Margaret Matters, C.S.B., of New York, New York
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The
Mother Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
Margaret Matters, C.S.B., of New York, a member of The Christian Science Board of Lectureship, delivered a lecture entitled "The Complete Nature of Man as Revealed by Christian Science," last evening under the auspices of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, in the Church Edifice.
The lecturer was introduced by Gordon V. Comer, C.S.B., First Reader in The Mother Church, who said:
Friends:
We are here as guests of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, to listen to an address by a member of the Board of Lectureship of this Church.
The subject of the lecture is "The Complete Nature of Man as Revealed by Christian Science." One may safely say that all inharmony suggests incompleteness in one form or another. This being so, it would seem that there should be a great desire on the part of mankind to learn of man's true selfhood, and your presence here tonight indicates such a desire on your part.
It is our sincere hope that you may be inspired with new courage and hope by hearing the clear logical explanation given by Christian Science of the demonstrable truth of man's spiritual completeness and perfection and of the possibility of our experiencing the coming of God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
The lecturer spoke substantially as follows:
There is a universal need for health, supply, fellowship, righteous government, integrity, law, and order. Neither personal leadership, sectarianism, nationalism, material sciences, material medicine, art, nor invention can meet this universal need — this yearning of the heart of humanity for that which inspires with enthusiasm and joy and which brings peace to all. The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes (Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 107, 365), "More love is the great need of mankind," and, "Good health and a more spiritual religion form the common want, and this want has worked out a moral result; namely, that mortal mind is calling for what immortal Mind alone can supply." For many centuries an invitation of Love has voiced its tender plea to mankind through the words of Isaiah, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." An invitation requires three things: first, an awareness of its request; second, a compliance with its behest; and third, active participation in its promised joy.
Today Christian Science is repeating Love's invitation to come to the waters, to the tributaries of His pleasure; in other words, to the outpouring good, love, intelligence, joy, harmony, and satisfaction which God bestows on, and expresses through, each one of His creation.
Many are willing to come away from the discord, confusion, uncertainty, and fears, the wars and rumors of wars that are going on in the world today, and some are even willing to leave its pleasures, which do not satisfy even though they seem to attract. All who come are asked to buy, but not with money, wine, which Mrs. Eddy defines in part as "Inspiration; understanding" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 598), and milk, or the pure, nourishing, satisfying truth about God and man. The fact that we are to buy this wine of inspiration and understanding indicates that we are to give something in exchange for it. We are to exchange the condemnatory, unworthy, suffering, inferior sense of ourselves for the understanding given us by Christian Science of our true selves as the likeness of God — a likeness which is perfect, capable, worthy, and praiseworthy. We are to part with misunderstanding, hatred, envy, in order to acquire the wine or understanding of Love. We are to give up the sense of pride and cold intellectuality, forsake the husks of physical indulgences, repudiate the intoxicating egotism of personal opinions, and the vanity of mere scholasticism, in order to buy and partake of the simple, nourishing, pure, joyous, intelligent, useful revealings of the ideas of God, Truth.
Divine Love or God is the Giver of this invitation and we are thus Love's guests, so let us become acquainted with Him — understand Him better and love Him more.
Many have been taught that God is three persons in one, and some have tried faithfully to believe that which they could not understand nor reason about. Christian Science makes clear God’s threefold nature as Life, Truth, Love. These names characterize God's nature and indicate His relationship to His creation. This threefold nature is one in Principle, not in a person. Briefly, the following are some of the functions of this triune Principle, God. Divine Life, the creator, maintains and sustains consciousness eternally, feeds with strength, energy, beauty, and provides all good, thus expressing God's fatherhood. Divine Love cherishes, preserves, nourishes, comforts, forgives, is compassionate and merciful, thus expressing the motherhood of God. And Truth is revealed or manifested by the Son of God, or the Christ. To put it in another way: our Father God, the divine Mind, is the one Ego, cause, source, and intelligence of all things. God's motherhood is expressed by the purity, the chastity, the beauty, the innocence, the inspiration, the holiness, of Soul. Spirit is represented by that spiritual understanding of God and man which is designated in the Bible as the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, or Comforter, and which is known today as Christian Science. This spiritual understanding saves, comforts, and heals. Mrs. Eddy states (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 63), "Our Master understood that Life, Truth, Love are the triune Principle of all pure theology; also, that this divine trinity is one infinite remedy for the opposite triad, sickness, sin, and death."
