In what does a man's identity consist? Whence comes it? Has it birth and death? Has it a double significance? Has it aught in common with moral responsibility? Grave questions these; questions so serious in their import, that the changes will be rung upon them, until from her throne of authority, the irrefutable decision of Divine Science is universally heard, understood, accepted, and incorporated into man's existence. By the aid of this Science only, can a pathway be found through the labyrinth of the great problems before this people.
"The proper study of mankind is man;" and the two great lessons of the age are these: first, to find out what man is, and whence he came; second, what he is not, and from what he did not come. This century is far advanced in the lesson which shall show the answer to both these questions. Christian Science teaches how to learn these lessons aright, and under its holy instruction, man attains for the first time a true conception of his identity and individuality; and as he studies, he developes a deep consciousness that from Infinite Intelligence he reflects forever the power to "divide the waters from the waters," to mark off the real identity in God from the delusion of a possible one in evil. He learns to separate man, the perfect idea of Divine Mind, from its opposite falsity, or matter, as a mere complexity of sensible forms, and to bring out this sense of spiritual reality and origin in demonstration of power over the suppositional. He learns to follow the divine command to "Call no man father," which means, author. He rejoices rather that he consciously hears God's command to hold his origin and being alone from Him. Just in the exact ratio that he gains the fact of his identity in, and inseparability from, God, (Good,) the opposite claims of earthly parentage, material birth, growth and death fade away, as the mirage before the light of the full-orbed sun.
As he comprehends God to be the One Mind, Cause and Controller of all things, he learns to live in unison and harmony with this One Mind, of which he is the reflection and idea. He sees that he is governed by it, and by it alone. No longer has he two lives to live, the true and the false, the good and the evil, the spiritual and the material—each clashing with the other. No longer do the false influences of material position, kindred or a human sense of possessions, set at naught the command of God which bids him "be about the Father's business." Gathering an ever growing sense of his spiritual origin, he sees the Master's meaning, in the words "If any man come unto me and hate not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple." No theologian, preaching the accepted creeds of modern Christianity, can attain the meaning of these seemingly awful conditions of discipleship. To the student of Divine Science, how radiant are they with love and justice, mercy and peace. We long to follow in the Master's footsteps, and learn how to be forever present with God.
But we know we cannot serve two masters, nor claim two opposite sets of duties, or two kinds of pleasures. We must hate the one and cleave to the other. If man has a material birth and kindred ties, duties and positions based on material foundations, some of God's children are of necessity nearer and dearer to us than others. His life and labors are for the few and not for all. But, on the other hand, realizing birth or origin alone from Spirit gives rise to the lofty conception of a universal brotherhood and sisterhood, a common Father and Mother,—God, and interests which are in mutual harmony, and a universe which mirrors Love.
As man learns in Divine Science how to resign all claims as a creator of, or a thing created from, matter, he feels his supremacy asserting itself in victory over all the minor falsehoods which are based on the greater one,—that Life, Substance, or Intelligence belong to matter. And when he grasps the great fact of One Mind only, and that one the Good, the opposite unreality of minds many and claims of evil becomes equally apparent. If parents would save their children from the evils of sin, sickness, and death, let them learn, like Abraham of old, to tear from the thought all that would divide Life from God: let them go through the furnace of purification of conception, and their Isaacs will not be lost, but will come closer than ever to them through consecration.
If it were true that man starts from a human parent, he would be handicapped from the outset, in the race of life. What a weight of error is transmitted to each of us, in belief, of inherited traits of character, family idiosyncracies, taints of diseases or weaknesses, which, unless destroyed, make life a burden, and warp the development of us all. How common the saying, "That man is his father over again in looks, disposition, health and everything." Does this mean a duplicated identity? All Truth is God. If heredity be true, in any of its statements, its Truth is God; and this once granted, we have no standard sense of right, no code of honor, no moral responsibility, no free agency, no identity, but are shuttlecocks at the mercy of a long line of diseased or impotent ancestors, and must perforce, as years pass on, work out the taints of blood and foolish characteristics of families in diseases or sins. Again, if heredity be true, animal magnetism and spiritualism are also true, for if man is subject to contamination or psychological impressions before his birth as a mortal, or is hindered and hampered by the ignorance or follies of those before him, equally true it is that he has no power to keep his life, liberty or happiness out of the clutches of those living.
This brings us back to our starting point, namely, that in order to preserve his identity and health, man must find out by what he is controlled, and by what he is not. He must cease laying at the door of inert, lifeless non-intelligible matter, the blame which lies in his own ignorance, and then learn the next lesson, which teaches him what it is that transmits diseases, proclivities and deformities from generation to generation. He will learn that the belief that there are human minds is the primal culprit, and the final claim put forth by this same belief is, that a man's identity, personality, yea, consciousness of existence, can be entirely, as well as in part, in the hands of a fellow man, and out of the hands of God.
Again, in our courts of justice, do the judges pass sentence on the act or the motive? Do they take into consideration the awful pressure of a biased life, with sin for a parent? Nay; they hold the prisoner responsible for his deeds of wickedness, and thus decide exactly in opposition to the medical faculty when disease is diagnosed. Certainly, here is a discrepancy. The great fact is this: if man is responsible for inherited sin, he is also responsible for inherited disease, though he is ignorant of this fact. Either his identity and individuality and character are inviolable and unchangeable, because from God, or he is the slave of his ancestors' passions and delusions, the toy of his fellow-men's speculations. This land is the land of freedom, yet by some strange paradox its emblematical bird is one which preys upon all weaker ones. Is this the true idea of liberty? Shall we put in a puny claim for an identity in matter or mortal mind when any one moment may end it forever? Are we drifting nonentities, mere flotsam and jetsam on the vast waves of human blindness and ignorance?
