University of Virginia Library

Search this document 
 
 
 
 

expand section
expand section
expand section
expand section
expand section
expand section
expand section
expand section
expand section
expand section
collapse section
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Choose ye to-day
expand section
expand section
expand section
expand section

Choose ye to-day

Dear reader, which mind-picture or externalized thought shall be real to you, - the material or the spiritual? Both you cannot have. You are bringing out your own ideal. This ideal is either temporal or eternal. Either Spirit or matter is your model. If you try to have two models, then you practically have none. Like a pendulum in a clock, you will be thrown back and forth, striking the ribs of matter and swinging between the real and the unreal.

Hear the wisdom of Job, as given in the excellent trans- lation of the late Rev. George R. Noyes, D.D.: -

Shall mortal man be more just than God?
Shall man be more pure than his Maker?
Behold, He putteth no trust in His ministering spirits,
And His angels He chargeth with frailty.

Of old, the Jews put to death the Galilean Prophet, the best Christian on earth, for the truth he spoke and demonstrated, while to-day, Jew and Christian can unite in doctrine and denomination on the very basis of Jesus' words and works. The Jew believes that the Messiah or


361

Christ has not yet come; the Christian believes that Christ is God. Here Christian Science intervenes, ex- plains these doctrinal points, cancels the disagreement, and settles the question. Christ, as the true spiritual idea, is the ideal of God now and forever, here and everywhere. The Jew who believes in the First Commandment is a monotheist; he has one omnipresent God. Thus the Jew unites with the Christian's doctrine that God is come and is present now and forever. The Christian who believes in the First Commandment is a monotheist. This he virtually unites with the Jew's belief in one God, and recognizes that Jesus Christ is not God, as Jesus himself declared, but is the Son of God. This declaration of Jesus, understood, conflicts not at all with another of his sayings: "I and my Father are one," - that is, one in quality, not in quantity. As a drop of water is one with the ocean, a ray of light one with the, sun, even so God and man, Father and son, are one in being. The Scrip- ture reads: "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."

I have revised Science and Health only to give a clearer and fuller expression of its original meaning. Spir- itual ideas unfold as we advance. A human perception of divine Science, however limited, must be correct in order to be Science and subject to demonstration. A germ of in- finite Truth, though least in the kingdom of heaven is the higher hope on earth, but it will be rejected and reviled until God prepares the soil for the seed. That which when sown bears immortal fruit, enriches mankind only when it is understood, - hence the many readings given the Scriptures, and the requisite revisions of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.