"WHAT a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties!" Thus Shakespeare; while Mrs. Eddy writes, "The admission to one's self that man is God's own likeness sets one free to master the infinite idea. This conviction shuts the door on death and opens it wide towards immortality" (Science and Health, p. 90). When mortals see themselves from the depths of their temptations, they are at least ready to appreciate Goethe's contention that men are capable of doing or being a party to all the evil that has been or ever will be done. When, on the other hand, we see ourselves from the heights of our desires and aspirations, even as we hope and feel we are seen and loved of God, we feel that we are capable of doing, or being a party to, all the good that ever has been or ever will be sought after, loved, and done.
What man really is, as God's image and likeness, and what we may accomplish as we awaken to this likeness, does not so fully appear as does what mortal and sinful man would do if he were left free to follow out all of his evil desires, suggestions, or temptations. We as yet only "know in part," and only conceive or hope "in part." Even Jesus, and those who have stood closest to him in spirit and achievement, saw and taught that all the heights and depths and glories of the nature and possibilities of man in conscious union and harmony with God, have not as yet been demonstrated, nor even expressed in terms of human conception, aspiration, and hope.
While mortal man professes to powers and virtues he knows that he does not possess, and desires evils that he is afraid to have known, we find that as we get glimpses of man as he should be, and as he really is as God's idea, he is endowed with a nature which only perfection can satisfy and with faculties which will enable him to realize this nature. There is nothing too noble and Godlike for him to aspire after and to attain to. At heart we do not feel that anything is too good to be true. We believe in the aspirations, hopes, and prophecies of the best men and women, as well as in the good deeds and mighty works that are attributed to them, because everything good and desirable seems reasonable and possible. Indeed we feel that the reasonableness or the possibility of realizing any spiritual gift is in direct proportion to its ability to satisfy our highest sense of good.
"The fidelity of what is to what is good," is the necessary presupposition as well as the very essence of all true faith. The nature of the real man being derived from God and at one with Him, God demands of us nothing which our own best and real self does not also demand. The very fact that so much is demanded of us by the teaching of the Master, and by the ever-present Christ, is the best kind of evidence that man is meant for something far higher and better than we have yet realized; and that every step forward in the spiritual life is not only satisfying, comforting, and healing to our whole being, but also awakens new and better desires and gives birth to higher and more glorious hopes, is the best kind of proof that an all-wise and loving Father has made provision for us beyond what we can think or hope.
In actual experience we find that in order to be at peace with conscience, in harmony with our best selves, in fellowship with mankind, and in conscious union with God, we must have an ever-growing and deepening sense of love for God and man. We feel a sense of loss and discord every time we neglect to do that which the still, small voice within,— the Christ, — whispers to us as being the wisest, kindest, most loving and helpful thing that is possible for us to do. And we have made very little progress in the spiritual life until we have good will for every one, and strive to think nothing, say nothing, and do nothing which is unjust, unkind, or hurtful to any one. Highest and best of all, we find that it is our duty and privilege, and really our greatest blessing and joy, to befriend, to bless, and to love even those who misunderstand, misjudge, and hate us. Indeed, as one learns to love his enemies he is obeying the highest teachings of conscience as well as of Christ Jesus. He is obeying the highest demand of his own nature and being as well as of God's.
The desire and goal of that love which is the greatest necessity of man, as well as the highest commandment of God, seems, as Prof. George B. Foster has so admirably phrased it, to be that "personal fellowship in which each has joy in all, for which each would gladly sacrifice everything else. To originate and deepen such fellowship is the unchangeable and eternal will of Love." Again to quote Professor Foster: "To love one's enemy, therefore, is not an exceptional accomplishment, which one may admire but not understand; certainly not a moral abnormality which is repellent, but a vivid example of the will that wills nothing but personal fellowship. If enmity could set limits to love, love would be limited from without and unfree. On reflection, one sees that it thus belongs to the very essence of love to love one's enemies" (Finality of the Christian Religion, pp. 471-472). Mrs. Eddy goes so far as to teach that it belongs to the very nature of the good man to love seeming enemies, not as enemies, but as friends (See article, "Love Your Enemies," in Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 8 to 13), and all experience teaches us that our seeming enemies are often our best friends.
