MARY BAKER EDDY considered the subject of marriage of sufficient importance to include a chapter on it in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." In this chapter our Leader writes (p. 56), "Until the spiritual creation is discerned intact, is apprehended and understood, and His kingdom is come as in the vision of the Apocalypse,—where the corporeal sense of creation was cast out, and its spiritual sense was revealed from heaven,—marriage will continue, subject to such moral regulations as will secure increasing virtue."
Centuries before the discovery of Christian Science the need for moral regulations was discerned by Moses, the great Hebrew leader. He also recognized that his task was twofold. He must lead the Israelites out of Egypt, but he must also lead them into the true worship of the great "I AM THAT I AM" (Ex. 3:14). It was natural for Moses to turn to Spirit, God, for the way to accomplish this task. Had not God promised to direct and guide him all the way, even from Egypt to the Promised Land?
As a result of his communion with God, the Commandments were revealed to Moses as the supreme law of the Holy One of Israel. This law made plain to the Israelites that if God was to be their God and they were to be His people, they must worship and serve Him with purity, fidelity, and constancy.
The need for adherence to moral regulations is as great today as it was in the day when the Hebrew Lawgiver discerned the moral code and recorded it in tables of stone. The belief that the Commandments can be broken arises from the belief that God, Spirit, is not All-in-all; that matter, Spirit's supposititious opposite, is real and has life, substance, and intelligence.
In Genesis, the belief of life in matter was typified by a talking serpent to which Eve listened and succumbed. Claiming presence as her own innermost thought, the serpent whispered subtly and insistently that it would be very good for her to taste, to investigate, the knowledge and ways of evil. Adam, asleep under the mesmeric spell that he could be the avenue for a form of creation and the identifier of the varied forms of matter, yielded to the suggestion that disobedience to God's commands was desirable and necessary.
How many individuals, throughout human history, have been beguiled by the serpent to do that which they would not otherwise have done, because they have yielded to the suggestions of dissatisfaction, conceit, and disobedience! For a time they have believed the lie that God's laws can be disregarded and broken and have refused to heed the imperious command (Ex. 20:3), "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
When the writer was a student in college, evil suggestions seemed to be aimed at breaking down individual and collective resistance to smoking, drinking, and other evil habits or practices. The attack was aimed at young women in particular. It was emphasized and furthered by advertising and certain literature which suggested that good—contentment, hospitality, companionship, satisfaction—might be gained by one's yielding individual dominion and self-control to enslaving habits.
Similar suggestions tend to break down moral standards at the present time. They urge upon young and old, men and women, the necessity and desirability of tasting, of investigating, various forms of sensuality and immorality, both before and after matrimony.
Christ Jesus, whose higher concept of law included observing its spirit as well as its letter, taught that obedience to the seventh commandment extends far beyond mere physical continence. It calls for purity of thought.
"Infidelity to the marriage covenant is the social scourge of all races, 'the pestilence that walketh in darkness, . . . the destruction that wasteth at noonday.' The commandment, 'Thou shalt not commit adultery,' is no less imperative than the one, 'Thou shalt not kill'" (Science and Health, p. 56). This statement of our Leader's is the dictum of Christian Science.
Loyal Christian Scientists have learned that adherence to the Ten Commandments and to the Sermon on the Mount, which demand the demonstration of purity, morality, fidelity, and constancy, results in happier human relationships and more enduring marriages.
Christian Scientists are taught to work from the fact in divine Science that God is Soul, spiritual consciousness; that this pure, spiritual consciousness is imparted to God's spiritual ideas, individually and collectively, by reflection. They understand that God's ideas, His spiritual offspring, reflect, embody, and express the qualities of His holiness, purity, wholeness, completeness.
In the perfect Science of being, in which all is infinite Spirit, Soul, and its infinite idea, spiritual man and spiritual universe, all must be spiritual and mental. In Science, God's ideas reflect all the qualities, capacities, and faculties of the creator; therefore they include the feminine ones as well as the masculine ones.
Since the union of the divine characteristics in man is an unchangeable, eternal fact in Science, Jesus taught (Luke 20:34, 35), "The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage." Yet, in his human experience, the Master was present at the marriage in Cana and in effect gave his blessing to it. Mrs. Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 286), "Until time matures human growth, marriage and progeny will continue unprohibited in Christian Science."
Recognizing that Christ, Truth, its destroyer, is at hand, "that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan" (Rev. 12: 9) is wroth. If the serpent, or material sense, can befool Christian Scientists into admitting sin into their individual experience, it has delayed, for a time, the destruction of the belief in sin. No Christian Scientist can consistently say that there is no sin and at the same time indulge in it.
As individual adherents of the Science of the Christ, we must stand fearlessly and firmly for the activity, presence, and power of the spiritual idea. We must strive to overcome evil. Let us be wide awake in order that we may distinguish between pure thoughts from God, Soul, and satanic suggestions, symbolized by the red dragon, whispering that evil is real, attractive, and necessary. Such suggestions may use the press, the radio, the television, the arts, as their mouthpiece. They may use those we call our friends, our business associates, our fellow church members, or complete strangers as its salesmen, hawking its sordid, cheap, and tawdry wares.
Let us remember that evil thinking, evil speaking, and evil acting, even when camouflaged as human good or expediency, can never result in true happiness, brotherly love, spiritual growth; nor will they promote harmony in the home or in the community. But obedience and devotion to moral regulations and obligations, to the Commandments and the Beatitudes, will bring lasting satisfaction.
Perhaps someone is saying: "I agree with these statements, but unfortunately it is too late. The damage is already done." Or perhaps parents, troubled over the worldliness of their children, may say: "We've tried so earnestly to rear our children in the right way, to be good children. Yet they have drifted far from the standard we gave to them. They just won't listen. They say we are old-fashioned."
Can Christian Science help these situations? Can it heal sin and its effects? Indeed it can. Many a home has been preserved, many a marriage re-established, many a man, woman, and child awakened from the mesmerism of the serpent, evil, through the prayers of an earnest Christian Scientist. But the inquiring helper may ask, "How do I begin?" Perhaps the very first step for him to take is to give up a sense of despair and hopelessness by recognizing that no problem is beyond the ability of Christian Science to solve. To destroy sin, we must know that evil is not of God, the only cause; therefore it has no cause, no person to be its victim, no action, no intelligence, no subtlety, no power to keep itself going, no slyness to outwit Truth.
We have to see that the individuals involved in sin are really the victims of hypnotic suggestion. In material sense they are the dupes of the whispering serpent. Their need is to be aroused to the fact that there is no pleasure in evil and that in Science they are the children of God, Soul, pure, sinless, undefiled, and Godlike. To see this great truth in Science is to separate evil from man and to separate mankind from the belief in evil.
There is often a desire to want to keep track of error, its victims, and its activities. One needs to know that wherever man is, right there is God, the governor and controller of each one of His ideas. Indeed, no idea of God can escape God's omnipresent, omnipotent government and control, but must live under it and obey Him.
It is necessary to realize that man loves Truth, is attracted only to and by good. Insistence on this spiritual fact will prevent one from being drawn into evil thought or action through the belief that evil has magnetic power or action.
All these truths regarding God and man, maintained, will ensure obedience to moral regulations and meet the claim of evil. The writer has seen the power of Truth, as revealed through Christian Science, heal the claim of sin on a number of occasions, and she is fully convinced that there is nothing on earth today except Christian Science that is prepared and able to master the varied claims of the red dragon, "that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan."
