Albert Clinton Moon, C.S.B.
of Chicago, Illinois
Member
of the Board of Lectureship of The Mother Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
The lecturer spoke substantially as follows:
Christ Jesus, speaking with the authority of the Son of God, declared (John 4:22), "We know what we worship." Today Christian Science has made it possible for everyone prayerfully to base his convictions on a demonstrable knowledge of God.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, has defined God in a way that all may know what they worship. In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," of which she is the author, we read (p. 587), "god. The great I am; the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving, and eternal; Principle; Mind; Soul; Spirit; Life; Truth; Love; all substance; intelligence." From this logical definition, which coincides with the teachings of the Bible, we must deduce that everything that really exists is an activity of this all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, and all-loving God. Hence, true creation must be divinely mental, spiritual, continuous, changeless, and perfectly satisfactory. Cause and effect must always be one in quality.
This definition also implies what Christian Scientists are daily proving: that what is unlike God, not being His effect, is but a mistaken view, having no more relation to God than an error in arithmetic has to the science of mathematics. Sin, sickness, and death are obviously unlike God, who is Life, Truth, and Love. Christian Science brings us the good tidings that these falsities are being healed through the spiritual understanding of God.
The Christianly scientific revelation of God's nature and being which Mrs. Eddy has given mankind is the culmination of God's revelation of Himself to humanity down through the ages. The desire to know God, to know what is really good, is inherent in humanity. Perhaps men have seen in some degree that a true knowledge of God as the cause of the universe could give them an understanding of how to be in accord with the effects of this cause, that is, how to become Godlike. The understanding of the true nature of God as Spirit, as the wholly good cause of the universe, when glimpsed in even a slight degree, brings harmony to mankind, blesses and uplifts them.
From the Bible one learns how the understanding of the spiritual idea of God, or the Christ, has been developing and unfolding in human consciousness. The writer of the book of Hebrews tells us that when the great patriarch Abram left Haran (Hebr. 11:10), "he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." Abram was the son of Terah, an idolater; consequently he must have been reared in an atmosphere of idolatry and polytheism (Josh. 24:2). His recognition of the one God as his governor and guide lifted him to a higher concept of life than he had before known. This was demonstrated so clearly that the spiritually minded King Melchizedek of Salem paid homage to Abram's understanding of God and declared (Gen. 14:19), "Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth."
Centuries later the great spiritual leader Moses discerned that God expresses Himself through changeless law. Moses said (Deut. 6:1), "Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it." Moses taught that, as God's law is known and obeyed, God is known and obeyed. The Ten Commandments which Moses recorded are the basis of correct human law.
The First Commandment demands the recognition of the eternal oneness, allness, and omnipotence of God. The nine commandments which follow show how this truth applies to humanity, and how through obedience to these rules or laws one obeys God in his human experience. This is an evidence of divine Truth being reduced to human apprehension. Long after Moses' time Isaiah glimpsed and unfolded to men something of the tenderness or motherhood of God. He wrote (Isa. 66:12,13); "For thus saith the Lord, . . . As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." This ascending and expanding knowledge of the true idea of God flowered into completeness in the teachings and demonstration of Christ Jesus.
Jesus constantly demonstrated God's ideal, the Christ. Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health, p. 332), "Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness." Through his life of wondrous goodness, his healings of the sick, reforming of sinners, and not only overcoming death for others but also conquering it for himself, Jesus has given mankind the perfect example of the healing activity of the true idea of God. However, it was impossible in his time, because of the people's unreadiness, to give them much of the spiritual knowledge of God's saving law which he himself understood and demonstrated. He said (John 16:12), "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." And he promised that the Comforter would come, the comforting knowledge that salvation from all the ills of materiality is always available through Christ, or Truth.
Mrs. Eddy's understanding of God led her to the discovery of the nature and meaning of this Comforter which Jesus promised. She tells us in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 189), "When, as little children, we are receptive, become willing to accept the divine Principle and rule of being, as unfolded in divine Science, the interpretation therein will be found to be the Comforter that leadeth into all truth." What could be more comforting than to have a demonstrable knowledge that salvation is at hand, that man's sonship with God can be demonstrated by humanity here and now through Christian Science in terms of better health and morals and a happy, joyous sense of life!
