In the Gospels two remarkable genealogies are recorded of our Master, Christ Jesus. St. Matthew traces a line of material ancestry from David to Jesus, thus testifying to the slow advance of human thought through many generations, or spiritual re-births, till it approaches a point of coincidence with the Divine; or, more exactly, till it reaches a point of self-dissolution, and the Divine is manifested just in so far and wherever the human has disappeared. The other genealogy is wholly Divine, and tells of the Light that emits light,—the Logos, or Divine Reasoning, which is ever with the Father, and shines in the darkness of earth through the One conceived of God. This is the real genealogy of us all, as God's ideas, and it is also the true origin and history of Christian Science. But it is natural, as so large a part of our thought is still human in spite of the spiritualizing influence of Science which is daily lifting thought above the clods to blossom in higher spheres of activity, for us to feel a deep interest in that building up of consciousness that has finally given way to let in so glorious a radiance on all humanity.
They who see the spiritual signs of the times,—who love America, her Pilgrim and Puritan Fathers,—whose ancestors have fought, not only in a material war for independence, but who have bent their mental sinews to the solving of the greatest problems that can ever confront man,—What is God? and What are man's relations to Him?—such that Christian Science may be the historical fulfilment of what this nation stands for and promises,—a development as yet nationally unacknowledged, but none the less real to the prophetic thinker.
That American institutions are superior to all others in many respects; that the general standard of morals is higher here than in any other country, and the average intelligence greater,—this we devoutly believe. Nevertheless, America is not all she should be, nor all that the civilized world has a right to expect her to be. To America the hungry eyes of idealists, social and religious, have looked for the solution of their problems. Here in a virgin soil, free from conservatism, free from precedent, noble thinkers planted the highest ideals of Europe, which were expected to blossom toward a millennium of altruistic civilization, where advanced mechanical invention would be but the servant of a nation governed both civilly and morally by grander systems than the world had ever seen put into practice.
In some ways the nation has fulfilled this ideal, but do we not too often see liberty turned to license, a corrupted system of politics, a discontented working-man, a grasping capitalist, a public thought where the very mention of the name of God, except as an abstract noun of far-off and indefinite attributes, is suspected as cant and bigotry; a society aping monarchical regime, a self-satisfied people taking it too much for granted that America is the greatest country in the world? The church has lost the zeal of her fathers, and in gaining breadth has embraced many subtle arguments of material philosophy; the country has ceased as a nation to argue about the eternal, its students and professors employ their time in observing and analyzing mere temporal phenomena, and regard the simple piety of the eighteenth century in America as a dark age of fanaticism. Truly, according to material evidence, setting aside those self-administered anæsthetics of flattery with which every age and every people have consoled their shortcomings, and comparing herself with the ideals of her founders, America has need of humility. It is vain to plead that we are young as a country as excuse for our failures to reach the level of many European institutions, for was not our civilization transplanted full-grown from the world, free from its parasites? Some historical idealist, visiting us for the first time, might exclaim: "Material prosperity! Inventions! Factories! Cities! Democracy! What, is this bustling, hurrying place the land where Columbus knelt in prayer? Is this country, with armies seeking conquest in foreign islands, the land where Elder Brewster set up the standard of a higher religion? Is this where generations of the unworldly lived and suffered, and battled with the problems of the universe as the very breath of their life? Why, you have wonderful intelligence, but there is more peace and harmony among the European peasantry, shackled as they are with inheritance of priestcraft and monarchism, than can be found in this heaving, throbbing mass of humanity, in one strained strife from top to bottom for place and power!"
The late war, with its glowing patriotism, its tidal wave of roused moral sentiment, has wakened us all to a new fervor of affection for our illustrious fatherland; yet if Christian Science had not shed its pure beneficence over us, how should we reply to such exclamations as these? We should even fear them, as so many of our countrymen do, and cry "Pessimism!" to all who voice such sentiments.
