, however, disappear; be put off, little by little. So, the true Christian no longer sits down despairingly with the sin and the mortality, to wait for future heaven; but he rises into the understanding of his true spiritual being now, knows it to be a heaven-dweller today, and begins to push out of his thought and experience all the things that are unlike heaven. The situation is turned about, that is all. If God, as divine Mind, is omnipresent, heaven is here now. The Christian Scientist stands in this divine logic, sustained by God in his endeavor to refute the material evidence which defies the presence of heaven. Once his hand is put to this plow, he cannot well turn back.
And how does he keep his hand to his plow? By the faithful patient reflection of the divine Love which serves. Christ Jesus plainly said no man could have greater love than to lay down his life for his friends. And he, in laying down his human life found himself immortal and intact in heaven. So his followers, letting go that which seeks even heaven for itself, find heaven. To be “of any use as a worker” each man must be putting off his own animality, that he may reflect, in all his mental attitude, true spirituality. His hand cannot weaken or waver at this plow, his head cannot turn. He conquers himself through clinging steadfastly to that divine Love which is Principle and which operates as Principle, and so reflects it to bring heaven to all. Futile it is to wonder how useful to the truth may be to us or whether it can be used by us. Our usefulness to Truth is our great concern. Upon page 165 of “The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany” Mrs. Eddy writes: “Thus may each member of this church rise above the oft-repeated inquiry, What am I? to the scientific response: I am able to impart truth, health, and happiness, and this is my rock of salvation and my reason for existing.”
When all men find that their “reason for existing” is to bring good to others, heaven will be here. Truth is never bent to the service of self. Truth compels service to others. And if only one man on earth were serving others in true spiritual love, his usefulness to Truth would begin the millennium. One and another and another joining him, their usefulness to Truth would multiply it. When all men serve God, or Truth, supremely by whole service to each other, no evil will remain. So, you can be useful to Truth, if you will, today and every day, by living the truth you know to purify yourself and thereby liberate your neighbor.
Sometimes we miss the simple ways of Truth, by overmuch theory. How can divine Love first be manifested by human beings, other than, say, in kindness? Let him who feels far from divine Love try to go about a steady unbroken course of kindness toward everybody and every living thing. That alone, based upon spiritual understanding, and patiently and thoroughly done, would make him enormously useful to Truth. And well done, would open further ways of usefulness. And when all is summed, the spiritual plowman really cannot turn back, once his hand is set to serve. His usefulness as a worker must set itself in serviceable order when his thoughts are right. His “reason for existing” must shine out inviolate, for service is the law of God.

* * * * * * * * * * * *
Visit the ChristianScienceBookStore.com for a nice selection of books!
* * * * * * * * * * * *