The following six names for God — Life, Truth, Love, Mind, Spirit, Soul — all mean Principle, a term for God that reveals His nature in a wonderful way. Let us consider the things we know about the so-called principles of the natural sciences, and see how applicable they are to God. First, a principle cannot be cognized by the material senses. It is incorporeal and is expressed by ideas, laws, rules, and by science. It is knowable and provable, changeless and logical. It is everywhere present, and always discernible to intelligence and understanding. It is universal, belonging to all, but is never a personal possession. One is not asked to believe a principle of mathematics, but one is required to know it, understand and prove it. It cannot be refuted nor influenced by material conditions. Add to all this the fact that divine Principle is supreme, infinite, perfect Life, Truth, Love, Mind, Soul, Spirit, and we see how glorious is our God. Mrs. Eddy says of this name Principle (No and Yes, p. 20), "When understood, Principle is found to be the only term that fully conveys the ideas of God, — one Mind, a perfect man, and divine Science."
I think you will agree that divine Principle which expresses changeless perfection, justice, integrity, law, order, universality, impartiality, and provableness must be Love. There are many amazing things offered in the name of love, and as most people desire to love or to be loved, they will try almost anything that is thus offered. The failure of these things to bring happiness should turn us away from such substitutes, to real love. Love is always happy. If what you are doing in the name of Love is not happifying, you can know it is not love. Can one find happiness doing unprincipled things, in being dishonest, disorderly, unjust, unstable, unloving? Of course not.
Through education we have formed the habit of associating love with personality rather than with Principle, and we are inclined to believe that it would be a bit dull to love Principle. This is because we do not realize that Principle is God, the one infinite individuality or Being, and that He is expressed individually by man, and of course we all love individuality. Personality is the corporeality of a mortal and all that the material senses cognize about him, his faults, foibles, weaknesses, as well as his personal good, his personal intellect, his personal ability, talents, and accomplishments, which it is believed belong to him privately and personally, apart from everyone else. Whereas man's individuality consists of his individual expression of God's goodness, strength, intelligence, beauty, power, and presence. We always find a man of ideas interesting, although we cannot, see or feel those ideas materially. Christian Science shows the true man of God's creating to consist wholly of ideas — ideas that express the perfection, the purity, the harmony, the integrity, and the law of Principle.
But you may think that beauty does not belong to divine Principle, but to personality, and that man, the likeness of Principle, must therefore be without beauty. All true beauty, whether it be expressed through science, art, or character, is based on law and order, on Principle. In fact, there is no such thing as unprincipled beauty. Beauty, because it is of Principle, is universal and belongs to, and is expressed by each one of God's creation. Sometimes people believe that beauty is not a necessity, and that it can be dispensed with when times of depression, limitation, or lack appear, whereas beauty is as necessary a part of man's being as is honesty or purity or intelligence. Mrs. Eddy states that the "divine Principle of all expresses Science and art throughout His creation" (Science and Health, p. 507). A work of art is beautiful; so God's art must express beauty throughout His creation. God never created anything superfluous or useless, for that would not be intelligent; therefore the beauty which God expresses through man is a necessity to him.
Humanly, we must recognize beauty within before we can behold it without. The artist sees beauty where the layman finds none. Why? Because the beauty is in his thinking, and he conveys to others the beauty which is in his own consciousness. If it were in the objects themselves or grouping of the objects, we would all be aware of this beauty. The fact that we recognize and appreciate beauty, joy, intelligence, and purity in others means that that beauty, joy, intelligence, and purity must first be in us. Ugliness of thought cannot see loveliness of character, no more can ignorance or bigotry appreciate intelligence. An astronomer states that "color is in us," not "in the rose." So beauty is in us, not in material things.
