Page:Miscellaneous Writings.djvu/388

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
362
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS

and manifestations are not those of the material senses; for instance, intelligent matter, or mortal mind, material birth, growth, and decay: they are the forever-existing realities of divine Science; wherein God and man are perfect, and man's reason is at rest in God's wisdom, — who comprehends and reflects all real mode, form, individuality, identity.

Scholastic dogma has made men blind. Christ's logos gives sight to these blind, ears to these deaf, feet to these lame, — physically, morally, spiritually. Theologians make the mortal mistake of believing that God, having made all, made evil; but the Scriptures declare that all that He made was good. Then, was evil part and parcel of His creation?

Philosophy hypothetically regards creation as its own creator, puts cause into effect, and out of nothing would create something, whose noumenon is mortal mind, with its phenomenon matter, — an evil mind already doomed, whose modes are material manifestations of evil, and that continually, until self-extinguished by suffering!

Here revelation must come to the rescue of mortals, to remove this mental millstone that is dragging them downward, and refute erring reason with the spiritual cosmos and Science of Soul. We all must find shelter from the storm and tempest in the tabernacle of Spirit. Truth is won through Science or suffering: O vain mortals! which shall it be? And suffering has no reward, except when it is necessary to prevent sin or reform the sinner. And pleasure is no crime except when it strengthens the influence of bad inclinations or lessens the activities of virtue. The more nearly an erring so-