Tell me, O thou when my soul loveth, where thou feedest,
where 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 of May 12th through May 18th, 2024.
The Christian Science Monitor was not printed on Sunday May 14th in 1916.
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THE LAW OF THE FIRST COMMANDMENT

Written for The Christian Science Monitor
May 12, 1916

EARTH has not known another so great and good as Christ Jesus.” This statement of Mrs. Eddy’s in “The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany” (p. 221), no one is likely to dispute, nor to deny the sentence that follows, although they may not make practical the conclusion which she draws. “Then can we find a better moral philosophy,” she asks, “a more complete, natural, and divine Science of medicine, or a better religion than his?” Every follower of Christianity should undoubtedly be able to answer no to such a question, for the Founder of Christianity gave a positive rule and demonstrated its scientific foundation. Jesus taught that God is Spirit and that all power is spiritual. His mode of healing was purely spiritual, and it healed mind and body. As exponents of his teaching Christians should have been healers ever since the beginning of the Christian era, for Jesus intended men to take his statement literally when he declared, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also.” He knew that it was possible for them to do this, because the power that did the works was not his own, and that point he made perfectly plain. The works followed necessarily upon a clear understanding of the law of the First Commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” and he was untiring in pointing out to men the simple truth of that commandment, the truth that should make them free. Christ Jesus knew that there were no God-appointed means of healing sin or disease that were not purely spiritual, and to attempt to heal with matter would have been impossible to one whose understanding had learned of divine law to reject matter for Spirit. For he must be aware, beyond the reach of argument, that the employment of any means dictated solely by material sense is the denial of Spirit, and breaks the First Commandment.
      That which Christ Jesus had learned of the allness of God he could not unknow and on certain occasions act in opposition to his understanding. For instance, with his apprehension of Truth, Jesus could not have set aside his knowledge of cause and effect so as to accept the vinegar and gall offered him to allay pain when on the cross; besides, the potion held no temptation to one who knew it had no power to heal or help. Aware that all power was spiritual, Jesus depended absolutely on Spirit, and he could have done nothing else, because he had left the common ground of mortal sense judgment, the place from which mankind views cause and effect. Those who brought him the remedy, believed that the trial that he was enduring produced suffering in nerves and muscles. Jesus knew otherwise. He had proved that through simple conformity to the law of the First Commandment pain and death had been overcome, and thus he had learned the unreal nature of physical sense. His appeal was, then, naturally, to Spirit alone; to him physical sense was no longer deceptive, for he had risen above where it could appeal to him as true or real. He relied on what he knew of Truth, on what in his daily walks among men he had proved beyond question; with scientific knowledge of the absolute truth he mastered pain and death. He had no other gods but the one God and thus compassed, on the basis of Christian Science, the greatest victory the world has ever seen. He conquered the physical senses; that, in short, is the victory of Jesus the Christ.
      Christian Science is pointing out that physical sense is the only foe of mankind and that as the law of the First Commandment is obeyed, physical sense will be overcome. Christ Jesus is the Wayshower and the way he showed is plain enough, but is not always agreeable to the human race, since it involves the relinquishment of the pleasures as well as the pains of sense. It involves the finding of the whole gamut of sense testimony baseless and false. Now, no matter how little men enjoy their troubles, they endeavor, none the less, to get all the pleasure they can from the material senses. Thus unconsciously they cling to other gods and cannot prove the truth of Jesus’ words, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also.”
      The conquest of the physical senses is made through divine Mind. Ever since the world began the attempt has been made to overcome false desires, as well as disease and pain, by the exercise of will power but the attempt has always proved a failure. Even when it seems to succeed for a time it fails in the long run because it has no Principle to support it. Christ Jesus had penetrated to the cause which lay behind the persistent evidence of material sense, and had found that sin and disease had a mental mortal origin, and he met and triumphed over all through his understanding of divine power, through his strict and logical adherence to the law of the First Commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” His resurrection and his works were absolute proof of what he taught. His works indeed speak louder than his words. When he healed the sick and raised the dead; when he walked on the water, fed the multitude, and rose from the grave through spiritual understanding alone, he proved for all time the powerlessness of the worst physical, material conditions when opposed by understanding. He gave the world evidence of the power of God, of divine Mind. That is the Science of Christ, the Science of Spirit.
       The human being, believing that evil is as real as good, must of necessity be instructed in the facts, before he can overcome the fictions of the senses. He must learn through Christian Science what power is, and he is often surprised to discover that power is spiritual. Yet the only power which Christ Jesus used was the power of Spirit, and he used it in the face of the world. The simplicity of Jesus’ method, the reason for his sole reliance on God, was not understood until Mrs. Eddy rediscovered the basic truth, the Principle of his demonstrations, and called her discovery Christian Science. In the following sentences from “Unity of Good” (p. 9), Mrs. Eddy lays bare the root of the mistake: “The talent and genius of the centuries have wrongly reckoned. They have not based upon revelation their arguments and conclusions as to the source and resources of being,—its combinations, phenomena, and outcome,—but have built instead upon the sand of human reason. They have not accepted the simple teaching and life of Jesus as the only true solution of the perplexing problem of human existence.”

