America – Cradle For The Second Coming Of The
Christ
CHAPTER VII
Christian Science Sounds the
Keynote of Universal Freedom
The Long Wait is Over
 Nineteen
centuries after Christ Jesus appeared on earth as a personal
Savior, the long wait was over. Humanity was finally ready to receive the
impersonal Savior, Christ Science, and begin to understand its
message. The messenger, Mary Baker Eddy, had been graciously prepared and the
cradle was ready--not a manger in Bethlehem this time, but the pious,
self-reliant, freedom-loving spirit of New England.
It was Mary Baker Eddy's mission to bring to human awareness
the kingdom of God within, which has always been present even though
unrecognized--just as the round earth was always present even when everyone
thought it was flat.
Could Mary Baker Eddy have fulfilled her God-given mission
in any other time or place?
What would have happened if Mrs. Eddy had come to Europe in
the Middle Ages, when women were forbidden to preach, were persecuted for
healing, and were burned as witches for holding independent views? Could her
message have been heard in colonial Massachusetts, where Puritans hung a Quaker
woman for adhering to her religion?
Under the United States' constitutional guarantees of due
process, freedom of speech and freedom of religion, Mrs. Eddy was protected
from such prosecution.
America nurtured and protected "the Woman." It allowed her
education, self-expression, independence, the right to own property--all
privileges which have been denied to women in other times and places.
America also offered unique protection for the "manchild"
the woman brought forth--the unfolding revelation of Christian Science in human
consciousness. Separation of church and state, due process, freedom of speech
and of religion, freedom of the press, and even copyright law would all play
critical roles in protecting the Christian Science movement from the antagonism
of other religions, from pressure from the medical profession to stop healing,
and from challenges from within.
God's message to mankind (in Science and Health, the
"little book" prophesied by Jesus in Revelation 10:1, 2), "will bruise the head
of lust" and establish the kingdom of heaven as the Mind and consciousness of
humanity. But it could only do so because the way had been prepared.
Why There HadTo Be a United States
of America
From Revelation (12:13,14) we learn that Jesus prophesied to
St. John that when "the dragon...persecuted the woman that brought forth the
man child," the promised Comforter, the second coming of the Christ, the woman
was "given two wings of a great eagle that she might fly
into the wilderness, into her place." Can there be any doubt that the
biblically prophesied "great eagle" that helped the woman was the United States
of America with its Constitution and Bill of Rights that "nourished" her "from
the face of the serpent"? What did Jesus say about prophecy?
"Prophecy cannot be broken." Thus, in the fullness of time,
the United States of America came into being in order that Jesus' Revelation to
St. John might be fulfilled.
Today, looking back over the centuries to the birth of
America and its Constitution--that remarkable unprecedented document worked out
by fifty-five men representing thirteen independent sovereign states making up
the Confederation--we see how America and its Constitution have played their
part in influencing and transforming world thought.
In this book our
motive has been to show that God, infinite good, though invisible, was always
on the field, and to bring God praise for the higher, deeper ways in which His
love is shown.
Liberty and Love
Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy says, "stands for the
inalienable, universal rights of men. Essentially democratic, its government is
administered by the common consent of the governed, wherein and whereby man
governed by his creator is self-governed" (See My. 246:30).
Mrs. Eddy's mission was to found in human consciousness the
divinely spiritual fact that man's real mind is the divine Mind, Love, and to
bring "the baptism of Spirit, or final immersion of human consciousness in the
infinite ocean of Love" (Mis. 205:13).
Mrs. Eddy expressed a divine Mother-Love toward all mankind.
As she describes it:
I saw the love of God encircling the universe and man,
filling all space, and that divine love so permeated my own consciousness that
I loved with Christlike compassion everything I saw. This realization of divine
Love called into expression the beauty of holiness, the perfection of being
which healed and regenerated and saved all who turned to me for
help.
