It has been said that the negative side of Unitarianism is better known than its positive side, or in other words, people know better its negations than its affirmations. This is largely true of Christian Science. I am confident if we but listen to both sides, we will find in it a welcome helper, and our preconceived opinions will quickly change. When the Founder of Christianity finished his earth work he left his religion a vital force in the world, though in its infancy. Its vitality existed in the fact that those who truly lived as he taught were able to prove their religion by practical works, such as the healing of disease, the casting out of evils, and the raising of the dead. Paul, who never enjoyed the benefits of Jesus' personal teaching, proved that Christianity had an ever-present divine Principle in accord with which all might do these same works through intelligent understanding. It is a recognized fact, that these works continued for the first three centuries of the Christian church, or until Constantine united the Church and State. Then materialism and worldliness crept in and gradually the vivid, spiritual power and works, which had so rapidly established Christianity throughout the Mediterranean country and cities, lessened, until the simple and spiritual import of divine law was again discovered in this century; and Christianity again proves to be scientifically true and demonstrable, "with signs following" through Christian Science.
We are all acquainted with the causes of the great Reformation, of the formation of Calvinistic theology, and of such teaching as we had in puritan America through Jonathan Edwards; of the modern liberal movement in Christianity as well as in Judaism, based on the fact that men could no longer believe in a Deity who left His children in endless torment and degradation. These are all steps upward to the recognition of a common Father, and the universal salvation of mankind from sin and death.
Channing once said, "Wait not to be backed by numbers. Wait not till you are sure of an echo from a crowd. The fewer the voices on the side of truth, the more distinct and strong must be your own." Thus it ever has been that Truth in the hour of its early discernment by men, has been represented by a marked minority. To bring our subject directly to a focus I would say, it is the sole aim of Christian Science to restore Christianity to its primitive strength, simplicity and practical works, namely, the healing of the sick, the preaching of the Gospel (Goodspell) and the casting out of evils from consciousness. To the Christian Scientist, the key-note to the solution of the perplexing problem of human existence is in the rational understanding of the causation of the effects or conditions good and bad which surround us on all sides. If we wish to purify the water supply of our town, we go to the lake from whence it comes, not to a half-way storage reservoir, because we know we must go to primitive first cause. Thus it must be if we would rid ourselves of the ills of the flesh and all their consequent sorrow. We must through rational, sober investigation and calm spiritual thought, ascertain whether or not the great First Cause, admitted to be infinite Perfection, creates both perfection and imperfection, harmony and discord, joy and sorrow, Good and evil, Life and death. Throughout the entire world of nature we have not a single suspension of the law that like produces like. Hence the assertion of Christian Science that God, the divine Mind, is perfection's self-hood, and can create only perfection; therefore sin, disease and death are not creations of a Principle whose very being is eternal and harmonious. Does light produce darkness, or frost create heat, or Truth form error? We answer, never. Can we worship in sincerity a God who creates an innumerable host of helpless beings, and gives them a knowledge of sin; and then perpetually punishes them by sickness, sorrow and death, for using and acting upon this God-given knowledge? Better believe in a Pagan god of evil, as well as a God of Good, than to hold that the eternal one creates, allows or sees a helpless creation, hopelessly subjected to sin, disease and death with no way of escape from this trinity of evil. Again, if sin or the knowledge of evil is in divine Mind, the more Godlike we become by nearer approach to the divine Mind, by overcoming the errors of the human mind, the more evil we shall know. All the thoughts of the Eternal are everlasting. Is evil one of his age-abiding thoughts? Where shall we turn for Truth? Hear what the inspired writer says: God is "of purer eyes than to behold evil." God is not tempted, neither tempteth he any man." Does Christian Science teach there is no sin? It does not. It teaches that evil is the direct result of a belief in a power apart from God or Good, termed sin, satan or devil: that this power is as real to material sense as Good is to spiritual sense, but because Good (the Anglo-Saxon term for God is Good) is the real and eternal, evil must be unreal and temporal in the realm of the real. If this is not so why should we try to overcome evil with Good, or how dare we say that "Truth crushed to earth shall rise again," or believe right, justice and Truth to be immortal or immutable, if their opposites, wrong, oppression, injustice and error are also eternal and equally real? Because Mind is God and he is all and all, matter, Mind's opposite, is unreal and temporal. In this religion it is recognized that God is divine Principle to be understood and demonstrated, instead of a remote and vague personality to be simply adored and believed as an enlarged human being. Jesus as the demonstrator of divine Science, a man who expressed the same Spirit of Truth that actuated Isaiah, Moses, the Baptist and all the spiritual leaders of Hebrew history, differing from these men in the fact that he was more directly born of the divine nature, thus giving him, in the words of the author of our text-book, Science and Health, "the Spirit without measure," proved his words by his deeds, and showed men if they would live in harmony with divine law, it meant not only freedom from disease, sin and death, but the power to do even the works he had done.