EVERY MAN A PENNY

Written for The Christian Science Monitor
May 13, 1916

THE English speaking race owes much to Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury. He stood behind the Barons in the struggle for liberty which they waged with King John, and which found its chief expression the day the Great Charter was signed at Runnymede. If, however, it was Langton, and not the Cardinal Hugo de Sancto Caro, the Dominican, who, in the thirteenth century, copied the example of the Synagogue in dividing the Bible in chapters, there is one incident of his career in which his public usefulness is open to question.
      From Paris to Lyons is some two hundred and fifty miles, a long journey enough in the sixteenth century when a man had no choice between his legs and a horse, unless it was a mule. Riding between the two cities, in the middle of this century, Robert Stevens did the world the very doubtful kindness of whiling away the time by dividing his Greek testament into verses, a convenience he extended, some time in the years 1556-7, to his Latin Bible, with the result that the arrangement was finally introduced into what may, for want of a better name, be described as the official versions, in the famous Protestant Bible published, at Geneva, in 1560.
      Now the division and subdivision of the Bible text in the way mentioned has been of such surpassing service to readers that they rarely stay to consider the effect of it in the way the student does. The truth is that this convenience is the very center of one of the most vicious exegetical circles imaginable. If only the most superficial effects are taken notice of it will be evident that the division of chapters into verses, has led to the most wild and reprehensible fashions of tearing passages from their context, with the result that texts have been used like brickbats in every theological and sectarian fight, to prove simply anything; whilst the division into chapters has ended in the decapitating or truncating of whole sections, so that the habit has been developed of reading chapters often without the slightest reference to what has gone before or its bearing on what follows after.
      One of the worst instances of this is to be found in the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, in the Gospel of Matthew. It is true that the chapter in which this is told, the twentieth, begins “For the kingdom of heaven,” and thus indicates to the wary the fact that it is a continuation of something very definite before. Unfortunately, however, this particular phrase has become so crystallized in the consciousness of the readers of the Bible, that it does not necessarily means that it is a direct continuation of something immediately preceding it. The truth is that the solution of the parable really lies in the last verses of the nineteenth chapter, and that the parable itself, in the twentieth chapter, is but the illustration by which Jesus made clear his previous meaning. Peter had asked him what would be the reward of those who had forsaken everything to follow him, and Jesus replied, with that remarkable statement about the reward of those who did forsake all to follow him, qualifying it by the well-known words, “but many that are first shall be last: and the last shall be first.” “For,” he went on, “the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder,” and then, by that illustration, he made clear his previous meaning.
