John D. Pickett, C.S., of Chicago, Illinois
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The Mother
Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
The subject of this lecture "Christian Science: The Revelation of Man's Unity with God," came to me as I recalled a scene that took place a few years ago. Two men were discussing a new material discovery of momentous import. One speaker was a physical scientist, a chemist, a lecturer on atomic energy, who had been suffering for some time with a persistent physical difficulty abruptly interrupted the conversation and cried, "Why does this have to happen to me?" The words were not uttered in despair, but in bewilderment and perplexity that a man of his educational background and training should be apparently blocked in his progress by a physical ailment. His words were addressed to a Christian Science practitioner who was grateful for the opportunity to tell him something of the nature of God, as revealed in Christian Science, and of man's unity with his creator. This conversation opened up a new vista for the chemist and led to his subsequent healing.
The cry seemed to the Christian Scientist to be a bridge spanning the ages, and he recalled the words of Job written centuries before, "I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me" (Job 30:20), and the voice of Jeremiah saying, "Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?" (Jer. 8:22) His friend was but echoing the cry of humanity itself, that deep seeking and searching for a release from the false beliefs which have held mankind in bondage and continue to enslave it. James wrote, "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss" (James 4:3). Almost certainly there are those in this audience who find themselves at one with the multitudes uttering this searching cry. If there should be, will you join me in seeing how the spiritually-minded have availed themselves of God's healing presence. Let us take a short walk into Bible history in the light Christian Science throws upon it. It will be revealed to us how God's law of spiritual harmony can be of help to all here and now.
What is the first thing we notice as we cross the bridge of time and examine the pages of Bible history? Is it not the power and protection that came to the patriarchs and other devout worshipers of God through their dawning recognition of man's unity with God? We may see Moses as he leads the children of Israel out of the slavery of Egypt. He has guided them through the wilderness. He has directed them to the promised land. In these pages we see Elijah. He has restored life to the widow's son. We see Daniel, who has lived through that unforgettable night in the den of lions. Here also are the three Hebrew men, untouched by the consuming flames of the fiery furnace.
To Moses, who, under divine authority, led the children of Israel to the promised land, God said, "My presence shall go with thee" (Ex. 33:14). The widow, holding her restored child to her bosom said to Elijah, "Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth" (I Kings 17:24). Daniel said, "My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, that they have not hurt me" (Dan 6:22). King Nebuchadbezzar, looking into the fiery furnace to determine the fate of the three Hebrew men, said, "I see four men loose. walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God" (Dan 3:25). Perhaps this fourth man symbolized the spiritual Presence which is always active in the protection of its idea.
What is the outstanding feature of these great Bible incidents? Is it not God, and man's conscious oneness with Him, the spiritual unity already referred to this evening? Do not these historic figures exemplify humanity's persevering faith that God can and does protect and heal? Here is faith that tirelessly strives to break the fetters of mortality, an active faith based upon a spiritual understanding that reflects deific power and frees from sin, sickness, and death. These examples are beacon lights, shining upon mortals with renewed assurance that divine help is always at hand. The light of the Christ appearing in human consciousness brings God's healing power to mortals. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, in the textbook of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," says of this appearing (p. 271), "Christ's Christianity is the chain of scientific being reappearing in all ages, maintaining its obvious correspondence with the Scriptures and uniting all periods in the design of God."
In later centuries the chain of Christ's Christianity grows stronger as the spiritually enlightened thought turns away from material ways and means to a more spiritual order under God.