A conversation recalled by James Gilman, in his
Recollections of Mary Baker Eddy, illuminates Mrs. Eddy's experience of
divine Love:
[Mary Baker Eddy related that] last night she had come
to revelations that had exceeded anything she had had before, in which she saw
plainly that all things were put under her feet and the love of God was so
manifest, it exceeded anything she could describe. All things were dissolved in
it; all sense of evil, all antagonism; nothing was left but the sea of God's
immeasurable Love."
Gilman adds, "I felt awed and as if a word in response from
me would be a sacrilege."
In the first edition of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy tells
us "we shall be Love, Life, and Truth when we understand them." So, of course,
we are "Love, Life, and Truth" right now in reality. And
this Love that we are "never loses sight of loveliness." But the
human heart yearns for spiritual harmony because it doesn't realize it already
possesses it.
Mary Baker Eddy's mission is destined to remove from
humanity's thinking the universal hypnotic suggestion that man is separated
from God, Love. Conquering corporeal sense, her revelation "drops the curtain
on material man and mortality" (Mis. 205:15), enabling students to
demonstrate heaven here, within our consciousness. As Jesus said, "The kingdom
of God is within you."
There is Only One Power
In Christian Science we learn there are not two powers--a
good one that overcomes an evil one. There is onIy one power, omnipotent,
omnipresent good. Christian Science therefore recognizes all discord such as
sin, disease, death, lack and limitation as merely illusion. In this
realization--in our ability to rest in the Word of God--the problem that
confronts us dissolves; healing takes place.
Mrs. Eddy continually admonished students to expose and
denounce evil and errors of every nature but recognize no reality in
them since they are illusions, hypnotic suggestion only.
Christian Science asks: if you accept an infinite God, an
infinite good that is all, omnipotent, omnipresent, an infinite Spirit beside
which there is naught else, can there, in reality, actually be discord such as
sin, disease, lack?
What Conclusion Should We Arrive
At?
If you think about it seriously must you not arrive at the
conclusion that if God is All, is infinite, is good only, is omnipotent and
omnipresent--and there is nothing present but infinite good, it's nature and
its qualities--then must not sin, disease, lack, and limitation, discord of any
kind, be illusion? Must these not be the result of universal hypnotic
suggestion?
When we believe disease has power, and try to rid ourselves
of it, we actually increase its seeming power over us, but if we hold to the
Truth that omnipotent Mind--the Mind that is our real Mind--possesses all
power, and this power is in the invisible spirit of God within us, we gain the
conviction that there is no power in the visible form--the body, the condition,
the person, place, thing--and therefore the discord or disease disappears.
The false sense disappears because we
have obeyed Jesus' admonition to resist not evil--resist not illusions,
hypnotic suggestions, animal magnetism. The discord has disappeared because the
spirit of Truth, the kingdom of God within our consciousness, has acted to
dispel the illusion.
Jesus' life gave us a monumental demonstration of overcoming
the illusions of mortal mind. Was there ever a greater seeming defeat, from the
mortal standpoint, than Calvary? Was there ever a greater victory than the
resurrection? Mrs. Eddy's life too was a series of snatching stunning victories
from the jaws of defeat (illusion, hypnotic suggestion). What these two
Wayshowers accomplished we can accomplish, too. These victories are also
available for us.
Dispelling the Illusion
Because mortals have been reared in a material sense of life
they hold themselves in bondage to form, and so commit idolatry--they bow down
and fear a form labeled body, disease, money, person, place, thing, condition.
But Christian Science reveals there is a presence and power, which as we
contact it, becomes a law unto us; it becomes "He that performeth that which is
given me to do."
The spirit of Truth can dispel the illusion only when we
arrive at the inner conviction that power does not exist in the visible form.
Spirit--infinite good, reality--is the only substance; it shadows forth
infinite forms, but the power remains in the Mind, the Spirit, the Principle.