Mrs. Eddy admonishes (Science and Health, p. 254): "But the human self must be evangelized. This task God demands us to accept lovingly to-day, and to abandon so fast as practical the material, and to work out the spiritual which determines the outward and actual." Since divine Mind is the only consciousness, human consciousness is not another consciousness but is a term used to describe the seeming mixture of good and evil that appears to be consciously present. The evangelization of this human consciousness comes as the result of recognizing the good in consciousness as true and replacing falsities in thought with spiritual ideas. This is the Christly method of salvation which Jesus utilized, for he constantly counseled men to think and do that which was Godlike. He taught them to embrace in thought the spiritual facts of true being, for he knew that this would bring them health and harmony. On many occasions, through uttering spiritual truths to them, he changed their experience immediately. In one case he said to a man who seemed sick of the palsy (Mark 2:5), "Thy sins be forgiven thee." That is, he healed that man of the belief that sin is a cause of either pleasure or pain, and this recognition in some degree of the sinlessness of man in God's image immediately restored the palsied man to normality.
On every side today we see men, women, and children expressing qualities that are so good they could only have their source in God. But also in the same individual one often sees evidence of the false beliefs that he can be ill, that he can be unhappy, that he can lack supply, or occasionally be a sinner. Now Christian Science teaches mankind what to do about this. Humanity must, in the words of Mrs. Eddy (Science and Health, p. 392), "Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously."
Jesus demonstrated, and Christian Science explains, that mortal man is a false, mistaken concept of God's likeness, and that the recognition of our existence here and now as the spiritual children of God begins at once to dispel this illusion, replacing the false sense of sin and sickness with purity and health. Thus we may and should claim our true relationship with God which He decreed in His divine fiat (Isa. 43:21), "This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise."
At one time I was urging an individual who seemed quite ill to claim mentally and audibly that right now he was the perfect, spiritual son of God, healthy, happy, and harmonious. He asked me, "Wouldn't I feel pretty silly declaring that if I didn't get well?" I answered, "If you must feel silly, why not feel silly about claiming to have something your Creator doesn't have, that as a professed Christian you are insisting that you have something totally unlike God and Christ?" He admitted this really was silly, so finally decided to chance it and declare God as His cause and God's effects as the only effects included in him. He was soon again about his business enjoying better health and a better business than he had known in years. In the man who is the spiritual image of God is to be found the real and only individuality of each one of us.
Mrs. Eddy did not ignore the problems of sickness, sin, and lack which face humanity, but through Christian Science has given the rules for demonstrating Christ, Truth, as the healer of these difficulties. Therefore, the divinely appointed name of this religion is Christian Science, the knowledge of the Christ that Jesus so perfectly demonstrated. Today Christian Science is reiterating that salvation from every form of error is right at hand through Christ, God's eternal message of good, and that recognition of this fact brings healing and regeneration to the human consciousness that entertains it.
Mary Baker Eddy, the forever Leader of Christian Science, has not only revealed to mankind the nature of God and of His creation but also the full import of Jesus' demonstration. She has shown that Jesus' works exemplified the ability of all men to demonstrate that each one is wholly spiritual and immortal now, and that all may follow Jesus' example and demonstrate Christ as he did. She has shown that they may demonstrate God's ideal Truth as their own present government and thus bring health and harmony into their daily lives.
In founding the Church of Christ, Scientist, Mrs. Eddy founded and provided for the continuity of the Christian Science Bible Lessons, church membership, Christian Science periodicals, Sunday School, and class instruction in Christian Science. Thus Mrs. Eddy established a complete educational system for the purpose of making men aware of God, and to awaken them to the means through which God's truth can be demonstrated in human affairs with healing and saving power. Before the revelation of Christian Science came to her Mrs. Eddy had demonstrated a very high degree of goodness, purity, and an unselfed desire for true spirituality. God always uses the thought that is good, for good is one with God and cannot help being used by Deity. The first step toward being used by God is the willingness to be good, to be Godlike. This obviously involves a refusal to be used by sin or by ungodly thinking or acting.
Mrs. Eddy proved, through a life devoted to goodness, that she was willing to be the messenger of good. She was willing to be God's messenger. Mrs. Eddy was faced with the necessity of expressing spiritual truths in words that were basically material in meaning, yet even with these crude tools, she has been able to convey spiritual ideas to humanity in a way that countless thousands of every age and at every stage of growth can comprehend and utilize. Physical healings, regeneration from sinful and enslaving beliefs, and the overcoming of lack and limitation have resulted from her discovery. Little wonder that multitudes today rise up to call her blessed.