Our Master, Christ Jesus, healed and brought the comfort of God to the lives of unnumbered multitudes through his spiritual awareness of man's eternal unity with God, his Father. He raised Lazarus and others from the dead, and likewise freed himself from the claims of this "last enemy" (I Cor. 15:26). For three hundred years following the advent of the Master, the primitive Christianity of his teaching and practice — unadorned and unencumbered by dogma and ritual — was active in the lives of his followers. Then began a long night of obscuration, known as the Dark Ages, persisting until the great awakening of the period of the Reformation, beginning in the Middle Ages, which culminated in the final revelation of divine Science in the year 1866 which Mrs. Eddy, the revelator, denominated Christian Science. She has given the final statement of this Science in her textbook, a book that is now available in several languages and which is bringing healing to the receptive thought throughout the world. Through the study of the Bible in the light of Christian Science, man's oneness with God becomes the grand reality.
Now let us return to the chemist and his companion of the moment, the Christian Science practitioner. The cry "Why does this have to happen to me?" was answered as the practitioner said to his friend, "It cannot happen to you when you replace your false concepts with the consciousness of the Christ, Truth, that consciousness which God, the divine Mind, bestows." The practitioner pointed out to him Mrs. Eddy's statement that "the erring human mind is inharmonious in itself," and then added her next statement, "From it," the erring human mind, "arises the inharmonious body" (Science and Health, p. 166).
The specific problem confronting the chemist had been a chest condition. The press of his material activities had dimmed the sense of his unity with God. Although he had had some previous acquaintance with Christian Science, he had apparently overlooked the Christian and scientific teachings of Christ Jesus that man is at one with his Maker. His ability to utilize spiritual power had been severely affected by this oversight. With the help of his friend, the practitioner, his sense of man's oneness with God was restored and the healing naturally followed.
Mary Baker Eddy defines, in part, the perfect spiritual man in the following words (Science and Health pp. 475, 476): "Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas; the generic term for all that reflects God's image and likeness; the conscious identity of being as found in Science, in which man is the reflection of God, or Mind, and therefore is eternal; that which has no separate mind from God; that which has not a single quality underived from Deity; that which possesses no life, intelligence, nor creative power of his own, but reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker." Then later she adds, "Learn this, O mortal, and earnestly seek the spiritual status of man, which is outside of all material selfhood."
Christian Scientists avoid formulas, knowing that God is infinite and cannot be reduced to a series of events or a sequence of words. However, the specific idea applicable to a particular situation may be realized as our textbook is thoughtfully studied. One citation from this textbook which may be helpful in any situation is as follows: "Divine Science, rising above physical theories, excludes matter, resolves things into thoughts, and replaces the objects of material sense with spiritual ideas" (ibid., p. 123) This statement enabled the chemist to deny the material misconceptions of mortal mind manifesting itself to him as matter and to establish in consciousness the spiritual fact that man's true understanding expresses the divine Mind and its ever-harmonious and complete ideas. These ideas are manifest as God's qualities or attributes such as beauty, calmness, dominion, gentleness, goodness, grace, inspiration, joy, peace, freedom, freshness, mercy, love. In the light of spiritual sense the false testimony of corporeal sense was replaced by an understanding of his true spiritual identity, as the man God made ever at one with his Father. Then the discordant material picture vanished from consciousness, and he was healed.
Let us consider further the divine fact of man's unity with God, as brought out in the experience of the chemist, which resulted in his healing. Christian Science teaches that God is Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love. God being the Life of man, He is the source of man's real selfhood. In this complete selfhood man embodies all the spiritual ideas of God. Man's conscious expression of all right ideas constitutes his true being. In this holy, perfect, indivisible, spiritual being there can be no discordant matter, no inharmonious functions. There can be no pain, no incurable disease, no inactive members, no impaired faculties. Such false physical conditions are dream shadows, which disappear with the realization within individual consciousness of man's eternal incorporeal existence.
I hope there are those here who are listening to a Christian Science lecture for the first time. Glorious unfolding days of joy and progress are ahead for you as you persist in your efforts to know God better. An important step for the beginning student of Christian Science is to learn to plan his study. One way to begin to study Christian Science effectively is to go to the local Christian Science Reading Room and there counsel with the attendants as to the material available and how best to use it. A Christian Science Reading Room is open to the public, and all are welcome.
