WHEN Elijah restored to life the widow's son, as recorded in the seventeenth chapter of I Kings, we are told that the first thing he did was to say to the mother, "Give me thy son." In like manner when the metaphysical worker of today is called upon to heal a sick child, he begins by separating the child, in thought, from the belief of human parentage. "Give me thy son," is the eternal demand of Truth. Give up thy false belief in a material creation and a material creator, and place thy child unreservedly under the protecting care of its true Father–Mother, God. The narrative goes on to say that Elijah "took him out of her bosom, and carried him up into a loft, where he abode." In other words, the prophet carried the child, in thought, into that higher realm of spiritual consciousness where he himself dwelt, wherein man is ever recognized as the perfect expression of the perfect and changeless and ever present Life which is God. We are all familiar with the outcome, how "the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived," and how the prophet took him back again, "and delivered him unto his mother."
In this simple story of long ago there is a deep lesson for all of us, for there is perhaps no thought to which mortal mind clings with more insistence than the belief in human relationship and human dependence, not only between mother and child but between all those who are still wandering in this Adam–dream of a material existence. The whole fabric of society is one intricate network of tangled human relationships. We all seem to belong to each other, instead of to God. There are circles within circles, wheels within wheels. Each one of us is related not only to those in his immediate family, but to others as well, causing outlying and outreaching and remote relationships which one can no more trace to their logical conclusion than he can trace the ever widening circles caused by the dropping of a pebble upon some quiet pool. The result is that situations often arise wherein we find ourselves, as it seems, hopelessly involved, unable to live up to our highest ideals, motives, and aspirations by the constant interference, be it conscious or unconscious, of those whom the world calls our "nearest and dearest."
This state of affairs entered quite early into the world's history; in fact, it came in with the suggestion made to Adam that man was not already sufficient unto himself as God's reflection, but needed something more to make him perfect and complete. How disastrously this first belief in human relationship ended, we all know. The second was no better; for the belief in human parentage resulted in the belief in human brotherhood, and that ended in murder, for "Cain very naturally concluded that if life was in the body, and man gave it, man had the right to take it away" (Science and Health, p. 89). But this belief of human relationship seems to be here. What are we to do with it? Are we to repudiate it, label it "nothing," lay down every sweet human love, duty, obligation, and responsibility, and live, each of us alone, an isolated, useless, and unhappy family of one?
By no means. Christian Science does not take away from any one that which is sweet and dear and beautiful and right. It does not ask of us anything unnatural or abnormal. It only asks us to see things as they really are, not as they seem to be. It only makes us better husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, citizens and friends, men and women, because it gives us the right idea about all these relationships. When this right idea about any relationship is seen to be the truth about it, the counterfeit belief, calling itself the human relationship, readjusts itself in exact proportion to the scientific right thought, and anything wrong or unjust or abnormal about the situation must undergo a natural, radical, and inevitable change.
Let us turn the search–light of Truth within, as Christian Science teaches, and see what we have been believing about all these things. Do we sometimes find ourselves entangled in a situation from which we do not seem able to extricate ourselves, on account of this belief in human relationship? If so, let us ask ourselves if that longing for mental freedom which we have perhaps smothered in our heart for years, through the fancy that it was wrong and unrighteous rebellion, is not after all only that divine unrest which stirs in every waking consciousness when it hears the call to come up higher, and longs to respond. Have we not sometimes failed to recognize impersonal evil putting out a hand to stop our progress, just because it sits upon our hearthstone and smilingly calls itself "our own"?
A mother who felt herself much opposed to Christian Science said to her son: "I beg of you not to join that church so long as I live. It would break my heart." His mother's slightest wish had all his life been as a command to this loving and unselfish son; yet in this case, after giving the matter earnest and prayerful consideration, he joined the church, simply because, as he explained to her, he could not be honest with himself and stay out. And the mother's heart did not break at all; in fact she herself later on turned to Christian Science for help.
Hearts do not break so easily, under such circumstances, as mortal mind would fain have us sometimes believe. Mortal mind, like Goliath of Gath, is just a gigantic bluffer, continuing to march up and down before our affrighted vision, and to threaten and bluster, just because it thinks nobody knows enough to walk straight up to it and stop it. But there is always somebody, sooner or later, who knows enough. "I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts," said that shepherd lad of long ago to the Philistine. Then there was one quick, well directed blow, and the whole windbag of nothingness collapsed, like a child's balloon pricked with a pin.
