Anna E. Herzog, C.S.B., of Columbus, Ohio
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The
Mother Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
Anna E. Herzog, C.S.B., of Columbus, Ohio, lectured on "Christian Science; Dominion Through Obedience of Law," Tuesday evening in the Church edifice, 34th and Washington boulevard, under the auspices of the Third Church Christ, Scientist. The lecturer was introduced by Wilbur Zobbe.
The lecturer spoke substantially as follows:
The child begins his mathematical calculations by learning that one and one are two. Later with mature experience he may be calculating mathematically in terms of light years and astronomical distances. If so, he has had to travel the long road of experience in strict obedience to the laws of mathematics. Only undeviating obedience thereto could give him the mastery, the vaster outlook of his later years.
Thus it is in the great problem of spiritual growth and progress. Only by accurate obedience to divine law can one increase his proficiency in applying that law and thus achieve greater benefits from the law's application. One of the interesting illustrations in the Bible, involving recognition of the dominion to be derived from obedience to God's demands is that of the centurion who implored Jesus to heal his servant. You may remember that the centurion told Jesus not to trouble to come to his house, "but say in a word, and my servant shall be healed. For I also am a man set under authority, having under me soldiers, and I say unto one, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it." And we are told that Jesus marveled at the man's intelligent faith and said to the people that followed him, "I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel."
Evidently the centurion recognized that Jesus could not manifest the dominion that he did except as the representative of a higher power, even God. In like manner the centurion himself had no authority except as it was delegated to him by Caesar.
Christian Science teaches that healing of any problem — such as sin, sickness, lack, loss, or fear — can be worked out only through complete reliance on the supreme Lawgiver, and through strict conformity to divine law. What is this law? Whence comes it? How can we utilize it?
Spiritual law in operation is the activity of divine Mind. What then is this Mind from whence law comes? On page 115 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," its author, Mary Baker Eddy, has defined God as: "Divine Principle, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind." With the exception of divine Principle each one of these words is employed in the Bible to define the nature of God. Five of them, Mind, Spirit, Soul, Life and Truth, were thus employed by Moses, and Love was used by John as a synonym for God. Each brings out a little different aspect of that infinite term, Deity — a term so difficult to define in human language.
Mrs. Eddy uses the word "Principle" in defining God. Principle is the great First Cause, that which bases, decides, and controls all true being, that which is strong, reliable, and undeviating. Life is a synonym for Principle, God, because it has the elements of eternity. Thus unchanging activity, harmonious continuity, and unceasing power are attributes of Life. Truth is God, perfect, accurate, and healing. Love is God, tender, powerful, intelligent, and everlasting. Soul is God; it is radiant, sinless consciousness. Spirit is God, incorporeal and ever present, as all-pervading and as beneficent as is the active, wise, and never-failing Mind which is God. It is such a God, the one and only God, from which divine law emanates.
For many years the teachings of the physical scientists were, if not frankly atheistic, at least decidedly nonreligious. It is encouraging to know that for some years now their attitude has been changing. Thus the noted English physicist, Sir Arthur S. Eddington, says in his book, "The Nature of the Physical World" (p. 338): "The idea of a universal Mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory; at least it is in harmony with it." And the distinguished American scientist, Dr. Robert A. Millikan has said on page 57 of his "Science and Life": "It seems to me as obvious as breathing that every man who is sufficiently in his senses to recognize his own inability to comprehend the problem of existence, to understand whence he himself came and whither he is going, must in the very admission of that ignorance and finiteness recognize the existence of a Something, a Power, a Being in whom and because of whom he himself 'lives and moves and has his being.' That Power, that Something that Existence, we call God."
It is a great satisfaction to know that such distinguished physical scientists are beginning to approach, through their long and learned study the truths that inspiration and spiritual revelation have made clear to the great religious thinkers of the ages.
When I drove over the hills of Palestine, and saw the people, practically unchanged since Jesus' day, the wonder of that human life, begun so long ago in Bethlehem, was greatly emphasized for me. Jesus lived as others lived, as they still do, and yet mentally, spiritually, he was in a totally different consciousness. That was true of his devoted follower, Mary Baker Eddy. Although Jesus' life and the Christianity he left with men enabled Mrs. Eddy to live in a very different and more enlightened world than he, still her vision excelled that of her contemporaries even as did his.
