Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy
flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one
that turneth aside by the flocks of they companions?
If thou know not, O thou fairest among women,
go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock,
and feed thy kids beside the shepherds’ tents.
(Song of Solomon)
* * * * * * * * * *
The ways of Christianity have not changed. Meekness selflessness and love
are the paths of his testimony and the footsteps of His flock.
(Rudimental Divine Science by Mary Baker Eddy)
* * * * * * * * * *

* * * * * * * * * *
THIS COUNTRY IS A TRUE REPUBLIC

“With regard to the election (for president), it is simply the test that this country is once again putting itself as to whether America is really the land of equal opportunity, which is the true Republican ideal, or the Democratic concept. Equality would reduce all to a common level, whereas equality of opportunity lifts all to the very highest if he will avail himself of the opportunity to go forward. I cannot go into this subject fully because it is far reaching . . . This country is not a Democracy; it is a true Republic.

Letter written 12/7/1932 by Herbert W. Eustace.

* * * * * * * * * *

* * * * * * * * * *
For the week of April 28th through May 6th in 2024.
The Christian Science Monitor was not printed on Sunday, April 30th in 1916.
* * * * * * * * * *

FEAR NO EVIL

Written for The Christian Science Monitor
April 28, 1916

I WILL fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Few compositions have surpassed the twenty-third Psalm in literary excellence, and none has ever depicted in more striking imagery the confidence and trust of a human being in the divine Principle, Love. It is the supreme effort of a religious poet in Israel; and it goes far beyond the spiritual understanding of the average human being as he was then or as he is today. When it was written, its author must have been conscious to an extraordinary degree of the omnipresence of good or Love; so much so that he had for the time being at least risen to a marked extent above the belief in the so-called power of evil which holds sway in the world of men.
      The problem of evil has been throughout all human history the problem confronting the humanitarian. He has been up against it everywhere. He has seemed to see its ravages extending not only to the individual doers of evil themselves but to the children of these and to their children’s children as well; he has seen it with the eyes of material sense, blasting youthful energies and wrecking manhood. Poverty, disease, every conceivable form or mode of suffering has followed with inevitable certainty upon the belief in and the practice of what mortals call evil. A cursory study of the religious systems of the world shows that men have devised many of their religious beliefs and consequent rites under the pressure of evil. They have sacrificed human life to arrest the scourge of pestilence by appeasing the wrath of a tribal or racial god; they have sacrificed the beast on the altar that their sins might be forgiven; they have brought gifts to the shrine that the afflicting hand of some undefined and irrational deity might be lifted from their sick and afflicted ones! The belief in the reality and power of evil is woven into the history of every nation, as it is woven into that of every individual, even as if it were a necessary part of existence.
      When Mrs. Eddy discovered that evil is unreal, and announced her discovery to the world, because of its greatness the world did not apprehend the significance of the revelation. Fifty years have elapsed since then and men are gradually beginning to inquire into the truth of the pronouncement. In Science and Health, on page 102, are the words: “Mankind must learn that evil is not power.” And before the world the words shall stand until they are not only inquired into, but understood to be true, because based on the correct spiritual understanding of God.