For example, the principle of mathematics has infinite forms each of which can
be erased from the blackboard, but the principle can reproduce the examples,
the calculations, the forms, because the power and reproductive capacity always
remains in the principle. It is the same with the Principle of our being. The
power is never in the visible form. Jesus told his listeners, "Destroy this
temple [this body, this form] and in three days, I [my divine Mind, the 'I'
that I am, the Principle], will raise it up," will reproduce it.
When error looms, we have a decision to make. We will have a
battle (since the illusions seem so real, and continually present pictures to
us of things that do not exist in reality). Christian Science asks: Is there a
something, a condition, that has to be overcome? Is there a condition that
Truth must do something to?
Christian Science teaches that other people do not have the
power to bedevil our life. But we must know this. When we
expose and denounce evil we must at the same time recognize no reality in
it.
We Must Know the Truth that
Frees
One of Mrs. Eddy's most valued students, Flavia Knapp, felt
keenly the envy, jealousy, malice, hate, and persecution directed against her;
therefore at a testimony meeting, after testifying of her many wonderful
healings, she concluded by asking: "For which of these works do ye stone
me?"
Two weeks later she died. She had personalized error, had
made it real. It was the suggestion, illusion, appearing in
her own thinking, that caused her to
believe in the power of animal magnetism (error, hypnotic suggestion, illusion)
and which prompted her to enter her public protest against
this illusion. Jesus said, "A man's foes shall be those of his own
household."
Mrs. Knapp had failed to heed the Christian Science teaching
that when we feel thoughts of error we should vehemently enter a protest
against our own belief in it. She should have understandingly
declared: "No, you are not real; you can't be real since
God, the kingdom of God within me, is All, and has sovereign power; therefore I
know you are nothing but hypnotic suggestion. This error has no power of its
own; it is coming to me to give it life, and I refuse to give it any!" Then the
error, the illusion, would have vanished, and Mrs. Knapp would have continued
with her wonderful mission on this plane of existence.
Our great work in this world is to let the light within our
own consciousness expand further and further into the darkness until this
light--from "the kingdom of God within [us]"banishes all darkness and
error.
What Makes Evil, Error Vanish?
If we stand fast in divine Science, the divine knowing that
God, infinite good, is All, is One, is omnipotent and omnipresent, then is
there a discord to be overcome? Is there disease, lack and limitation to be
overcome? The answer, of course, is "No!" Christian Science calls on us to
decide between reality and appearances, between the Spirit and the flesh.
"The belief that life and sensation are in the body should be overcome by
the understanding of what constitutes man as the image of God [our true
Mind]. Then Spirit will have overcome the flesh" (S&H 289:4). When
we are in that consciousness where "the spirit of the Lord God is upon [us],"
evil of every nature vanishes.
Mary Baker Eddy's great discovery revealed that materiality
and the discords confronting us are not a power. They cannot be a power since
God, our real Mind, alone is power; Spirit (reality, good) alone is
power. Clinging to this truth we prove that materiality and discords
are not a power. They are false concepts, misperceptions.
Christian Science Restores Our True
Mind
The conflict between Truth and error can be resolved only in
our Mind. "God is individual Mind" (Mis. 101:31); God is individual
spiritual consciousness, and "the ultimate of the entire teaching of
Christian Science is to restore to man his consciousness of the divine Mind as
his only Mind." This restoration takes place as we become aware that
the entire mortal point of view is a state of hypnosis, illusion, caused by a
universal state of hypnotic suggestion.
To "rouse the dormant understanding from material beliefs to
the apprehension of spiritual ideas" is our difficult task. It is in the mind
that the crucial battles--battles between reality and appearance, between
understanding and belief--must be fought.
Mrs. Eddy makes it clear that all human experience is the
externalization of conscious and unconscious thought. Blind belief causes
mortals to cry out for help and then resist the enlightenment that would rid
them of their illusions and bring the ever-present harmony of heaven into
focus.
We learn in Science that Adam was a belief; not a believer.