One of the joyous experiences in the lives of Christian Scientists are those first months when the student begins to discover for himself the proof of God's healing power. New proofs of God's love seem to burst forth each day with a spring-time glory and overflowing fullness that make life fresh and new. It may seem difficult for the beginner to replace the illusory concept of sickness or discord with the spiritual counterfact necessary to heal it. It is not a difficult task for those whose love for God has revealed to them His infinite perfection.
To illustrate, suppose yourself to be on a boat approaching New York Harbor. A colossal statue of a woman with a torch in her hand comes into view. What does the statue signify to you? Stone and metal, or liberty and freedom? Liberty and freedom, of course. Its true value is in what it symbolizes. Paul makes our choice an easy one. He writes, "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" (II Cor. 4:18). Mrs. Eddy writes, "As the physical and material, the transient sense of beauty fades, the radiance of Spirit should dawn upon the enraptured sense with bright and imperishable glories" (Science and Health, p. 246).
Mary Baker Eddy was a true scientist. From early childhood she fearlessly sought the underlying reality of things. She held firmly to those facts she believed true and fearlessly rejected what she considered false. At twelve years of age, when preparing for membership with a church of a Protestant denomination, she was greatly troubled over the question of "predestination," a religious belief more prevalent in those days than now. Because of the child's complete acceptance of God as Love, she rejected the belief that the God she knew could create a man predestined to doom. It was a conflict in her thought between being declared a heretic by the church or forsaking her complete trust in God's love. So troubled became the child's thoughts that a doctor was called and pronounced her stricken with fever. Her mother, a spiritually-minded woman, encouraged her to lean on God's love. As she prayed, a soft glow of ineffable joy came over her. She had made her decision. The fever was gone. When the church examination took place with the clergyman and members present, the child stoutly maintained that she was willing to trust God even if her creedal doubts left her outside the church doors. The oldest church members wept, and in her words, "To the astonishment of many, the good clergyman's heart also melted, and he received me into their communion, and my protest along with me" (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 15). Is not this a beautiful example of God's law of harmony at work — the child wrestling with the problem next establishing her unity with God, then the physical healing and finally the blessing for all, the clergyman included? Truly an example of Christian healing.
Many years later she had an experience which, to use her own words, was as follows: "... in the latter part of 1866 I gained the scientific certainty that all causation was Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon" (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 24). Mrs. Eddy does not tell us the thoughts that came to her as she lay in a serious condition, her life despaired of by the attending physician. But her faith in God's love so firmly established in her childhood served her in this hour of great need. She turned to the Bible and was reading the account of Jesus' healing of the palsied man in the Gospel of Matthew (9:2-8) when her recognition of the scientific fact of man's unity with God underlying this healing illumined her consciousness. This spiritual illumination brought her healing, and she was thus enabled to instantly rise, dress, and join her waiting friends.
For three years she sought the Science of Mind-healing, that she might give the message to suffering humanity and teach mortals to utilize its underlying Principle, God — the approach of a true scientist. The Bible was her textbook and God revealed to her the spiritual laws that governed her healing. These laws she tested in various ways and found them to be equally effective in healing others as they were in her own experience. She then restated and amplified these laws in what is known as the textbook of Christian Science. Because this book is the revelation of divine law, thousands have been healed solely through the reading of the book.
With the writing of the Christian Science textbook, there came also the charge to establish the Christian Science movement. This Mrs. Eddy did under divine direction and The Mother Church, with its world-wide healing activities, including the great Publishing House, forever proclaim her to be the Founder of Christian Science, as well as its Discoverer.
Reviewing our lecture to this point, we have looked into Bible history and have witnessed the power of God that has come to those who discern and understand His presence. We have seen the light this understanding has brought to suffering humanity. Next we have seen that Jesus declared man's nature to be at one with God — his Father. We have noted that those striving to prove their oneness with God have brought the light of spiritual harmony into the lives of many persons. We have seen that mortals who believe themselves to be separated from God, the divine Mind, are enslaved by the ills that derive from this sense of separation.
