Personal Statements.
MANY misrepresentations are made concerning myself and my doctrines, some of which are as unkind and unjust as they are untrue; but I can only repeat the Master's words: “They know not what they do.”
The foundations of these assertions, like the structure raised thereupon, are vain shadows, repeating — if the popular couplet may be so paraphrased —
The old, old story,
Of Satan and his lie.
In the days of Eden, humanity was misled by a false personality, — a talking snake, — according to Biblical history. This pretender taught the opposite of Truth. This abortive ego, this fable of error, is laid bare in Christian Science.
Human theories call, or miscall, this evil a Child of God. Philosophy would multiply and subdivide personality into everything that exists, whether expressive or not expressive of the Mind which is God. Human wisdom says of evil, “The Lord knows it!” thus carrying out the Serpent's assurance: “In the day ye eat thereof [when you, lie, get the floor], then your eyes shall be opened [you shall be conscious matter], and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil [you shall believe a lie, and this lie shall seem truth].”
Bruise the head of this Serpent, as Truth and “the woman” are doing in Christian Science, and it stings your heel, rears its crest proudly, and goes on saying: “Am I not myself? Am I not mind and matter, person and thing?” We should answer: “Yes! you are indeed yourself, and need most of all to be rid of this self, for it is very far from God's likeness.”
The egotist must come down and learn, in humility, that God never made evil. An evil ego, and his assumed power, are falsities. These falsities need a denial. The falsity is the teaching that matter can be conscious; and conscious matter implies Pantheism. This Pantheism I unveil. I try to show its all-pervading presence in certain forms of theology and philosophy, where it becomes error's affirmative to Truth's negative. Anatomy and physiology make mind-matter a habitant of the cerebellum, whence it telegraphs and telephones over its own body, and goes forth into an imaginary sphere of its own creation and limitation, until it finally dies in order to better itself. But Truth never dies, and death is not the goal which Truth seeks.
The evil ego has but the visionary substance of matter. It lacks the Substance of Spirit, — Mind, Life, Soul, Mortal mind is self-creative and self-sustained, until it becomes non-existent. It has no origin or existence in Spirit, Immortal Mind, or Good. Matter is not truly conscious; and mortal error, called mind, is not godlike. These are the shadowy and false, which neither think nor speak.
All Truth is from inspiration and revelation, — from Spirit, not from flesh.
We do not see much of the real man here, for he is God's man; while ours is man's man.
I do not deny, I maintain, the individuality and reality of man; but I do so on a divine Principle, not based on a human conception and birth. The Scientific man and his Maker are here; and you would be none other than this man, if you would subordinate the fleshly perceptions to the spiritual sense and Source of Being.
Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” He taught no selfhood as existent in matter. In his identity there is no evil. Individuality and Life were real to him only as spiritual and good, not as material or evil. This incensed the rabbins against Jesus, because it was an indignity to their personality; and this personality they regarded as both good and evil, as is still claimed by the worldly wise. To them evil was even more the Ego than was the Good. Sin, sickness, and death were evil's concomitants. This evil ego they believed must extend throughout the universe, as being equally identical and self-conscious with God. This ego was in the earthquake, thunderbolt, and tempest.
The Pharisees fought Jesus on this issue. It furnished the battleground of the past, as it does of the present. The fight was an effort to enthrone evil. Jesus assumed the burden of disproof, by destroying sin, sickness, and death, to sight and sense.
Nowhere in Scripture is evil connected with Good, the Being of God, and, with every passing hour, it is losing its false claim to existence or consciousness. All that can exist is God and His idea.