Dear Mrs. Eddy: Not as an idle inquirer, but as an earnest, sincere thinker after the Truth, do I address you; and I hope you will, out of the goodness of your heart, answer me. I have completed a course of Mental or Christian Science lectures. My teacher is a practising metaphysician of Chicago. She is also a "Theosophist," and during her lectures she introduced much of the Theosophic teachings and belief. When we were through, she advised us to purchase Sinnett's works, and several other books of like nature. I will say first, that I have your book, and that, with my Bible, I study constantly. After her suggestion I bought Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism," and have read it. I am now all confusion and mixed. I can not reconcile it with the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. I can not reconcile it with your teachings, consequently. Now, will you help me? Are you a Theosophist? My teacher says: "Theosophy is metaphysics (Christian Science), only more so." Sinnett's book speaks (page 255) of "the necessity of evil." (?) Do "inanimate forms progress onward until a human Soul has been formed"? Do you believe "in the certainty of some hundred many-earth-lives to come,—the repeated in-carnations of a Soul"? He says: "Our planet and ourselves are no more creations than an iceberg." He says: "The seventh principle of man is undefinable, incomprehensible, and is the only God recognized by esoteric knowledge." Does that agree with your doctrine? He also says: "You can be immortal in good by identifying onesself with God, or can be immortal in evil by identifying onesself with Satan." He says, there are utterly unspiritual Egos. Do you believe in "the system of seven worlds for man," and in the seven principles that the occult science teaches men are composed of? Tell me, dear Mrs. Eddy, can one be a thorough, consistent believer in the teachings of Theosophy and the occult sciences, and at the same time a thorough, consistent believer in Christian Science, and a successful Healer? I have studied in order that I may be able to live the pure Christian life here, and to do good; oh, I want to do much good, and I see daily where I can do it if I am in the right path; and so it is for this I ask your help and advice, which I feel sure you'll not refuse to give me. If Divine Spirit created man in his own image and likeness, how can there "be unspiritual Egos"? or how can man be spiritually evil and immortally evil?
Hoping anxiously for an early reply,
I am sincerely yours,
Answer. Your interesting questions found ready response in my heart, and enlisted my interest in your situation, as hundreds of others are doing, but for lack of time remain unanswered. I can only touch briefly the borderland of comment on the vast questions proposed.
Just now, the darkest spot on the horizon of mortal mind that Christian Science can illumine is envy, and the strife for "who shall be greatest." It pushes Christianity aside to elbow in a crowd of robbers, that enter not in by the door, Truth, but would climb up some other way. Obscure, unlettered, unprincipled people are filling the field as Mind-Healers, who are mind-killers, building their only superstructures on false foundations —the power of evil and substance of matter. They are working out, through mortal mind, the claim of total depravity, in all its forms of animal magnetism. They rise on the merits of the true healer, to at length fall from their own demerits.
The above qualities, entering so largely into their work, engender the most difficult forms of disease.
Twenty years ago, when I first brought this subject to the consideration of the race, to be a Christian Science Mind-healer was no bid for respectability, popularity, wealth. It was a sharp appeal to conscience, spiritual growth, moral courage. The question then was, "Can you drink the cup?" On this basis there was no danger of injuring onesself or one's neighbor. The pioneer work has been done faithfully. Now comes the inquiry, Shall this work be overthrown by charlatans of the baser sort? Naught but the unselfish purpose, the higher understanding of God and the love of man, are incentives to real Mind-Healing. Once in this direction, and persecution, hardship, sacrifice, only "lead into green pastures, and beside the still waters."
Of "Esoteric Buddhism," its oriental necromancy, philosophy, or religion, I am happily ignorant. Such human philosophy may charm, allure, but it obscures the spiritual sense of Divine Science.
I recommend that you quit other reading and confine yourself for the present to the perusal of the Scriptures, and my work, Science and Health. This book has a Key to the Scriptures that never picks the lock, but opens the Word only as it turns in the grooves of God. This course pursued, and you will gain consolation and light. Theosophy is not allied to Christian Science: it misleads the understanding, whereas Christian Science enlightens it.
In good there is no necessity for evil. If evil has a necessity, it is to destroy itself.
The inanimate does not originate the animate. Intelligence never sprang from nonintelligence.
Soul is Spirit, infinite and eternal; hence Soul is neither sinful nor susceptible of growth—can neither sin nor die. "The wages of sin is death." Soul is immortal Spirit,—God,—and is in nothing unlike Him. Mortals entertain a false conception of Soul, because the senses say God—Mind—is in matter. This false view of Life, substance and Intelligence is miscalled Soul. Flesh was never incarnated; God made manifest in the flesh is the divine outer action upon the inner vile affections of mortals. The influence from without cometh from Spirit. Whatever is from within is of the flesh.
It was a false teacher who told you that Christian Science and Theosophy are one.
Man is not as an iceberg; he is the image and likeness of his Maker; and the sunlight of Truth melts these frozen hypotheses of error with the warmth of divine Love.
Man has but one Principle, and that is God; and the Scripture saith: "Acquaint now thyself with God, and be at peace."
Good is immortal, and evil is the opposite of good; hence evil is mortal.
The Ego is Spirit, and can be nothing else.
To your last touching enquiry, "Can one believe both Theosophy and Christian Science and be a successful healer?" I answer, No! "As well might a camel go through the eye of a needle." Christ is the Way, and the spiritual idea coincides at no point with the sensual or material.
Now dear friend, follow only the guidance of Truth and Love; then you will be at peace, and heal the sick and sinner.
Yours tenderly.
