St. Paul speaks of what we understand to be the new birth as "waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." The Scripture saith, "none but the pure in heart shall see God;" nothing aside from the spiritualization, yea, the highest christianization of thought and desire, can give the true perception of God and divine Science and their results in health, happiness, and holiness. The new birth is not the work of a moment; it begins with moments, and goes on with years—moments of surrender to God, of childlike trust and joyful adoption of good; moments of self-abnegation, self-consecration, heaven-born hope and spiritual love.
Time may commence, but it cannot complete, the new birth,—eternity does this,—for progress is the law of Infinity. Only from the sore travail of mortal mind shall Soul be satisfied, and man awake in His likeness. What a Soul-lighted thought is this, that mortals can lay off the "old man" until they reflect only, and all of the infinite good that we name God, and arrive at the fulness of the stature of man in Christ. In mortal and material man goodness is in embryo; he must, by suffering for sin, be developed into an infant Christian; and feeding at first on the milk of the word, he drinks in the sweet revealings of a new and more spiritual Life and Love. They nourish his hungry hopes, satisfy more his immortal cravings, and so comfort, cheer and bless him, that he saith, In mine infancy, this is enough of heaven to come down to earth. But as he grows into the manhood and womanhood of Christianity, he finds so much wanting, and so very much requisite to become Christ-like, that he saith The Principle of Christianity is infinite, it being God, and this infinite Principle hath infinite claims on man, and these claims are divine, not human; and man's ability to meet them is from God, for being His likeness or image, he must reflect the full dominion of Spirit, even its supremacy over sin, sickness, and death. Here, then, is the awaking from the dream of Life in matter, to the great fact that God is our Life, and we must entertain a higher sense of both God and man. We must learn that Deity is more than a person, or finite form; that God is a divine whole, an all-pervading Intelligence and Love, yea, a divine Principle, and Christianity is a divine science. This newly awakened sense is wholly spiritual; it emanates from Soul instead of body, and is the new birth began in Christian Science.
Now dear reader, pause for a moment with me to contemplate this new-born attitude of thought, for the spot whereon thou treadest is holy ground. Here you stand face to face with the infinite demands of infinite Spirit, and behold for the first time the irresistable conflict between the flesh and Spirit; and before the awful detonations of Sinai you hear and record the thunderings of the spiritual law of Life as opposed to the material law of death, the spiritual law of Love as opposed to the material sense of love, the law of omnipotent harmony and good as opposed to any possible law of sin or sickness; and before the flames have died away on this mount of revelation, like the patriarch of old, you take off your shoes, lay aside your material appendages of understanding, and give up your more material religion, with its rites and ceremonies, and put off your materia medica and hygiene as worse than useless, to sit at the feet of Jesus and meekly bow before the more spiritual idea that our blessed Master gave of the power of God to heal and save. Then it is that you behold for the first time the spiritual and divine Principle that redeems man from sin sickness and death.
The birth spiritual, whereby we gain divine power to heal the sick, rebuke the sinner, and destroy error with Truth, is when we have obtained a higher and holier sense of Truth, that opens to our enraptured view the supremacy of Spirit, universal harmony, God's entirety and the nothingness of matter. What is termed a material birth is the development of the entire material form of the human but not the divine being, and this birth is more or less prolonged and painful according to the timely or untimely circumstances the normal or abnormal or conditions attending it. So with the spiritual birth: man's primitive, spiritual, sinless existence is unfolded through the travail of mortal mind, hope deferred, the perishing pleasures and accumulating pains of sense, by which he loses himself as matter and gains his estate in Spirit. The purification or baptismals that come from Spirit, develop step by step the original likeness of perfect Spirit, and efface the mark of the beast. "God loveth those whom He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." Therefore rejoice in tribulation, at those spiritual signs of a new birth under the law and gospel of good.
The prominent laws which forward birth in the divine order of Science, are these: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," and "Love thy neighbor as thyself." These are the commands of infinite wisdom, which, translated into the new tongue, their spiritual meaning, signify, Thou shalt love Spirit only, and not its opposite in every God-quality, that we term matter. Thou shalt recognize thyself, and every man and woman of God's creating, as the children of one common Parent, whose father and mother, the divine "Us," are the one God, our spiritual Father, who made man one in good and good in One. With this recognition, man could never separate himself from goodness or God, and must entertain habitual love for his fellow man. Only by admitting evil and entering into a state of evil thoughts can we separate in belief one man's interests from that of the whole human family, or separate life from God. Envy, evil thinking, evil speaking, covetousness, lust, hatred or malice, will break the rule of Christian Science and prevent its demonstration.
The task of healing the sick is far less than teaching the divine Principle and rules of Christian Science so as to lift the affections and motives of men to adopt them and bring them out in their lives. He who has named the name of Christ so as to accept virtually the spiritual claims of Truth and Love in divine science, is daily departing from evil, and all the wicked endeavors of earth's demons can never change the current of that life from steadfastly flowing on to God, its divine source. But taking the livery of heaven to cover iniquity with, is the most fearful error that mortal man can commit. I should have more faith in an honest drugging doctor, healing me, who abides by his statements and works upon as high a principle as he understands, than I could or would have in a mental hypocrite, or malpractitioner. Between the centripetal and centrifugal moral forces of mind, its material and spiritual gravitations, we go into or we go out of materialism or error, and shall choose our course and pursue it. Which then shall be our choice, what is termed the temporal, material and perishable; or the spiritual and eternal? The diviner sense of Life and its grand pursuits is of itself a bliss, health-giving and joy-inspiring—it is the elixir of Life, that illumines our pathway with the radiance of divine Love, healing man spontaneously, morally and physically, and breathing the aroma of Jesus' own words, "Come unto me, all ye that are weary and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