The fact is, optimism cannot be correctly drawn from material premises. The cold philosopher who reduces the heart and history of man to x, y, z, and reasons that all is vanity, is a traitor to humanity, justly condemned. Man must have, will have, hope, and he is justly cursed of God and man who tears down, where he cannot build up. The real spiritual optimist is the material pessimist; like Jesus, who saw the kingdom of God at hand, and also the destruction of unbelieving Jerusalem. So those who are bathed in the light of the new and full revelation of Divine Science can safely see the shortcomings of the land which gave it birth, for they hold the key of its redemption in their hands. Oh, may they prove worthy of the hour which needs them!
The nation does not as yet recognize its own ideal in this new movement. The world has looked for a material reign of harmony, a human Utopia, dominated by some powerful system of civic unselfishness to be born of intellect and natural science. In the old days they looked for a mortal king and a free Judæa. Neither came. Born of a woman, nourished in secrecy, despised and rejected of men,—this this is Truth's history. Truth is not born of the world, nor loved by the world, and its kingdom is not of the world. The Christ Science shows us the spiritual idea of America, and as we realize this in our lives, that hope for which thousands have suffered and died, the hope of a country governed by Christianity, free from worldliness, will be realized.
When Luther enthroned the revealed word of God in the place of church tradition, the world was confronted with a new problem that shook all earnest men with the birth agonies of mighty thought, that upheaved nations, separated peoples, founded a new world, and continued to saturate religious thought with fears, and doubts, and divisions, till old formulas were dissolved, to crystallize again in new forms. Hitherto the Christian world had accepted the Bible interpretation of the Roman Church as authority. Luther destroyed this faith, and threw the Scripture into the arena of individual discussion, there to be worshiped as literally inspired, and to be interpreted to each heart. For this ineffable service to mankind, Martin Luther will ever be enthroned in earth and heaven. Yet, for all the reverence his person inspired, he neither claimed nor attained for his own understanding of the Bible the place which the Roman orthodoxy occupied. Division began at once as spiritual activity was born.
The Episcopal church, founded externally on the personal policy of Henry VIII., nevertheless expressed an internal reform of religious feeling in England,—somewhat conservative, to be sure. We find the strongest action and power of the Reformation embodied in Calvin, Knox, and Presbyterianism; but the inspiration which had written the Scriptures, and which they recorded, was still lacking to explain them. The established church had proven itself unworthy by its fruits; Luther was a grand reformer, an exalted thinker; Melancthon was noble scholar; but the voice of actual spiritual authority, proving itself by signs following, was lacking to that age.
Thrown face to face with the literal reading and imperfect translation of these sacred accounts of the only monotheistic nation and its religious experience; with the poets and prophets, inspired yet still imperfect in their concepts of God; with the fragmentary, sometimes contradictory, narratives of that pure and perfect one who spoke in parables, oft misunderstood by those nearest him; with the epistles of those filled with the Spirit, but using of necessity material terms of expression, fearfully strained and deadened in meaning by the misuses of an unspiritual theology,—what were the formers of new creeds to do?
With souls of deep devotion, and hearts capable of mighty sacrifice, they nevertheless read eternal punishment, predestination, total depravity in that same book which was dearest on earth because it said "God is Love," and "Our Father which art in Heaven." So they reared that stone of fearful doctrine which darkened two centuries, and whose shadow still lies in cold regions of unenlightened thought to frighten children with the dread inheritance of an angry God. Yet, seeing as they did, we are thankful that with hearts naked and unjustified before God, they faced the problem, and did not reject. If they had refused the Bible as an inspired word, because of the seeming contradictions, we cannot tell how long the progress of religious thought might have been delayed. Instead, a perfect system of logic was compounded, based on an ethically impossible basis; but the spirit in which this was done, and with which devout thinkers took up this cross of their own manufacture, doubtless saved the world at this epoch. It brought about an honesty, humility, and self-sacrifice in human character which the world had not seen in many an age, and breathed a fresh, though piercing purity into the foul atmosphere of decaying doctrines. Let us not remember the hypocrisy, the intolerance, the fanaticism which were also fostered by this stern system of Calvin; but let us be grateful for that solemn self-abnegation which led our forefathers bravely to face such conclusions, just as they faced the lonely perils of our New England shore, and to accept them as emitting the most light, and stimulating the most spiritual growth of any doctrine the world then contained.
