Retrospection and Introspection/Foundation-stones
FOUNDATION-STONES
THE following ideas of Deity, antagonized by finite theories, doctrines, and hypotheses, I found to be demonstrable rules in Christian Science, and that we must abide by them.
Whatever diverges from the one divine Mind, or God, — or divides Mind into minds, Spirit into spirits, Soul into souls, and Being into beings, — is a misstatement of the unerring divine Principle of Science, which interrupts the meaning of the omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of Spirit, and is of human instead of divine origin.
War is waged between the evidences of Spirit and the evidences of the five physical senses; and this contest must go on until peace be declared by the final triumph of Spirit in immutable harmony. Divine Science disclaims sin, sickness, and death, on the basis of the omnipotence and omnipresence of God, or divine good.
All consciousness is Mind, and Mind is God. Hence there is but one Mind; and that one is the infinite good, supplying all Mind by the reflection, not the subdivision, of God. Whatever else claims to be mind, or consciousness, is untrue. The sun sends forth light, but not suns; so God reflects Himself, or Mind, but does not subdivide Mind, or good, into minds, good and evil. Divine Science demands mighty wrestlings with mortal beliefs, as we sail into the eternal haven over the unfathomable sea of possibilities.
Neither ancient nor modern philosophy furnishes a scientific basis for the Science of Mind-healing. Plato believed he had a soul, which must be doctored in order to heal his body. This would be like correcting the principle of music for the purpose of destroying discord. Principle is right; it is practice that is wrong. Soul is right; it is the flesh that is evil. Soul is the synonym of Spirit, God; hence there is but one Soul, and that one is infinite. If that pagan philosopher had known that physical sense, not Soul, causes all bodily ailments, his philosophy would have yielded to Science.
Man shines by borrowed light. He reflects God as his Mind, and this reflection is substance, — the substance of good. Matter is substance in error, Spirit is substance in Truth.
Evil, or error, is not Mind; but infinite Mind is sufficient to supply all manifestations of intelligence. The notion of more than one Mind, or Life, is as unsatisfying as it is unscientific. All must be of God, and not our own, separated from Him.
Human systems of philosophy and religion are departures from Christian Science. Mistaking divine Principle for corporeal personality, ingrafting upon one First Cause such opposite effects as good and evil, health and sickness, life and death; making mortality the status and rule of divinity, — such methods can never reach the perfection and demonstration of metaphysical, or Christian Science.
Stating the divine Principle, omnipotence (omnis patens), and then departing from this statement and taking the rule of finite matter, with which to work out the problem of infinity or Spirit, — all this is like trying to compensate for the absence of omnipotence by a physical, false, and finite substitute.
With our Master, life was not merely a sense of existence, but an accompanying sense of power that subdued matter and brought to fight immortality, insomuch that the people “were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” Life, as defined by Jesus, had no beginning; it was not the result of organization, or infused into matter; it was Spirit.