      If Principle is the householder, then Principle offers to everybody who will be atoned with it, or at one with it, the exactly same reward, which Jesus, in his illustration, described as a penny. Principle could not offer more salvation to one person than to another, without ceasing to be Principle. The question, which the laborers had to learn, is not what Principle offers, but how advantage is to be taken of the offer. The laborers who went into the vineyard, in the first hour, instead of being thankful for that privilege, were anxious that those who went in in the eleventh hour should receive less than they. They forgot that though the same opportunity of salvation was offered to all of them, the man who came in at the eleventh hour could not take from the man, who had come in early in the morning, the advantage of the experience and knowledge gained by bearing the burden and heat of the day. It is just that labor that brings men, provided they do labor, nearer to Principle, whereas the man who comes in in the cool of the evening must eventually prove his understanding of Principle to exactly the same extent, in order that he may gain the power to demonstrate his knowledge, and so rejoice in the fruits of his demonstration.
      Everybody knows that in actual practice this is exactly what takes place in Christian Science. A man who has been healing the sick for twenty years cannot gain more eventually than a place in the kingdom of heaven, or what Paul calls the republic of heaven. A man who has been healing the sick for one year will eventually gain his place in the republic of heaven, but unless the first man, bearing the burden and heat of the day, wastes his time by looking all around him when he should be laboring, in other words, whilst he thinks he is laboring, indulges himself in what Jesus termed the cares, riches, and pleasures of the world, he must be gaining all the time, that clearer understanding of Principle, which brings him out of the hell of material existence into the heaven of spiritual truth, earlier than the man who started nineteen years behind him. This is surely what Mrs. Eddy was insisting on, as the necessity of the gospel of work in Christian Science, and why she wrote, on page 2 of the Message to The Mother Church for 1900, “The right thinker works; he gives little time to society manners or matters, and benefits society by his example and usefulness. He takes no time for amusement, ease, frivolity; he earns his money and gives it wisely to the world.”
      At the same time if the early laborer in the vineyard does go to sleep in the heat of the day, and the man who comes in in the cool of the evening toils on through the night, whilst the sluggard still dreams, then the time may come when the first shall be last and the last first, but there will be nothing whatever unfair in this. The householder offered the laborers a penny. To gain it they had to do their work, and most certainly if they failed to do what they bargained to, in any way, they were bound to create in themselves a condition of dishonesty, of idleness, or of malice, which would inevitably bar them from earning other pennies on other days. Because the twelve disciples were, perhaps, the first to follow Jesus, and to share his toils and deprivations, they would not themselves have desired that the seventy, who came afterwards, or the Christian converts of succeeding centuries, should be debarred from that salvation which they desired to make their own; or that because future generations were to share with them the citizenship of the republic of heaven, that would prevent them from sitting upon the twelve thrones and judging the twelve tribes of Israel. This is surely why Mrs. Eddy has written, on page 5 of Science and Health, “So it will ever be, till we learn that there is no discount in the law of justice and that we must pay ‘the uttermost farthing.’”

