University of Virginia Library

Suicide and sin

We are prone to believe either in more than one Su- preme Ruler or in some power less than God. We im- agine that Mind can be imprisoned in a sensuous body. When the material body has gone to ruin, when evil has overtaxed the belief of life in matter and destroyed it, then mortals believe that the deathless Principle, or Soul, escapes from matter and lives on; but this is not true. Death is not a stepping-stone to life, immortality, and bliss. The so-called sinner is a suicide. Sin kills the sinner and will continue to kill him so long as he sins. The foam and fury of illegiti- mate living and of fearful and doleful dying should disappear on the shore of time; then the waves of sin, sorrow, and death beat in vain.

God, divine good, does not kill a man in order to give him eternal Life, for God alone is man's life. God is at

once the centre and circumference of being. It is evil that dies; good dies not. Spirit the only intelligence and substance All forms of error support the false conclusions that there is more than one Life; that material history is as real and living as spiritual history; that mortal error is as conclusively mental as immortal Truth; and that there are two separate, an- tagonistic entities and beings, two powers, - namely, Spirit and matter, - resulting in a third person (mortal man) who carries out the delusions of sin, sickness, and death.

The first power is admitted to be good, an intelligence or Mind called God. The so-called second power, evil, is the unlikeness of good. It cannot therefore be mind, though so called. The third power, mortal man, is a supposed mixture of the first and second antagonistic powers, in- telligence and non-intelligence, of Spirit and matter.