Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/181

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CREATION.
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The universe of Spirit is peopled with spiritual beings, and its government is Divine Science. Man is the Godward gravitation. offspring, not of the lowest, but the highest qualities of Mind. Man understands spiritual existence in proportion as his treasures of Truth and Love are enlarged. Mortals must gravitate Godward, their affections and aims grow spiritual, they must near the broader interpretations of Being, and gain some proper sense of the Infinite for matter and mortality to be annihilated.

This Scientific sense of Being, forsaking matter for Spirit, by no means suggests man's absorption into Deity, and the loss of his identity, but confers upon him enlarged individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive benevolence, a higher and more permanent existence.

The senses represent man as having untimely birth and his death as irresistible, as if he were a weed growing Mortal birth and death. apace, or a flower withered by the sun and nipped by untimely frosts; but this is true only of mortals, not man. The Truth of Being is perennial, and the error is seen only when we look from wrong points of observation.

Who that has felt the loss of physical pleasure has not gained stronger desires for spiritual joy? The Blessings from pain. aspiration after heavenly good comes even before we discover what belongs to Wisdom and Love. The loss of earthly hopes and pleasures brightens the ascending path of many a heart. The pains of sense quickly inform us that its pleasures are mortal, and that joy is spiritual.

The pains of sense are salutary, if they wrench away false pleasurable beliefs, and transplant the affections

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