      Now on what does the statement that evil is unreal depend? It follows from the fact that God is infinite good or Principle. If God be admitted to be infinite good or perfect Principle, then infinite good or perfect Principle is spiritual fact, or is that which is absolutely true. There can be nothing outside of infinity. Infinite good must signify that good is omnipresent and that good is the only power there is. The conclusion results that since what is called evil is not good but is the very antithesis of good, evil can have no place in infinite good, that is, evil has no place anywhere; in other words, evil is unreal. Christian Science shows that the problem of evil is not a problem imposed by God upon men, for God never made anything the unlikeness of Himself; neither is infinite good cognizant of aught but perfect Principle.
      The problem of evil is, however, the problem more than any other confronting mankind. The question is: How is the belief in the power of evil to be overcome in the human mind? Did it ever strike those who argue that evil is real and that the problem of evil is of such vast importance, that perhaps it might be wiser if humanity changed its attention from the problem of evil to the contemplation of good? Obviously it is a mental question first and last. A man cannot be sinful unless he first thinks sinful thoughts. One never associates sin with anything which cannot think. If this be so, what would happen, if, instead of continually allowing thought to dwell on evil, men began to seek the solution of this problem in divine Mind and to learn from spiritual truth that God is the divine Principle of all that exists? There can be no possible doubt but that the deliverance of the human race from the thraldom of evil lies along the line of a right understanding of what constitutes God or Principle. “The Christian Science God is universal, eternal, divine Love,” writes Mrs. Eddy on page 140 of Science and Health, “which changeth not and causeth no evil, disease, nor death.”
      Jesus the Christ prayed for his disciples in the words: “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” The great Metaphysician knew that Truth, which is God, can deliver men from the evil beliefs of the world. For what does evil become to him who spiritually understands the allness of good? Evil to him is no longer a power to be feared, he looks upon it as a suggestion of the carnal mind or of material sense, seeking to cause him to believe in something which has no real existence. It should not be understood that Christian Science ignores the belief of evil. Far from it. Christian Science looks upon evil belief in all its myriad forms as the canker at the heart of humanity. It looks upon a human being as one who must be healed from his false beliefs; and it knows that the human mind is regenerated exactly as it spiritually understands good, divine Principle, thereby losing faith in so-called evil.
      John knew the powerlessness of evil, because he knew that God is Love. He said: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.” The human race has, at least so it believes, a long way to go ere it can say that all its fears have gone. But what an advance has been made by the revelation of God which has been given to the world in Christian Science. God is Love. God is infinite, divine Principle. There we have the metaphysical foundation for the working out of the world’s salvation from sin, from disease, from death. People generally have little conception of the power conferred on a man through understanding something of the allness of God. To the human consciousness it is a marvelous thing to behold, as is often the case in Christian Science practice, sickness of long standing healed by the apprehension of the allness of good, a wonderful thing to think that the truth about good destroys in the human mind the false belief that evil is real. And a no less extraordinary thing it is that the human mind is so backward in apprehending the importance to itself of the discovery of the healing power of Truth.
      Fear no evil, for evil is unreal since God is omnipresent and omnipotent Love. As a man begins to understand and make practical the inspired utterance of John that God is Love, and learns from Christian Science that Love is divine Principle, he learns to acknowledge no seeming evil as real, and whenever the suggestion of evil confronts him, to endeavor to realize the presence and power of omnipresent divine Principle, Love. As a man gains a stronger grasp of divine Principle, his consciousness becomes less liable to harbor evil thoughts and desires. What the human race has to spiritually understand is that God is infinite good. As it does so, it will proportionately lose its fear of so-called evil.

