Part 36 (1/2)

242:30 The finger-posts of divine Science show the way our Master trod, and require of Christians the proof which he gave, instead of mere profession. We may hide 243:1 spiritual ignorance from the world, but we can never succeed in the Science and demonstration of spiritual 243:3 good through ignorance or hypocrisy.

Ancient and modern miracles

The divine Love, which made harmless the poisonous viper, which delivered men from the boiling oil, from 243:6 the fiery furnace, from the jaws of the lion, can heal the sick in every age and triumph over sin and death. It crowned the demon- 243:9 strations of Jesus with unsurpa.s.sed power and love. But the same ”Mind ... which was also in Christ Jesus”

must always accompany the letter of Science in order to 243:12 confirm and repeat the ancient demonstrations of prophets and apostles. That those wonders are not more com- monly repeated to-day, arises not so much from lack of 243:15 desire as from lack of spiritual growth.

Mental telegraphy

The clay cannot reply to the potter. The head, heart, lungs, and limbs do not inform us that they are dizzy, 243:18 diseased, consumptive, or lame. If this in- formation is conveyed, mortal mind conveys it. Neither immortal and unerring Mind nor matter, 243:21 the inanimate substratum of mortal mind, can carry on such telegraphy; for G.o.d is ”of purer eyes than to behold evil,” and matter has neither intelligence nor 243:24 sensation.

Annihilation of error

Truth has no consciousness of error. Love has no sense of hatred. Life has no partners.h.i.+p 243:27 with death. Truth, Life, and Love are a law of annihilation to everything unlike themselves, because they declare nothing except G.o.d.

Deformity and perfection

243:30 Sickness, sin, and death are not the fruits of Life.

They are inharmonies which Truth destroys. Perfection does not animate imperfection. Inasmuch as G.o.d is 244:1 good and the fount of all being, He does not produce moral or physical deformity; therefore such deformity is 244:3 not real, but is illusion, the mirage of error.

Divine Science reveals these grand facts. On their basis Jesus demonstrated Life, never 244:6 fearing nor obeying error in any form.

If we were to derive all our conceptions of man from what is seen between the cradle and the grave, happi- 244:9 ness and goodness would have no abiding-place in man, and the worms would rob him of the flesh; but Paul writes: ”The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath 244:12 made me free from the law of sin and death.”

Man never less than man

Man undergoing birth, maturity, and decay is like the beasts and vegetables, - subject to laws of decay. If 244:15 man were dust in his earliest stage of exist- ence, we might admit the hypothesis that he returns eventually to his primitive condition; 244:18 but man was never more nor less than man.

If man flickers out in death or springs from matter into being, there must be an instant when G.o.d is without His 244:21 entire manifestation, - when there is no full reflection of the infinite Mind.

Man not evolved

Man in Science is neither young nor old. He has 244:24 neither birth nor death. He is not a beast, a vegetable, nor a migratory mind. He does not pa.s.s from matter to Mind, from the mortal to the im- 244:27 mortal, from evil to good, or from good to evil. Such admissions cast us headlong into darkness and dogma.

Even Shakespeare's poetry pictures age as infancy, as 244:30 helplessness and decadence, instead of a.s.signing to man the everlasting grandeur and immortality of development, power, and prestige.

245:1 The error of thinking that we are growing old, and the benefits of destroying that illusion, are ill.u.s.trated in a 245:3 sketch from the history of an English woman, published in the London medical magazine called The Lancet.

Perpetual youth

Disappointed in love in her early years, she became 245:6 insane and lost all account of time. Believing that she was still living in the same hour which parted her from her lover, taking no note of years, 245:9 she stood daily before the window watching for her lover's coming. In this mental state she remained young.

Having no consciousness of time, she literally grew no 245:12 older. Some American travellers saw her when she was seventy-four, and supposed her to be a young woman.

She had no care-lined face, no wrinkles nor gray hair, but 245:15 youth sat gently on cheek and brow. Asked to guess her age, those unacquainted with her history conjectured that she must be under twenty.

245:18 This instance of youth preserved furnishes a useful hint, upon which a Franklin might work with more cer- tainty than when he coaxed the enamoured lightning 245:21 from the clouds. Years had not made her old, because she had taken no cognizance of pa.s.sing time nor thought of herself as growing old. The bodily results of her belief 245:24 that she was young manifested the influence of such a be- lief. She could not age while believing herself young, for the mental state governed the physical.

245:27 Impossibilities never occur. One instance like the foregoing proves it possible to be young at seventy-four; and the primary of that ill.u.s.tration makes it plain that 245:30 decrepitude is not according to law, nor is it a necessity of nature, but an illusion.

Man reflects G.o.d

The infinite never began nor will it ever end. Mind 246:1 and its formations can never be annihilated. Man is not a pendulum, swinging between evil and good, joy and 246:3 sorrow, sickness and health, life and death.

Life and its faculties are not measured by calendars. The perfect and immortal are the eternal 246:6 likeness of their Maker. Man is by no means a material germ rising from the imperfect and endeavoring to reach Spirit above his origin. The stream rises no higher than 246:9 its source.