Many of these brave ones came to a new country to live the new religion. Their whole life and mind was filled with it, and the qualities of God, the responsibilities of man, were topics of daily discussion. A deep, true sense of the falsity and depravity of mortals was the strong, stern basis of their characters. Good was good, and evil was evil, for no modern philosophic devices were then invented for developing evil into good, and vice versa. They stood on the edge of the precipice of mortality and knew they were there. "Blessed are they that mourn," and "Blessed are they that weep." Theirs was a true pessimism, not looking for the infinite to emerge from the finite. Such a spirit of religious life as this made it possible for a Divine Science to be discerned, and such ancestry formed at length a character which was capable of giving way before the Light, thus letting through again upon the world a true ray of the Absolute.
The softening influences of more emotional Methodism, the still more literal interpretations of the Baptists, the more svmbolic reading of the Quakers, the clear intellectualitv of the Unitarians, the loving breadth of Universalism, — all these influences were at work when Christian Science was discovered, fragments bad thus been hacked from that austere stone of Calvinism, each stroke causing the reformer suffering. Conservative men feared, however, to lose the deadly logic of the old theologian by stepping aside one inch from his premises, lest they be thrown into confusion.
But there were other less definable, more powerful agent at work undermining these foundations. The old creeds caused fearful suffering, especially to women, who suffer most, because they are apt to love most. A woman can see clearer through her tears than a man through the spectacles of his human intellect. She could not endure to have her children eternally damned. and turned intuitively toward Love as the source of her own heart's affections. The truly spiritual woman must have a concrete religion, and will trust any existing creed that promises good rather than step into a chaos of human disputation, or play at marbles with precious stones by unsettling the questions of eternity for a moment. Is it not for this reason more than any other that we have no female philosophers, and that woman has usually grown along conservative lines?
The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science was a member of an Orthodox church; yet at the age of twelve she rejected the doctrine of predestination and eternal punishment. She simply loved her brothers and sisters too well and too unselfishly even to desire what they could not have. (See Retrospection and Introspection). Old theology received a terrific blow from the hands of this child, telling her minister that she would take her chances outside the church doors if for it was to this fearless, selfless spirit that divine logic was later added, and the solidity of Calvinism was everlastingly dissolved in that wondrous philosophy of Love— Christian Science. The Congregational Church sheltered and nourished the young spiritual growth of this exquisite character, though one of its credal bases she had rejected, and to this church Mrs. Eddy's heart ever turns with special affection and tenderness. She never left it, never swerved from her devotion to it, till her own larger growth forced her beyond its borders. Indeed, it was in attempting to fulfil her duty to this organization, that the accident occurred which led her to perceive the laws of Mind.
In Divine Science a firm basis of metaphysics is supplied whereon the wearied thinker may rest, and the merest child can step in confidence. No link is missing from the strong chain of spiritual reasoning wherein premise and conclusion unite in rhythmic perpetuity and perfection. Others have torn from honest John Calvin's system things which they could not supply, and the timid as well as the deeply loving have bided on the old platforms rather than risk a loss. The true metaphysics takes away no really good and helpful thought which has ever inspired man; but in the temple of spiritual logic, built without hands of human sophistries, can be found every jewel the tired old world has ever treasured, and found it set in the gold of its exact and demonstrable relationship to other proven gems. God's work is a complete work; in the crucible of a woman's heart the cruel stones of a petrified theology were melted, and from it God raised a structure of perfect logic, based on perfect Love