If we consider the beauty of a child we must admit that it does not always consist of that which is evident to the senses, but of the innocence, purity, trust, gaiety, and freedom of his thought. Are not these qualities or characteristics beautiful wherever they are found? The beauty of God's man, God's likeness, does not attract to matter or to personality, but to the source of that beauty, namely, to God, good, Love, Soul, Principle.
Because Principle, God, expresses His spiritual art and Science throughout His creation, this demands that we become Christian Scientists and spiritual artists in order to perceive this beauty and to live it. The great artist, Mind, or Love, outlines the beauty of holiness, the symmetry of perfection, the harmony of health, the joy of Life, to man, through man, as man and the universe. Mrs. Eddy states (Rudimental Divine Science, p. 6), "All beauty and goodness are in and of Mind, emanating from God," "Man, governed by immortal Mind, is always beautiful and grand. Each succeeding year unfolds wisdom, beauty, and holiness" (Science and Health, p. 246).
Just as the so-called [principles] of mathematics and music are made known to us through ideas, rules, and laws, [so] the nature of divine Principle is made known to us through its ideas and laws. Even as notes in unison, or numbers in their right relationships, [express what] the rules and laws of mathematics and music present, so man expresses all that the laws, ideas, and Science of being make known of God as divine Principle.
Suppose that personality tells you that you have a temper, a weakness, a sorrow, a deformity, a sickness, or a sin. Ask yourself, Has Principle any of these things? Your answer of course is that they are all unprincipled, therefore self-destroying, not self-perpetuating, as is Principle. Personality is but a personal, corporeal sense of man. Individuality is the true sense of man as God created him.
Suppose that you seem to be suffering from an inferiority complex and that you are constantly being tempted to belittle yourself, to compare yourself unfavorably with others, and to be afraid to think well of yourself. In such a situation turn your thought to the nature of Principle. You know that Principle cannot be tempted, and that it is not subject to comparisons. Mrs. Eddy says of Principle: "God is like Himself and like nothing else. He is universal and primitive. His character admits of no degrees of comparison" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 102).
Jesus when tempted turned to the fact that God cannot be tempted, and he quoted the following Scriptural truth to the carnal mind or tempter, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." Jesus knew that whatever was true of God was true of man, as God's likeness. Christian Science enables us to deduce what we know of man from what we know of God, and gives us a God-like man instead of a man-like God. It is not difficult to understand that God cannot be tempted, and from this fact to deduce that man, His reflection, cannot be tempted. This leaves the tempter or carnal mind listening to its own temptation. Instead of listening to the unprincipled temptations of fear, discouragement, self-pity, self-condemnation, you can silence them with the truth that neither Principle nor its likeness, man, can be tempted by such things.
Jesus said, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me." According to a dictionary definition, a yoke unites, binds, or connects. Jesus refused to be yoked or bound to materialism in any form, for he knew man's oneness or unity with God, good. Let us behold man as one with or like divine Love, for then we shall cease to compare ourselves disparagingly with others, and we shall see our true selfhood as the incomparably perfect, healthy, beautiful, intelligent, and good reflection of our incomparable Father-Mother God, divine Principle. That which is one with God must be beautiful, good, pure, for darkness, fear, mental or physical deformity, cannot be yoked to or one with light, Love, the beauty of holiness. God's self-revealing love will make the burden of selfishness, egotism, inferiority, sickness, and sin, very light, so light that you will not be aware of it; for God's all-embracing love reduces this burden to its original state, namely, to the absence of good, God, and an absence is always a void, a nothingness.
Debt is always a sense of incompleteness. It expresses the belief that at some time or other man has not completely expressed God, that he has lacked one or more of the qualities of justice, intelligence, gratitude, fidelity, honesty, love, harmony, purity, or goodness. Perhaps you are asking, Have you forgotten the lack of money? And the answer is, No, for money has very little to do with the paying of debts, although it is often the outward symbol of these attributes I have just mentioned. When you pay a debt you want to express justice, or gratitude, or love, or appreciation, for a service rendered or for value received; so if you claim and utilize a supply of these qualities as part of your completeness, your perfection, and prove that you have these qualities by expressing them, you will find that they will externalize themselves in a proper medium for paying your debts.
