His unseen individuality, so superior to that which was
seen, was not subject to the temptations of the flesh, to
laws material, to death, or the grave. Formed and gov- [5]
erned by God, this individuality was safe in the substance
of Soul, the substance of Spirit—yea, the substance of
God, the one inclusive good.
In Science all being is individual; for individuality is
endless in the calculus of forms and numbers. Herein [10]
sin is miraculous and supernatural; for it is not in the
nature of God, and good is forever good. Accord-
ing to Christian Science, perfection is normal—not
miraculous. Clothed, and in its right Mind, man's
individuality is sinless, deathless, harmonious, eternal. [15]
His materiality, clad in a false mentality, wages feeble
fight with his individuality—his physical senses with
his spiritual senses. The latter move in God's grooves
of Science: the former revolve in their own orbits, and
must stand the friction of false selfhood until self- [20]
destroyed.
In obedience to the divine nature, man's individuality
reflects the divine law and order of being. How shall
we reach our true selves? Through Love. The Prin-
ciple of Christian Science is Love, and its idea represents [25]
Love. This divine Principle and idea are demonstrated,
in healing, to be God and the real man.
Who wants to be mortal, or would not gain the true
ideal of Life and recover his own individuality? I will
love, if another hates. I will gain a balance on the side of [30]
good, my true being. This alone gives me the forces of
God wherewith to overcome all error. On this rests the
[pg 105]
implicit faith engendered by Christian Science, which [1]
appeals intelligently to the facts of man's spirituality, in-
dividuality, to disdain the fears and destroy the discords
of this material personality.
On our Master's individual demonstrations over sin, [5]
sickness, and death, rested the anathema of priesthood
and the senses; yet this demonstration is the foundation
of Christian Science. His physical sufferings, which
came from the testimony of the senses, were over when
he resumed his individual spiritual being, after showing [10]
us the way to escape from the material body.
Science would have no conflict with Life or common
sense, if this sense were consistently sensible. Man's real
life or existence is in harmony with Life and its glorious
phenomena. It upholds being, and destroys the too [15]
common sense of its opposites—death, disease, and sin.
Christian Science is an everlasting victor, and vanquish-
ment is unknown to the omnipresent Truth. I must ever
follow this line of light and battle.
Christian Science is my only ideal; and the individual [20]
and his ideal can never be severed. If either is misunder-
stood or maligned, it eclipses the other with the shadow
cast by this error.
Truth destroys error. Nothing appears to the physi-
cal senses but their own subjective state of thought. The [25]
senses join issue with error, and pity what has no right
either to be pitied or to exist, and what does not exist in
Science. Destroy the thought of sin, sickness, death, and
you destroy their existence. “Whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap.” [30]
Because God is Mind, and this Mind is good, all
is good and all is Mind. God is the sum total of the
[pg 106]
universe. Then what and where are sin, sickness, and [1]
death?
Christian Science and Christian Scientists will, must,
have a history; and if I could write the history in poor
parody on Tennyson's grand verse, it would read [5]
thus:—
Traitors to right of them,
M. D.'s to left of them,
Priestcraft in front of them,
Volleyed and thundered! [10]
Into the jaws of hate,
Out through the door of Love,
On to the blest above,
Marched the one hundred.
Extract From My First Address In The Mother Church, May 26, 1895
Friends and Brethren:—Your Sunday Lesson, com-
posed of Scripture and its correlative in “Science and
Health with Key to the Scriptures,” has fed you. In addi- [20]
tion, I can only bring crumbs fallen from this table of
Truth, and gather up the fragments.
It has long been a question of earnest import, How
shall mankind worship the most adorable, but most
unadored—and where shall begin that praise that shall
never end? Beneath, above, beyond, methinks I hear [25]
the soft, sweet sigh of angels answering, “So live, that
your lives attest your sincerity and resound His praise.”
Music is the harmony of being; but the music of Soul
affords the only strains that thrill the chords of feeling
and awaken the heart's harpstrings. Moved by mind, [30]
your many-throated organ, in imitative tones of many
[pg 107]
instruments, praises Him; but even the sweetness and [1]
beauty in and of this temple that praise Him, are earth's
accents, and must not be mistaken for the oracles of God.
Art