INSIGHT

Written for The Christian Science Monitor
April 29, 1916

THE ever-recurring fact in any attempt to apply a metaphysical analysis to words is the unity of good. What does it matter whether it be said that Life governs, that Truth governs, or that Love governs? Is there anything more alive than Truth, or more truthful than Love? Thus when we speak of insight what do we ever mean but spiritual perception, and what is spiritual perception but a full or scientific knowledge of God or Principle? Spiritual insight, then, is exactly the same thing as a dawning scientific knowledge of God, that is of Truth, or Principle. It is consequently manifest, therefore, that the outlook even of one human being differs from the outlook of another in the precise ratio of his spiritual perception, that is of his perception of Truth. It is just this which separates a Geoffrey of Monmouth from a Shakespeare, and makes one an interesting intellectual problem, and the other something in the nature of a seer. A great poet has expressed this with true insight:

“As I declare our Poet, him
Whose insight makes all others dim;
A thousand poets pried at life,
And only one amid the strife
Rose to be Shakespeare.”

Is not that why Mrs. Eddy, on page 66 of Science and Health, speaks of Shakespeare as “immortal”?
      Every man’s utterances are immortal just in the exact proportion in which they coincide with absolute Truth. At that moment they cease to be human and instead reflect divine Principle. This is what it really means to be a theologian, not a coiner of dogmatic axioms, but a prophet or expounder of divine logic. And thus the unity of good is manifested in the spiritually axiomatic fact that every reflection of good is a reflection of God or Principle. Such a statement made without explanation may sound like a mere abstract truism. It is the sort of argument which the man in the street has had showered upon him, for centuries, from the pulpits and the rostrums. For the first time, however, since the days of primitive Christianity, he is now being told, in Christian Science, that it is of something more than a mere philosophical theory: that it is something which he is called upon to prove, and which, it is insisted to him, he must not pretend to understand until he has proved. Insight, then, is the dawning perception of reality which accompanies the ordinary man’s expanding knowledge of God, Principle. This was clearly what Paul meant when he wrote to the Corinthians, “The things we now see are reflections from a mirror which we have to make out as best we can, but then we shall see realities face to face.” And so, on page 264 of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes, “As mortals gain more correct views of God and man, multitudinous objects of creation, which before were invisible, will become visible.”
      Now in the trivial everyday struggle of what is termed human existence no less than in the titanic contests in the realms of great affairs, the man in the street and the man in the cabinet have alike ample opportunities for testing the quality of the insight to which they have attained. There is not an hour in the calendar of material life in which we are not called upon to utilize this insight, though we must gain some measure of insight to perceive this. “The Divine Being must” Mrs. Eddy says, on page 3 of Science and Health, “be reflected by man,—else man is not the image and likeness of the patient, tender, and true, the One ‘altogether lovely’; but to understand God is the work of eternity, and demands absolute consecration of thought, energy, and desire.” When, for instance, Jesus made the demand that his followers should judge righteous judgment, in other words, mentally separate that which was scientific from that which was unscientific, he required, in that demand, the display of spiritual insight. Now the whole course of any and every man’s daily life should be contained in this effort to so choose between good and evil as to walk in the footsteps of the Christ, and never stray on to the broad highway of evil. That which makes his choice a safe one, that which guides his feet with unfailing sureness, is his spiritual insight. Why he makes one choice rather than another, why he treads boldly down this path instead of that, he could not possibly explain to the satisfaction of material sense, for spiritual things can only be spiritually understood. There are times, indeed, when he hardly knows why himself, and when he is conscious that he is walking with his feet, as it were, in the clouds, guided solely by spiritual intuition. As, however, he gains a more clearly scientific knowledge of Principle, these clouds roll from about his feet, though they may still hover on the pathway higher up the mount of revelations. Below, the narrow way climbs up the mountain side, distinct and sheer, and he sees and understands how he was enabled to follow it without straying.
       Spiritual instinct, therefore, is no mere blind directing faculty such as a man is accustomed to associating with the animal kingdom. It is really the first gleam of perception, the first rent in the clouds of ignorance which precedes some understanding of the realm of law. It is the invariable accompaniment of some corresponding loss of materiality; and it is absolutely indestructible since it is the first faint dawn of the vision of the Christ, of that which is, and shall be, and ever must endure. It is this which makes it so absolutely safe to follow spiritual instinct, and to reject the wisdom of this world. The wisdom of this world leads as surely into the labyrinth of matter, as spiritual instinct points to the mountainside of revelation. There are very few wayfaring men, however, who will not insist on penetrating the labyrinth, more or less deeply, before they begin the ascent of the mountain. Even then as they begin to make the ascent, and to rise slowly and painfully out of the mists of the valley of materialism, they will stay to look back, as Lot’s wife looked back on Sodom and Gomorrah, or will persist in taking a zigzag course in order, as they fondly fancy, to make the ascent less arduous.
      This is what some people seem to think Mrs. Eddy meant, when she wrote, on page 485 of Science and Health, “Emerge gently from matter into Spirit.” But there is a vast difference between emerging gently and emerging slowly: between emerging with a great commotion, and emerging quietly, unobtrusively, and harmoniously. It is a man’s instinct for Truth which will govern his emergence, in those days when he has not yet learned the law of Principle nor fathomed the depths of scientific Love.