A brief but outstanding experience of my life did much toward explaining to me the reason for their greater vision. One morning when my husband and I were on a train approaching the Canadian Rockies, we rose about four o'clock and went out to the observation platform. We were sitting in the dark facing east when the train went around a curve and turned our gaze to the west. There, in a world of midnight darkness, against a perfectly black sky, was the most awe-inspiring spectacle I ever saw. Great jagged peaks of fiery rose color towered in the sky ahead of us. After our first thrilled astonishment we realized that the stupendous height of the Rockies made it possible for them to catch the sunlight, hours before the plain even hinted of morning.
There that minute it came to me, "Why that was the way the consciousness of Jesus and of Mrs. Eddy must have reflected the rays of Truth. Their thought towered so high above and beyond all others that they caught first the glory of reality. The light of Truth shone on their lives, and was expressed in their achievements, while many of their contemporaries were enveloped in the darkness of materiality. That vision of reality which they beheld, they were able to impart to others. That Truth which they saw, they demonstrated in their lives that men might see and follow it.
Mary Baker Eddy was the Discoverer of Christian Science and the Founder of The Mother Church and its branches. She is the Leader of the Christian Science movement for all time through the provisions of the Manual of The Mother Church and her other writings. She obeyed the law of divine Principle so well that she saw far beyond the usual concept of God and man and reality into the Science of Christianity. She saw the allness of God and the nothingness of any opposing belief so well that she demonstrated the power of good in her own experience to a wonderful degree. She saw the true expression of God's man so clearly that she healed countless cases of sin and sickness. She realized the world's need for love and understanding so well that she founded a church which should "reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing" (Manual, p. 17).
Every activity of this church is for the purpose of healing sin and sickness. Its reason for being is the demonstration of the Christ, that active, loving, healing influence for good which Jesus knew and demonstrated so well. Unless a branch of The Mother Church is expressing the Christ-consciousness; unless it is healing the sick and sinner, comforting the sorrowing and confused, lighting the darkened, and demonstrating warm and friendly love to all men, it is not fulfilling its purpose. The Church of Christ, Scientist, as already stated, was founded by Mrs. Eddy. No branch church has any other founder or leader. Every loyal Christian Scientist strives to reflect impartial and universal Love, and a branch church grows in its loving welcome, its healing activities, its joyous spirituality in the degree that its members are living the Christ truth of Christian Science.
Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health, page 332, "Jesus demonstrated Christ; he proved that Christ is the divine idea of God — the Holy Ghost, or Comforter, revealing the divine Principle, Love, and leading into all truth." How the world needs that comforting truth, that Christly love, that revelation of divine Principle! Obedience to the rules of Christian Science does lead into all truth.
As has been said, spiritual law in operation is the activity of divine Mind. Man's real being expresses that activity in obedience to law. The real you, the real man, is the creation of God, the idea of Mind, the manifestation of Principle, the reflection of Love. He is the likeness of Spirit, the image of Truth, the child of Life. His business is to obey the divine requirements of the synonyms of God. What do I mean by that? I mean this, in part, if one is persistently thinking of his origin as creative Mind, or our heavenly Father, one must, obviously, be claiming for himself the qualities of Mind such as intelligence, efficiency, alertness, and wisdom. If one is thinking of himself as the expression of Love, naturally he must be acting like an expression of Love. This means that he will be kind, wise, friendly, helpful, considerate, and compassionate in all his human contacts. Realizing oneself to be the reflection of Life one will eliminate from consciousness the beliefs of weakness, disease, and inactivity. This will remove fear of sickness, contagion, infection, and all the dark beliefs of age, failure, loss, decrepitude and death. The life that man reflects from God, and he has no other life, knows no change, deterioration, or end. True life is not affected by age or time; is not saddened by loss or loneliness; is not shortened by disease or injury; is not ended by war or death. None of these evils can touch the real man, Life's vigorous and joyous expression. Jesus proved this clearly when he raised from the dead Lazarus, and the son of the widow of Nain, and when he healed cases of sin and disease. Christian Scientists, too, are proving these great spiritual facts, when through understanding them, they are healing themselves, or others, of sin, disease, lack, and sorrow. A vast storehouse of authenticated testimony to such healing has been accumulating, through the years, in the pages of The Christian Science Journal and the Christian Science Sentinel.
God's law, as expressed in the Ten Commandments, and the teachings of Christian Science, requires man to express God's nature. Growing into the realization of our selfhood as that real man, by growing out of the belief that we are mortals, is the work ahead of us all. On page 159 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," Mrs. Eddy writes, "Truth, life, and love are the only legitimate and eternal demands upon man: they are spiritual laws enforcing obedience and punishing disobedience."