From this point on, we shall consider a path that may be called "the Way," to use a Bible term. It is the path of spiritual understanding. Referring to man's experience as he journeys along this path, Mrs. Eddy writes, "The encumbering mortal molecules, called man, vanish as a dream; but man born of the great Forever, lives on, God-crowned and blest" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 205).
The trials encountered in our path Spiritward cannot be borne by others. It is a path each must take individually. Let not this trouble you, for the Christ and Christian Science will accompany you. This path lies within the sanctuary of every human consciousness and leads to man's true dwelling place, the divine Mind. This is the way of Christ and Christian Science. It is the way Jesus trod. It leads to the kingdom of spiritual harmony, the kingdom of heaven within us.
"The Way," or the spiritual understanding within the consciousness of each individual, helps us to choose the real and to dismiss the false, helps us to dismiss and destroy the inharmonies of mortal existence and awaken to spiritual reality. Here man's eternal oneness with God is recognized as perfected and established. It is spiritual understanding that reveals man's unity with God. In this divine unity of perfect Father and perfect Son, man knows himself to be the expression of God, the conscious reflection of divine Love. Is it not a great need for all of us to accept this true concept of ourselves and to utilize it in harmonizing our daily experience? As the spiritual expression of Mind, do we not reflect and express those ideas which constitute the nature of Mind, such as poise, freshness, freedom, foresight, resourcefulness, intelligence? As the spiritual expression of Life, do we not express those ideas which constitute the nature of Life such as buoyancy, health, activity, joy, abundance? As the spiritual expression of Love, do we not express those ideas which constitute the nature of divine Love, such as purity, beauty, grace, and tenderness? Mrs. Eddy writes, "God, the divine Principle of man, and man in God's likeness are inseparable, harmonious, and eternal," and "God and man are not the same, but in the order of divine Science, God and man coexist and are eternal. God is the parent Mind, and man is God's spiritual offspring" (Science and Health, p. 336).
Jesus, through his teachings and deeds, proved this path of spiritual understanding to be the only way to man's unity with God. He termed any evil force attempting to obstruct man's journey along this spiritual path "a thief and a robber" (John 10:1) and warned that "the thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy" (John 10:10). Did not Jesus mean that evil, if accepted as real, would try to steal one's health, freshness, joy? Would attempt to destroy his poise, resourcefulness, beauty, and grace? Christian Science teaches, as Jesus taught, that one should protect himself from the supposititious forces of the carnal mind and should fill his days with goodness, abundance, and progress.
Salvation is a daily experience. It is not something that happens at a fixed point of time. It is the spiritual understanding of God as Life, Truth, and Love and man as God's expression. It is the redeeming power of the Christ ever at work within individual consciousness. Salvation through Christian Science enables you to know yourself as the expression of Life, the exemplification of Truth, and the idea of Love. Dwelling in such thoughts as these gives us freshness of purpose, the joy of expectant fulfillment. Salvation enables us to glorify our Father by expressing His love, His life, His truth, at all times, in our homes, in our business, and elsewhere, and in helping those of our brothers in need. Salvation is a step-by-step coming out of the dream of mortal experience through spiritual understanding.
This is the full salvation as revealed by Christian Science and as demonstrated by Jesus. Could God's salvation be less than full, healing the sinner, but neglecting the invalid? God's power is unbounded. It heals both the invalid and the sinner. Jesus taught a complete salvation. To the scribes, whose impotent faith could not measure up to the healing Christ-power did he not say: "Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk?" (Matt. 9:4, 5)? He then proceeded to heal the palsied man. It was these very words of Jesus that Mrs. Eddy was reading when she discovered the power of Christian healing. Could it not have been that the Christ dawning in her consciousness spoke to her substantially as follows: "The God you have loved and obeyed since childhood brings a complete salvation. He that heals the sinner heals the invalid as well. Arise in the consciousness of His full salvation"? What spiritual thoughts came to Mrs. Eddy at this time we can only surmise. But we do know that after this experience she wrote these challenging words: "Body and mind are correlated in man's salvation; for man will no more enter heaven sick than as a sinner, and Christ's Christianity casts out sickness as well as sin of every sort" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 241).