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The Christian Science Monitor was not printed on Sunday May 14th in 1916.
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HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS

Written for The Christian Science Monitor
May 15, 1916

HUMAN relationships are seemingly governed by many factors. There are, for instance, the civil laws of the country in which one is living which define one’s position with regard to the state and to the individuals within the state. These civil laws are based on a nation’s sense of equity and justice which its representatives have by enactment translated into codified form. Civil law may in certain instances be far removed from the highest appreciation of right entertained by many individuals in a state; but no matter how that may be, its intention undoubtedly is to prevent abuses, to remedy injustice, and to preserve equity among men. It is generally recognized that there is another fact of immense importance controlling human relationships; it is the moral consciousness. Whatever men may think about the absolute, that is to say about infinite good, which is God, they are in agreement that society is held together and that civilization advances as the moral sense of a community or a nation is alert and clearly defined. A state whose moral sense is low will rupture itself and probably go to pieces. A third factor, it will be generally admitted, which exercises an enormous weight in human affairs is the religious. It has been truly said that a man’s concept of God is the most powerful agency in his life, more than any other determining his attitude toward the state and his fellow-men, and at the same time consolidating his moral outlook; and this is how Christian Science looks upon the function of true religion.
      Christian Science holds that what the world needs is a demonstrable religion, and to be demonstrable religion must be based on accurate knowledge of God. This knowledge cannot possibly detract from the value of national law or international law; it will not undermine in the slightest degree whatever is ethically of value anywhere; rather will it, by increasing human trust in ethical values, stimulate regard for what is best in every code which men have devised for the advancement and the preservation of humanity. The knowledge of God is the knowledge of absolute truth. If, then, the knowledge of what is absolutely true can be gained, it is obvious that whoever possesses this knowledge is in the strongest possible position to harmonize human relationships. In Science and Health (p. 43) Mrs. Eddy writes: “The divine must overcome the human at every point. The Science Jesus taught lived and must triumph over all material beliefs about life, substance, and intelligence, and the multitudinous errors growing from such beliefs.”
      Christian Science declares that since God is infinite, good alone is real. This is the same as saying that what men call evil is unreal in the absolute sense, because it is inconceivable that evil can exist in infinite good. Christian Science, therefore, looks upon so-called evil as false belief. As has already been indicated, both civil and moral law, as formulated by human beings, are framed for the purpose of aiding and protecting the right-doer against the wrong-doer. Both are substantially necessitated by the belief that evil is as real as good. There can be no denying this. And to the human mind which believes in the reality of evil and is putting its belief into what it calls practice by sinful acts these self-imposed checks are of great value. But consider what must happen as the allness of good is spiritually understood and as the human mind recognizes the omnipotence of good. In proportion as this is done, faith in the delusions, suggestions, and artifices which arise from the belief in evil will be lost and the human being will cease to practice anything which is not good either upon himself or his fellow-men. To believe in the reality of evil, to believe in the necessity for evil in thought or word or deed, is to believe, exactly in the same ratio, that good is not the only real power. If one examines the many admonitions given to the early Christian church by Christ Jesus and the Apostles, one finds running through them the constant desire that one should not render evil for evil but that the endeavor of all should be after goodness or righteousness. Thus Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: “See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men.”
      Sometimes the path seems rugged as we travel along life’s highway. Our belief in the pleasures and pains of matter may tempt us to sin or cause us to be sick. The evil beliefs of the world, our own, or another’s disposition to indulge envy or malice or hate, may upset our balance and betray us into irrational and unwise actions. It is here that Christian Science comes in with its wonderful metaphysical aid. It causes a man to ask himself: What are these things that would upset me, that would dethrone God from the position He should occupy within my knowledge? Are they true, real thoughts, or what are they? The question which a man has to decide is, what are they? Every one of them is a form of evil. And evil, in the sight of God, in the light of the knowledge that God is infinite good, is unreal. Reasoning thus, the human consciousness begins to lose its fear of so-called evil, and as the understanding of the omnipresence or the supremacy of good asserts itself despondency flees away.
      The aim of everyone should be to endeavor to bring about happier relationships between men the world over. There is an old saying that reformers should begin by reforming their own immediate surroundings. There is wisdom in the advice. And whether we take our immediate surroundings to be the home, the office, or the workshop, each offers an excellent field for the demonstration of “pure and undefiled religion.” The supreme aim is to prove that good alone has presence and power. It will signify the more perfect control over every debasing passion, the sacrifice of materiality, the overcoming of self-will, the cultivation of the affections and the fostering of all the refined sentiments. It will, in short, inaugurate a fight against everything in one’s own consciousness that is opposed to God. It may be strenuous work but it will result in the sweetening of every human relationship, and will bring out unexpected veins of charity in places where one least looked to find them. The world, because it seeks to wander idly in the paths of sensuousness, keeps itself in the somber shadows and refuses to know that good is omnipotent. “The good in human affections should preponderate over the evil, and the spiritual over the animal,—until progress lifts mortals to discern the Science of mental formation and find the highway of holiness.” (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 287.)