Someone may say, Well I do not see how the perfect God you have been talking about could punish disobedience when He knows no dream of error. In reply I would call your attention to the fact that in mathematics its demonstrated laws have to be obeyed or we get wrong answers to our problems. The bridge builder has to obey the laws of engineering or his bridge collapses. The singer must obey the rules relating to breathing and tone production or his singing is bad. The punishment for not obeying the law is, in every case, defective performance.
That our human lives have been fairly defective no one would deny. That is because we have not clearly known and obeyed the Christ-rules of living. We may have been following the rules of our human profession quite meticulously, thus making a measure of success of it, but we may have pitifully neglected that far greater profession of being God's expression. That is why we may have experienced disappointments, unfulfilled ambitions, fears, frustrations and failures. However well or however poorly we may have been succeeding in our professional or business affairs heretofore, we shall handle them more successfully when we are hourly striving to bring out, through these human activities, the intelligent and lovely qualities of infinite Mind. Much of the world is engaged in what we call a profession or a business. That activity claims to determine one's supply, usefulness, and opportunity. Christian Science teaches that true activity is an eternal fact: that it is never limited, prevented, obstructed, or curtailed. We need to know that the real man constantly expresses the faculties of Mind. He has perception — true, broad, mental vision. He has apprehension — intelligent, quick, and accurate understanding. In fact, the real man expresses all of the activities and qualities of Mind, unchanged by any beliefs of heredity, environment, history, time, war, or accident. Each one of us must claim these qualities as his own and then demonstrate their possession.
The Christian Scientist knows that he cannot claim good for himself and not for others. That which truly blesses one blesses all, as Mrs. Eddy teaches. One illustration of that truth in a matter relating to business is the following. A very productive and prosperous farm was condemned, among others, for the establishment of an aviation field. The wife of the man who owned it was a Christian Scientist and when this happened both were very much troubled and sought the aid of a Christian Science practitioner. They promised the practitioner full cooperation and implicit obedience to whatever this teaching required of them in the working out of the problem. Complete, harmonious, and satisfactory settlement of the transaction was brought about by acknowledging the existence of only one Mind, God, and by realizing man's obedience to Him. It was clearly seen that all connected with the transaction were governed by Mind and blessed by obedience to Mind. The negotiations took several weeks, but no trouble of any kind was experienced by anyone concerned. When the business was completely settled the attorney who was acting for the group taking over the property said, "This is the first settlement that I have known in which there was no other attorney, no lawsuit involved, and no hard feelings anywhere." Business affairs, whenever thus intelligently worked out in obedience to Love and Mind, do bless all concerned, as this little incident illustrates.
Our experiences, our human lives, are plainly products of our thinking. Thus the consciousness which is broadly intelligent, wisely active, honestly unselfish, constantly expectant, is not going to be externalized in a limited, meager, human experience. If our days seem beset by lack or monotony, by little interest, success or opportunity, it is our thinking that needs changing. Get a glimpse of Mind's vastness and man's unlimited ability to express that Mind. Turn to Principle with reliance and willingness to be led. Express every quality of God in every possible way, by molding your will to the divine. The divine will is always good. Obeyed in business it will mean the manifestation of industry, integrity, intelligence, resourcefulness, and right initiative. The spiritually-minded businessman knows that opportunity to express and experience good is constant, not intermittent. He knows that the fruitage of spiritually mental activity is adequate for all man's needs. He knows that the judgment and decisiveness which reflect divine Mind are never failing and never misleading.
Complications, injustices, losses, and failures cannot involve the real man. If they seem at times to face us, we need a firmer faith, stronger assurance of God's presence, and a clearer realization of the changeless fact of perfection. Standing thus, obedient to intelligence, faithful to right, brings eventual dominion over circumstances. Each such experience brings greater faith in God, clearer realization that all is mental, and greater proficiency in keeping thought obedient to the eternal truths of being. Improving the endless opportunities to reflect God will bring ever broader opportunities into human experience. Mental refusal to accept reversal of good or frustration of effort stabilizes growth already made.
Today many are facing problems of readjustment and reconstruction. The more clearly we see that no reality has ever been out of adjustment and so none needs readjustment, the more efficiently we shall be able to remedy such human difficulties. The more clearly we see that nothing real has ever been destroyed, the more ably we shall bring that out in human experience as reconstruction. Strain, tension, push and hurry are no part of Life, God, thus no part of man. Refuse them. Tension means false responsibility. Humility corrects that, since humility is a clear realization that God alone is power — ours to utilize by reflection. Push and hurry fade away before the serene assurance that today is eternity, and that Principle's ever-present power is never less than infinite. Never shut your mental doors through apprehension. Open them wide through expectancy.
