CHAPTER XXIV
Christianity
Agnes M. Lawson
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The Colorado College of Divine
Science
Denver, 1920.
Christianity
followed Judaism as naturally as the
fruit follows the blossom, for one is the
fulfillment of the other. A little over a
half century after Palestine had become a
Roman province a child of humble
parentage was born in an obscure village
of that province. As the child grew he
revealed a comprehension of life and
exercised powers hitherto unknown as
being inherent in man. His advent was of
such importance that besides dividing our
history into two great sections it has
caused an understanding of the purpose of
the Creator in and for men to steadfastly
unfold in the consciousness of the
race.
Before the
revelation of an inner and spiritual
world which Jesus called “The
Kingdom of God,” the human race was
ignorant of the destiny of man or the
dominion which he might have over his
body and the earth. Up to this time the
visible had seemed to be of such a nature
and solidity that control of it was
considered the dream of a poet or the
result of supernatural interference,
which peoples of unscientific ages so
readily accept.
Someone has
said that the greatest discovery of the
nineteenth century was Jesus Christ. He
was rediscovered and rescued from the
superstitious misconceptions regarding
him, in which he was thought of as a
superman of extraordinary powers which
were, and ever would be, beyond the rank
and file of the race. A new interest was
given Christianity with the rescue of the
thought of its founder from a
supernatural being to that of a man who
was but a member of the human family with
powers not extraordinary, but the
ordinary powers all men possess will they
but believe in them and use them.
This brought
about the renaissance of Christianity and
it is studied now, not as something
supernatural to which all men must give
superstitious credence, but as a
revelation of spiritual law which all men
may comprehend and apply. “Ye shall
know the truth and the truth shall make
you free,” is the fiat of
Christianity. This is the positive
assertion of one who has perceived the
principle of life and demonstrated its
exactness.
Booker T.
Washington has told us, “Freedom is
not a bequest, it is a conquest.”
Freedom is both a bequest and a
conquest. Christianity establishes the
fact that everything that is exists in
principle in completeness. Principle is
the way things are in the spiritual
world; in other words, the way God thinks
of them. The eternal quest of man is for
principles, for when he masters the
principle of anything he possesses the
thing itself. Freedom is a bequest then
in that these life principles exist for
man’s benefit. The conquest of
these principles through our
comprehension of them is the promised
freedom of Christianity.
The
disclosure of the spiritual world
revealed by Christianity brings the end
of our quest. We may now indeed find the
“journey’s end at every
step.” Christianity invites us to
enter this realm of light, love, peace
and perfection, not at some future time
but now.
Christianity
is more than an evolution, it is a
revolution. It reveals a spiritual
creation in the consciousness of the
Creator, perfect, eternal, finished. This
Creation, like the mind of the Creator,
is without “variableness or shadow
of turning.” Time and space
conceptions of finite sense are
eliminated as we put off
“mortality,” the race beliefs
of life, “and put on
immortality,” God’s
consciousness of His universe.
Man is the
central figure of the Kingdom, he is the
“Son and heir” to all that
the Father possesses. Christianity
reveals man as being created by God, not
in the sense that man is later in time
than God, that there was a time when God
was and man was not, but since God is
Mind, man, the Idea of God, is an eternal
consequence of this Mind.
The founder
of Christianity discovered the
relationship of God to man and of man to
God. Man expresses his Creator in
fullness and freedom when he knows the
truth. Jesus revealed the nature,
spirituality, love and substance of God.
He said the Kingdom is here and now, that
it becomes apparent to us as we put away
sin (the discords of sense) and that it
was the Father’s good will that we
have the Kingdom. God is Life and the
purpose of life is its own expression.
God is Love and the purpose of love is to
express love. God is Light and the
“darkness” of material
beliefs does not exist but is merely the
result of our failure to perceive this
omnipresent Kingdom.
Life has
fixed and eternal principles even as
mathematics and music have. These
principles must be comprehended and
applied; man rises into the resurrection
and the life, out of his misconceptions
of sense. He must work out his own
salvation, through his perception of
Reality. Reality is the Kingdom, the
Soul, eternally perfect. Sin, sickness
and death are ignorance of life; love,
joy and eternal life are knowledge of
truth. Knowledge is what we know;
we can know only what we have
experienced. Knowledge can never be
received from another.