My friends, God created neither a sinner nor an invalid. Infinite divine Love knows neither sin nor sickness. Therefore, you do not have to fear either. Rise in the light of this truth and walk fearlessly in the glorious liberty of the child of God.
The Christ, Truth, within your consciousness is your guide along the path that leads to man's realization of his perfect selfhood. What is this Christ? One very illuminating and revealing definition of the Christ is given in the Bible by Jeremiah, the prophet, who calls it, "THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS" (Jer. 23:6). Other definitions of the Christ that Christian Scientists find helpful are given in the Christian Science textbook, as follows: "Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness" (Science and Health, p. 332); "the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error" (ibid., p. 583). It may be clear, from the foregoing, the distinction that Christian Science makes between Christ — the divine idea — and its highest earthly representative, Christ Jesus.
Your guide to the realization of your true being in "the Way" of spiritual understanding is the Holy Comforter, Christian Science. It will help you to know the Christ within your consciousness. It guards and guides you in your journey Spiritward. It brings to you the fruitful blessings of health, peace, and joyous activity.
Do you know what a human being is? Mrs. Eddy gives this definition, "Human beings are physically mortal, but spiritually immortal" (Unity of Good, p. 37). Some human beings are so engrossed with their physicality that they lose sight of their higher nature. Men of wisdom sometimes are victims of this error, as the following story well illustrates. An astronomer talking with a friend said, "We astronomers, as we go out into the infinitude of space and see the magnitude of the stars, realize what a pigmy man is." His friend smilingly reminded him: "Don't forget! This pigmy is still the astronomer." Always remember your spiritual nature existing in the universe of Spirit. Jesus did. And remember the true spiritual nature of your fellow man. Jesus did. It was his ability to see the Christ in man that was the basis of his healing power. Does not Mrs. Eddy tell us, "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick"? (Science and Health, p. 476.) The invisible Christ is imperceptible to personal sense, whereas Jesus appeared as a bodily existence. The Christ was his spiritual nature, or real self, and the source of his healing power. Mrs. Eddy's definition of Jesus is as follows: "The highest human corporeal concept of the divine idea, rebuking and destroying error and bringing to light man's immortality" (Science and Health, p. 589).
Let it not be said that this lecture implies that there are two men, a mortal and an immortal. There is only one kind of man. That man is the image of God — spiritually whole and wholly spiritual. What is the relationship between the true man and a mortal? Actually, there is no relationship, as mortal man is in reality nonexistent. Is there a relationship between your waking selfhood and your sleeping dream, which everyone knows to be unreal? The question in Christian Science is, Which concept of man are we accepting as real, the mortal or the immortal? The challenge is, What kind of man am I proving myself to be, the material or the spiritual?
Christian Science rejects both the theory and the use of material remedies. It will be helpful to recall that the suggestion to use a material remedy is from the same source that argues that disease is real. Let the student take note: the Bible says the same tree that bears evil fruit cannot bear good fruit (Matt. 7:18). Holding to the understanding of God as the source of all Life, goodness, and wholeness, he, that is, the student, will be enabled to dismiss the temptation as another phase of the carnal mind. The spiritual remedy is to awaken and stay awake to the realization of man's true being, his spiritual at-one-ment with God.