Error is never a person; let us hold that thought clearly in mind. When Jesus healed the epileptic boy, he called that which was making the trouble, "Thou dumb and deaf spirit." Error is, indeed, both dumb and deaf. It cannot talk for itself, nor can it hear itself talk; hence it must get some one to do its talking, and some one to listen to its talking. The one it selects as its mouthpiece is usually the one who is nearest and dearest to us. Why? Because that person naturally has the most influence over us. What is said to us by the husband, wife, mother, brother, child, or friend of our next–door neighbor, for instance, can generally be quickly dismissed, for it has little weight to start with; but when it is "our own" who talk to us, we frequently listen to arguments which would be promptly repudiated if coming from an outside source.
At this point, however, the question naturally arises, Have "our own" no rights at all? Is the soft hand which rules an entire household with a rod of iron entitled to no consideration whatever? Indeed it is; but only to the extent that it does not interfere with our God–given freedom as reasonable, rational, thinking individuals. Let us see how Jesus solved this problem of human relationship, and where he drew the line of demarcation in regard to its claims upon him. He was once preaching, we are told, when word was brought that his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. Did he bring his discourse to an abrupt close, and hasten to do that mother's bidding? Not at all. He made not the slightest move to accede to her request. It is evident that he saw in the whole situation not the natural, legitimate wish of a human parent, but a device of the adversary to stop his work. Error, calling itself "his mother," took advantage of that relationship to make a demand upon him which no one else on earth would have dared to do. But how utterly it failed, as it always did under the clear light of that spiritually illumined thought! "Who is my mother?" he inquired joyously; and then he tenderly added, not only for those who were listening, but for the benefit of all ages to come as well, "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother."
Judging, then, from the example which Jesus gave us, the reply to the question, Have "our own" no rights at all? is this: They have rights only so far as the human demand does not conflict with the divine. When it comes to the actual point of choosing between the requests of personality and the demands of Principle, there is but one course left open for the true Christian Scientist. It is true that to take this course often requires more moral courage than any one dreams who has never tried; but it can be done. After Goliath has walked up and down before us for twenty or thirty years, more or less, he has a way of appearing uncomfortably real and formidable, as many of us know. We have seen him so long, and been afraid of him so long, that we can hardly imagine how things would look without him. But because a wrong condition has seemed real for thirty years, it does not actually make it any more real than if it had existed as a false belief for only thirty seconds. We ourselves are just that much more deeply mesmerized by it. That is all.
Let us have done with counterfeits. Who is the true Father and Mother of the universe? God, to whom we owe first, last, and always supreme and unwavering allegiance. Who is the child? Man, God's reflection, spiritual, perfect, harmonious, complete, "without father, without mother, . . . having neither beginning of days, nor end of life," but coexistent and coeternal with his Maker. What is the true family? "The household of God," wherein all ideas dwell together in perfect love and accord. Who is the true teacher? "They shall be all taught of God," was the glad prophecy of long ago. Who is the true student? The awakening consciousness, learning each day more and more of its unity with the divine. Who is the true employer? God, in whose service every one of His spiritual ideas is continuously and successfully employed. Thus might one go on indefinitely, substituting the right idea for the human concept, and finding in every case that true relationship which is Mind's eternal relationship to its own ideas.
How sweetly it rests the tired one to remember this! Has the arm of flesh sometimes failed us? Have we turned in some sudden extremity to those whom we call "our own," and met with no response? In the hour of what seemed perhaps our greatest need, have we reached out in the darkness for a dear, familiar hand, and found none? Then let us rejoice, for it was the Father's hand, after all, which led us home, the Father's tender love which lifted our thought to see what we had never seen before, —the true, universal family, wherein there is no "thine" and "mine," but all are "ours." These human disappointments have only served to teach us God's beautiful lesson, that in this true home there are no misplaced confidences, no broken ties, no unsatisfied cravings, no heart hunger, no empty places, no loss, no change, no separation. The voice from heaven has declared that all things are made new.
Those who are already realizing something of this may well rejoice, as they look beyond the tangled warp and woof of the world's false standards, to see the better thought about it all, just waiting to be understood. This is indeed the first glimpse the world has ever had of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, —not as the far away fancy of the poet's golden dream, but as a demonstrable, established fact, based upon the simple truth which our Leader has so beautifully expressed on page 151 of "Miscellaneous Writings," when she wrote, "God is our Father and our Mother, our Minister and the great Physician: He is man's only real relative on earth and in heaven."