The
spiritual realm is omnipresent. The
author of Ben Hur has this to say of it:
“There is a kingdom on this earth
though it is not of it; a kingdom of
wider bounds than the earth; wider than
the sea and the earth though they be
rolled together as finest gold and spread
by the beating of hammers. Its existence
is a fact as our hearts are facts and we
journey through it from birth to death
without seeing it. Nor shall any man see
it until he has known his own soul, and
in its dominion there is glory such as
has not entered imagination, original,
incomparable, impossible of
increase.”
This is the
Real and to enter the life of the Soul is
to be in it and of it. On many occasions
I have consciously experienced this--and
many others known to me personally have
also been aware of it. Jesus said:
“The Kingdom of God cometh not with
observation: neither shall they say, Lo
here! or, lo there! for behold, the
kingdom of God is within you.” That
is, it must be within one’s
consciousness.
When aware
of this realm one has a sense of buoyant
life and health, a sense of the
spirituality of the body and of radiant
joy. Having once in consciousness
experienced this realm, the fundamentals
of Christianity are readily
comprehended.
The central
doctrine of Christianity is the
incarnation. Man is the incarnate word of
God held steadfastly in God
consciousness, a spiritually perfect
being. This includes the spiritual body
of man which is the only body he has. Man
is never in the body finite sense
perceives, which is but a picture in his
mentality. To know the truth of the body
is to place it in its sustaining
principle, incapable of discord, for we
are individual entities in perfect
bodies, our eternal identity in God.
Man comes to
know himself because God knows him
eternally. A realization of the dignity
and value of our lives comes to us
through the revelations of Christianity.
Infinity can have no useless ideas,
something new is to be revealed in each.
“The whole is the sum of all its
parts.” Jesus redeemed the
prostitute, he recalled the publican to a
sense of life’s value, for life is
not to be squandered in sensuous
pleasures, but held as a sacred trust for
the expression of God’s
original idea. When we have found
this we have found ourselves in God and
henceforth life is free, spontaneous,
joyous expression.
As man
reconstructed his conception of
astronomy, changing its basis from the
Ptolemaic to the Copernican system, thus
eliminating a mortal belief that the
earth is the center of the solar system
and substituting the truth that the sun
is the center, so Christianity demands
another basis for life than the human
conception of it. Christianity’s
initial command is, “Repent
ye,” demanding a complete and
radical change of thought. Man is not
mortal nor has he a material body. He is
an idea in God's mind, sinless and
deathless. He is eternally a citizen of
the spiritual world even when he is
ignorant of its existence.
The
education of man consists in learning
accurately the temporal facts of his
unfoldment and learning definitely the
established truths of his eternal verity.
The Gospel is the “good news”
the truth brings to us. It uncovers
Reality thus delivering us from the evils
of mortal belief. The Gospel is the power
to conform our concepts of life to
God’s eternal truth.
There is a
perfect method given in Christianity for
the task which confronts humanity in the
mode of thinking called prayer in the New
Testament. Man works out his own
salvation. The original meaning of
certain words brings to our knowledge the
purpose of the sacred writers.
(Testament, being a witness, making
one’s last will; a
covenant.--Webster.) The New Testament
then is a later revelation of God’s
will, his last will. A covenant binds the
two contracting parties.
Agreement is
the working basis of Christianity, the
method of transmitting God’s power
to man and it reveals the eternal unison
of God and man. There is no line of
demarcation where God the cause ends and
man the result begins, so there must be
perpetual agreement between them; if they
cannot be separated they are one, there
can be no disagreement in absolute
unity.
In spiritual
creation man exists in eternal
completeness and supply, not only for
every need he has now but also for every
need he ever will have. The
eternal action of God consists in
his sustaining thought of Creation. This
thought of God is the principle of
man, for God sees man always in exactly
the same way and this persistent thought
of man in God’s consciousness is
reality. “The ultimate test of the
reality of a thing is its
persistence,” Herbert Spencer tells
us, and this thought of man as God thinks
of him does persist and man is never
satisfied until he accepts this truth and
rests in it.
Prayer as
taught by Christianity is the process of
getting into the stream of God’s
will and receiving our inheritance.
Prayer is a state of pure receptivity and
acceptance on man’s side, of
gracious bestowal on God’s side.
True prayer is never petition, it is
contemplation of the truths of life and
establishing these facts in
consciousness.
In agreement
with God, healing of thought, health of
body, freedom of expression, come into
our consciousness, and man possesses all
that enters his consciousness. “For
whosoever hath (in his consciousness), to
him shall be given; and whosoever hath
not (in his consciousness), from him
shall be taken even that which he seemeth
to have.” Luke 8:18.