We have been considering true God-inspired law but there seem to be many things called law that are "more honoured in the breach than the observance." These are counterfeit laws of supposititious mortal mind, supported not by Truth, but by habitual racial belief, by physiological thinking, or, sometimes by medical teaching. These mesmeric beliefs regarding years, heredity, chance environment, climate, and so on should not be dignified by the name of law. Christian Science does not advocate obedience to such; it does advocate wise and demonstrated ability to overcome such. Because a certain disease is scheduled to appear in a certain year does not mean that one need blindly obey and carry out such a belief. Because our parents or grandparents manifested such and such an undesirable trait of character assuredly does not necessitate our doing so.
Early in the Biblical history of man's growth toward God there appeared a remarkable concept of the demands of good. The Ten Commandments have stood as a basic moral code for the world for many centuries, and their effect on civilization has been incalculable. Christian Science points out their inestimable value and insists on their strict observance. Jesus, hundreds of years later, reiterated these Commandments but added to them the grace, brotherly love, and spirituality which we know as Christianity. He said, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." How do you love yourself? We talked a few minutes ago about God and the spiritual man who is His creation and likeness. That man of God's creating is completely lovable, completely good, manifesting full dominion and perfection. Is it such a pure reflection of God that you habitually think of and love as yourself? If so, then you have a perfect criterion for loving your neighbor.
Many mortals believe that they are troubled and retarded by what is termed self-consciousness. Is it consciousness of themselves as sons of God that troubles them and interferes with their progress? Manifestly not. There is in reality no limited, material self of which to be conscious. Such is truly a "self-made man," not the real man of God's creating. Thus such self-consciousness is a phase of egotism even though it masks as self-depreciation. Let go of such a false sense. Gladly and continually claim your selfhood as God's reflection, able as that true selfhood to express freedom, initiative, originality, capability, and gracious dominion.
The individuality which is one's
true selfhood is eternally distinct and eternally perfect. Science and Health
contains the two following statements, "Man is not God, and God is not
man" (p. 480); "Man is not absorbed in Deity, and man cannot lose his
individuality, for he reflects eternal Life" (p. 259). True
self-consciousness then is a consciousness of one's own indestructible, definite, everlasting individuality. It
is that distinct and beautiful individuality that we love in each other. It is
that eternal, changeless individuality that we recognize as fadeless and
perpetual in each other. "Miscellaneous Writings" says of Christian
Science (p. 22). "It absolutely refutes the amalgamation, transmigration,
absorption, or annihilation of individuality." Learning to know the
spiritual individuality of oneself or others is to see the truth regarding man
as God's expression.
Christian Science is a wonderful disciplinarian. One must follow its rules with scientific exactitude. Nowhere is this more imperative than in giving a Christian Science treatment. Such treatment is purely mental; it is prayer only. It must include obedience to Jesus' quoted admonition about loving God and man. It includes seeing that God alone is power and that the only man is one with and beloved of God. It includes realization that man, this spiritual expression of perfection, cannot be involved in sickness, sin, fear, confusion, lack, or sorrow. The real man does not desire anything other than spiritual good. He does not manifest anything less, and cannot be influenced by anything less than his divine Principle. He is obedient to the eternal, irrefragable law of harmony, health, peace, and life. He need not, in fact the real man cannot, obey anything less. The Christian Science practitioner knows all of that for his patient, and if wise, he knows those truths daily for himself.
A Christian Science practitioner regards a sick man or a sinner with compassion, even as Jesus did. He knows that the conditions that need to be healed are forms of deception, for nothing that is true or actual can be changed. Jesus could heal the sick because he never allowed himself to be deceived by appearances. So a Christian Science practitioner must replace the false belief in a sinner or a sick man, with the joyous and intelligent certainty of man as spiritual individuality — eternal, changeless, perfect. Can humanity expect to manifest unimpaired health while it does not manifest unimpaired goodness? Christian Science is not alone in teaching that wrong thinking may result in a sick body. A well-known physician and surgeon who has been much quoted in print is credited with saying that "the emotions, worry, fear, hate, and jealousy affect every cell in the body. Some organs are stimulated, some inhibited, the foundations of certain characteristics of human diseases are laid." Evidently the doctor believes that a sick body is but the manifestation of wrong thinking.
