Margaret Murney Glenn, C.S.B., of Boston,
Massachusetts
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The
Mother Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
Margaret Murney Glenn, C.S.B., of this city, a member of The Christian Science Board of Lectureship, delivered a lecture entitled "The Availability of God's Riches as Revealed by Christian Science" this noon under the auspices of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, in the Colonial Theater.
The lecturer was introduced by Gordon V. Comer, C.S.B., First Reader in The Mother Church, who said:
Friends:
Christian Science is meeting a great need in the business world today by changing, in the thoughts of many, the acquisitive desires of mortal mind for more matter to a truer objective for a better and more dependable sense of substance. Matter has been proved to be a false sense of substance, and right thinkers are now eagerly turning their thoughts Spirit-ward, for in this realm only can true substance be found. Our speaker today will explain more about this in a lecture entitled: "The Availability of God's Riches as Revealed by Christian Science."
Authorized lectures on Christian Science are given by members of the Board of Lectureship of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, to inform interested listeners about this Christianly scientific teaching. Miss Glenn is a member of this Board.
We feel sure that the lecture will be of interest to you, and that you will be blessed for having heard it.
It is my pleasure to introduce to you Miss Margaret Murney Glenn, of Boston.
Miss Glenn spoke substantially as follows:
It was at noonday many centuries ago that Abraham entertained angels. You, who are here today, are using your noon hour of rest and refreshment to entertain angels, for angels are God's thoughts of love, intelligence, harmony, and enlightenment. These angel thoughts when entertained will eliminate from your thought and experience all fear, limitation, discord, thus enriching, blessing, and enlightening you as they did Abraham centuries ago.
The sense of limitation which seems to prevail with all mortals results from the accepted theory that man and the universe consist of matter. Is there any form of matter of which you can think as being unlimited or perfect? We quite readily accept the fact that intelligence, talents, opportunities, sight, hearing, ability belong to us individually, but, supply seems to be something outside of ourselves which we by our strenuous efforts must earn. We have to make our living, we say, and then we go ahead and make our living miserable by worry, fear, envy, competition, simply because we believe living to be a material thing, subject to fluctuation, to material changing conditions. Then after we have made or earned our living we are afraid to use it for fear we will use it up.
If you will admit with me that matter is a belief of limitation, then you will also admit that an attempt to accumulate matter is an attempt to accumulate limitation. Why do we want supply? Generally speaking, it is in order to provide ourselves with home, education, food, clothing, opportunities, necessities, comforts, joys, and sometimes luxuries. God, who is Love, could not do other than sustain the object of His love, which is man. It is Love's prerogative to supply its creation with all that constitutes the loveliness, the joy, the wisdom, the opportunities of Life. It is Love's nature to feed us with satisfying, strengthening, encouraging, harmonious thoughts. It is Love's loving which gives us the shelter, safety, comfort, and tender understanding which home typifies. This is not impractical idealism; this is the most practical and effective truth; but in order to experience its practicality you have to lay claim to it and utilize it. If someone had a million dollars in the bank and knew it not, this supply would do him no good. If he knew it and did not utilize it, he would derive no benefit from it. And how can we utilize these spiritual facts revealed by Christian Science? By thinking them, knowing them, keeping our consciousness filled with them. Then there will be no opportunity in our consciousness, or experience, for lack, disease, fear, or sorrow.
In Christian Science, demand and supply are one, for God always demands that which He supplies, and He always supplies that which He demands. If the demand is made on you to express more love, courage, patience, intelligence, or supply, this is but evidence that you are enabled through spiritual understanding to manifest the supply; for, as Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, says (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 45), "Under the deific law . . . supply invariably meets demand." These demands are made first on our thinking, in other words we must become conscious of them, and supply is expressed to us first as ideas for the same reason. In fact, no such thing as a wholly material need exists. This may seem incredible to some of you; but let me illustrate. If you are in debt, you may think that your need is for a merely material medium, namely, money; but if you had all the money in the world you would not pay that debt unless you were prompted to do so by a sense of honor, of justice, of honesty, or love. So what you owe another is to love him, and if you love him you will pay your debt. If you were in debt and had no money, but realized that what you owe is purely mental and spiritual, you would lay claim to the presence of infinite Love and utilize it. In other words, you would know that it is but loving, just and honest that your creditor have what belongs to him and that God enabled you to do what is honest, loving, and just.
This truth will have its manifestation in a better human belief, namely, in the belief that you are able to pay your debts, and then through the means wherewith to pay them. Fundamentally it is never money we lack. It is love, fearlessness, confidence, spirituality, and this lack can always be overcome by the counter claim to abundance of love, ability, trust and intelligence, which are yours as the reflection of God. Because supply is wholly spiritual and mental, the more you use it the more you have of it. For instance, the more you use love the more love you have to use. The more intelligence you use the more intelligence you have to use. You can never use up your spiritual supply of honesty, love, justice and intelligence. This ever-increasing supply of spiritual qualities has its coincident manifestation to the human senses in increased assurance of the ability to do right, and this in turn is externalized in the means with which to do right. For whatever is entertained in thought has its externalization. If you find yourself owing anybody anything, this is but an indication that you need to love more. Fear, envy, resentment, hatred, have never paid a debt.
