The essential unity of God and man is thus the one fact which permeates the whole teaching of Jesus. He himself stood forth as its living expression. He appealed to his miracles as the proofs of it: "it is the Father that doeth the works." It formed the substance of his final discourse with his disciples in the night that he was betrayed. It is the Truth, to bear witness to which, he told Pilate, was the purpose of his life. In support of this Truth he died, and by the living power of this Truth he rose again. The whole object of his mission was to teach men to realise their unity with God and the consequences that must necessarily follow from it; to draw them away from that notion of dualism which puts an impassable barrier between God and man, and thus renders any true conception of the Principle of Life impossible; and to draw them into the clear perception of the innermost nature of Life, as consisting in the inherent identity of each individual with that Infinite all-pervading Spirit of Life which he called "the Father."
"The branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the vine;" the power of bearing fruit, of producing and of giving forth, depends entirely on the fact that the individual is, and always continues to be, as much an organic part of Universal Spirit as the fruit-bearing branch is an organic part of the parent stem. Lose this idea, and regard God as a merely external Creator who may indeed command us, or even sometimes be moved by our cries and entreaties, and we have lost the root of Livingness and with it all possibility of growth or of liberty. This is dualism, which cuts us off from our Source of Life; and so long as we take this false conception for the true law of Being, we shall find ourselves hampered by limitations and insoluble problems of every description: We have lost the Key of Life and are consequently unable to open the door.
But in proportion as we abide in the vine, that is, consciously realise our perpetual unity with Originating Spirit, and impress upon ourselves that this unity is neither bestowed as the reward of merit, nor as an act of favour—which would be to deny the Unity, for the bestowal would at once imply dualism—but dwell on the truth that it is the innermost and supreme principle of our own nature; in proportion as we consciously realise this, we shall rise to greater and greater certainty of knowledge, resulting in more and more perfect externalisation, whose increasing splendour can know no limits; for it is the continual outflowing of the exhaustless Spirit of Life in that manifestation of itself which is our own individuality.
The notion of dualism is the veil which prevents men seeing this, and causes them to wander blindfolded among the mazes of endless perplexity; but, as St. Paul truly says, when this veil is taken away we shall find ourselves changed from glory to glory as by the Lord the Spirit. "His name shall be called Immanuel," that is "God in us," not a separate being from ourselves. Let us remember that Jesus was condemned by the principle of separation because he himself was the externalisation of the principle of Unity, and that, in adhering to the principle of Unity we are adhering to the only possible root of Life, and are maintaining the Truth for which Jesus died.
XVII
Externalisation
Who would not be happy in himself and his conditions? That is what we all desire—more fulness of life, a greater and brighter vitality in ourselves, and less restriction in our surroundings. And we are told that the talisman by which this can be accomplished is Thought. We are told, Change your modes of thought, and the changed conditions will follow. But many seekers feel that this is very much like telling us to catch birds by putting salt on their tails. If we can put the salt on the bird's tail, we can also lay our hand on the bird. If we can change our thinking, we can thereby change our circumstances.
But how are we to bring about this change of cause which will in its turn produce this changed effect? This is the practical question that perplexes many earnest seekers. They can see their way clearly enough through the whole sequence of cause and effect resulting in the externalisation of the desired results, if only the one initial difficulty could be got over. The difficulty is a real one, and until it is overcome it vitiates all the teaching and reduces it to a mere paper theory. Therefore it is to this point that the attention of students should be particularly directed. They feel the need of some solid basis from which the change of thought can be effected, and until they find this the theory of Divine Science, however perfect in itself, will remain for them nothing more than a mere theory, producing no practical results.
The necessary scientific basis exists, however, and is extremely simple and reasonable, if we will take the pains to think it out carefully for ourselves. Unless we are prepared to support the thesis that the Power which created the universe is inherently evil, or that the universe is the work of two opposite and equal powers, one evil and the other good—both of which propositions are demonstrably false—we have no alternative but to say that the Originating Source of all must be inherently good. It cannot be partly good and partly evil, for that would be to set it against itself and make it self-destructive; therefore it must be good altogether. But once grant this initial proposition and we cut away the root of all evil. For how can evil proceed from an All-originating Source which is good altogether, and in which, therefore, no germ for the development of evil is to be found? Good cannot be the origin of evil; and since nothing can proceed except from the one Originating Mind, which is only good, the true nature of all things must be that which they have received from their Source—namely, good.