The Coquille Valley sentinel., February 21, 1930, Page 6, Image 6

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Christian Science
Entitled
Christian Science: Tha
Realization of Hmnanity’a Hope
r
by
Charles E. Jarvia, C. 8.
of Loa Angelos, California
Member of the Board of Lectureship
of The Mother Church, The First
Church of Christ, Scientist,
in Boston, Maas.
If a Christian Scientist could reply
to Jeremiah’s sorrowful question,
“Is there no balm in Gilead; |a there
no physician there?” it would be with
the assurance that there is balm in
Gilead; that there is a Physician at
hand, and that the health of our sons,
m well as our daughters, is recovered.
To a weary, disappointed, suffering,
sinning world, Christian Science says:
Look up! for “the night ja far spent,
the day io at hand.” There ia no con-j
dition of morel, mental, or physical
distress which cannot be healed
through the application of the teach­
ings of Christian Science. The pro­
cess is neither abstruse nor mysteri­
ous. It is so simple that when wo
gain even a faint glimpse of the glor­
ious import of our real sonship with
God, and of His tender, merciful,
compassionate relationship to all His
ehi
rightfully wonder how
we
; ourselves out of the
kingdom so long. To those listening
to a Christian Science lecture for the
first time, lot me say that wo do not
urge you to abandon your precon­
ceived beliefs, or exhort you to accept
the teachings of Christian Science,
but it ia safe to assume that you are
hero to learn more about God and
something of Christian Science, oo we
shall tell you just a little about the
hope which Christian Science offers,
and let you do with it aa you win.
It is perfectly nonnal and natural
for human beings to desire and to ex­
pect happiness, contentment, and free­
dom from bodily ilk. During a con­
siderable portion of our waking hours
we dovoto our best efforts to a form
of service so that others as well aa
ourselves can enjoy a measure of
“life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap­
piness.” Too often db our efforts be­
come tragic struggles for a mere ex­
istence, for the reason that we do not
understand God or look to Him for
guidance. Try as we may, many of
our beet endeavors apparently fail,
and in desperation we look about us
for a way of escape, or we hope for
some door of opportunity to open,
through wMch relief may come to ua.
To such a one, burdened with fear,
discouragement, or despair, Christian
Science comes with a message of
glorious hope.
If you doubt this,
look about you and see how many of
your friends and neighbors there are
who have, through the ministrations
of Christian Science, been delivered
from every conceivable form of mis­
ery, sorrow, and adversity; and some
of them have literally been snatched
from open graves.
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The trouble with many of us has
been that we have failed to realise
that the infinitely good and all-pow­
erful God is everywhere, and, conse­
quently, He is with us right now. We
here either failed to regard God as
a factor in our live«, or ws have en­
tertained a false concept of Him. I
do not mean to say that he who has
been faithful to his highest Christian
concept of God has not expressed a
better belief than the agnostic or the
atheist.
When Paul visited Athena and saw
an altar erected “to the unknown
God,” he realised that these who were
responsible for that inscription really
wanted to know the true God, and
later, when they were gathered on
Mara’ hill, Paul said to them, “Whom
therefore ye ignorantly worship, him
declare I unto you." To-day people
need to know more about the God they
are ignorantly worshiping and Chria-
tian Science reveals to us a God of love
who never fails to answer our prayers
when we pray to Him aright
I
f
Throughout the Bible we are taught
the oneness, goodness, omnipotence,
omniscience, and omnipresence of
God, and we are also taught that man
is made in His image.
God is the
only creator, He has created all things
like Himself; therefore, all that really
exists is that which God has made,
and it must be good aa He created it.