THE WALL OF JERICHO

Written for The Christian Science Monitor
May 16, 1916

WHEN Jesus of Nazareth said to his disciples “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you,” he expressed what the human mind regarded as his great offense, that is, his insistence upon the nothingness of matter. Yet he was but affirming what the Scriptures repeatedly illustrated of the triumph of understanding, a quality of Mind, over material resistance. More than this, he was proving, in a manner disquieting to the materialists, the nothingness of matter, in his daily deeds of mercy and power. The teachers lacked the insight which penetrates to the law underlying the miracles, as recorded in the Scriptures which they professed to understand. So they had no incentive themselves to practice what Jesus’ affirmations would require, and they resented the rebuke to their dead faith, contained in his disregard of the supposedly insuperable laws of matter. Yet it was precisely this blow to the belief that matter is substance, which was necessary to arouse humanity to receive the healing of the Christ, Truth. It is this insistence upon the allness of Spirit, Mind, and the consequent nothingness of matter, which renders Christian Science a redemptive power in the world today, and which kindles, as of old, the antagonism of carnal mind.
      Among the many remarkable demonstrations of the power of Spirit to overcome matter, as enumerated, for example, in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, none, perhaps, more clearly illustrates the nothingness of matter than the falling of the wall of Jericho before the faith of Joshua’s band. Joshua, it will be remembered, was one of the spies who had been able to see good in, and to give a good report of, the land which was apparently occupied with idolatrous conditions entirely opposed to the faith of the children of Israel. This spiritual insight fitted Joshua for the task of leadership which devolved upon him as Moses’ successor. The wilderness lessons had been completed. The material sense of things had been lessened through learning to obey the law of the one God. Now this knowledge of spiritual law must be demonstrated in overcoming the seeming presence of evil in the world that lay before the children of Israel. What, to the superficial reader, might seem a spectacular performance before the wall of Jericho, was, in fact, developing and emphasizing obedience, consecration, unity, qualities which always prepare consciousness to realize the actuality and omnipotence of good, and the nothingness of evil. The ark of God was before these conquerors signifying, as Mrs. Eddy points out on page 581 of Science and Health: “ARK. Safety: the idea, or reflection, of Truth, proved to be as immortal as its Principle; the understanding of Spirit, destroying belief in matter.” When they were enabled to shout together in the unity of good, “the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.” Here was no violation of law, but a revelation of the power and substance of Spirit, good, before which evil, matter, simply could not stand.
      The wall of Jericho, typifying any obstructive error, was only the expression of the subjective state of mortal mind in which the wall arose as thought before it appeared as matter. To the consciousness which was overcoming the idolatrous mind itself which first thought and then expressed the wall, it was as possible to see the objectification “down flat,” as standing up. That is to say, the wall was as unreal as its origin, the evil mind which formulated it. The only reality at the city of Jericho that day, or in any other place and time, was the law and unity of good, and the understanding of it. Of this victory of Joshua’s band, Mrs. Eddy writes on page 279 of “Miscellaneous Writings,” “They went seven times around these walls, the seven times corresponding to the seven days of creation: the six days are to find out the nothingness of matter; the seventh is the day of rest, when it is found that evil is naught and good is all.”
      Joshua was commonly acknowledged as a prophetic similitude of the Christ. The history of the conquest of Canaan is a series of what, to the human sense, seemed miracles or violations of law. The elements were held in abeyance and the impossible became event. Exactly according to the clearness of Joshua’s perception of the Christ, or the spiritual idea, his victories showed forth the power of Spirit as opposed to matter and material law. Then as the “days of creation,” the understanding of the allness of good, unfolded, that is, as the vision of the Truth penetrated more and more to the human expectation, the full revelation of the Christ at last became possible. Then it was that Jesus the Christ set about systematically, through his exact knowledge of God, to annul every law of matter, to deny the existence of any carnal mind, and to prove that the experience of harmony requires only that the tremendous actuality of good be seen and realized.
      There is today no more reality in mortal mind and its manifestation, matter, than there was when Joshua proved the nothingness of evil through his faith in the power of Spirit, and when Jesus of Nazareth healed the sick, raised the dead, walked upon the water, and appeared and disappeared when doors were closed. The wall of Jericho has just as much existence today as it did, however, to the material consciousness whose belief in matter and evil inwalls the sense of sin, disease, or any mortal error. Every human being who will set about obediently and consecratedly to gain, through the aid of Christian Science, an understanding of the unity and allness of good will be able to prove, step by step, the nothingness of matter. When the divine Mind is understood to be the only Mind and substance, reason must conclude that the harmonious reflections of divine Mind are the only creations, and sin, sickness and death must disappear. “When the substance of Spirit appears in Christian Science,” writes Mrs. Eddy on page 480 of Science and Health, “the nothingness of matter is recognized. Where the spirit of God is, and there is no place where God is not, evil becomes nothing,—the opposite of the something of Spirit.”