* * * * * * * * * *
The Christian Science Monitor was not printed on Sunday, April 30th in 1916.
* * * * * * * * * *

WELCOME SURPRISES

Written for The Christian Science Monitor
May 1, 1916

IT HAS fallen to the lot of most of those who have become interested in Christian Science to be surprised. This scientific understanding of Christianity, upon examination, generally turns out to be quite different from what we had imagined, because the imagination can give us no proper estimate of spiritual understanding. Again, if we have been in the way of hearing sermons preached, or reading newspaper reports purporting to describe Christian Science, our surprise on learning its true nature will indeed be great. Not infrequently the subject may have been presented to us in a jocose vein; then the deep and satisfying solemnity of this Science, when we begin to understand it, startles and causes us to wonder how a flippant word can be uttered concerning it. Sometimes Christian Science is represented by its would-be explainers as a sort of intellectual gymnastics in which people try to torture their mentality into trying to believe what their so-called common sense rejects. Then the childlike wisdom which characterizes Christian Science comes as a welcome surprise. Its simple and direct appeal to spiritual reasoning brings a pleasant relief from the so-called mental exercises which certain systems inculcate as curative and regenerating. Among the agreeable surprises which come to those who associate themselves with Christian Scientists must also be reckoned that of finding former friends who have preceded them in tasting and pronouncing very good the fruits of this Science.
      The writer obtained one of his special surprises in hearing the Scriptures read for the first time in a Christian Science church, for this was done from a metaphysical point of view. Mrs. Eddy showed her usual wisdom in arranging to have the Bible read in Christian Science services without comment. Thus the reader may place the interpretation which comes to him from his study of Science and Health into the very intonation and emphasis of his reading, and the listener is constantly surprised to discover a meaning in the sacred words which had never dawned upon him before. Heard thus in connection with the reading from the textbook, the stories in the Old Testament, many of which when taken literally and materially sound crude and barbaric, acquire a metaphysical meaning when read in the course of a Christian Science service which gives them a profound meaning to the struggling Christian of today. The vicissitudes of the children of Israel, wandering forty years in the wilderness, bring home their lessons to the modern man in a workaday world. The art of reading the Scriptures is to bring out the meaning which comes to us at a given stage of spiritual growth, but not to seem to impose this meaning upon the listener as final and definitive, because Truth being infinite, humanity must be ever progressing and growing in its understanding of Truth.