When the truth as revealed in
Ch ri stain Science dawns in our con­
sciousness, we begin to know God as
He is described by the Psalmist, as
One “who forgivsth all thine iniqui­
ties; who healeth all thy diseases; who
redoemeth thy life from destruction;
who crowneth thee with lovingkind-
nesa and tender mercies." Is it not
utterly unthinkable that such a God
should visit grief, disaster, or dis­
ease upon His children ? Even a hu­
man father vrould not do this. One of,
the sublime things in human experi­
ence is the faith of a child in its par­
ents. Amplify that faith to the point
of spiritual understanding where we
realise that we are actually the chil­
dren of a tender, loving, heavenly
Father, and we find that this under­
standing enables re to rely upon God
with an absolute confidence that He
will guide our footsteps and deliver
us from all evil. There are many in
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thia audience—possibly the majority
of us—who were utterly without hope,
for are did not know there ia or could
bo such
L In our desperation wo
reached
is a drowning man would
clutch at a straw, and through thio
spiritual understanding erf God wore
rescued from the depths of ignominy
and ^despair. Many of us who turned
to Christian Science in our darkest
hour of seemingly hopeless invalidism,
or as victims of habit, as* to-day Us­
ing witnesses to the great fact that
“the Lord’s hand is not shortened,
that it cannot save; neither his ear
heavy, that it cannot hear.”
Many are willing to concede that
God is infinite, eternal, and perfect,
for nothing lees could create and
maintain the univeroe. Mary Baker
Eddy defines God in the Christian
Science textbook, “Science and Health
with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 587),
as “The great I AM; the all-knowing,
Mi-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-
lovtng, and eternal; Principle; Mind;
Soul; Spirit; Life; Truth; Love; all
substance; intelligence.” As we study
this definition there is revealed to us
a new and constantly unfolding con­
cept of God, which enables us to com­
prehend His power and infinitude.
This God of infinite, all-embracing
love is ever at hand. We no longer
entertain our childhood concept of
God as we thought of Him in a far-
off, nebulous heaven where He was
supposed to keep a record of our good
and bad deeds in a great book and
from which He passed judgment upon
His children.
Mary Baker Eddy has
given us a new and broader sense of
Deity as our Father-Mother God who
expresses the tenderness, the love,
and the compassion of motherhood,
combined with the strength, the jus­
tice, and the firmness we naturally
attribute to fatherhood. It is to such
a God that we turn for realese from
our troubles, and we have proved
that He does not give us a stone when
we ask for bread. The highest sense
of God is Love, our Father and our
Mother, ever present w‘th us, over
conscious of us, over caring for us;
that Lovo which never changes and
never fails; that Love which is im­
partial, universal, and eternal; that
Love which is incorporeal or spiritual
and bestows its blessings alike upon
all, as the sun shines upon the whole
earth, irrespective of time, person,
place, or thing. We shaH know some­
what of thia Love and express it more
when we lovo our neighbor as our­
self and our neighbor’s child u our
owaC " What human father in hie
right senses would deny his children
anything that would contribute to
their welfare and happiness? When
we learn that God has nothing in
store for us but good, how much
greater, infinitely greater, should be
our trust in His ability to give us all
and more than we can possibly re­
ceive!
In the opening chapter of Genesis
we are told that God crested man in
His image and likeness and gave man
dominion over all the earth as well as
over everything above and beneath
the earth. Hae it ever occurred to
you that this is literally and demon­
strably true? Do you realise that
the truth of this statement is being
proved daily, hourly, and constantly
by thousands of Christian Scientists
who are successfully asserting man’s
God-given dominion over circum­
stances of birth, environment, and the
sins of flesh through an understand­
ing of God and of man’s relationship
to Him? The freedom which follows
thia overcoming of discord is an in­
herent right of every child of God.
This surely does not imply or convey
a sense of a manlike God but, on the
contrary, begins to unfold the idea of
a Godlike man.
This unfoldment
takes place through the ever present,
always enforceable power of God op­
erating as law. The affairs of men,
as well as the rotation of the planets,
are governed by this same infinite, un­
erring, immutable law of which God
alone is the author. All the trouble
and discord in the world is due to ig­
norance of or dieobedience to God’s
law. We find this to be true as we
turn away from our sinful habits and
false beliefs and, through a conscious­
ness awakened to spiritual under­
standing. claim our right to freedom
and harmony under the law of divine
Justice. -
If there is a creator of the universe,
including man, and there is; and if
this creator is good.