Christian Science helps us to solve the problem of unemployment by showing us that God is forever employing man to express good, love, the abundance of Mind's ideas, so you, man, are never without employment. If this is true, that man is employed now, what is it that keeps us from seeing and experiencing this fact? It must be a state of mesmerism, for if we are deceived into believing that a situation exists which has no truth in it, this belief must be a condition of mesmerism. In this case the mesmerism is induced by fear, depression, anxiety, and mental contagion. These suggestions have no mind to employ them. They are simply trying to make us believe that God, good, is not present. Know that they come from nowhere, lead nowhere, and are nothing because God did not create them. These suggestions cannot employ your thought, for God alone employs man to express Himself.
In one of his parables Jesus related that a certain man who was going away gave each of his servants a different number of talents and told them, "Occupy till I come." The conclusion of the parable shows that this man expected the talents to increase through utilization. Although Jesus was speaking of money, we can apply this parable to our mental and spiritual talents and abilities.
There can be no superfluous supply in God's kingdom, for Mind employs every one of its ideas or creations. Occupy your thought with these truths until they come to your human experience as demonstrated Truth. Think encouraging, loving, joyous thoughts, until the mesmerism of fear and depression has vanished and the result of your right thinking which is based on a demonstrable Principle has come. Let God employ your thought.
Superfluity, overproduction, and unemployment cannot be true, Godlike conditions, for they are based on the erroneous assumption that something exists which is not utilized. Only through the utilization of ideas do we become conscious of supply. Money which is buried in the ground or hoarded is not supply, nor is it even a reserve of supply, but merely an expression of fear, of lack, miserliness, or ignorance, — a dead belief of matter doing nothing.
Utilize your talents. But you may answer that you are not given the opportunity to utilize them. God who has given us our talents gives the opportunity or occasion to utilize them. But perhaps we are seeking in the wrong direction for this opportunity. We may believe that somebody ought to give us opportunity, or that our experience in a certain line of work should assure us of opportunity, or that some corporation ought to engage us. When we admit these suggestions we are turning away from the source of opportunity, which is God, who affords man "fresh opportunities every hour," as Mrs. Eddy says (Christian Healing, p. 19).
A person who is looking for employment and who takes the belief with him that he is without occupation, will see that belief manifested wherever he goes. But if he goes forth occupying his thought with the truth that he is employed of God and that whatever he is doing, even though it may be looking for work, is his opportunity to manifest this truth, such a one will find that the mesmerism of lack, unemployment, and depression has disappeared from his experience.
It is God's law that we use our talents. This does not mean that because our talent is for architecture we must have work as an architect, but it does mean that the constructive thinking which made us architects has to be employed, for this thinking is the real talent. If we are musicians, the harmonious thinking which has made us musical will have to be persistently used. If we are chemists, our talent for analysis, for understanding the constituency or true nature of things, will have to be utilized. And if we believe we have no talent, this is because we have not recognized that we possess the greatest talent of all, namely, the ability to think intelligently, lovingly, courageously, according to the demands of Principle. Occupy your thought with your true God-given talents, until the mists of fear, doubt, and depression have disappeared and the truth of your being has come, in other words is made apparent, and you see that you are occupied, in your right place, manifesting the abundance of God.
It is the true idea of, or the fact about, an individual, a situation, or a condition that frees us from falsity of every sort. Christian Science brings us this true idea. Mrs. Eddy states that with Christian Science "can be discerned the spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold" (Science and Health, p. 585), Let us use Christian Science for a moment to look on the things of the universe from the viewpoint of Spirit, God, who sees all things as they are, as He created them.
Perhaps you have been looking with the material senses at supply, and you have seen it as money which fluctuates, is elusive, delusive, limited, unjustly distributed, and you have seen it as having power to give or deprive you of happiness, education, enlightenment, home, and all the other good things. If this is the case, give Christian Science a trial, and behold with it the spiritual fact of supply. You will see that supply is Mind instead of matter, and that it is infinite in quantity, so that there is enough for all; that supply expresses the fact that God sustains and maintains man in harmony and happiness, and that He enlightens man with the true idea of all things. This fact of what the material senses have beheld as money, when understood, determines and governs the outward expression of supply. A person who has been limited by the material senses view of money as supply will find through Christian Science that he is beholding supply as sufficient, unchanging, at hand, and within his own consciousness and experience.
If you have been made unhappy by seeing unjust distribution, or made envious by looking at your own lack and another's affluence, you will find this lack, unhappiness, envy, and belief in injustice, disappearing from your vision, your consciousness, or experience, as you see that supply is from God, who is infinite, impartial Principle. You will then know that this view of supply is free to all who will look at it through the lens of Science. In fact, your view of this supply and your proof of it will enrich all others, as they, too, will behold that which is theirs; for this supply comes from the one source, their God, or Mind, and yours.