Sometimes the question is asked, How can I make others pay me what they owe me? In Christian Science you cannot make anybody do anything, but you can heal yourself of the false belief that man, God's complete and perfect likeness, lacks anything which belongs to perfection. The first definition of credit given by Webster is, "Reliance on the truth or reality of something; belief, faith; trust;" and the definition of the verb to credit is "To confide in the truth of." To the extent that we rely on Spirit, God, for our support, supply, and our ability to do right, are we able to express the substantial ideas of Spirit. Even as man relies on God for his supply, so God relies on man to express all that Love supplies, therefore man's supply is sure, infinite, tangible and available. We do not rely on or trust God for His future goodness, love and abundance, but we confide in His presence, His Being, in the fact that He is I AM.
John tells us, "We love him [God], because he first loved us." We rely on God because He first expressed reliance on and through us, man. We have confidence in God, Love, because He first and last expresses His confidence through us. Use your reliance on God by realizing your completeness, that you have all by reflection that God has to give you. Your reliance on, and confidence in God and yourself as His complete, perfect likeness must have its reward. Do not let fear, doubt, discouragement, impatience rob you of your true self-reliance by making you believe that you are less than the perfect, complete expression of God. There is no debt, no lack, nothing to discredit in completeness, which is perfection. The Psalmist wrote, "He layeth up the depth in storehouses."
Man has an infinite reserve of riches laid up in God's storehouse, and these riches are substantial, spiritual, ever-present facts or ideas, which are in the storehouse of infinite Mind. Mrs. Eddy tells us that this Mind "is not subject to growth, change, or diminution, but is the divine intelligence, or Principle, of all real being; holding man forever in the rhythmic round of unfolding bliss, as a living witness to and perpetual idea of inexhaustible good" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 82). Give credit where credit is due. Do not credit fear, injustice, lack, debt, with reality or power. Credit your God with the ability to maintain His creation, man, in harmony, and credit yourself, man, with ability to be "a living witness to and perpetual idea of inexhaustible good." As you do this you will find that your reliance on and confidence in God, good, is supporting, providing, and sustaining you in harmony now, enabling you to do what is right, loving, good, honest, and generous. God is Love, so give Him the credit for doing the loving thing to and through you, His beloved creation, man.
Every individual is seeking satisfaction in some form. Some believe that they will be satisfied with wealth, others with health, others with position, and still others with inactivity and ease in matter. The Psalmist said, "I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." Christian Science brings this awakening and shows us that man is conscious of his likeness to God; and this means completeness, for of course God is complete and His likeness is also. If satisfaction is awakeness to, or awareness of, man's true nature, then dissatisfaction must be sleep, or the unconsciousness of reality. If you find yourself dissatisfied with your surroundings, your business, your friends, your supply, your opportunities, your ability, your progress, wake up, for this dissatisfaction is sleep, or the unconsciousness of reality. Although sleep is utterly unconscious of reality, nevertheless it claims consciousness and its claim to consciousness is through dreams. Whatever seems to happen to you and me in this sleep state, which is unconscious of man's true nature as God's likeness, is a dream.
Adam was one of earth's greatest dreamers, and almost the first thing he dreamed was that he was incomplete. Human beings are all Adam-dreamers and Christian Science comes to these dreamers and awakens them to the fact that man is God's complete likeness, reflecting or expressing the fatherhood and the motherhood of God. Thus man can never be dissatisfied with himself, for he is consciously expressing the strength, energy, intelligence, dominion, ability, and activity of his manhood as the likeness of his Father God, and the purity, tenderness, innocence, guidance, intuition, and love of his womanhood as the reflection or expression of his Mother God. In this awakeness, in this consciousness of man as God's likeness, there are no dreams of animality, or domination, to demoralize his manhood, and no subtle, beguiling temptations to weaken his womanhood. This awakening, which Christian Science brings, saves us from the dreams of loneliness, starved affections, sensuality, and sin. Adam's cardinal sin was that he dreamed a material dream instead of being intelligently awake to God's true spiritual creation, man.