Everyone who loves his brother would like to have the dominion or spiritual understanding that can say to those in need, "Rise up and walk." And everyone will have to attain that ability through obedience to the same rules, or laws, which the Master obeyed. Might and obedience go hand in hand. Christian Science teaches the application, the utilization, of the divine and beneficent rules of immutable Truth. It is Science — eternal, infinite, unchanging Truth — that can be applied humanly. It is of no use to us if it remains an abstract, absolute theory without human application. Two dictionary definitions under "practice" are: "to acquire proficiency," and "to pursue a profession actively." Thus, actively to pursue the application of God's laws to human problems is the work of the Christian Science practitioner. To acquire proficiency in so applying God's laws requires intelligent obedience and persistence and consecration. There could not be a higher ministry — an applier of God's law, a prover of the healing availability of the ever-present, omnipotent, absolute law of Spirit!
A case clearly proving the availability of God's power under all circumstances is the following. A highly trained medical nurse was losing her faith in material remedies; so she began a cursory study of Christian Science. Many years later she and her husband were both taken with an infectious fever of a very serious nature, and doctors who were called eventually pronounced them both incurable. Thereupon the wife decided to turn completely to Christian Science. The husband continued with material help. When this patient called the practitioner and renounced all medical aid the symptoms were extremely serious from a medical point of view. At first the practitioner visited the patient four times a day — sometimes she and the husband's doctor met at the door and went to their respective patients. The Scientist usually gave audible treatments in the effort to make clear that because all disease is mental it requires mental means to destroy it. She explained that when one loves God with all one's heart and mind and strength one could see nothing unlovely or un-Godlike in family or self. One night the practitioner was called with the information that the patient was apparently passing on and would be gone before she could get there. This was denied positively and confidently as the Scientist sped to the patient's house. Silently she entered the sickroom and stood looking out of the window thinking about the words of Jesus, about the law of Life which was utilized by him and which Christian Science has revealed. That ever-available and ever-operating law she knew was present with her there. After two or three hours the patient moved and began to speak. By six o'clock she sat up and drank some milk. In a few days she was downstairs completely healed. The terrible effects of this dream of disease had completely disappeared.
As soon as the wife had fully recovered from her own difficulty, she assisted the nurses in caring for her husband. Although his physicians were devoted and attentive to his case, he continued to be weak and partially paralyzed for several weeks. Then he turned to Christian Science for help, and within five days, he was able to get downstairs. Three weeks later, that husband and wife were able to take a long journey and, today, these healthy, active students of Christian Science are working to make known the teaching of God's allness and man's right to Life, which has brought so much to them. This healing, which was well known in the community where it occurred, was another proof of the power of Christian Science to heal a sense of hopelessness and also to overcome the belief that disease is real, because nothing true or real could be destroyed. Jesus declared that a knowledge of the truth would make us free, and we have learned in Christian Science that our worst dreams about disease disappear when we learn to obey that which is true in the sight of God.
We learn in Christian Science that fear is the basis of most of our problems of sickness, and that requires us to learn how to get the mastery over fear. Fear of disease and death, fear of failure, fear of danger, weakness, inability — all of them are found to be nothing more than faith in evil instead of faith in good. Because evil is unreal and good is real we have a right to refuse fear, to refuse to believe that we can be subject to it or be handled by it. The Bible says that "perfect love casteth out fear." Thus fear is negative — only the absence of understanding, of the realization of Love's presence, and of its protection and care.
Prayer as understood in Christian Science is consciously uniting our thought to good and seeking a closer communion with infinite Love. As children we may have thought of prayer as a mode of persuading God to grant us a special favor. As we become spiritually adult we learn that we have no need or ability to persuade God who is infinite Love and unchanging Mind. True prayer requires us to conform our thought to Principle. It is not an ignorant belief that we can conform Principle to our thought. Prayer means self-abnegation and spiritual realization. Prayer means trusting God, letting go of false responsibility, turning our problems over to infinity for sure solution. Prayer means confidence and consecration. It means love and trust and praise. Such prayer, when intelligently applied to the healing of sin and sickness, does bring release.
Christian Scientists follow Paul's injunction, "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." It is interesting to note that two thousand years after Paul made that statement in his letter to the Corinthians, Eddington, whom I have already quoted has said: "It has been the task of science to discover that things are very different from what they seem. It is in the midst of such misrepresentations of environment (if you must call them so) that we have to live." (The Nature of the Physical World, pp. 334, 335).