"This indicates that Jesus, 'the last Adam,' is understanding or Science, and
not 'he who' does or thinks anything. So the last Adam was not just a great
thinker replacing a misguided believer; he was spiritual understanding (Soul)
replacing belief (material sense)." The resurrection is seeing the real man
that was never in matter. The real man never was discordant or in want, to be
made harmonious and fulfilled.
But since "the higher Truth lifts her voice [to inform man
of his divinity] the louder will error scream"; it therefore seems that the
inspiration of truth cannot be gained without tasting the cup that Jesus and
Mary Baker Eddy drank to the dregs.
Because of this ignorance and resistance to Truth, it is
only through step by painful step that mankind is progressing toward the
acceptance of its ever-present heritage of glorious, boundless freedom.
Belief in Two Powers Caused
Suffering
Now we can understand why, even though the Bible was the
guiding light and impetus for the ventures undertaken in the discovery and
settling of America, so much adversity and suffering was encountered.
It was because the people involved--and this is still true
of most of us--had a religious background which had instilled in them the
belief of two powers. They prayed to a God that did not exist.
They prayed to God as a great power that could overcome other powers such as
sin, disease, hunger, cold, or danger. There is no such God. God, our true
Mind, "the kingdom of God within" us, knows no sin, disease, death, discord, or
error. These people believed that evil was real and
that God knew about evil; hence they were praying to a nonexistent God.
God's nature as omnipresent good can have no
opposite, hence evil is unreal. God is All; His work is
done; evil is merely an illusion. But only as people understand the nature of
God and the nature of man can there be unfailing, systematic demonstration of
God as the ONE power, the only power.
Evil's unreality was the great revelation that
came to Mary Baker Eddy. So powerful was this revelation in Mrs. Eddy's time
that some practitioners took 100 patients a day and healed them all! This
spread Christian Science around the world and built up the
thousands of Christian Science churches.
Until Mrs. Eddy revealed the allness and ever-presence of
infinite good, people did not realize that even "religion," which believed in
two powers--a good and an evil power--was a barrier to understanding the
kingdom of God within their own consciousness; hence the suffering and hardship
that has accompanied mankind's progress.
Nevertheless a divine Providence was in evidence from the
time of Adam and Eve. The people who participated in the ventures that
forwarded civilization may not have had a clear understanding of the nature of
God, infinite good, but they had great faith in God's willingness and ability
to help them.
This was especially true of the founders of our nation.
Their pure and strong belief--their sublime faith in God--shadowed itself forth
as the substance of the good that was made visible.
Mankind's Struggle for Freedom
The story of America is the story of the search for true
freedom. Mankind's struggle for freedom began when the Adam dream, universal
hypnotic suggestion, falsely convinced man that he is a mortal rather than a
divine being capable of knowing the truth because he has the Mind of God and
the "kingdom of God is within [him]", as his consciousness.
The Adam allegory can never be understood if we think of
Adam and Eve as two. Each mortal is Adam AND Eve. It is the Eve
in us that leads us to see that error of any kind is illusion, merely
aggressive mental suggestion coming to us for life. We can either give it life
by believing the lie, or we can reject it by recognizing it as aggressive
mental suggestion, the serpent. Infinite good made all that was made.
Good alone is real.
Truth, cross-questioning man as to his knowledge of
error, finds woman [meaning the thought male or female, receptive to
spiritual sense] the first to confess her fault. She says, "The serpent
beguiled me . . ." She has already learned that corporeal sense is the
serpent. Hence she is first to abandon the belief in the material origin of
man and to discern spiritual creation. (S&H
533:26)
Further, Mrs. Eddy wrote:
Thus it was that I beheld, as never before, the awful
unreality called evil. The equipollence of God [God's allness and evil's
nothingness, its unreality] brought to light another glorious proposition,man's
perfectibility and the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on
earth.
The biblical Eve must therefore be seen as the first gleam
of Truth coming to Adam--to the Adam in each of us. This gleam of Truth
is destined to awaken and free us--awaken and free all
mankind--from bondage to the cruelest of all taskmasters, namely, the
Adam dream that life and intelligence are in matter.