We all know that there will always be light where the sun is. Christian Science shows that there will always be perfect, complete man, the expression of God, where God is, and God, Principle, good, is everywhere. The only way for a human being to be unconscious of light in the presence of the sun is to close his eyes or to sleep. The light of Truth through Christian Science is here today revealing the complete nature of man. The sufferings, fears, sins, and limitations of mortals are but the human mind's dreams about God, man, and the universe, and these dreams are unaware of this light, because asleep to it. The remedy for a bad dream is to wake up.
A Christian Scientist, as a human being, may be no better than other human beings; he may even be worse than some, but he has been awakened, to a certain extent by Christian Science, to the fact that man is God's likeness and he is a better human being than he was before this awakening.
A Christian Science practitioner approaches a case of disease or sin from the mental standpoint that it is a dream and that man is no dreamer, for he is awake in God's likeness. To illustrate how this healing work is done, let us suppose that a little boy has gone to bed and is sleeping. His father and mother are standing on either side of the bed watching over him in love and tenderness. Suddenly the little boy begins to dream. He dreams that he is doing something very naughty and that he is having a good time doing it. Then he dreams that his father has caught him doing wrong, and that he, the father, is very angry and about to punish him. In his sleep he cries out. Then he dreams that his mother is grieved and hurt, and he begins to feel very uncomfortable and becomes restless in his sleep. Suddenly in his dreams all of his school friends are gathered around him throwing stones at him and taunting him with his misdeeds. He begins to weep in his sleep. His father and mother, who are watching him in love, speak to him. The father says, "Son, wake up, you are all right, I am here with you." The mother says, "Beloved boy, you are being loved, you are safe, and you know it." The boy then wakes up to the consciousness of his harmony and to the presence of his father and mother.
So it is with us big children. The dreams that tell us that we are sick, sensual, intoxicated, criminal, or sorrowful, that we are being hated by our fellowman, that we are being punished by our Father God, and that we are offending our Mother God — these dreams are all dispelled by the truth revealed by Christian Science and voiced sometimes audibly, other times mentally, which assures us that our Father-Mother God is with us; that we are awake in His likeness, that there is no condemnation, no memory, no knowledge of horrible past dreams; that they have no substance, no reality. Just as the human father and mother knew naught of the dreams, nor of the bad deeds, fears, and condemnation that were being dreamed about by their little boy, and just as they through their love and the knowledge of the reality and safety of the boy's being, roused him from sleep and dreams, so the Christian Science practitioner, through his love for and understanding of God and man in His likeness, beholds man free, safe, and harmonious. This truth, this light of intelligence and Love, wakes up the patient so he, too, beholds the reality about himself and becomes conscious of the presence of his Father-Mother Love, in which he dwells secure, harmonious, innocent, joyous, and free.
You may believe that your dreams are very real, but that belief is a part of the sleepiness which dreams. Awake, and the Christ, Truth, will give you that light which will enable you to see that your perfection and completeness are substance and that your suffering, fears, and sins are dreams. Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 230), "This awakening is the forever coming of Christ, the advanced appearing of Truth, which casts out error and heals the sick."
God, in His great love, in His nature as Principle, is always revealing or manifesting Himself, and this revelation or manifestation is the Christ, and He is always expressing Himself as man. Christian Science shows that the Christ was not a person, but the manifestation of God's nature appearing throughout time, and made manifest to us as ideas, and as deeds. The first chapter of Genesis states the appearing of God's nature as the creator evidenced or expressed by His glorious perfect creation, which was pronounced "very good." This appearing is the Christ.
Every message of good is the Christ making plain to you God's nature, presence, and power. But you may say, I have never been conscious of the Christ. This, however, is a mistake. Perhaps in the face of great difficulty you have become conscious of strength and courage wherewith to carry on. This was the Christ telling you that the strength of good, the presence of Love is with you. Perhaps in the midst of great loss and grief you have felt comforted and reassured with the sense that all is well. This is the Christ manifesting to you the presence of harmonious Life. Mayhap you have been angry or hurt because of the actions and words of a friend or acquaintance and you find the suggestions of revenge and resentment disappearing before a sense of kindliness and love that have entered your consciousness. This is the Christ telling you that you are the loving likeness of divine Love. Perchance you have rejoiced in the innocent gaiety of a little child, in the noble unselfed deed of some man or woman, in the tender, shy beauty of a violet, in the freedom of a bird, in the glory of a sunset. If so, God was revealing His nature to you and you were listening to His messages, the voice of the Christ.
