Unity of Good Part 4

Is it unchristian to believe there is no death? Not unless it be a sin to believe that G.o.d is Life and All-in-all. Evil and disease do not testify of Life and G.o.d.

Human beings are physically mortal, but spiritually immortal. The evil accompanying physical personality is illusive and mortal; but the good attendant upon spiritual individuality is immortal. Existing here and now, this unseen individuality is real and eternal. The so-called material senses, and the mortal mind which is misnamed _man_, take no cognizance of spiritual individuality, which manifests immortality, whose Principle is G.o.d.

To G.o.d alone belong the indisputable realities of being. Death is a contradiction of Life, or G.o.d; therefore it is not in accordance with His law, but antagonistic thereto.

Death, then, is error, opposed to Truth,--even the unreality of mortal mind, not the reality of that Mind which is Life. Error has no life, and is virtually without existence. Life is real; and all is real which proceeds from Life and is inseparable from it.

It is unchristian to believe in the transition called _material death_, since matter has no life, and such misbelief must enthrone another power, an imaginary life, above the living and true G.o.d. A material sense of life robs G.o.d, by declaring that not He alone is Life, but that something else also is life,--thus affirming the existence and rulership of more G.o.ds than one. This idolatrous and false sense of life is all that dies, or appears to die.

The opposite understanding of G.o.d brings to light Life and immortality.

Death has no quality of Life; and no divine fiat commands us to believe in aught which is unlike G.o.d, or to deny that He is Life eternal.

Life as G.o.d, moral and spiritual good, is not seen in the mineral, vegetable, or animal kingdoms. Hence the inevitable conclusion that Life is not in these kingdoms, and that the popular views to this effect are not up to the Christian standard of Life, or equal to the reality of being, whose Principle is G.o.d.

When "the Word" is "made flesh" among mortals, the Truth of Life is rendered practical on the body. Eternal Life is partially understood; and sickness, sin, and death yield to holiness, health, and Life,--that is, to G.o.d. The l.u.s.t of the flesh and the pride of physical life must be quenched in the divine essence,--that omnipotent Love which annihilates hate, that Life which knows no death.

"Who hath believed our report?" Who understands these sayings? He to whom the arm of the Lord is revealed. He loves them from whom divine Science removes human weakness by divine strength, and who unveil the Messiah, whose name is Wonderful.

Man has no underived power. That selfhood is false which opposes itself to G.o.d, claims another father, and denies spiritual sonship; but as many as receive the knowledge of G.o.d in Science must reflect, in some degree, the power of Him who gave and giveth man dominion over all the earth.

As soldiers of the cross we must be brave, and let Science declare the immortal status of man, and deny the evidence of the material senses, which testify that man dies.

As the image of G.o.d, or Life, man forever reflects and embodies Life, not death. The material senses testify falsely. They presuppose that G.o.d is good and that man is evil, that Deity is deathless, but that man dies, losing the divine likeness.

Science and material sense conflict at all points, from the revolution of the earth to the fall of a sparrow. It is mortality only that dies.

To say that you and I, as mortals, will not enter this dark shadow of material sense, called _death_, is to a.s.sert what we have not proved; but man in Science never dies. Material sense, or the belief of life in matter, must perish, in order to prove man deathless.

As Truth supersedes error, and bears the fruits of Love, this understanding of Truth subordinates the belief in death, and demonstrates Life as imperative in the divine order of being.

Jesus declares that they who believe his sayings will never die; therefore mortals can no more receive everlasting life by believing in death, than they can become perfect by believing in imperfection and living imperfectly.

Life is G.o.d, and G.o.d is good. Hence Life abides in man, if man abides in good, if he lives in G.o.d, who holds Life by a spiritual and not by a material sense of being.

A sense of death is not requisite to a proper or true sense of Life, but beclouds it. Death can never alarm or even appear to him who fully understands Life. The death-penalty comes through our ignorance of Life,--of that which is without beginning and without end,--and is the punishment of this ignorance.

Holding a material sense of Life, and lacking the spiritual sense of it, mortals die, in belief, and regard all things as temporal. A sense material apprehends nothing strictly belonging to the nature and office of Life. It conceives and beholds nothing but mortality, and has but a feeble concept of immortality.

In order to reach the true knowledge and consciousness of Life, we must learn it of good. Of evil we can never learn it, because sin shuts out the real sense of Life, and brings in an unreal sense of suffering and death.

Knowledge of evil, or belief in it, involves a loss of the true sense of good, G.o.d; and to know death, or to believe in it, involves a temporary loss of G.o.d, the infinite and only Life.

Resurrection from the dead (that is, from the belief in death) must come to all sooner or later; and they who have part in this resurrection are they upon whom the second death has no power.

The sweet and sacred sense of the permanence of man's unity with his Maker can illumine our present being with a continual presence and power of good, opening wide the portal from death into Life; and when this Life shall appear "we shall be like Him," and we shall go to the Father, not through death, but through Life; not through error, but through Truth.

All Life is Spirit, and Spirit can never dwell in its antagonist, matter.