It also belongs to our true higher nature, as revealed to us in Science, to have sympathy, kindness, good will and love for the whole creation. All growth heavenward is a growth in the universality as well as in the purity and intensity, of our love. The best men love the animals, the trees, the flowers, — the whole order of nature, even better than a low order of men loves God and their fellow-men; and as our love becomes universal, pure, and vital, as we long to impart good and only good to everything as well as to everybody, as we seek to help everything and injure nothing, we ourselves are blessed by the fearlessness, certainty, and security of love, as well as by its peace, joy, and harmony. It is a beautiful and necessary law of our being that we fear nothing which we really love and bless, but fear everything that we hate and injure; hence it is that "perfect love casteth out fear," and that "he that feareth is not made perfect in love."
While perfect love for God, man, and the whole creation includes and fulfils every demand of conscience, reason, and revelation, our own nature, as well as God's, requires of us the sincerity, truthfulness, faithfulness, insight, activities, and harmonies of Love and of Love's essential qualities. We always have a good conscience when we are true and truthful; but let the least note of falsehood or deception find expression in our words or deeds, and we feel condemned by everything we prize most and love best.
Man is made for life and not for death; for harmonious action and not for discord and inertia; for unfoldment and not for retrogression. As there is such a desire for immortality and clinging to life, such joy and inner approval and harmony when we live most perfectly and abundantly, such infinite and eternal ends to live for, our own nature confirms the almost universal hope in, as well as desire for, eternal Life. And closely associated with our desire and need for Life, and to live ever more perfectly and abundantly, is our dissatisfaction with all the discords and inharmonies, and our joy in all the concords and harmonies, of human existence. We ought to be even more readily reconciled to discords and inharmonies in mathematics and music than in life.
To be happy and to be in harmony with our environment we have to do our work and do it well. All necessary work can be and must be lifted above the sense of drudgery and weariness and become a fine art, a recreation, a joy; and there is within us the feeling that we should not only do everything so well that it becomes an act of worship, but that we should be doing the things that are most worth while. We are most at one with our real selves, as well as with God and His creation, when we are doing the highest and best things in the best and most perfect way.
Faith or confidence in God, or in the divine power by which we live, is another fundamental necessity of our being. Without faith it is impossible to please God. "Faith in God," faith in man, faith in the integrity and reliability of God's universe, faith that all is well with us and will become better as we do the best we can, faith in the ultimate and universal victory of good, — this is the very substance of that we most need and hope for. Then, too. as previously indicated, there is within humanity the desire, necessity, and capacity to know God and the things of God. We long to know the truth, and feel that we can know it, and will finally know it perfectly. We also long to be lifted above all deception. In our best moments, at least, we feel the desire as well as the necessity to be known by the whole universe at our best, and to know even as we are known. Then we long to have no consciousness which is not loving, healing, and helpful. And this perfect consciousness, in the light of Christianity, of Christian Science, is the Christ-mind, the spiritual and perfect idea of being. It is God's point of view becoming ours also. "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." God forever sees everything that He has made, and behold it is very good.
All of the highest moral and spiritual teachings of the race are written in the constitution, aspirations, and hopes of men. The Law was written upon the heart before it was written upon the tablets of stone. The Sermon on the Mount was a perception and formulation of the moral and spiritual laws which conscience and reason and Love are always pleading with us to obey, and to obey for our own highest good as well as for the highest good of all. The visions of Isaiah and of St. John, and the prayers of Jesus and of his friends in all the ages, are expressions of desires and needs that God has implanted within the hearts and minds of all His children. Thus, too, Mrs. Eddy must have felt the power of Truth before she could give it to the world in Science and Health.
Because of man's divine origin nothing but an ever-unfolding and growing sense of perfection can satisfy us, hence we may confidently and reasonably expect that there is no sense of evil which we shall not overcome, and no desire and need of good which we shall not realize and make a stepping-stone to still higher attainments.