From childhood Mrs. Eddy's life was marked with a great awareness of the reality of Spirit and spiritual being. Even at a very early age some of her writings showed that she pondered the great truths of God and His relationship to man. In her mature years she was faced with grave physical problems that seemed to defy correction. A fall on the ice seemed to bring about a condition which her physician feared would be fatal. At this point she turned unreservedly to God and discerned in some measure the perfect spiritual nature of herself as God's creation. This glimpse of Christ, Truth, proved to her that Jesus' teachings are practical and available now to mankind. She writes of this in her book, "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 24), "My immediate recovery from the effects of an injury caused by an accident, an injury that neither medicine nor surgery could reach, was the falling apple that led me to the discovery how to be well myself, and how to make others so." She proved conclusively that in the understanding of the true nature of God and His loving relationship to man may be found the answer to every problem which confronts mankind.
Mrs. Eddy reasoned correctly from
cause to effect. Like all Christians she recognized that God is Spirit, but she
did not stop there. She discovered that God's effect or creation must be
spiritual, and that man, the image of God, is spiritual and good; hence, he is
not composed of matter or evil. Her spiritual discernment led her to the
correct conclusion that sin, disease, and death are no part of God's creation.
She glimpsed the fact that these errors have no more reality than did the god
Thor, or the hosts of Olympus. Through her healing works, through teaching, and
through her published writings, she has shared this spiritual understanding
with the world. Through her work the sick are being healed, the sinful
reformed, and lack is giving way to abundance. Mrs. Eddy never departed from
her basic premises that effect has to be like cause, and that cause is God,
Spirit, without a second or equal.
Inductive human reasoning assumes a material cause for what appears to the material sense to be a material universe, but intelligent thought is recognizing more and more that what is called matter is merely a humanly mental concept governed by human thinking and not the solid substance it would seem. The Encyclopedia Americana (Vol. 18, p. 440) says of matter, "Since we can know it only through the mediation of our senses, its actual objective reality has often been questioned by philosophers and metaphysicians; and in order to avoid doubtful points of this sort it is frequently defined merely as a 'physical concept,' without making any hypothesis as to its objective existence." Hence the thought of matter as the cause of the universe must be dismissed by intelligence which finds itself God-driven to accept the opening statement of the Bible (Gen. 1:1), "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
St. John tells us (John 1:3), "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." Then truly cause and effect must mean God and His creation.
In Science and Health (p. 262) Mrs. Eddy writes: "Divine Mind is the only cause or Principle of existence. Cause does not exist in matter, in mortal mind, or in physical forms." How exactly opposite is this statement to the general belief of mankind. Almost everything except God seems to be cause. It is believed by many that weather causes them to be ill or well, to be happy or unhappy. Economic conditions seem to cause one to have supply or not to have supply. Innumerable circumstances, and such minute germs that they have never been seen by humanity's unaided eye, seem to cause men to be sick, or cause them to do evil. If a cause is small enough we attribute fearful effects to it.
A priori reasoning must in reality be reasoning from true cause to true effect. We can depend on Mrs. Eddy's correct deductions from God as cause, because her works have proved that she understood God. She revealed that the creator cannot be a creation. Primal cause cannot be an effect of something else. Creator is always creator, and creation is always creation, but they are inseparable and eternal. One never takes the place of the other. They never get mixed up. Only mankind does this, and mankind's mixed-up belief has grown to such proportions that it has become a Goliath that requires a spiritually minded David to lay it low. Christian Science as revealed by Mrs. Eddy is this spiritual liberator that gives freedom to mankind from this chimerical giant, materiality.
Most Christians would agree that God is good, that He is Spirit, that He is pure, that He is illimitable Love, that He is intelligence, that He is source, that He is the only power and presence. Yet to this wholly good, infinite Being, mankind attribute a creation that has little goodness in it, in which evil seems the rule and joy the exception. Mankind has learned to reason quite logically when they approach a problem in mathematics. They reason intelligently in solving a problem in chemical engineering or civil engineering. Why, then, cannot mankind learn to reason as intelligently concerning the most vital thing in the universe, God and His relation to man? God could not be matter or material, because the creator must be infinite, unbounded by aught else. Spirit alone fills this requirement; hence God's effect. His image and likeness, man, must indeed be spiritual.