Life, therefore, is deathless, because G.o.d cannot be the opposite of Himself. In Christian Science there is no matter; hence matter neither lives nor dies. To the senses, matter appears to both live and die, and these phenomena appear to go on _ad infinitum_; but such a theory implies perpetual disagreement with Spirit.

Life, G.o.d, being everywhere, it must follow that death can be nowhere; because there is no place left for it.

Soul, Spirit, is deathless. Matter, sin, and death are not the outcome of Spirit, holiness, and Life. What then are matter, sin, and death? They can be nothing except the results of material consciousness; but material consciousness can have no real existence, because it is not a living--that is to say, a divine and intelligent--reality.

That man must be vicious before he can be virtuous, dying before he can be deathless, material before he can be spiritual, is an error of the senses; for the very opposite of this error is the genuine Science of being.

Man, in Science, is as perfect and immortal now, as when "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of G.o.d shouted for joy."

With Christ, Life was not merely a sense of existence, but a sense of might and ability to subdue material conditions. No wonder "people were astonished at his doctrine; for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes."

As defined by Jesus, Life had no beginning; nor was it the result of organization, or of an infusion of power into matter. To him, Life was Spirit.

Truth, defiant of error or matter, is Science, dispelling a false sense and leading man into the true sense of selfhood and G.o.dhood; wherein the mortal does not develop the immortal, nor the material the spiritual, but wherein true manhood and womanhood go forth in the radiance of eternal being and its perfections, unchanged and unchangeable.

This generation seems too material for any strong demonstration over death, and hence cannot bring out the infinite reality of Life,--namely, that there is no death, but only Life. The present mortal sense of being is too finite for anchorage in infinite good, G.o.d, because mortals now believe in the possibility that Life can be evil.

The achievement of this ultimatum of Science, complete triumph over death, requires time and immense spiritual growth.

I have by no means spoken of myself, I _cannot_ speak of myself as "sufficient for these things." I insist only upon the fact, as it exists in divine Science, that man dies not, and on the words of the Master in support of this verity,--words which can never "pa.s.s away till all be fulfilled."

Because of these profound reasons I urge Christians to have more faith in living than in dying. I exhort them to accept Christ's promise, and unite the influence of their own thoughts with the power of his teachings, in the Science of being. This will interpret the divine power to human capacity, and enable us to _apprehend_, or lay hold upon, "that for which," as Paul says in the third chapter of Philippians, we are also "apprehended of [or grasped by] Christ Jesus,"--the ever-present Life which knows no death, the omnipresent Spirit which knows no matter.

Personal Statements

Many misrepresentations are made concerning my doctrines, some of which are as unkind and unjust as they are untrue; but I can only repeat the Master's words: "They know not what they do."

The foundations of these a.s.sertions, like the structure raised thereupon, are vain shadows, repeating--if the popular couplet may be so paraphrased--

The old, old story, Of _Satan_ and his _lie_.

In the days of Eden, humanity was misled by a false personality,--a talking snake,--according to Biblical history. This pretender taught the opposite of Truth. This abortive ego, this fable of error, is laid bare in Christian Science.

Human theories call, or miscall, this evil a child of G.o.d. Philosophy would multiply and subdivide personality into everything that exists, whether expressive or not expressive of the Mind which is G.o.d. Human wisdom says of evil, "The Lord knows it!" thus carrying out the serpent's a.s.surance: "In the day ye eat thereof [when you, lie, get the floor], then your eyes shall be opened [you shall be conscious matter], and ye shall be as G.o.ds, knowing good and evil [you shall believe a lie, and this lie shall seem truth]."

Bruise the head of this serpent, as Truth and "the woman" are doing in Christian Science, and it stings your heel, rears its crest proudly, and goes on saying, "Am I not myself? Am I not mind and matter, person and thing?" We should answer: "Yes! you are indeed yourself, and need most of all to be rid of this self, for it is very far from G.o.d's likeness."

The egotist must come down and learn, in humility, that G.o.d never made evil. An evil ego, and his a.s.sumed power, are falsities. These falsities need a denial. The falsity is the teaching that matter can be conscious; and conscious matter implies pantheism. This pantheism I unveil. I try to show its all-pervading presence in certain forms of theology and philosophy, where it becomes error's affirmative to Truth's negative.

Anatomy and physiology make mind-matter a habitant of the cerebellum, whence it telegraphs and telephones over its own body, and goes forth into an imaginary sphere of its own creation and limitation, until it finally dies in order to better itself. But Truth never dies, and death is not the goal which Truth seeks.

The evil ego has but the visionary substance of matter. It lacks the substance of Spirit,--Mind, Life, Soul. Mortal mind is self-creative and self-sustained, until it becomes non-existent. It has no origin or existence in Spirit, immortal Mind, or good. Matter is not truly conscious; and mortal error, called _mind_, is not G.o.dlike. These are the shadowy and false, which neither think nor speak.

All Truth is from inspiration and revelation,--from Spirit, not from flesh.

We do not see much of the real man here, for he is G.o.d's man; while ours is man's man.

I do not deny, I maintain, the individuality and reality of man; but I do so on a divine Principle, not based on a human conception and birth. The scientific man and his Maker are here; and you would be none other than this man, if you would subordinate the fleshly perceptions to the spiritual sense and source of being.