The culminating appearance of God's nature, of the Christ, in human history was manifested in the life of Jesus. In everything that he thought, said, or did he expressed the nature of God, or the Christ; so he deserved as has no other the title of Christ, or the Godlike man.
Repeatedly one hears the question, Do Christian Scientists believe in the divinity of Christ and in the blood of Christ? To answer the first part of that question, let me say that we believe the Christ expresses the very nature of divinity which the human man Jesus understood, loved, and lived so perfectly that his humanhood was permeated with that divinity. But we believe that Christ Jesus was the Way-shower, and that what he proved to be true of himself as the likeness of God we have to prove true of ourselves. As for our belief with regard to the blood of Christ, let me cite to you what Mrs. Eddy has written on this subject in her book "No and Yes" (p. 33): "The spilling of human blood was inadequate to represent the blood of Christ, the outpouring love that sustains man's at-one-ment with God; though shedding human blood brought to light the efficacy of divine Life and Love and its power over death." To the Christian Scientist Jesus' blood was his life, and we partake of his blood when we live or express that divine Life which is Love, just as Jesus lived it.
How often do we hear the remark that a leader is needed to solve business, political, national, and international problems! Humanity is looking for certain qualities of thought which it believes will lead it out of its distressed conditions, and for the most part it believes that these qualities are possessed exclusively by the male. A very wise man and a prophet once said, “A little child shall lead them.” Naturally he did not mean that an inexperienced, ignorant mortal child should be a leader, but that the childlike qualities of love, purity, innocence, joy, freedom, intuition, and trust in good could lead humanity out of its bondage onward to God.
Before Moses could lead the children of Israel out of bondage, it was necessary that he perceive and address these childlike qualities of leadership. You remember that God was first revealed to Moses as I AM; in other words, not as a corporeal or material man or person, but as the one Being, as that consciousness which is Mind, or indestructible self-existent Life. This nature of God was made clear to Moses through the bush which was not consumed by that most consuming of material conditions, namely, fire; through the hand which was not eaten away by the most devastating of diseases, namely, leprosy, but which was restored; and through the powerlessness and harmlessness of the serpent's deadly poison.
The intelligence which made these facts clear to Moses also made plain to him on the mount of revelation God's law as revealed through the commandments, and gave him the strength to stand steadfast, knowing this presence of I AM even when surrounded by the chaos and thundering rage of materialism. But even this intelligence, courage, strength, and law were not sufficient to lead the people. Moses still lacked those essential qualities which would enable him not to be disturbed by nor resentful of the materialism, idolatry, faithlessness, ingratitude, and lovelessness expressed by the people he was to lead. As you know, he had to return a second time to the mount of revelation, to that intelligent concept of God, to the Christ, which reveals God's nature. This time God was revealed to him, according to the statements in Exodus, as "merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression." Was not this the revelation of God as Love — as Mother? With this complete concept of God as Father-Mother, which implies the correlative fact that man, as the male and female, or likeness of the divine Us, possesses by reflection the mercy, graciousness, patience, goodness, and forgiveness of God's motherhood as well as the strength, intelligence, energy, and activity of God's fatherhood, Moses was able to lead his people out of the bondage of fear, tyranny, hatred, idolatry, diseases, and plagues.
That which leads always goes ahead, gives a higher concept of living, loving, working, of government, and of social justice. Love alone can do this. Hatred of evil, fear of it, attempts to fight it, to evade or escape it, are all misleading, for they do not acknowledge God's leading out of temptation into the holiness and allness of Love. Material power or force misleads into the bondage of materiality, whereas Love leads into the understanding that all things are lovely, the creations of God, good, and that there is therefore nothing to fear. The leadings of spirituality, of love, mean freedom, whereas the misleadings of materialism expressed in aggression, repression, personal domination, suppression of individual freedom of thought, speech, or action mean bondage. Even though this bondage may seem a pleasant thralldom for a season, the demands of Principle, the leadings of Love, the natural innate desire in every man for right, continue to rouse and lead us out of materiality into the understanding of God and our true being.
