Part 2 (1/2)
My dominant thought in marrying again was to get back my child, but after our marriage his stepfather was not willing he should have a home with me.
A plot was consummated for keeping us apart. The family to whose care he was committed very soon removed to what was then regarded as the Far West.
After his removal a letter was read to my little son, informing him that his mother was dead and buried. Without my knowledge a guardian was appointed him, and I was then informed that my son was lost. Every means within my power was employed to find him, but without success. We never met again until he had reached the age of thirty-four, had a wife and two children, and by a strange providence had learned that his mother still lived, and came to see me in Ma.s.sachusetts.
Meanwhile he had served as a volunteer throughout the war for the Union, and at its expiration was appointed United States Marshal of the Territory of Dakota.
It is well to know, dear reader, that our material, mortal history is but the record of dreams, not of man's real existence, and the dream has no place in the Science of being. It is ”as a tale that is told,” and ”as the shadow when it declineth.” The heavenly intent of earth's shadows is to chasten the affections, to rebuke human consciousness and turn it gladly from a material, false sense of life and happiness, to spiritual joy and true estimate of being.
The awakening from a false sense of life, substance, and mind in matter, is as yet imperfect; but for those lucid and enduring lessons of Love which tend to this result, I bless G.o.d.
Mere historic incidents and personal events are frivolous and of no moment, unless they ill.u.s.trate the ethics of Truth. To this end, but only to this end, such narrations may be admissible and advisable; but if spiritual conclusions are separated from their premises, the _nexus_ is lost, and the argument, with its rightful conclusions, becomes correspondingly obscure.
The human history needs to be revised, and the material record expunged.
The Gospel narratives bear brief testimony even to the life of our great Master. His spiritual noumenon and phenomenon silenced portraiture. Writers less wise than the apostles essayed in the Apocryphal New Testament a legendary and traditional history of the early life of Jesus. But St. Paul summarized the character of Jesus as the model of Christianity, in these words: ”Consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself.” ”Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of G.o.d.”
It may be that the mortal life-battle still wages, and must continue till its involved errors are vanquished by victory-bringing Science; but this triumph will come! G.o.d is over all. He alone is our origin, aim, and being.
The real man is not of the dust, nor is he ever created through the flesh; for his father and mother are the one Spirit, and his brethren are all the children of one parent, the eternal good.
EMERGENCE INTO LIGHT
The trend of human life was too eventful to leave me undisturbed in the illusion that this so-called life could be a real and abiding rest. All things earthly must ultimately yield to the irony of fate, or else be merged into the one infinite Love.
As these pungent lessons became clearer, they grew sterner. Previously the cloud of mortal mind seemed to have a silver lining; but now it was not even fringed with light. Matter was no longer spanned with its rainbow of promise. The world was dark. The oncoming hours were indicated by no floral dial. The senses could not prophesy sunrise or starlight.
Thus it was when the moment arrived of the heart's bridal to more spiritual existence. When the door opened, I was waiting and watching; and, lo, the bridegroom came! The character of the Christ was illuminated by the midnight torches of Spirit. My heart knew its Redeemer. He whom my affections had diligently sought was as the One ”altogether lovely,” as ”the chiefest,” the only, ”among ten thousand.” Soulless famine had fled.
Agnosticism, pantheism, and theosophy were void. Being was beautiful, its substance, cause, and currents were G.o.d and His idea. I had touched the hem of Christian Science.
THE GREAT DISCOVERY
It was in Ma.s.sachusetts, in February, 1866, and after the death of the magnetic doctor, Mr. P.P. Quimby, whom spiritualists would a.s.sociate therewith, but who was in no wise connected with this event, that I discovered the Science of divine metaphysical healing which I afterwards named Christian Science. The discovery came to pa.s.s in this way. During twenty years prior to my discovery I had been trying to trace all physical effects to a mental cause; and in the latter part of 1866 I gained the scientific certainty that all causation was Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon.
My immediate recovery from the effects of an injury caused by an accident, an injury that neither medicine nor surgery could reach, was the falling apple that led me to the discovery how to be well myself, and how to make others so.
Even to the h.o.m.oeopathic physician who attended me, and rejoiced in my recovery, I could not then explain the _modus_ of my relief. I could only a.s.sure him that the divine Spirit had wrought the miracle--a miracle which later I found to be in perfect scientific accord with divine law.
I then withdrew from society about three years,--to ponder my mission, to search the Scriptures, to find the Science of Mind that should take the things of G.o.d and show them to the creature, and reveal the great curative Principle,--Deity.
The Bible was my textbook. It answered my questions as to how I was healed; but the Scriptures had to me a new meaning, a new tongue. Their spiritual signification appeared; and I apprehended for the first time, in their spiritual meaning, Jesus' teaching and demonstration, and the Principle and rule of spiritual Science and metaphysical healing,--in a word, Christian Science.
I named it _Christian_, because it is compa.s.sionate, helpful, and spiritual. G.o.d I called _immortal Mind_. That which sins, suffers, and dies, I named _mortal mind_. The physical senses, or sensuous nature, I called _error_ and _shadow_. Soul I denominated _substance_, because Soul alone is truly substantial. G.o.d I characterized as individual ent.i.ty, but His corporeality I denied. The real I claimed as eternal; and its antipodes, or the temporal, I described as unreal. Spirit I called the _reality_; and matter, the _unreality_.
I knew the human conception of G.o.d to be that He was a physically personal being, like unto man; and that the five physical senses are so many witnesses to the physical personality of mind and the real existence of matter; but I learned that these material senses testify falsely, that matter neither sees, hears, nor feels Spirit, and is therefore inadequate to form any proper conception of the infinite Mind. ”If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.” (John v. 31.)