Fallibility Of Human Concepts
Evil counterfeits good: it says, “I am Truth,” though [20]
it is a lie; it says, “I am Love,”—but Love is spirit-
ual, and sensuous love is material, wherefore it is hate
instead of Love; for the five senses give to mortals pain,
sickness, sin, and death,—pleasure that is false, life that
leads unto death, joy that becomes sorrow. Love that is [25]
not the procurator of happiness, declares itself the anti-
pode of Love; and Love divine punishes the joys of this
false sense of love, chastens its affection, purifies it, and
turns it into the opposite channels.
Material life is the antipode of spiritual life; it mocks [30]
the bliss of spiritual being; it is bereft of permanence and [1]
peace.
When human sense is quickened to behold aright the
error,—the error of regarding Life, Truth, Love as
material and not spiritual, or as both material and spirit- [5]
ual,—it is able for the first time to discern the Science
of good. But it must first see the error of its present
erroneous course, to be able to behold the facts of Truth
outside of the error; and, vice versa, when it discovers
the truth, this uncovers the error and quickens the true [10]
consciousness of God, good. May the human shadows of
thought lengthen as they approach the light, until they
are lost in light and no night is there!
In Science, sickness is healed upon the same Principle
and by the same rule that sin is healed. To know the [15]
supposed bodily belief of the patient and what has claimed
to produce it, enables the practitioner to act more under-
standingly in destroying this belief. Thus it is in heal-
ing the moral sickness; the malicious mental operation
must be understood in order to enable one to destroy [20]
it and its effects. There is not sufficient spiritual power
in the human thought to heal the sick or the sinful.
Through the divine energies alone one must either get
out of himself and into God so far that his consciousness
is the reflection of the divine, or he must, through argu- [25]
ment and the human consciousness of both evil and good,
overcome evil.
The only difference between the healing of sin and the
healing of sickness is, that sin must be uncovered before
it can be destroyed, and the moral sense be aroused to [30]
reject the sense of error; while sickness must be cov-
ered with the veil of harmony, and the consciousness be
allowed to rejoice in the sense that it has nothing to mourn [1]
over, but something to forget.
Human concepts run in extremes; they are like the
action of sickness, which is either an excess of action or
not action enough; they are fallible; they are neither [5]
standards nor models.
If one asks me, Is my concept of you right? I reply, The
human concept is always imperfect; relinquish your human
concept of me, or of any one, and find the divine, and you
have gained the right one—and never until then. People [10]
give me too much attention of the misguided, fallible sort,
and this misrepresents one through malice or ignorance.
My brother was a manufacturer; and one day a work-
man in his mills, a practical joker, set a man who applied
for work, in the overseer's absence, to pour a bucket of [15]
water every ten minutes on the regulator. When my
brother returned and saw it, he said to the jester, “You
must pay that man.” Some people try to tend folks, as
if they should steer the regulator of mankind. God makes
us pay for tending the action that He adjusts. [20]
The regulator is governed by the principle that makes
the machinery work rightly; and because it is thus gov-
erned, the folly of tending it is no mere jest. The divine
Principle carries on His harmony.
Now turn from the metaphor of the mill to the Mother's [25]
four thousand children, most of whom, at about three
years of scientific age, set up housekeeping alone. Certain
students, being too much interested in themselves to think
of helping others, go their way. They do not love Mother,
but pretend to; they constantly go to her for help, interrupt [30]
the home-harmony, criticise and disobey her; then “return
to their vomit,”—world worship, pleasure seeking, and
sense indulgence,—meantime declaring they “never dis- [1]
obey Mother”! It exceeds my conception of human
nature. Sin in its very nature is marvellous! Who but a
moral idiot, sanguine of success in sin, can steal, and lie
and lie, and lead the innocent to doom? History needs it, [5]
and it has the grandeur of the loyal, self-forgetful, faith-
ful Christian Scientists to overbalance this foul stuff.
When the Mother's love can no longer promote peace
in the family, wisdom is not “justified of her children.”
When depraved reason is preferred to revelation, error [10]
to Truth, and evil to good, and sense seams sounder than
Soul, the children are tending the regulator; they are
indeed losing the knowledge of the divine Principle and
rules of Christian Science, whose fruits prove the nature
of their source. A little more grace, a motive made pure, [15]
a few truths tenderly told, a heart softened, a character
subdued, a life consecrated, would restore the right action
of the mental mechanism, and make manifest the move-
ment of body and soul in accord with God.
Instead of relying on the Principle of all that really [20]
exists,—to govern His own creation,—self-conceit, igno-
rance, and pride would regulate God's action. Expe-
rience shows that humility is the first step in Christian
Science, wherein all is controlled, not by man or laws
material, but by wisdom, Truth, and Love. [25]
Go gaze on the eagle, his eye on the sun,
Fast gathering strength for a flight well begun,
As rising he rests in a liberty higher
Than genius inflated with worldly desire.
No tear dims his eye, nor his pinions lose power [30]
To gaze on the lark in her emerald bower—
Whenever he soareth to fashion his nest,
No vision more bright than the dream in his breast.