Agreement is
the law of Christianity because it is
unity and unity is love. God is life and
all life is on the inside of this
universal life. The thing which finite
sense imperfectly perceives exists in
perfection in divine Mind. In spiritual
creation there is nothing nor anyone to
disagree with; agreement extends to the
relationship between man and man. Only in
affiliation can we accomplish our
purposes with each other. “Again I
say unto you, that if two of you shall
agree on earth as touching anything that
they shall ask, it shall be done for them
of my Father which is in heaven.”
Matt. 18:19.
Since life
is one and that One pure Spirit there can
be nothing to disagree with, therefore we
are told to “resist not evil”
and to agree with even our adversary. The
adversary can be nothing but a wrong
belief, “the devil,”
therefore instantly agree with it; it is
nothing and there is nothing to oppose
our full expression of life. Thus we take
all power to harm us out of everything or
any one. The only power the adversary has
we give it by our belief in it as power.
All power is God’s, there can be no
other power.
In
disagreement we repel, in agreement we
receive and attract. The former holds us
in bondage to evil beliefs, the latter
enables us to live the life of truth and
freedom. To live in spirit and in truth
gives us the “New Tongues” of
Christianity. Life, love, competency,
power, truth, are the life bringing words
of the New Era; sin, sorrow, materiality,
death, are the obsolete language of our
former ignorance.
The great
discovery of Jesus was, “The flesh
profiteth nothing.” The life of man
and his body are in Spirit alone.
“Satan hath bound him,” Jesus
said of the one who was under the
material delusion being rendered impotent
by the limitations of his own erroneous
beliefs. “It is the Spirit that
quickeneth,” that is, changing our
material belief of body to a spiritual
conception of it.
Forgiveness
of sin is the Biblical term for
correcting our misconceptions of life to
the Truth. We correct our material errors
in direct ratio to our perception of
God’s finished Creation. This is
another of Christianity’s
revolutionary ideas, that it is man not
God that forgives sin. It is the false
concept of life which has sinned and
man’s perception of Reality enables
him to correct the errors of sense, in
both his own mentality and also that of
others. There is no forgiveness of sin
save as the sin is corrected and
abandoned.
Man’s
responsibility is clearly defined in
Christianity. “Whose sins ye remit,
they are remitted unto them: and whose
soever sins ye retain, they are
retained.” Every advance of the
human family is by the correction of the
errors in the thought of the race. As we
make our accounts tally by making them
square with the principle of mathematics,
correct our unmusical discords by the
fixed fundamental rules of music, we
forgive sin, a violation of spiritual law
by the application of the unerring
accuracy of spiritual principles. This
restores us to unity, peace and truth; a
false sense of life miscreates “all
the ills that flesh is heir to.”
True vision enables us to live in
God’s eternal love and life.
To
“heal the sick, cleanse the lepers,
raise the dead, cast out devils,”
is the natural result of the forgiveness
of sin. In fact there is nothing to cast
out but sin (an evil belief), and
wholeness results. The whole process
which confronts the Christian worker is
to hold consciously in vision the Real,
thus giving to one’s self the
supreme joy of knowing that “I have
filled the unforgiving minute with sixty
seconds’ worth of distance
run.”
For joy,
radiant, soul-filling joy, is the purpose
of Christianity. “These things have
I spoken unto you, that my joy might be
in you, and that your joy might be
full.” John 15:11. Life is an
ecstasy and of unfailing interest while
we remain with the vision. Nothing is
hopeless and our service to the race is
incalculable in its light, for every one
that sees aids in the freeing of
the race from its delusion of power in
the material misconceptions.
Every one of
us is a distant thought in God
consciousness, a channel through which an
idea is to be expressed.
Frederick
Froebel, the apostle of individuality,
says: “Every human being has but
one thought peculiarly and predominantly
his own, one fundamental thought, as it
were, of his whole being, the keynote of
his life’s symphony, a thought
which he simply seeks to express and
render clear with the help of a thousand
other thoughts, with the help of all he
does.”
Life is a
symphony and each has his part in it, and
not to yield ourselves without
reservation to the Power is to fail
“to do the will” which
enables us to “know the
doctrine.” As we individually
emerge from the isolation of the self to
the unison of the Self, the stately and
harmonious rhythm of the great solar
systems each majestically “about
the Father’s business,” will
be apparent in our lives. Then in the
universal birth of the Christ idea, may
the angelic anthem be heard, “Peace
on earth, good will to
men.”
END
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