His creation
most be and is like Him. Then we, in
reality, are the perfect offspring of a
perfect God right now, and the hu­
man belief in evil and matter is a fal­
sity and no part at us as God’s off­
spring. If the beliefs in sin, sickness,
disease, death, envy, jealousy, hatred,
and so on are not of God. who or
what then is the creator of these
vicious briiefs? They tare no creator,
ceaafully resisted. You positively can
do this just as you can refuse to ac-
a mutilated or a counterfeit coin.
JESUS
Christ Jesus demonstrated the
truth about God to his age. His di­
vine origin and the human conditions
surrounding his birth enabled him to
understand and appreciate to the full
the problems of these ha camo to seek
and to save- He was fully conscious
"Iff hie oneness with God. Thus en­
dowed, ho met and mastered sin, dis­
ease, and death. He was a true way­
shower because ho not only preached
the gospel, but over and over again
he proved his statements by his dem­
onstrations. Then ht gave us—that is,
all who believe in him—this wonder­
ful assurance that the works he did
we should do also; and evsn greater
works.
Jesus gave to mankind the
greatest message the world ever re­
ceived. His only moans of communi­
cation was by the spoken word to
single individuals or to groups of peo­
ple, by the sea, on the hillside, or in
their simple homes. Our only record
of his sayings is through the reports
of others, yet the message ho gave nas
endured through the centuries, and its
potency and availability to the needs
of to-day are as provable now as when
first uttered.
The Christianity that Christ Jesus
taught is not complete without the
healing of sin and disease. The heal­
ings which have occurred sines Mary
Baker Eddy gave her discovery to the
world are proof conclusive that the
truths uttered by'Jesus were not
limited in their application to his im­
mediate hearers or to the people of his
generation, but were addressed to'
every individusl throughout all time.
Truth is eternal. It is without begin­
ning or end. Truth has appeared
through Mosee, Elijah, Elisha, and
other prophets, or whenever the hu­
man race reached the place where it
realised its own impotence and cried
out to God for deliverance. When
Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I
am,” he did not, of course, refer to
his human selfhood but to the eternal
Christ, or Truth, which ho demon­
strated.
,,
Jesus did not come to destroy but
to fulfill the law,—the eternal law of
Christ, which had its earlier expres­
sions in the experiences of the proph­
ets, some of whom foretold the Mes-
siahship of Jesus. Jesus did not up­
set anything except evil; ho cease to
establish law and order, to point the
way to salvation, and to prove thpt
God is the author of our being and
the healer of all our diseases. Jesus
took no credit to himself, but made it
clear that it was God working through
him that accomplished the results.
Quietly, lovingly, Jesus went about
his Father’s business, never refusing
a eall for aid, end without the record
of a single failure in all of Ms ex­
perience. His was the sublime ex­
ample for all time of what God will
do through man when man reflects
the Mind of Christ.
CHRIST
It is this same Christ, Truth, which
unfolds in our consciousness and en­
ables us to recognise God as the au­
thor of man’s being. When this reve­
lation comes to us and we are trans­
formed by the renewing of our mind,
the fear, sickness, pain, sin, sorrow,
and discouragement which we have
hugged to our boeoms begin to melt
away as mist before the morning sun­
shine and we realise that, as one of
our hymns says,
“Man does stand as God’s own child,
The imago of His Love.”
(Christian Science Hymnal, p. W)
It was the Christ which enabled Jesus
to make his supreme demonstration
over death, thereby proving forever
the nothingness of the belief which we
have been falsely educated to regard
as inevitable, but which Jesus tells us
Is an enemy to be overcome. More­
over, he assured us that if we believed
on him, and understood him and Ms
mission,—-which was to reveal the
Christ,—we should never see death.
It is the Christ, or divine idee, which
enables us to help and encourage our
fellow-man in times of sickness or
stress; which inspires to deeds of he­
roism ifi the face of apparently insur­
mountable obstacles, and which en­
ables us to meet and overcome the
argument* of fear. Fear ip the arch­
enemy of the human race, and is to
be resisted as the chief torment of
mankind. It is the greatest hindrance
to our freedom. Pear is at the bot­
tom of all the devastating beliefs of
war, pestilence, contagion, disease,
death. We rise out of all error as
fear Is overcome.