      As we read the account of Israel’s experience in the wilderness and turn to the Glossary in the Christian Science textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 597), for the definition of wilderness, we read first of all: “Loneliness; doubt; darkness.” Thus interpreted, is not the wilderness part of our earthly experience? Have we not all wandered in it, hungered and thirsted under its relentless sun, and stumbled about in its burning sands? Immediately, therefore, this metaphysical interpretation of the word makes us akin with the Israelites and eager to follow the working out of their experience in order to see if it has not something to ease the burdens of our own pilgrimage and reduce its risks. The Book of Deuteronomy opens with a sort of a résumé on the part of Moses of the forty years’ wanderings. He himself, by reason of an act of obedience, was not to enter the Promised Land, but the children of Israel were about to do so, and he seems to have wished to make sure that none of the lessons taught by this national experience should be lost upon them. Indeed, in verses thirty-five, thirty-six and thirty-eight of Chapter I. of that book, Moses refers to the fact that none of the full-grown generation which left Egypt were to enter the land of Canaan save Caleb and Joshua. From this one may learn that none of the evil thoughts with which we enter the wilderness,—that region of “loneliness; doubt; darkness,”—will be with us when we emerge into the Promised Land. Caleb and Joshua had proven by their faithfulness in spying out this land that they had qualities of thought which fitted them to dwell in it. Furthermore, in verse thirty-nine a beautiful exception is made in behalf of the little children. Israel in one of its rebellious moods had complained that its children would perish in the sufferings it was undergoing. “Moreover your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, and your children, which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil, they shall go in thither, and unto them will I give it, and they shall possess it.” It would seem then that innocence when cast into the wilderness, shall be rescued and it shall afterward possess the land flowing with milk and honey.
      But Mrs. Eddy, not satisfied to leave the definition of wilderness in the supposititious grasp of evil, has further elucidated its possibilities by referring to it in the Glossary of Science and Health as: “Spontaneity of thought and idea; the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence.” Here again we tread on familiar ground. Has it not been our experience that in the very loneliness of abandonment, when human fellowship seemed denied to us and earthly hopes had vanished, there came a sudden wonderful mental “spontaneity” or activity which revealed to us in the twinkling of an eye “the great facts of existence?” And when the experience has gone down into our history, the lessons have been learned, some of the tenacity of evil in our mental make-up has been loosened, we are heard to declare that we would not have missed this experience for untold material wealth, because it proved to be “the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears.” At this hour many human beings are undergoing the sufferings of the wilderness, have been cast out from a seemingly joyous existence in Egypt, and are wandering the world apart, aggrieved and fearful of the future. Those who stood to them in the name of friends have betrayed, those who opinion seems to count in the world have condemned, all the appearances which timid conservatism likes to believe must be kept up at all costs, even though the substance of good be sacrificed, these appearances too have been made to testify falsely. Then comes the assurance from the divine logic of Christian Science that a welcome surprise awaits: the Promised Land is not far off; spiritual perception is dawning; God is at hand, yes, very nigh; peace, tenderness, spiritual satisfaction close this day of searching, feed the famished and rescue the lost.

