Part 21 (2/2)
You have proven that the greatest piety is scarcely [1]
sufficient to demonstrate what you have adopted and taught; that your work, well done, would dignify angels.
Faithfully, as meekly, you have toiled all night; and at break of day caught much. At times, your net has [5]
been so full that it broke: human pride, creeping into its meshes, extended it beyond safe expansion; then, losing hold of divine Love, you lost your fishes, and pos- sibly blamed others more than yourself. But those whom G.o.d makes ”fishers of men” will not pull for the sh.o.r.e; [10]
like Peter, they launch into the depths, cast their nets on the right side, compensate loss, and gain a higher sense of the true idea. Nothing is lost that G.o.d gives: had He filled the net, it would not have broken.
Leaving the seed of Truth to its own vitality, it propa- [15]
gates: the tares cannot hinder it. Our Master said, ”Heaven and earth shall pa.s.s away, but my words shall not pa.s.s away;” and Jesus' faith in Truth must not ex- ceed that of Christian Scientists who prove its power to be immortal. [20]
The Christianity that is merely of sects, the pulpit, and fas.h.i.+onable society, is brief; but the Word of G.o.d abideth.
Plato was a pagan; but no greater difference existed be- tween his doctrines and those of Jesus, than to-day exists between the Catholic and Protestant sects. I love the [25]
orthodox church; and, in time, that church will love Christian Science. Let me specially call the attention of this a.s.sociation to the following false beliefs inclining mortal mind more deviously:-
The belief in anti-Christ: that somebody in the flesh [30]
is the son of G.o.d, or is another Christ, or is a spiritually adopted child, or is an incarnated babe, is the evil one-
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in other words, the one evil-disporting itself with the [1]
subtleties of sin!
Even honest thinkers, not knowing whence they come, may deem these delusions verities, before they know it, or really look the illusions in the face. The ages are bur- [5]
dened with material modes. Hypnotism, microbes, X-rays, and ex-common sense, occupy time and thought; and error, given new opportunities, will improve them. The most just man can neither defend the innocent nor detect the guilty, unless he knows _how_ to be just; and this knowl- [10]
edge demands our time and attention.
The mental stages of crime, which seem to belong to the latter days, are strictly cla.s.sified in metaphysics as some of the many features and forms of what is properly denominated, in extreme cases, moral idiocy. I visited [15]
in his cell the a.s.sa.s.sin of President Garfield, and found him in the mental state called moral idiocy. He had no sense of his crime; but regarded his act as one of simple justice, and himself as the victim. My few words touched him; he sank back in his chair, limp and pale; his flip- [20]
pancy had fled. The jailer thanked me, and said, ”Other visitors have brought to him bouquets, but you have brought what will do him good.”
This mental disease at first shows itself in extreme sensitiveness; then, in a loss of self-knowledge and of [25]
self-condemnation,-a shocking inability to see one's own faults, but an exaggerating sense of other people's.
Unless this mental condition be overcome, it ends in a total loss of moral, intellectual, and spiritual discernment, and is characterized in this Scripture: ”The fool hath [30]
said in his heart, There is no G.o.d.” This state of mind is the exemplification of total depravity, and the result
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of sensuous mind in matter. Mind that is G.o.d is not in [1]
matter; and G.o.d's presence gives spiritual light, wherein is no darkness.
If, as is indisputably true, ”G.o.d is Spirit,” and Spirit is our Father and Mother, and that which it includes is [5]
all that is real and eternal, when evil seems to predomi- nate and divine light to be obscured, free moral agency is lost; and the Revelator's vision, that ”no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name,” is imminent. [10]
Whoever is mentally manipulating human mind, and is not gaining a higher sense of Truth by it, is losing in the scale of moral and spiritual being, and may be car- ried to the depths of perdition by his own consent. He who refuses to be influenced by any but the divine Mind, [15]
commits his way to G.o.d, and rises superior to sugges- tions from an evil source. Christian Science shows that there is a way of escape from the latter-day ultimatum of evil, through scientific truth; so that all are without excuse. [20]
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