The Biblical writers who recorded the statement that God made man in His image and likeness were not recorders of old wives' tales, but they were those who discerned spiritual scientific truths of cause and effect. They saw that man is Godlike, just as effect is like cause.
Throughout most known history mankind have believed in the existence of many things which, a short time later or a long time later, have been proven nonexistent. Men have devoted themselves assiduously to serving gods who have had no entity. These false gods of mythology bothered people no end. Where did these gods get their power, and where did they operate? Wholly from the thought of the people and in the seeming experiences of those who believed in their existence. Today enlightenment says, "But there were no such gods." May not the enlightenment of the future say of so many things from which people today flee, such as germs, contagion, virus, and so on, "But they never really existed"?
A student of Christian Science had a business associate who caused him much trouble through indulgence in alcoholism. While this Christian Scientist did not use alcohol as a beverage, he realized one day that he was admitting this noxious habit as a cause of his difficulties. He did not scientifically treat the individual because he had not been asked to do so, but he did lay down the law to himself that drunkenness was not cause and could produce no effect in his business. In a few days the Christian Scientist was told by his business associate that he would never become intoxicated again, and this proved true over all the years of their association that followed.
Most human progress has come through the admission mentally of an intelligent fact, of which at the time there was no human evidence. The automobile, the airplane, and most inventions illustrate this. They were brought to human view by those who mentally admitted them as practicable facts. Who will admit the practicable divine idea that he is now a spiritual being, subject to God alone, and that God ceaselessly causes him to have health, happiness, harmony, and dominion over all the earth? The one who is willing to admit this truth is one who today is bringing into view a higher sense of man, endowed with spiritual freedom and changeless health.
The spiritual understanding of true cause and true effect does not permit any perversion of this truth in human experience. The question might be asked, "Since God is the only cause and His effects are the only effects, why not indulge in lust, envy, revenge, malice, or hate? Since these are not true cause, they can produce no bad effects for me." Well, this is fallacious reasoning. Do not ever try to do it, because you cannot get away with it. When one indulges in lust, envy, revenge, and so on, regardless of what he says about it, he is claiming them as a cause. He claims that they cause satisfaction and pleasure. What one does outweighs what he says, for what he does is his absolute conviction. Hence, to demonstrate Truth, our acts and our thoughts must be in accord, and they must be spiritual. The belief that evil causes both pleasure and pain is one. The only way one can be free from evil's pains is to refuse to accept evil's so-called pleasures. One's human experience is governed by what he mentally accepts as true, not always what he says he accepts as true. Sometimes there is a great difference between these two. If one accepts the belief that a quality of thought which is unlike God can give him even momentary satisfaction, he accepts its twin which says it can give him pain. The absolute truth concerning true cause and effect nullifies these perversions and brings healing to mankind.
Mrs. Eddy warns in Science and Health (p. 419), "Lurking error, lust, envy, revenge, malice, or hate will perpetuate or even create the belief in disease." This awakens us to the fact that it is not a cursory knowledge of cause and effect that brings us healing, but it is a deep-seated conviction of God as the only cause that wipes out of our consciousness any belief that what is unlike God has an excuse for being entertained for one moment. The purification of the human consciousness is quite a task, but it is a task that is possible through the application of Christian Science.
Sometimes people believe that because they seem to have contact at work or at home with thinking that is contrary to what they know is constructive and right, they must suffer, as these thoughts seem to be transferred to their mentality and thereby produce in their experience something unlike God. The understanding of God as the only cause, the only Mind, dissipates such erroneous belief and its seeming effects. Each of us is endowed by God with the ability and power to think divine thought and to reject everything unlike it. In the proportion that one does claim his divine right to think correctly and to reject what is untrue, he will find that he can be at peace and demonstrate his individual freedom. The Bible tells us (Isa. 26:3), "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee." So let us trust in the fact that God is the only cause and the only Mind, and that erroneous thought belongs to no one; hence, it cannot be transferred from one to another and thus produce evil effects. The good effects of the one cause are omnipresent.
Christian Science healing is accomplished through prayer alone. To be conscious of the spiritual facts of being is to pray. To recognize God as Spirit and man as spiritual is to pray. Such prayer rebukes the false belief that man is material, subject to sin, disease, and lack. Such prayer heals sickness and sin and elevates mankind.