Material sense, which is incapable
of grasping anything beyond itself,
does not, cannot comprehend the
Christ, but it io possible for the human
mind to become so imbued with a holy
desire to know God that itean par-
Christ-idea. Th?. ”
tencies with which these books have
boon regarded. Than follow« a Gloss­
ary of terms commonly used in Chris­
tian Science, and finally, the chapter
on Fruitage, which contains the testi­
monies of many who were healed
through reading the textbook.
Christian Science ia a clear, com­
prehensible revelation of the truth. It
h demonstrable, for it is the only re­
ligious teaching which is solving the
problems of* mankind and overcoming
the beliefs of evil and matter scienti­
fically.
If you wish to know what Christian
Science is and how it operates, let mo
earnestly commend you to a study of
this book. In order to appreciate its
full meaning, road it carefully, pon­
der Its statements, apply them to your
problems, and in the degree that you
are receptive to the truth elucidated
in this book, you will find yourself
experiencing freedom from whatever
has seemed to distress you. More­
over, you will be found entertaining a
different and more loving attitude to­
ward God and your fellow-man. Sci­
ence and Health is not a book one can
reed through quickly and lay aside as
one would a novel. K can be thor­
oughly perused from cover to cover
times without number, and each read­
ing unfolds new and clearer meanings
of passages which may have seemed
obscure on a previous occasion.
This textbook not only seta forth
Christ Jesus’ method of the treatment
of disease and sin, but, as its title in­
dicates, it is a “Key to the Scrip­
tures.” With this key we unlock the
door to a vast storehouse of hitherto
hidden treaure of spirtual illumina­
tion. The Bible is full of passages of
exquisite beauty, and when illum­
inated by the light of spiritual under­
standing, these divinely inspired ut­
terances become our refuge from evil,
our assurance of heavenly protection,
our strength in times of stress, and
our consolation in the hour of sorrow.
THE BIBLE
The claim is sometfahes mistakenly
made that Christian Scientists have a
Bible of their own, a different Bible
from that generally used in Protes­
tant churches. The Bible always used
in our churches is the same' King
James Version which has been studied
and expounded by Bible students since
the days of the Reformation. It was
to this Bible that Mrs. Eddy turned in
her search for the great discovery
which later she denominated Chris­
tian Science and to which she makes
reference .on page IN of the textbook
as follows: “I have set forth Christian
Science and its application to the
treatment of disease just aa I have
discovered them. I have demonstrated
through Mind the effects of Truth on
the health, longevity, and morals of
men; and I have found nothing in
ancient or in modem systems on which
to found my own, except the teachings
and demonstrations of our great Mas­
ter and the lives of prophets and
apostles. The BtMe has been my only
authority. I have had no other guide
in ‘the straight and narrow way* of
Truth. And in the tenets of Christ-
tion Science wo read: “As adherents
of Truth, we take the inspired Word
of the Bible as our sufficient guide to
eternal Life” (Science and Health, p.
487). At egery service ia Christian
Science churches, the congregation
listens to passages from the Bible,
followed by correlative selections
from the Christian Science textbook.
Although many books have been
written attacking the Bible, and many
efforts have been made to destroy it
and to prevent people from reading
it, the Book of boohs has not only
survived all opposition, but it ia to-day
the moot popular book in the world.
Christian Scientists have contributed
not a little to the steadily increasing
popularity of the Bible, for there are
no people more devoted to the daily
study and contemplation of its sacred
pages, and who depend more upon its
promises for spiritual food and guid­
ance.
> >
concept of body which gives us so
much concern and which is said to
finally return to the dust of which it
was made. It is from this false con­
cept that proceeds all the pain, sick­
ness, and distress from which man­
kind cries out for deliverance.