BELIEF AND UNDERSTANDING

Written for The Christian Science Monitor
May 2, 1916

IT IS, or at least has been, a very general impression that in matters connected with religion, that is, in those things which are of the utmost importance to a man, we cannot expect to gain an intelligent understanding, but must be content to accept certain statements on the basis of faith or belief, the reason given for such an attitude of mind being that the human mind is finite, and cannot, therefore, grasp the infinite by any process of reasoning. In these days, however, when research into every subject of thought is so profound and critical, such an attitude is becoming impossible to thinking people, and consequently the complaint in most denominations is that lack of faith, lack of what they term religious feeling, is more and more apparent.
      On the other hand, there are many evidences that never before have men been so eagerly reading the Bible, so keenly attracted and held by anything, exhibitions, pictures, books, which may make the daily life and surroundings of Christ Jesus live again in their imaginations, by plays that touch upon religious thought and feeling, facts that show that the religious sentiment is indeed deeply stirred, and that the lack of faith that is complained of is, in reality, the intense desire to find some reasonable basis for the faith men feel to be indispensable. On page 23 of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes: “Faith, if it be mere belief, is as a pendulum swinging between nothing and something, having no fixity. Faith, advanced to spiritual understanding, is the evidence gained from Spirit, which rebukes sin of every kind and establishes the claims of God.” And further, on page 488, “The Hebrew and Greek words often translated belief differ somewhat in meaning from that conveyed by the English verb believe; they have more the significance of faith, understanding, trust, constancy, firmness. Hence the Scriptures often appear in our common version to approve and endorse belief, when they mean to enforce the necessity of understanding.”
      It is difficult to see how the general religious teaching as to the impossibility of understanding our relation to God has come about, for the Scriptures impress the necessity of understanding upon the student at every turn, and one can only conclude that the misapprehension must have arisen from the inability to realize that while it is true that finite reason cannot grasp the infinite, there is a higher faculty in man which can lay hold intelligently on Truth. Saint Paul makes this clear in his letter to the Corinthians when he says that “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: . . . neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” This spiritual discernment Mrs. Eddy uniformly calls spiritual understanding, and says “When Christ changes a belief of sin or of sickness into a better belief, then belief melts into spiritual understanding, and sin, disease, and death disappear.” (Science and Health, p. 442.) The book of Proverbs is specially interesting with this thought in mind, for in it are to be found constant and forcible expositions of the contrast between the result of the practice of a good understanding, and that of ignorance and folly. Take, for instance, the following: “Good understanding giveth favour; but the way of transgressors is hard.” Who understands, or even believes, this statement actively enough to influence his daily conduct? Is not the reason for such general indifference to be found in the fact that these and other similar sayings have been taught as being merely affirmations of general truth, without any intelligent understanding that they are enunciations of a law from which there is no escape? Read in the light of Christian Science, a good understanding, or an understanding of good, is that state of mind which allies itself with all that is constructive, permanent and orderly, and which, therefore, brings these forces into play in individual experience, while the way of transgressors is the way which is allied to all that claims to be destructive, transitory and disorderly, and the result must inevitably be confusion worse confounded. It is, in fact, the operation of a universal law that like produces like.
      The Bible is one long reiteration of this truth, stated in poetry, in drama, in historical incident, by prophets, psalmists and apostles, and above all by the great Teacher, who not only taught it, but demonstrated its effects in daily life and experience. How then shall the people of today exchange their feeble beliefs for this good understanding which promises so much? Christian Science has found the way, and it proves to be the very same which Jesus trod and pointed out to his followers. By the healing which Christian Science brings to men’s bodies, they are gradually being led to see that the ills they suffer from are the result of ignorance, ignorance of God’s nature, of His law, of His being, which has betrayed them into what is commonly known as sin, or into wrong ways of thinking. And so by a very simple process of reasoning, a sensible man soon realizes that if, for instance, some form of disease from which he may be suffering has been produced by a sense of hatred, resentment, fear or worry, entertained and not resisted, it is of no use to apply a drug to his body: he must rather set about eliminating the evil belief which produced it. A good understanding, that is an understanding of God and His law, not a mere belief in some unknown power, alone enables him to do this, for in no other way is it possible to gain dominion over the surging demands of the senses. This good understanding comes naturally into consciousness through the honest study of Christian Science and its textbook, making the declarations contained in the Bible, hitherto found by so many to be stale and profitless, living, palpitating illuminations on the way out of sense into Soul.
      So we see that the difference between belief and understanding is as radical as that between ignorance and knowledge, for where the former gropes in darkness after some vague and illusive power which may or may not render help, the latter gives a sure and intelligent grasp of laws and forces available to men, which, as Principle, are is applicable to their daily needs as is the rule of mathematics.