HEALTH A CONDITION OF MIND

Written for The Christian Science Monitor
May 17, 1916

THE popular narrow conception of health is a distinct burden on humanity; it hides the truth and often shackles and nullifies human effort. One often hears that it is a rare thing to find a really healthy man, that indeed most people are physically troubled in some way.
      The truth is that health is sought for in the wrong direction, for health is harmony of mind, not of body. Such health is the result of a process of the regeneration and purification of the human mind, which strikes at the cause of sickness and destroys it. Knowing this with such perfect clearness, Mrs. Eddy, in her exposition and restatement of primitive Christianity, laid down that “Health is not a condition of matter, but of Mind; nor can the material senses bear reliable testimony on the subject of health.” (Science and Health, p. 120.) The Mind thus spoken of—capitalized as the word is in accordance with the unique and helpful method adopted by the Discoverer of Christian Science—signifies Him who is the only cause and creator; therefore one can only know health when he knows God and seeks to do God’s will. In this way, a so-called healthy man may be sick; and a sick man may be nearer experiencing true health than the other, if he be recognizing that it is not a question of doctoring the body but of reforming the consciousness. The moment we begin to get away from the universal belief in matter—the belief that credits it with possessing life, intelligence and power—and begin to see that Spirit is the only power, we are on the highway to a transformation that leads to health.
      The individual who refuses to accept this teaching of Christian Science is disposed to ridicule it, because it leaves no room for the operation of what to him is an integral part of God’s creation, and a necessary instrument in overcoming sickness and discord. He finds it difficult to lift thought above what he thinks tangible, the material. At the same time he will admit that it is absurd to say that sin is forgiven or destroyed by matter; a drug to him is potent in one case but not in another. But Christian Science corrects this mistake by proving that there is no essential difference between sickness and sin; that as both are unreal in the metaphysical sense, they must be treated alike, and that the power which heals the one heals also the other. One can see therefore how Christian Science Mind healing is widely differentiated from materia medica, and how impossible it is that they can work in harmony. Here every man is called upon to make his choice. That choice is simply between Mind and matter; between the spiritual and the material; between reliance upon God who heals all diseases, and trust in human skill, whether medicine, surgery, or hygiene.
      There are two outstanding facts that make it remarkable that mankind should continue to choose material means for overcoming physical discord, while they acknowledge that a spiritual process is necessary to moral regeneration: The first is that Christ Jesus not only healed the body, but taught others how to do so, by ignoring all material laws and methods. He could do no other. He knew the impotency of matter, the futility of endeavoring to obtain a man’s betterment by imaging that there was power in that which is inert and without real existence. He recognized only the presence and the healing efficacy of Spirit. And yet, though the world acknowledges this, men refuse to follow in his steps. Jesus opened the door to health, the door that leads to God, to an acknowledgment that, as divine Principle, His spiritual laws of goodness and health are available to all mankind. Men, with few and significant exceptions, have been passing by the door ever since the third century, until there came a woman who was spiritually-minded enough to reveal Truth and show how it may be demonstrated.
      The other outstanding fact is that, in spite of much praiseworthy effort, much self-sacrifice and intellectual skill and research in the line of materia medica practice, sickness has not diminished.
      Centuries of effort to promulgate a Christianity dissociated from the healing works of the Master have not enlightened the world. Jesus laid no greater emphasis upon preaching the gospel than he did upon healing the sick. He taught that here and now spiritual law will redeem men from lust and hate and selfishness, malice, revenge and all fleshliness, save them in fact from every one of those errors which are focused in the belief of the dominance of matter. The Christianity of the New Testament, the revealed Word of Truth, is the rule of Mind, the recognition in human thought, when it has been transformed, that health and harmony only exist where Spirit is supreme. That being so, it is clear to the student of Christian Science, to him who is living in the light of reason and revelation as found in the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, that “Mind as far outweighs drugs in the cure of disease as in the cure of sin. The more excellent way is divine Science in every case.” (Science and Health, p. 149.) That is the door of hope and fruition. The stone of material mesmerism, of the illusions of mortal sense, has with the advent of Christian Science been rolled away; and Truth is revealed. Who can deny therefore that the mission of Christian Science is the greatest the world has known or can conceive of? It is the Christ coming to the human consciousness, making “the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”