One may read verified accounts of healings accomplished through scientific prayer in the Christian Science Sentinel, Journal, and the foreign language Heralds. At the Wednesday testimony meetings one often hears of hopeless invalids being restored to health, of dishonest individuals being made honest, and the sinful made pure. This is done through prayerful admission that God's creation is like Himself, wholly good. To be benefited by prayer one must utilize this righteous knowing. All the arithmetic in the world can do nothing for one who does not admit basic mathematical facts and draw correct mathematical conclusions from them. In the same way God's goodness can do all things good for the individual who prayerfully accepts spiritual good as the reality. Jesus promised (Mark 9:23), "All things are possible to him that believeth."
Human experience is the outward manifestation of human thought. When one prayerfully accepts what is spiritually true, then the Christ, God's anointed, becomes the thought of the individual who accepts it, and this anointed idea of God brings healing, happiness, joy, and harmony into his human experience. For this reason Christian Scientists concern themselves with Christly thinking as their means of healing and do not look to matter as a savior from the bad effects of the belief that matter is real.
A student of Christian Science seemed troubled for quite a long while with a distressing throat condition. He had recognized and proved in his experience at other times that disease is a mental experience rather than a physical one. He kept looking into his own thought to see what was causing this inharmony. One day he would see one thing he thought must be the cause, and another day he would find another, but the condition persisted. One morning he found himself much discouraged and asking, "What is causing this?" Then suddenly he saw his error and reversed his method, declaring, "This sickness has no cause, it comes from no place, it has no law to support it, no substance, no intelligence, for all of these are truly attributes of God, good." Then he declared that health is the effect of God, his perfect cause. He saw that harmony had perfect causation and was enforced in his behalf. Instantly he was freed from the problem, and it troubled him no more.
Health is a quality of God, not of matter. Drugs, manipulation, and so on cannot produce permanent health where it has seemed to be lacking, any more than they could be relied upon to cause permanent integrity to be present in a mortal who seemed to lack it. Therefore, Christian Scientists do not use or prescribe drugs or material methods for healing.
A young woman appeared to be very ill with what seemed to be a contagious disease. Since Christian Scientists always obey the law of the land, this matter was reported to the Health Department. The representative of the Health Department who called at the home stated that the disease was erysipelas. Upon learning that a Christian Science practitioner had been called, and that Christian Science treatment was being given for the situation, the Health Department representative was most co-operative and kind and told them that when they felt this disease had been healed they should inform her, and she would take the necessary legal steps to remove the restrictions of quarantine. In a very few days she was notified that all traces of the disease had disappeared. She was quite surprised but came to the home and confirmed the findings of the Christian Scientist that there was no further trace of the malady. Accordingly she released them from quarantine.
Now, what constituted the Christian Science treatment that had effected the healing of this disease? The practitioner prayed the prayer of spiritual understanding. He dwelt on the spiritual fact that here in reality was an individual child of God, that she was not material and not subject to laws of materiality, such as disease and sin. As it became clear to the young woman's consciousness that she was the perfect, loving child of God, and that she was not subject to disease, this truth was manifested in her experience as a correction of the false evidence that she was a victim of disease, and she found herself well.
Christian Science treatment establishes in thought the spiritual fact of man's oneness with God as His expression, and this divine message or Christ is literally mankind's true Saviour and healer. Christ, Truth, is available to everyone at all times and in every condition. We have all proved that we can awaken from illusions. One sees the sea and sky apparently come together at a distant horizon, and one might ask, if not instructed in this matter, "What causes them to come together?" One who knew the facts would explain that it is just an illusion, that they do not come together, that if one were to sail out to what appears to be the horizon, he would find the horizon equally distant from that point, and he would never find a joining of sea and sky for this apparent juncture never existed. It was never caused. It is not the effect of anything. It is merely an illusion of material sense and no longer befools or enters into the calculations of one who is instructed by truth.
Let us no longer allow the illusion of sickness or sin to befool us into believing that we live in matter instead of God, but rather let us keep awake to the reality of our spiritual and real being by recognizing the sacred import of St. John's joyous assertion, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God" (I John 3:2).
How often mankind seem to have been made miserable by a lack of the things that are necessary for well-being and a happy life! Now, what causes this lack? What causes insecurity? What causes men to have no positions? Is it God? No! Jesus, the greatest demonstrator of God's power and presence the world has ever known, said (John 10:10), "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." Abundance and Life, the true Life which is God, are inseparable. The more one knows of God as cause, the less he will know of limitation and lack.