At one time my office overlooked a small park. Many times when praying to realize that which is true to God, in order to unsee some disease which seemed very real, I have looked out at the flat, green lawn of the park, and said to myself, This disease, this disordered matter, looks no more real than that world out there looks flat, yet I do not accept the appearance of "the things which are seen" in that case and I refuse to accept as real the disease which is "seen" in this case. Thus the Christian Scientist in his treating of sin and sickness, lack and fear and sorrow, looks definitely away from the unreliable testimony of the material senses, to the spiritual realities of being.
The very basis of the belief in evil is the dream that there is a mind, a power, other than the one infinite good. The student of Christian Science holds steadily to the spiritual fact that the only actual power is good; that the only Mind in operation is the divine. He may see little in the human situation about him to indicate that, but he recalls the facts he knows as to the unreliability of all that the senses tell him. Thus in the midst of confusion, war, or sorrow, he holds to the spiritual realities of being. He knows evil to be only a phase of mesmerism, a lie, or unreality. He knows that eventually good will triumph in the affairs of the world. The Christian Scientist does not see all evil instantly removed from his experience, but through spiritual guidance he is constantly led to choose the human step which is nearest in line with Principle. Although that may lead him to war or through other difficult experiences it leads him into mental peace and unfolds his way of service and spiritual growth.
There could not be a time when we need to see the presence of the one Mind more than we do right now, when a wise and lasting peace must be achieved for the world. Order, be achieved for the world. Let us know that selflessness, wisdom, and courage are vital qualities of man which should be present at every peace conference. Let us realize that sentimentality, emotionalism, subtle subversive influences, stupidity, and confusion are not powerful, or real, or present at any council table, and that hate, selfishness, and cruelty are equally impotent. That the Christ-qualities alone are present is the eternal truth. The part of the spiritually awake individual today, is to know this constantly, that it may be demonstrated in human affairs.
Because the brotherhood of man unites nations as well as individuals let each one pray that his country may turn wholeheartedly from materiality and recognize that the only basis for happiness, the only healing of the world's sorrow, the only establishing of permanent peace, the only harmony between groups, must come through intelligent unselfish love, through turning to Principle for leading. That is true for all of the countries which have stood on the side of Principle, in this present world struggle. Truly each could, with equal sincerity, join in America's great hymn:
"Our fathers' God to Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing;
Long may our land be bright
With freedom's holy light;
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God our King!"
— Samuel Francis Smith
As the individual finds peace and healing by obediently fulfilling the law of his being as Mind's reflection, so can the nations — those great groups of individuals — find peace and harmony by conducting their affairs in obedience to the law of divine Principle. Spiritually-minded, scientifically obedient individuals, at one with divine Principle will establish prosperous nations at one with peace.
The Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians, "The law was our schoolmaster to bring us into Christ." If we want to walk in the footsteps of our great Way-shower, Christ Jesus, and understand the Science of Christianity which Mrs. Eddy has given us, we must live in obedience to the divine Principle of all law and government. True obedience to God does not do away with freedom, initiative, originality and spontaneity. They belong to man's true birthright.
By accepting God as our Father, we live in obedience to His government, and express the spontaneity of freedom and joyousness. The more one brings his life into conformity with divine reality the more divine reality appears in his experience as perfection, abundance, activity, and dominion. As complete unity with Mind is eventually attained we shall be like those whom Paul described to the Romans who "do by nature the things contained in the law," thus becoming a law unto themselves.
Let us examine our thought and see what we are looking for, what we are expecting. Are we looking for all the good that we can find in each other and in our own lives? Are we constantly being grateful for that good? Are we expecting everything ahead even today, to come from God, good, Love? Are we obediently "forgetting those things which are behind" and living today to express God? If so, then we are confidently pressing forward to greater service, unfolding opportunity, better health, abundance, harmony, and eternal life. To summarize, think in obedience to Principle, then live in obedience to your thinking.
Obedience to Spirit means dominion over matter. Obedience to infinite Love means overcoming envy, jealousy, resentment, and hatred. Obedience to Principle means dominion over every belief in chance, accident, limitation, and failure. Full demonstrated obedience to Life will mean, at last, full dominion over all materiality and death. And it will mean for each of you today, in the measure of your acceptance and practice of this Science of obedience to Spirit, a fuller, richer, gladder life, an ever-increasing measure of pure and selfless happiness and of free and God-governed dominion.