Communion Address, January, 1896
Friends and Brethren:—The Biblical record of the
great Nazarene, whose character we to-day commemorate,
is scanty; but what is given, puts to flight every doubt as
to the immortality of his words and works. Though [30]
written in a decaying language, his words can never pass [1]
away: they are inscribed upon the hearts of men: they
are engraved upon eternity's tablets.
Undoubtedly our Master partook of the Jews' feast
of the Passover, and drank from their festal wine-cup. [5]
This, however, is not the cup to which I call your at-
tention,—even the cup of martyrdom: wherein Spirit
and matter, good and evil, seem to grapple, and the
human struggles against the divine, up to a point of
discovery; namely, the impotence of evil, and the om- [10]
nipotence of good, as divinely attested. Anciently, the
blood of martyrs was believed to be the seed of the Church.
Stalled theocracy would make this fatal doctrine just
and sovereign, even a divine decree, a law of Love! That
the innocent shall suffer for the guilty, is inhuman. The [15]
prophet declared, “Thou shalt put away the guilt of
innocent blood from Israel.” This is plain: that what-
ever belittles, befogs, or belies the nature and essence of
Deity, is not divine. Who, then, shall father or favor
this sentence passed upon innocence? thereby giving the [20]
signet of God to the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of His
beloved Son, the righteous Nazarene,—christened by
John the Baptist, “the Lamb of God.”
Oh! shameless insult to divine royalty, that drew
from the great Master this answer to the questions of the [25]
rabbinical rabble: “If I tell you, ye will not believe; and
if I also ask you, ye will not answer me, nor let me go.”
Infinitely greater than human pity, is divine Love,—
that cannot be unmerciful. Human tribunals, if just,
borrow their sense of justice from the divine Principle [30]
thereof, which punishes the guilty, not the innocent. The
Teacher of both law and gospel construed the substitution
of a good man to suffer for evil-doers—a crime! When [1]
foretelling his own crucifixion, he said, “Woe unto the
world because of offenses! for it must needs be that
offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense
cometh!” [5]
Would Jesus thus have spoken of what was indis-
pensable for the salvation of a world of sinners, or of the
individual instrument in this holy (?) alliance for accom-
plishing such a monstrous work? or have said of him
whom God foreordained and predestined to fulfil a divine [10]
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 assailable: 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 damnation 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 substitutes
the suffering of the Godlike 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: God 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
same spirit that in our time massacres 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 gods before me:”
it is either idolizing something and somebody, or hating [5]
them: it is the spirit of idolatry, envy, jealousy, covet-
ousness, superstition, lust, 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
passions and human gods, or tortured to appease the
anger of a so-called god or a miscalled man or woman!
The Assyrian Merodach, or the god of sin, was the “lucky
god;” and the Babylonian Yawa, or Jehovah, was the [15]
Jewish tribal deity. The Christian's God 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 God, 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 God is Love, is Spirit; hence
it follows that those who worship Him, must worship [30]
Him spiritually,—far apart from physical sensation
such as attends eating and drinking corporeally. It is
plain that aught unspiritual, intervening between God [1]
and man, would tend to disturb the divine order, and
countermand the Scripture that those who worship the
Father must worship Him in spirit. It is also plain,
that we should not seek and cannot find God 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 God as our God!” 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 God.
The last act of the tragedy on Calvary rent the veil
of matter, and unveiled Love's great legacy to mortals: [25]
Love forgiving its enemies. This grand act crowned
and still crowns Christianity: it manumits mortals; it
translates love; it gives to suffering, inspiration; to
patience, experience; to experience, hope; to hope, faith;
to faith, understanding; and to understanding, Love tri- [30]
umphant!
In proportion to a man's spiritual progress, he will
indeed drink of our Master's cup, and be baptized with [1]
his baptism! be purified as by fire,—the fires of suffering;
then hath he part in Love's atonement, for “whom the
Lord loveth He chasteneth.” Then shall he also reign
with him: he shall rise to know that there is no sin, [5]
that there is no suffering; since all that is real is right.
This knowledge enables him to overcome the world, the
flesh, and all evil, to have dominion over his own sinful
sense and self. Then shall he drink anew Christ's cup,
in the kingdom of God—the reign of righteousness— [10]
within him; he shall sit down at the Father's right hand:
sit down; not stand waiting and weary; but rest on the
bosom of God; rest, in the understanding of divine Love
that passeth all understanding; rest, in that which “to
know aright is Life eternal,” and whom, not having seen, [15]
we love.
Then shall he press on to Life's long lesson, the eternal
lore of Love; and learn forever the infinite meanings of
these short sentences: “God is Love;” and, All that is
real is divine, for God is All-in-all. [20]