If the expected relief from bodily
discord ia not forth-coming as the re­
sult of the use of dfugs or other ma­
terial remedies, it not infrequently
happens that change of climate ia
recommended, as if geographical lo­
cation could have any more effect
upon the elements contained in the
physical body than if they were con­
tained in a bottle. In every such case,
the esuse and effect are predicated
upon the same fallacy of intelligent
matter, but, may. I ask, how would
the drugs or medical treatment affect
the same matter after the so-called
mortal mind had left it?.
We have no evidence that Jesus ever
employed drugs in order to effect a
cure; yet he healed countless cases
without the aid of any material means.
Paul said, “Be ye transformed by
the renewing of your mind,” therefore
it is the human mind that must be edu­
cated out of its false beliefs, and that
is the basis upon which Christian
Science operates.
/
Shakespeare uttered a truism when
he said that “there is nothing either
good or bad, but thinking makes it
so.” If our premise ia wrong, it nat­
urally follows that our conclusions
and
results
will
likewise
be
wrong.
If the patient who be­
lieves in the efficacy of drugs and the
physician who depends upon drugs
fail
to
accomplish
the
anti­
cipated results, the discouraged pa­
tient wonders If there b any relief
possible in some other direction.
Here enters Christian Science with
its message of hope, declaring that
there b a way out; that the way of
salvation which Jesus made clear is
still open and unobstructed, and that
the promisee he made—with which the
Scriptures abound—were not limited
to his immediate hearers' but to all
who have eyes to see and ears to
hear. Mrs. Eddy tolls us in her book
“Retrospection
and
Introspection”
that “the mortal body being but the
objective state of the mortal mind,
this mind must be renovated to im­
prove the body” (p. 34). When the
afflicted one begins to realise that the
promises are true and applicable
specifically to him, the shacklee of
fear and doubt begin to loosen, he
ceases the mesmeric contemplation of
material, bodily conditions, and there
dawns in his consciousness a gleam
of hope which expands into spiritual
inderstanding which sets him free.
Neither human will power, suggee-
tion, nor the hypnotic control of one
human mind by another has brought
about thb demonstration.
•How can we doubt that the same
God who led the children nf Israel
through the Red Sea and guided them
through all the years of their pil­
grimage to the promised land, who
delivered Daniel from the lions’ den.
whose protective power enabled the
Hebrew children to walk unscathed
through the burning, fiery furnace;
how can we doubt that this same God
is able to deliver His childdren to­
day from the mental, moral, and
physical discords with which they
seemingly have to contend?
Christian Science ia proving hourly
that all things are possible with God,
and therefore there is a very lively
hopt for the so-called hopeless. The
healings which Jesus accomplished
are beautifully described by Mrs.
Eddy in Science and Health (pp. 47«,
477) as follows: “Jesus beheld in
Science the perfect man, who appear­
ed to him where sinning mortal men
appears to mortals. In this perfect
man the Savior saw God’s likeness,
and this correct view of man healed
the sick.” Christian Sicentista are
striving to follow the example of Je­
sus by healing the sick in thb same
way, and the opportunity for such an
attainment is open to all.
SALVATION
The salvation of which mankind ia
to-day so sorely in need is to gain
the right idea of God and man. Sal­
vation includes understanding, dem­
onstration, and deliverance from sin,
sickness, and death and is accom­
plished through spiritualisation of
thought. All that needs to be healed
or reformed is erroneous, sinful think­
ing, no when the odiousnres of sin be­
comes apparent,—in
other
words,
when we see ain for what it actually
isr-we turn from it with loathing.
Thus as thought la purified we stop
sinning, and we find that discordant
bodily condition« are also healed. For
centuries we have accepted as real
and inescapable all sorts of mls-
chievous, sinful suggestions which, af­
ter once
gaining entrance
into
thought, are very apt to breed a lively
swarm of attendant evils, until we
have become so AIM with sin
sin in
in such
such
forme as envy, Jealousy, hatred,
hatred,
malice, resentment, and the like, that
it is small wonder wo have suffered
physically. It is your divine right to
exercise your God-given dominion
over these arguments which would
rob you of your peace and freedom.
It matters not whether the argument
takes the form of sin, sorrow, or -dis- -
you can successfully resist ev­
ery effort of evil to invade the har-
moay of your being. God’s child ia
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