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.