As I have before stated, the first three centuries of the Christian church proved that Jesus, the apostles and disciples, did not possess a power limited to them alone. This power was the manifestation of an eternal Principle, as old as the everlasting hills, and obtainable by all Christians through all time on certain conditions, namely, that material sense, sensualism, evil thought and blind belief be overcome, that spiritual illumination, purity, Christ-like living, and an intelligent understanding of divine causation might hold full sway. Hear his promises: "The works that I do ye shall do also and greater works than these;" again, "these signs shall follow them (not only you but them) that believe (understand. In my name shall they cast out devils. They shall speak with new tongues they shall take up serpents: and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover." Truly spake Emerson when he said, "There will be a new Church, founded on Moral Science,—at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger, again the algebra and mathematics of ethical law." We who are here to-night firmly believe that if we thoroughly acquaint ourselves with the moral law and abide by its statutes we will remain free from all acts of murder, theft, or crime in general. Thus it is that if we learn and live up to the spiritual law of life as formulated by the Master, and reduced to the language of to-day in divine or Christian Science, we will keep ourselves just as free from moral and bodily disease as we free ourselves from evil doing by living in accord with moral law. Men must cease looking on spiritual law as vague and for another world's use, but see it as the only one and true law for present living, and thus we shall learn that material law, so-called, is but human belief, productive of discord of every nature. To overcome evil and come into oneness with God, thereby earning power over human discord, we must overcome all such thoughts as lust, hate, pride, jealousy, self-love, desire and material living, that the Christ Mind may be all in all. Hence, "Let this Mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus."
Christian Science meets much opposition because it lays all stress on the testimony of spiritual sense and metaphysical reasoning in contradistinction to the evidence of material sense and reason based on laws of physics or matter. Do we not daily rise above the evidence of sense testimony when we rely on the verdict of astronomy that the sun rises not; do we not again do so when natural law proves to us that the straight stick which looks crooked under the water is still straight and again when conditions of atmosphere change a whole landscape do we not willingly believe the evidence of a law higher than physics? Why then should any object to the assertion that it does not follow that evil, disease, discord and death are real and eternal, because, material sense says so. Let us in this case find and rely upon the higher law and escape all this discord. Let fair thinking and tolerance have the ground. Truth is a circle, it must be approached from all sides, not one only. We shall thus gain the Truth that makes free.
It is a well known fact that blind opposition is always followed by honest investigation; thus can all afford to wait their time. The Founder of Christian Science in speaking of disease calls it but the "bugle call to higher thought and action."A correction was made in the September 1893 Journal: "The article in the August Journal entitled 'A Christian Science Lecture,' by Carol Norton, on page 205, was made to read: 'The Founder of Christian Science in speaking of disease calls it but the bugle call to higher thought and action.' It should have read thus: 'in speaking of the healing of disease,' these words having been inadvertently omitted. " It is a vital part of the religion, yet it is only a natural sequence to the teachings.
As to the assertion that medicine is God-given as a pathway to health, and that sickness is a wisely sent discipline from a loving Father, I feel we are privileged to ask the following questions: If medicine is a science, and drugs of divine origin, why do many of the greatest authorities agree that there is really no science in materia medica Hear what Dr. O. W. Holmes says, "If all the medicine were thrown into the sea, I feel that it would be better for the man and worse for the fishes." Also Dr. Mason Good of London, "The effects of medicine on the human system are in the highest degree uncertain, except indeed, that it has already destroyed more lives than war, pestilence, and famine all combined." If an eternal creator gives drugs, how can they lose power to cure? If sickness is to discipline us, what moral right have we to thwart God's means of educating us by trying to get well? Does God create man, then form certain laws, keep man in complete ignorance of those laws, and allow him to be constantly the victim of broken laws of whose existence he has been allowed no knowledge? The revelation of all higher Truth through mortals is as light through a window pane. The divine understanding comes most clearly through that man or woman whose material opacity is least, and this state of spiritual clear-sightedness is born only of temptation met and mastered, material sense subdued, and Christly character won.
As Channing says of miracles, so let us say: "Miracles are the acts and manifestations of a spiritual power in the universe superior to the powers and laws of matter." Let us see that spiritual law is divinely natural, and that its manifestations are supernatural to false personal sense only.
Says one of our writers of Christian Science teaching; "When we have occasion to speak of this, we call murder, murder; lying, lying; consumption, consumption; and a fever a fever: since these are their names to the material senses,—to the men of the world. Our real ground is, that these things are falsities to the spiritual man, and the spiritual realm. We also claim that the spiritual realm is the only one that has a right to be; that when this high Truth is perceived, the phenomenal and deceitful appearance of all forms of evil will disappear like shadows of the night. To embody our doctrine, as nearly as may be, in a single sentence, it is an honest, studious, persistent attempt to reduce our Saviour's teachings and maxims to every-day experience that the life that now is may be made glorious.
In the spirit of Christ's love let us go on higher and higher uplifting our fellow men until we come into perfect at-one-ment with Divine Mind—the Father.
What is thy thought? There is no miracle?
There is a great one, which them hast not read,
And never shall escape. Thyself, O man,
Thou art the miracle. Ay, thou thyself,
Being in the world and of the world, thyself,
Hast breathed in breath from Him that made the world.
Thou art thy Father's copy of Himself,—
Thou art thy Father's miracle.—