THE CITY OF GOD

Written for The Christian Science Monitor
May 3, 1916

THE finite sense of mortals has pictured a locality somewhere in space as the dwelling-place of God. Material sense cannot tell where it is; but what it is like it has pictured in glowing imagery. Sometimes the streets of this city are paved with gold, sometimes its surroundings take on the luxuriance of the tropics, and melodies from harp or other ancient form of musical instrument fill the air. It is interesting to notice how the material beliefs of men project themselves beyond their immediate surroundings and seek to be established even in heaven. The falsity of human belief is only equaled by the depth of its credulity.
      Of Abraham it was said: “He looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” And what was said of the father of Israel can be said of all who are desirous of knowing the truth about the “city” in which God dwells. Now every question that relates to God can only find its solution in the knowledge of God. To be ignorant of God is to remain ignorant of every condition which is dependent upon Him. Thus one has to consider whether God is like unto a man, whether He is at all like what is called material, or whether God is altogether spiritual, being in consequence cognizant of nothing but the ideas of Spirit. Christian Science teaches that God is infinite Mind or Spirit. And this statement opens up the way to the solution of the question of “the city of God.” God is infinite Mind. What does this imply? It implies that Mind, which is infinite good or perfect Being, is everywhere. Go to the farthest star, far beyond those we see in the heavens with the mortal eye, and Mind is there; reach to the ultimate atom which mortal sense has pictures to itself, and Mind is there. Mind is expressed everywhere in the spiritual idea, because Mind is omnipresent. What becomes of the city of God in space, what becomes of the hypothetical heaven of a man’s depicting, situated as he believes, somewhere in the physical distances, when it is known that Mind is omnipresent? They vanish as completely as does the star-light at the dawning of the morning.
      The city of God is often referred to in the Bible as the new Jerusalem. John, whose spiritual understanding penetrated the veil of material sense so completely, knew its true nature, and in the Apocalypse he pictures it as purely spiritual. In one passage he says: “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” The meaning of this passage is obvious. If neither sun nor moon shines there, physical sensation is obviously eliminated as necessary to consciousness. And what takes the place of material sense? The understanding of Love or divine Principle, for the word Lamb is symbolical of Love. Thus John leads us to the same point to which Christian Science takes us, that the city of God, or the new Jerusalem, is the spiritual understanding of Love or God. This spiritual understanding, being accurate knowledge, is divine Science. The position is clearly stated by Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health (p. 592), where the metaphysical interpretation of New Jerusalem is given thus: “NEW JERUSALEM. Divine Science; the spiritual facts and harmony of the universe; the kingdom of heaven, or reign of harmony.”
      It is a relief to people when they recognize the futility of straining the mental vision over a hypothetical and mythical delusion, for assuredly the heaven of the golden material streets has no more real existence than the mirage which deludes the desert traveler. The kingdom of heaven lies immediately at hand. The city of God is entered by a human being as he understands the truth about God, as he reflects divine Principle, Mind. There is no other doorway leading into the city of God. It is the understanding of Life which is eternal life. Since God is infinite Life, there exists nothing real but Life; and the illusion that there is an opposite of infinite Life is the unreality that deceives the whole world.
      How then may human beings enter the city of God most readily? There is but one method. There is but one method for all mankind. The city of God contains neither classes nor masses, neither material rich nor material poor; for these are material beliefs which have no place in divine Mind. The gates of the city which are never shut by day or by night, typify the kingdom of Spirit, which is without limit or boundary, and which can be entered by all who are willing to leave the old standpoint of matter and seek to be guided through spiritual understanding. “Its gates open towards light and glory both within and without, for all is good, and nothing can enter that city, which ‘defileth, . . . or maketh a like.’” (Science and Health, p. 577.)
      Every one has to enter the city alone. He may be helped thereto by the spiritual understanding which another possesses of Principle, but he has to understand for himself. Understanding grows with practice. Assurance and faith result from demonstration; neither is based on credulity. So that the practical method becomes: use whatever is understood of divine Principle. This means: adhere constantly to the truth about reality, about the omnipresence and omnipotence of good, thereby denying either presence or power to evil. This is the same as saying: “Pray without ceasing.” In proportion to spiritual understanding will evil belief disappear. At times when the omnipresence of good is more clearly recognized, it is easy to discard the false suggestions of evil. And then one feels how it will be when the light of Truth has destroyed the last trace of the darkness of mortal mind. Then divine Mind will be known by all men to be the only power. Each will know Mind to be divine Principle from which the real man is never separate; and knowing thus each will behold in all the image and likeness of God.
      Christian Science, the Science of divine Principle, Mind, or Love, is transforming human thought far more rapidly than the world imagines. The Science of Truth will ultimately penetrate to the last vestige of human error, and every trace of material belief will finally be destroyed. The city of God is the spiritual understanding of spiritual existence. It is the eternal city of reality. How well did Samuel Johnson sing its everlasting nature:

“In vain the surge’s angry shock,
In vain the drifting sands;
Unharmed upon the eternal Rock
The eternal city stands.”