THE CONDITION PRECEDENT

Written for The Christian Science Monitor
May 18, 1916

IN ONE of those mighty battles with the ecclesiasts of his day, when the Pharisees and Sadducees sought to induce him to give them some sign, Jesus emphatically told them that no sign should be given “but the sign of the prophet Jonas.” Being so familiar with the history of the prophets, it must have made a tremendous impression upon these supposed keepers of the purity and inviolability of the sacred law to be told that they were “a wicked and adulterous generation,” and that they must do as Jonas had done before they could receive the sign of authority.
      All this implies that the mere asking for a blessing, either directly from God or through one who has a correct understanding of God as divine Principle, is not all that is necessary. Jesus knew his questioners were familiar with the teachings of Moses and the prophets, and he also knew that they had adulterated these teachings in such a way as to countenance the most wicked forms of living, so long as their actions appeared outwardly to conform to all ritualistic observances. If an adulterous generation could not receive a sign except that of Jonas, what was the sign of Jonas (or Jonah, as he is more commonly known) and what did he do to prove his worthiness? His whole experience, as related in the Book of Jonah, proves that obedience to divine Principle is the essential sign of worthiness, and that he found he must in all respects be obedient to the divine promptings. Then they who seek a sign must have some higher motive than mere material gratification; and one who seeks a sign in order to use it, to adulterate it, for personal ends must first of all renounce that wrong desire and give evidence of fitness to receive the blessing asked: must cease to be an adulterous generation.
      Human experience shows that a price must be paid for everything and often the price paid for those things which are most desirable is very great. Christian Science has come to the world to show mankind how they may know God and man as they really are, and how to obtain the blessings resulting from that knowledge. It also shows that they have to pay a price for those blessings and that the first portion of that price is a willingness to be obedient to the divine law.
      Christian Science is exact Science. Its demonstrations, the blessings it brings, are the result of an exact knowledge of God as divine Principle, Life, Truth, Love, as infinite intelligence, or Mind, and of an exact application of that knowledge. Above everything it requires the sign of obedience.
      It appears to be the thought of many, as it seemed to be with those who sought a sign of Jesus, that they only have to express a willingness to receive help through Christian Science and that they will be conferring a great favor on the Christian Scientist of whom they ask help particularly, and on the Christian Science movement generally. They feel they are even willing to pay for the help asked for, that is, in a monetary sense; and, when they have done this, they are perfectly satisfied that they have done all that can reasonably be required of them. All this, notwithstanding that the applicant for help in Christian Science may all the time in his thought, his words, and his life, be of that adulterous generation to whom Jesus said only the one sign should be given.
      The law given on Sinai was: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” This is the law to which seekers for a sign are to be obedient, and, since God is one, the first proof of obedience must necessarily be application to ascertain exactly what the one God is who is to be loved with all the heart and might. On page 275 of the Christian Science textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” Mrs. Eddy writes: “Spirit, Life, Truth, Love, combine as one,—and are the Scriptural names for God. All substance, intelligence, wisdom, being, immortality, cause, and effect belong to God. These are His attributes, the eternal manifestations of the infinite divine Principle, Love. No wisdom is wise but His wisdom; no truth is true, no love is lovely, no life is Life, but the divine; no good is, but the good God bestows.” It is, of course, universally conceded that knowing is entirely a mental condition or process, and, therefore, in the effort to be obedient, a beginning must be made by knowing or thinking correctly of God as Spirit, Life, Truth, Love: by knowing Him only as He really is. This is certainly obediently having “no other gods before me.” Continuing, a man must have no other good, save that bestowed by God: no other Life; no other Truth; no substance, no intelligence, no wisdom: he must know no other being, but that which is God and which emanates from God. Does not this then mean that, to be obedient to God and His law, mankind must cease to adulterate the truth about God and His creation,—they must unknown as real every thought, every word, every act which does not conform to the standard of the perfect God expressed through His perfect creation, including man in His image and likeness? It means, too, that each one who turns to Principle to be made “every whit whole” must eradicate from what Paul calls the “fleshly mind” or “carnal mind” the “works of the flesh”: in fact, the price he has to pay is to eliminate the carnal mind and its works—“adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like”—entirely from his consciousness.
      This may seem to be a big price to pay for a sign, yet, when it is remembered that salvation consists of a complete understanding of God, the universe, and man, and that each one expects to attain salvation, it must be evident that the sooner we learn joyfully to remove from our consciousness whatever has tended to make us an adulterous generation,—whatever has adulterated the pure truth of our being and relation to God,—the quicker we shall hear the triumphant commendation of Truth: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant . . . enter thou into the joy of thy lord.”

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