With Moses it was not his personality that led the children of Israel, but the spirituality which enlightened him, and those who followed this leadership beheld it as a pillar of cloud by day and as fire by night. This leadership of spirituality expressed itself formerly in the deeds sometimes called miracles, performed by Abraham, Jacob, Elijah, Moses, Jesus, and others; in other words, through the Christ. Today this same leadership of spirituality is expressed through the knowing of Truth, through the understanding of the nature of God and man, and this knowing is revealed by Science. Today it is the light or enlightenment of this Science that moves before us even as did the pillar of cloud and the fire by night, and the human Leader who discovered this enlightenment, this Science, and pointed it out to us is a woman, Mary Baker Eddy.
That which makes one a leader is the fact that he follows, in advance of others, the leadership of Love, of intelligence, of good, in his own consciousness. He does this by actually taking the footsteps pointed out through this leading; in other words, by doing the works and living Love. We are followers of such a leader to the extent that we discern the vision of Love which has led him, and are obedient to that leading by bringing forth the fruits of good, Spirit, by doing the healing works and by demonstrating brotherly love. There is nothing personal in this leadership, for the light or enlightenment that such a leader is holding aloft in his consciousness, and which is leading him, is also leading us. It is his perception, in advance of others, of this light that makes him a human leader.
Mary Baker Eddy was such a leader. She has showed us the way to go, by making plain the footsteps of Truth, through her discovery of Christian Science, and she has led and is leading us through her statement of this discovery in her written works. Christian Science is the Science Jesus used in doing his great works. Mrs. Eddy says that Jesus needed no discovery of Science, for he was a natural and divine Scientist, but she adds: "To one 'born of the flesh,' however, divine Science must be a discovery. Woman must give it birth. It must be begotten of spirituality, since none but the pure in heart can see God, — the Principle of all things pure; and none but the 'poor in spirit' could first state this Principle, could know yet more of the nothingness of matter and the allness of Spirit, could utilize Truth, and absolutely reduce the demonstration of being, in Science, to the apprehension of the age" (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 26).
Mary Baker Eddy is the Leader of Christian Science, not only because she discovered and knew more about it than anyone else, but because she did, in advance of others, the great works Jesus did, healing the sick, reforming the sinner, and raising the dying to life and usefulness, and these deeds were accomplished in the way that Jesus accomplished them.
It is the spirituality, intuition, purity, innocence, mercifulness, forgiveness, and tenderness, in other words the womanhood, in each one of us that beholds this leadership of divine Love. It is our womanhood that knows and our manhood that does. Some birds in their flight are always led by the female and this leadership is protected, guarded, and defended by the male. So in our individual experience it is our womanhood, our purity, intuition, love, constancy, that, leads us out of materialism, and our manhood, our strength, intelligence, energy, which follows and protects by doing or demonstrating all that our womanhood knows. Demonstration always follows the leadership of revelation. Revelation and demonstration, knowing and doing, Science and art, desire and fulfillment, manhood and womanhood, are one, the complete expression of our complete, perfect, Father-Mother God.
Mrs. Eddy states (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 346), "Science and Health makes it plain to all Christian Scientists that the manhood and womanhood of God have already been revealed in a degree through Christ Jesus and Christian Science, His two witnesses. What remains to lead on the centuries and reveal my successor, is man in the image and likeness of the Father-Mother God, man the generic term for mankind."
[Delivered Feb. 1, 1943, in The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, and published in The Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 2, 1943. In the section "Divine Love Must Be Love," several words were either omitted or incorrectly typed in the penultimate paragraph and were corrected by consulting the Feb. 26, 1938, text in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of Brooklyn, New York. The corrections were placed in brackets. Several paragraph breaks have been added to make the lecture more accessible to modern readers.]