Part 23 (2/2)

decree, ”It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea”?

The divine order is the acme of mercy: it is neither questionable nor a.s.sailable: it is not evil producing good, [15]

nor good ultimating in evil. Such an inference were impious. Holy Writ denounces him that declares, ”Let us do evil, that good may come! whose d.a.m.nation is just.”

Good is not educed from its opposite: and Love divine [20]

spurned, lessens not the hater's hatred nor the criminal's crime; nor reconciles justice to injustice; nor subst.i.tutes the suffering of the G.o.dlike for the suffering due to sin.

Neither spiritual bankruptcy nor a religious chancery can win high heaven, or the ”Well done, good and faithful [25]

servant,... enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”

Divine Love knows no hate; for hate, or the hater, is nothing: G.o.d never made it, and He made all that was made. The hater's pleasures are unreal; his sufferings, self-imposed; his existence is a parody, and he ends- [30]

with suicide.

The murder of the just Nazarite was incited by the

[Page 123.]

same spirit that in our time ma.s.sacres our missionaries, [1]

butchers the helpless Armenians, slaughters innocents.

Evil was, and is, the illusion of breaking the First Com- mandment, ”Thou shalt have no other G.o.ds before me:”

it is either idolizing something and somebody, or hating [5]

them: it is the spirit of idolatry, envy, jealousy, covet- ousness, superst.i.tion, l.u.s.t, hypocrisy, _witchcraft_.

That man can break the forever-law of infinite Love, was, and is, the serpent's biggest lie! and ultimates in a religion of pagan priests bloated with crime; a religion [10]

that demands human victims to be sacrificed to human pa.s.sions and human G.o.ds, or tortured to appease the anger of a so-called G.o.d or a miscalled man or woman!

The a.s.syrian Merodach, or the G.o.d of sin, was the ”lucky G.o.d;” and the Babylonian Yawa, or Jehovah, was the [15]

Jewish tribal deity. The _Christian's_ G.o.d is neither, and is too pure to behold iniquity.

Divine Science has rolled away the stone from the sepul- chre of our Lord; and there has risen to the awakened thought the majestic atonement of divine Love. The [20]

at-one-ment with Christ has appeared-not through vicarious suffering, whereby the just obtain a pardon for the unjust,-but through the eternal law of justice; wherein sinners suffer for their own sins, repent, forsake sin, love G.o.d, and keep His commandments, thence to [25]

receive the reward of righteousness: salvation from sin, not through the _death_ of a man, but through a divine _Life_, which is our Redeemer.

Holy Writ declares that G.o.d is Love, is Spirit; hence it follows that those who wors.h.i.+p Him, must wors.h.i.+p [30]

Him spiritually,-far apart from physical sensation such as attends eating and drinking corporeally. It is

[Page 124.]

plain that aught unspiritual, intervening between G.o.d [1]

and man, would tend to disturb the divine order, and countermand the Scripture that those who wors.h.i.+p the Father must wors.h.i.+p Him in spirit. It is also plain, that we should not seek and cannot find G.o.d in mat- [5]

ter, or through material methods; neither do we love and obey Him by means of matter, or the flesh,-which warreth against Spirit, and will not be reconciled thereto.

We turn, with sickened sense, from a pagan Jew's [10]

or Moslem's misconception of Deity, for peace; and find rest in the spiritual ideal, or Christ. For ”who is so great a G.o.d as our G.o.d!” unchangeable, all-wise, all- just, all-merciful; the ever-loving, ever-living Life, Truth, Love: comforting such as mourn, opening the prison [15]

doors to the captive, marking the unwinged bird, pitying with more than a father's pity; healing the sick, cleansing the leper, raising the dead, saving sinners. As we think thereon, man's true sense is filled with peace, and power; and we say, It is well that Christian Science has taken [20]

expressive silence wherein to muse His praise, to kiss the feet of Jesus, adore the white Christ, and stretch out our arms to G.o.d.

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