Mankind's Misconception of What Sin
Is
In Christian Science we learn that sin doesn't mean just bad
behavior, like committing adultery, lying, cheating, getting drunk or smoking.
The writings of Mary Baker Eddy--the second coming of the Christ--reveal sin as
far more encompassing.
Sin is dishonoring God, the kingdom of God within our
spiritual consciousness, by accepting the universal hypnotic suggestion that
there is a material universe, and that humanity is separated from the one Mind,
God--the real Mind of man.
This belief in a material universe, inhabited by
flesh-blood-bones bodies, is what is meant by having "other gods." It breaks
the First Commandment. From the point of view of the Science of being there is
no difference between the belief in lack, sorrow, and disease, and the belief
in any other so-called sin, such as adultery or stealing. They are all
ILLUSION, merely hypnotic suggestion. God being All, there is
naught besides. Error of any kind is unreal. Once we see this we
can heal, just like a mathematician can "heal" 2x2=5, because he has learned it
is 4.
False appetites and evil traits are forms of the same thing:
illusion, mesmerism, hypnotism. Because Science explains "existence separate
from divinity" as impossible (S&H 522:10), sin is revealed as believing in
a material universe peopled with mortals. This belief, of course, includes--as
sin--what religions have designated as sin.
The struggle of humanity to free itself of this universal
hypnotic suggestion continues as an underlying theme in Scripture from Genesis
to Revelation.
In Revelation it was prophesied that freedom would come
through the "little book" that a "mighty angel" would bring, and through the
mission of the God-crowned woman and her earthly representative, the
"wilderness woman." (See Rev. chapters 10, 12, and 21.)
These prophecies were fulfilled when Mary Baker Eddy
published Science and Health and founded God's "Christ Science" in human
consciousness. Christ Science did not need to be founded in God-consciousness
where it always has been and always will be.
Man Governed by His Creator is
Self-Governed
Freedom is humanity's birthright. On page 23 of the 16th
edition of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy says that man is free because he
"should have no other Mind than God. In reality he has not. It is only delusion
that he seems to have another mind"a dual mind made up of
both good and evil tendencies.
Man is free because he has the kingdom of God within his
consciousness, and what is called "man" is the manifestation of this divine
consciousness. Man is but the reflection of the "I AM that I am."
Therefore God, the "I" of you and the "I" of me, is not in its reflection, any
more than you are in the mirrored image that returns your likeness.
Again in the 16th edition, on page 27 and 51, Mrs. Eddy
tells us man is free because "mortal body and material man are delusions that
spiritual understanding destroys; but man will not lose his identity because of
this destruction, but will gain the conscious infinitude of being.... Waking to
real Life, mortals find that what they have learned from the senses to be
reversed in the facts of existence. That which sense deems shadow is found to
be substance; and what sense deems substance becomes nothingness when the
dreams of the senses vanish and reality appears."
Recall Jesus' warning to Mary on that Easter morn 2000 years
ago: "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended" (John 20:17) and the startling
evidence he later gave to his followers when he walked through doors that had
been barred. He was demonstrating that his recreated body was a more spiritual
body, an advanced concept, yet still recognizable.
This is in accord with Mary Baker Eddy's assertion that
spiritual man will always remain substantial and recognizable, that every
spiritual idea will remain in a form or a "body" that can be cognized.
"Infinite progression" will always be "concrete being." The resurrection was
the real man coming to view--the man that was never in matter. Translation only
lifts us to a higher plane of spiritual understanding and joy.
In My. 200:1 Mrs. Eddy wrote, "religious liberty and
individual rights under the Constitution of our nation are rapidly advancing,
avowing and consolidating the genius of Christian Science." As this process
leads to man's recognition of his spiritual status, it reveals
that "material history is drawing to a close."
AMERICA book sections
Foreword | I |
II | III |
IV | V |
VI | VII |
VIII | IX |
X | XI |
XII | XIII |
Conclusion | Bibliography |