IGNORANCE

Written for The Christian Science Monitor
May 4, 1916

IGNORANCE, or want of true knowledge, is the one all-inclusive malady of humanity. Fear and sin are elements of the darkened understanding, the blindness of heart, which Paul deplored, in his letter to the Ephesians (iv.18), as the cause of the alienation of mortals from true knowledge of any kind. Fear always arises from the ignorance that believes something to be real which is unreal. Sin, even that which is called willful sin, is primarily a want of the knowledge of good. To one, or all, of this triad of darkness, Christian Science traces all physical suffering. Mrs. Eddy says, on page 411 of Science and Health: “The procuring cause and foundation of all sickness is fear, ignorance, or sin. Disease is always induced by a false sense mentally entertained, not destroyed.” To know God aright is to understand and to reflect immortal Life. To live, in any sense worthy of the term, is to understand. Christian Science has inaugurated a process of dispelling ignorance, or educating mortal mind out of itself and the illusion of limitation, into the scientific knowledge of God, and so, of man as God’s image.
      In the infinite reality of being, God’s creation reflects divine intelligence which is Truth. There can be no state of ignorance, no want of the knowledge of Truth, with aught that reflects God, because infinite Mind precludes the possibility of limited or imperfect intelligence. To the human consciousness, however, the dawning of divine intelligence upon mortal ignorance, or mental darkness, is as a process of creation in which something before unknown suddenly, or gradually, becomes spiritually discernible. “The earth was without form, and void;” it is written in Genesis, “and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good.” A state of receptivity, a willingness to learn all things aright, necessarily precedes and invites illumination. The scientific understanding of creative Principle reveals God as expressing Himself in all that is true. This is the only real knowledge to be obtained, and it is the way to eternal life.
      Ignorance is relative. It coexists with the belief of life and intelligence in matter. An untutored barbarian may be well instructed in matters pertaining to elemental living, and a scholar may be master of classics, but so far as both belief life and intelligence to be in matter, they are alike in ignorance of real life. Indeed, a man who sedulously pursues the false systems of education based upon the hypothesis of life and intelligence in matter, is simply enveloping himself in material knowledge which is ignorance of truth, and a procuring cause of disease. The “natural man” stores his thought with much that is “foolishness with God.” The most brilliant intellectual attainment, if it be lacking in the perception of Truth, is, in Jesus’ words, a light that is darkness. Only through the understanding of spiritual actuality can humanity demonstrate the power of Truth which exposes the nothingness of material life and heals disease. Jesus said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Obviously the truth can only free a man from ignorance of what is true in being. The divine Mind does not need the process of education, since the divine Mind includes and expresses all true intelligence. Man, in the image of Mind, God, is not dependent upon educational processes, since he is the reflection of divine intelligence. But on the plane of relative human existence, a man must reach out for the truth which unfolds the capacity to perceive the spiritual reality behind the material counterfeit; and this development must go on until consciousness, spiritually illuminated, becomes ignorant of evil, that is, until all sense of evil disappears.
      Knowledge, it seems hardly necessary to say, is the only cure for ignorance and the effects of ignorance, sin, disease, death. It should be understood, however, that there is only one kind of knowledge, that is, the understanding of what is true. An untruth or unreality cannot be known. Mistakes and illusions may be believed in, and the struggle go on to replace untutored ignorance with the mesmeric knowledge of false systems of education; but a person’s emergence from the darkness of materiality can be measured only by his demonstrable knowledge of Truth. In the field of relative existence, a man is helped to a broader outlook upon life, and so to a certain superiority to its trammels, by a study of such branches of human knowledge as language, history, the arts, and so on. But it is only in proportion as he learns to coordinate facts and appraise them in the light of their relation to Principle, that he can separate from the intricacies of material knowledge, the true grain of reflected Truth, and thus gain the genuine comprehension of humanity. Jesus of Nazareth lived in the illumination of true understanding, and because of this, he possessed a knowledge of humanity disconcertingly keen to the bigoted ignorance of his day. He elicited from the Jews the astonished question, “How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?”
      Christian Science works for the elimination of ignorance in every direction. “‘Let there be light,’ is the perpetual demand of Truth and Love,” writes Mrs. Eddy on page 255 of Science and Health, “changing chaos into order and discord into the music of the spheres.” Mrs. Eddy was herself educated, in the best sense of the word, and so high an estimate does Christian Science place upon education of the right sort, that the Manual of The Mother Church requires that students in normal classes and readers in the churches shall be well educated. Scholars have been awakened from educated ignorance to an understanding of Truth through the study of Mrs. Eddy’s works; and others have been roused from the lethargy of illiteracy and have learned to read because they have desired to understand the truth as taught in the literature of Christian Science. Divine Principle guides the awakening consciousness to every right means in its emergence from ignorance into the knowledge of God wherein lies the healing power of Truth.

Please forgive us for the delay in getting the last two week’s “Footsteps Articles” completed. 
I am appreciative to Wright Computing in Zionsville Indiana for figuring out that the keyboard was causing all the trouble!