America – Cradle For The Second Coming Of The Christ

CHAPTER XII

"MAN IS, NOT SHALL BE, PERFECT AND IMMORTAL"

Christian Science Lifts Human Consciousness into the Millennium

Mrs. Eddy's discovery of reality--that good alone is real and evil is unreal--is destined to transform human consciousness and bring its structure in line with reality. The would-be Christian Scientist is required to yield up deeply entrenched personal inclinations, to place the demands of divine Science before any other commitment. His commitment must be to the ultimate Truth, which is not shaped by his preference but by divine being itself. Infinite good is the final power to which the human--in the single-minded pursuit of truth--prays: "Not my will, but thine, be done."

O, sometimes gleams upon our sight,
Through present wrong, the eternal right;

And step by step since time began,
We see the steady gain of man.

John Greenleaf Whittier

We take courage in knowing that whatever happens, all is working toward the optimization of good as it further and further minimizes the illusion of evil and matter, and brings to view the Christ man you have always been, the "man [that] is, not shall be, perfect and immortal" (S&H 428:22).
There is no evil! The divine Principle, Love, is always ever-present and in full and unrestricted operation. Therefore there is no evil. Divine Principle is in operation no matter how blinded mortals seem to be by the veil of universal hypnotic suggestions and illusions that appear to be reality. The divine Principle is in operation no matter how deceived and befooled we may be by materiality, apathy, ignorance, or old theological beliefs.

We need only become aware of the truth that "Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation or object.... Love never loses sight of loveliness.... Let us then shape our views of existence into loveliness, freshness, and continuity" (S&H 304:10; 248:3; 246:29). Love, our true Mind, "the kingdom of God within" us, is wedded to its own spiritual idea now, not at some future date. This wedding of Love to its idea, besides which there is nothing else, assures our salvation; it only awaits our realization and recognition.

The Textbook is Within Our Consciousness

Because "God is individual Mind," all that Mind, God, has is ours, including the textbook. The textbook of Christian Science is within our individual spiritual consciousness. When we read it understandingly, it is not that we are getting something from outside; it is not that we are learning something from a book; rather it is that we are recognizing what we already know, what we already have and are.

This is why Mrs. Eddy could ask, "When will mankind awake to know their present ownership of all good?" (My. 356:1)

If we heed the biblical injunction "Be still and know that I am God...that I AM that I am [that is God]" (S&H 588:921), we will find salvation is ever present. It only awaits our recognition. Heaven is here; it is within our individual, infinite, spiritual consciousness. The Bible and Mary Baker Eddy's writings reveal it; it is up to us to practice it, so the ever-present millennium comes to light, and is recognized and realized.

Of the millennium, on which Mrs. Eddy lifted the curtain during her forty-four year teaching career (and on which her writings continue to lift the curtain), she wrote:

The millennium is a state and stage of mental advancement, going on since ever time was. Its impetus, accelerated by the advent of Christian Science, is marked, and will increase till all men shall know Him (divine Love) from the least to the greatest, and one God and the brotherhood of man shall be known and acknowledged throughout the earth. (My. 239:27

The impetus of the millennium is marked and accelerated by the advent of Christian Science which is loosening from millions of individuals the fetters of sin, disease, and discord of every nature as it ushers in Science and the glorious facts of creation. Science teaches us the true idea of good, and abiding in this, we lose all sense of evil, and so are "being ushered into the undying realities of Spirit [infinite good]" (S&H 325:4).

A Mist Went Up

Unfortunately, with Mrs. Eddy's passing "a mist went up" when the five temporary Directors of the Christian Science "Mother Church" refused to obey the Church Manual estoppels which terminated their existence as a Board of Directors and which terminated the "Mother Church." They refused to obey the explicit demands made in ten of her thirteen Deeds of Trust. These provisions, which terminated all central ecclesiastical control, were thrust aside and legalism was substituted for spirituality.

Question: What does Mrs. Eddy say is "the most fearful thing that mortals can commit?"

Answer: "Taking the livery of heaven wherewith to cover iniquity, is the most fearful sin that mortals can commit" (Mis. 19:18). Disobedience to the Manual By-Laws has obscured genuine Christian Science from humanity.

We in the field who acquiesced in this terrible, unholy disobedience are not without blame.

Failure to honor and accept the second coming of the Christ has brought about a moral crisis in this country. "So secret are the present methods of animal magnetism [the hypnotic suggestion, the illusion that evil is real] that they ensnare the age into indolence, and produce the very apathy on the subject which the criminal desires" (S&H 102:20).

In an article, Roscoe Drummond said, "The state of the world reflects the state of Christian Science." We are today going through Revelation, chapters 13-20, where the beast, the red dragon and the false prophet are in the saddle, as Jesus prophesied to St. John on the Isle of Patmos.

Today the spectre of an extended period of spiritual darkness looms as "earth's stupid rest" ominously continues, and Mary Baker Eddy's Manual requirements are twisted and ignored. Mrs. Eddy called the advice to "see no evil, hear no evil," heathen philosophy, which resists all attempts to uncover and kill lurking serpents. If we are too ignorant, too cowardly, or too wicked to uncover wrongs and if we deny that these evils exist--that is, exist in hypnotic suggestion--we become the victims of this evil and so thwart our spiritual progress. (See My. 211:3.)