Wealth, or well-being, like health, belongs to every man, for this wealth and this health are spiritual states of Mind, not material conditions. We would never think that because one person is healthy he has taken health away from others and that he must therefore be penalized and made to give up some of his health in order to distribute it to those with less health. Rather do we rejoice in the health expressed by others, for we realize that they are expressing that which is normal to each individual.
Wealth is a state of well-being belonging to all, because God-bestowed. Such wealth cannot be obtained by dishonesty, greed, monopolies, or by accumulation, for these cling to the limitation of matter, or the opposite of true wealth. True wealth, or well-being, which expresses good, health, joy, substance, intelligence, love, beauty, opportunity, is obtained by overcoming the false qualities of greed, dishonesty, miserliness. Wealth can only be measured in terms of that which it brings of good to the individual, and thereby to the community. If we seem to be suffering from poverty, lack of opportunity, lack of friends, lack of health, let us claim our God-bestowed wealth of love, joy, strength, harmony. These are things money can never buy, but which the wealth of God's love brings to each one of us.
You will remember that the Psalmist was once very disturbed by what the lens of the material senses conveyed to him, and he wrote: "I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. . . . They have more than heart could wish. . . . They increase in riches. . . . When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me; until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end." Envy of the health, wealth, or happiness expressed by others never solves the problem for anyone, but going into the sanctuary, or the mental place where we can know God, man as His likeness, and the "spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold," enables us to see the end or nothingness of materiality in all its forms. This does not mean that you will be without money, but that you will have supply of every kind expressed in the way that will meet your human need. This supply, however, will be demonstration, evidence, or proof that wealth is a state of Mind, not of matter, and that it is not governed by fear, limitation, dishonesty, or greed. This true idea of wealth brings freedom from fear, lack, poverty. Mrs. Eddy says to "level wealth with honesty" (Science and Health, p. 239). When this is done, each individual will be expressing the wealth of well-being bestowed on him by God or good, for this is honestly his, and no one will be trying to deprive another in order to enrich himself, for no one can want or have more than the allness of God's love, presence, and power.
With Christian Science you can also discern the true idea of your position, namely, that man already has his position in Mind. Whenever we know the facts of any situation we must utilize them and act on the basis of their truth. Of course, if position is in Mind, it must be mental. Is it not in fact a mental attitude? For example, we all have a mental attitude or position with regard to government, supply, health, love, friendship. The mental attitude or position God bestows is one of love, intelligence, harmony, good. There is nothing changeable or transitory about this mental attitude or position, and man always has it with him. The very fact that you exist means that you have a position. Even physically, no one else can occupy the position you occupy. It will always be yours. Your position could no more be occupied by another than your individuality could be assumed by another.
Christian Science enables you to discern that you already have a position and that it is good. Utilize this fact. It is already true and you can prove its truth by mentally holding to it until the untrue beliefs with regard to a lack of position disappear. David said, "Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place." The position provided for each one of us expresses the wealth of Love's ideas, and reveals to you that you, man, dwell in the beauty, bounty, light, purity, intelligence of God's presence. Man does not get out of or into a position, for the fact that he exists means that he has place or position. This position is free from friction, chance, politics, personal influence, or dissatisfaction. It is your holy place in Mind and it is forever established.
Mrs. Eddy not only discovered this Science, with its gospel of freedom, but she experienced in her own career this freedom. After discovering Christian Science she had to prove that true womanhood is free from the pettiness, the physical weakness, the lack of logic, and the lack of business ability, as well as other hampering limitations that, particularly at that time, beset womankind. This Mrs. Eddy did most wonderfully and exemplified in her life that true womanhood is as much the likeness of God as true manhood. With Christian Science she discerned and with Christian Science she proved that which she wrote in a poem called "Woman's Rights," namely, that woman has "the right to work and pray, 'To point to heaven and lead the way'" (Poems, p. 21).
In no way has her proof of the nature of true womanhood detracted from true manhood; rather has it heightened, complemented, and completed the manhood of the Christ, as revealed and demonstrated by Jesus, and carried on in varying degrees by noble men and women since Jesus' time. Of course, true spiritual womanhood is the expression of God's motherhood, and this motherhood of God was part of the revelation of Christian Science.
Love was the motivating impulse of Mrs. Eddy's career. It enabled her not only to discern, prove, and patiently wait for others to prove Christian Science to be the liberator of mankind from all evil, but it also enabled her to found her discovery in such a way that it would be available to all mankind through the activities of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts.
While depending wholly on the love of our Father, God, which sustains, supplies, supports, and provides all good, Mrs. Eddy demonstrated the love of our Mother, God, which embraces all humanity in one family, and thus holds them together in the united activities of a church which is indeed a Mother Church. It was the demonstration of divine Love in her human experience as the Founder and Leader of Christian Science which made every step in the founding of this church a successful one. The world looks on and sees, what to its sense seems to be a splendid organization, a good business, a remarkable, centralized form of government, but to the Christian Scientist who uses Christian Science to discern "the spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold" these things are expressions of the government of divine Principle, of the unity of the ideas or children of God, of the leadership of divine Love, of the fruits of Spirit, as revealed by one who understood and practiced Christian Science and who has given to all mankind its gospel of freedom.