Poverty and lack are not good, although in human thought they seem at times associated with piety. It is sometimes believed that people who are very good have little of this world's goods, and often those who are not so good may have abundance. Jesus demonstrated that abundance is a spiritual reality and is natural to man in God's image. Who today is rich enough to feed thousands on a moment's notice without previous preparation? Jesus did this. Jesus was dressed in a fine robe of his time, a seamless robe "woven from the top throughout" (John 19:23). He knew that abundance is natural to man, for abundance is the effect of our abundant Father-Mother God. So poverty is not synonymous with piety. Throughout the Bible one finds that those who have demonstrated the laws of God and have become Godlike have also manifested what is humanly called abundance. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph present a few instances of this fact. A lack of abundance is healed through the understanding of God as the universal and only cause or source. Since God is cause, His effect is just as big as God, for God's ideas are everywhere that God is. Too often we limit our activities by thinking of our incomes as small and inadequate. The income God gives each one of us is Godlike, and we must admit this.
A student of Christian Science at one time found himself in great need. He had no money with which to buy food. As he went upstairs in his home, he found a penny on the stairstep. His first thought was one of resentment. "What good is a penny? I need food, and I find a penny!" Then the angel of Truth came to his thought with this understanding: God's effect, true supply, is infinite. It is not small. It has the same stature as reflection as God has as cause. Hence even though my material senses tell me that this is only a penny, here is actually infinite supply. It is false belief that is telling me that the supply at hand is small and inadequate. He mentally rejected this false sense concerning supply and audibly declared: "Father, I thank Thee for this limitless supply. I know that no matter what material sense tells me, right here is limitless abundance that meets all my needs."
The next morning he received a letter in the mail for a service that he had performed many months before and completely forgotten. It included a check for $1.53. To one who had nothing, this seemed a most welcome sum. The next day he received a larger amount from a most unexpected source. On the third day a sum appeared that had been put in trust by a relative years before, of which he had known nothing. Although this was also a small amount, it was adequate to meet his needs for that time. Then a position appeared accompanied by an income which enabled him to live in a normal way. His recognition that God is cause, and His effects Godlike, not small and meager, brought a change in his human thought which was manifested in a way that brought the necessary correction to the human situation.
The only activity in the universe is that which is caused by God. Since man is His image and likeness, man must reflect in his perfect being this perfect activity. Good business is natural to man. The recognition of this will bring perfect activity into one's human experience. No one has to have poor business activity. If this seems the case, it is because one is accepting the false belief that business, which in reality is the activity of God, is poor, and that something can take the place of God as cause and so interfere with God's effect, the only business there is. Dwell on the fact each day that God as cause is enforcing His perfect health, His perfect business, His perfect supply in you, and this Christly truth will give you in every direction that life abundant which Jesus promised.
Salvation results from the replacement of false beliefs in human consciousness with spiritual truths. The only difference between the so-called greatest sinner and the best man on earth is the kind of thinking each one does, for all action is the result of thought. In the proportion that one thinks spiritual truths, he recognizes his unity with God and has the very government of God, of good, operating in his experience. Salvation's one requirement is that we accept it in terms of thinking and acting in a way that is spiritually true, correct, and Godlike. If one seems impelled to do something wrong, and he recognizes immediately that God is the only cause, and that this impulse from error is not Godlike or God's effect, hence does not really exist, he will find himself free from this temptation. If one believes that he is subject to illness and is experiencing illness, he can recognize that this sickness has no cause, for God is the only cause. It comes from no place and is not an effect. Proportionately as he realizes this, he will find disease disappearing into its native nothingness.
If one seems to be faced with lack, let him ask himself, "Does this lack come from God? No, it does not come from Him, or anyone, anything, or any circumstance. Abundance does come from God, and I accept abundance as the reality. I have abundance of health, happiness, and supply here and now, and nothing can mesmerize me into believing the opposite." As a result of this awareness of true cause and true effect established in his thought, he will see God's abundant effects, health, harmony, and goodness, manifested in his human experience in a way that blesses all and injures none. Truth is God, and Truth has the ability and power to correct every form of error. God, Truth, communicates Himself to mankind. This communication evidences the ever-present Christ telling you and me of our eternal oneness with God, that we are His creation, His effect, including all that is Godlike and excluding everything unlike His goodness and grace.
[Date of delivery unknown, probably circa 1960.]