He's a slave who dares not be In the right with two or three. He's a slave who dares not choose Hatred, slander, and abuse Rather than in silence shrink From the truth he needs must think.

The Manual was Divinely Dictated

Had Mrs. Eddy's divinely dictated Manual been obeyed and had the 5-member Board of Directors not committed the most fearful sin that a mortal could commit, it would have prevented "the seven last plagues" (Rev. xxi:9) from descending upon humanity; it would have removed the obstruction hiding from view the already existing Church Universal and Triumphant--the "structure of Truth and Love" (S&H 583:12) "the kingdom within" our consciouness--and would have ensured its coming into focus.

The disobedience will be seen. It cannot forever hide divine Love's great plan for the redemption and universal salvation of the human race. That the Manual was divinely dictated by God (infinite good) we know because each time the 5-member Board of Directors asked Mrs. Eddy to change the By-Law entitled "Directors" (Manual p. 26) so they could continue the power they had under Mrs. Eddy's divine supervision, she told them God had dictated that By-Law and she could not change what God had mandated.

Disobedience to Mrs. Eddy's Manual Brought Plagues

Why is the Church Manual so vitally important?

Mrs. Eddy warned her students of the disastrous consequences of reorganizing a material church after she had dissolved the material church organization in 1889. When the students failed to heed this warning, which she said came from God, she "prayed day and night for an answer." The answer came in the form of a Manual, which she steadfastly maintained was just as divinely dictated as was Science and Health.

The Manual enabled her to frame the church in such a way that it would be a self-dissolving symbol and not become an ecclesiastical counterfeit. The Manual made The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, become a Branch church at her passing, with a legal FOUR member self-perpetuating Board to govern only it. Unlike the temporary FIVE-member board which had served under Mrs. Eddy's supervision, this FOUR-member Board had no control over any church other than The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston. No human authority was to dictate to the field in the name of the "Mother Church" for "church" was to be the structure of Truth and Love within the hearts of the members"the kingdom of God within you."

The FlVE-member ecclesiastical Board was NOT self-perpetuating. It required Mrs. Eddy's approval and consent to fill a vacancy on it; therefore when a member of that Board died in June 1912, after Mrs. Eddy left us, that ecclesiastical Board could not continue. It henceforth could only act as provided in the Manual's Deed of Trust, shown on pages 128135 of the Manual--as a 4-member Board having control only over the property in Boston.

"Christian Scientists, be a law to yourselves that mental malpractice cannot harm you either when asleep or when awake" (S&H 442:30). When each Christian Scientist accepts Christ Jesus' teaching that "The kingdom of God is within you," and each individual reflects the motherhood of Love within himself, what need is there to look to five persons in Boston for an ecclesiastical authority external to himself?

"Organization Wars with Love's Spiritual Compact"

Mrs. Eddy saw that "organization...wars with Love's spiritual compact" (Ret. 47:2), and that "the real Christian compact is love for one another" (Mis. 91 :10). In Unity of Good (17:7) Mrs. Eddy writes:

Hourly, in Christian Science, man...weds himself with God, or rather he ratifies a union predestined from all eternity; but evil ties its wagon load of offal to the divine chariots,or seeks so to do,that its vileness may be christened purity, and its darkness get consolation from borrowed scintillations.

When ecclesiasticism "tied its wagon load" of disobedience and misinterpretation to Mary Baker Eddy's God-dictated Manual it obscured from view the Church Universal and Triumphant [the structure of Truth and Love] which she had founded in human consciousness.

Ecclesiasticism's violation and non-compliance with Mrs. Eddy's Manual directives has obscured mankind's understanding of the omnipresence of present perfection. This, in turn, has resulted in the deep crisis, the dire peril, that today faces the Christian Science movement and our entire nation, indeed the entire world.

When Mrs. Eddy's Manual, which contained estoppel clauses dissolving the material organization at her passing, was not obeyed, "a mist went up" in fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy to St. John, set forth in chapters 13 to 20 of the Book of Revelation. This "mist," resulting from disobedience, has for more than three quarters of a century hindered the great redemptive work that Mary Baker Eddy's writings are destined to accomplish for the race.

Mrs. Eddy saw the plot of the disobedient 5-member Board--that they would not obey her estoppel clauses in the Manual. She dictated to Laura Sargent that "it took a combination of sinners that was fast to harm me." Mr. Carpenter states that she told those in her household that if she should die, it was because she was mentally murdered. On her last carriage drive she told Laura Sargent, "If my students had obeyed me I might have lived and carried the Cause."

The sin of ecclesiasticism that is today refusing to recognize Mrs. Eddy's thirteen Deeds of Trust which make obedience to the Manual legally obligatory--the sin that is pillorying those who are insisting Mrs. Eddy's Deeds of Trust be honored--this sin will be uncovered and summarily dealt with by divine justice. In Message for 1900, p. 10. Mrs. Eddy admonishes:

Success in sin [those who refuse to obey Mary Baker Eddy's Manual] is downright defeat. Hatred bites the heel of love that is treading on its head. All that worketh good is some manifestation of God asserting and developing good. Evil is illusion, that after a fight vanisheth with the new birth of the greatest and best. Conflict and persecution are the truest signs that can be given of the greatness of a cause or of an individual, provided this warfare is honest and a world-imposed struggle. Such conflict never ends till unconquerable right is begun anew, and hath gained fresh energy and final victory.

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