Be not discouraged if you have not as yet demonstrated this fully. Because of its innate opposition to truth, the carnal mind cunningly tries to materialize thought and thus hide the path of spiritual understanding. Be not troubled. The Christ within you will uncover and destroy these deceptive illusions. Because God is good and good is all, evil is unreal. It is deceptive in nature. Its only claim to power is to have itself accepted as real by human consciousness. It falls powerless before the consciousness enlightened by the Christ. Let us apply God's divine power to our daily activities. This means to let Truth bring joy to our homes, clarity of thought to our business, wisdom to our political activities, and the freshness of eternal manhood to our whole experience.
If mortal mind should seem to divert one's spiritual progress, the true idea voicing good comes saying, "This is not the way, walk ye not in it." An example of guidance and protection inherent in man's relationship with God may be found in the following incident. A student of Christian Science in the course of business was inspecting an electrical installation to the plant of a public utility. Preceding his guide, he walked casually down a narrow corridor with a row of large transformers on one side, coming within inches of contacting them. Turning back, he found the guide greatly agitated, as the transformers were charged with very high voltage and any contact with them would have been fatal. Our friend was at first shocked when he perceived the danger, but as he retraced his steps he was very conscious of God's protection and once more refreshed himself on the nature of man's spiritual relationship to his God, which Mrs. Eddy tells us is indestructible. Though he was unaware of the danger, the Christ, the "true idea voicing good," had safely directed his path.
If the false forces of evil should tempt one in the form of sensuality, the Christ says to him, "Matter is unreal. Therein lies no real pleasure. Be not deceived by its seeming reality. You are free." And if he listens and obediently holds to his oneness with God, he can resist the temptation and prove the Christ to be supreme. The conflict in mortal consciousness is never between matter and the material senses. How could it be? These two unholy partners are both offshoots of the carnal mind. They are always in agreement. The conflict is between the evidences of Spirit and the false testimony of the five physical senses. The conflict takes place in human consciousness. It is simply the struggle between the real and unreal, the true and the false. It is the attempt of this entirely supposititious force to impose itself on human thought as apathy and indifference, causing us to forget our true selfhood and true spiritual nature. Divine Love is our protection. Divine Love knows no struggle, it has no contests.
The true nature of this Love is taught in the Christian Science Sunday School, even to the youngest of the children. Mrs. Eddy established the Sunday School so that children could learn to understand their true spiritual nature, so that false education could not cloud the receptivity and innocency of their thought. Parents seeking God's wisdom will be alert, that the worldly claims of mortal mind do not rob their children of their precious right of instruction in spiritual things. The children are taught in Sunday School basic Bible truths and how to apply them in meeting and overcoming the problems of their eventful childhood days. Parents of pupils of the Christian Science Sunday School tell how naturally the child accepts and applies his faith in God's healing power. Often the child's simple reliance on God awakens his parents to renewed spiritual effort. Jesus said of little children, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 19:14). By supporting regular attendance at Sunday School, parents help the child protect this kingdom of spiritual consciousness, which is his only source of security and his best assurance of fulfilling capably whatever lies ahead for him in later years.
Before bringing this lecture to a close, I should like to speak briefly of the spiritual nature of prayer in Christian Science. The simplicity of the child's prayer, with its often quick results, is a good example. The Lord's Prayer, though profoundly metaphysical, is simple. Why? Could it not be because Jesus understood man's relation to God to be fundamentally simple? Man's true mission is to joyously obey God's directive voice. God created all, and the Bible records that He found it very good — completely good. He created man in His image and likeness, that man might partake of and express the spiritual fruits of the divine nature. Wordy prayers or emotional prayers tend to materialize thought and thus to draw one away from the realization of the unity of man and God. Simple prayers acknowledging God's presence, power, and peace, with childlike gratitude, lift thought into spiritual oneness with divine Mind, with accompanying spiritual enlightenment and power.
Pray to God for help, whatever seems to be your need, but do not outline the results. If the heart is sincere, He will hear, and His healing presence will be manifest and the prayer answered. As thought ascends the scale of being to a diviner consciousness, prayer becomes silent realization, a daily, hourly, constant awareness of man's unity with God. It is this truth established in individual consciousness that breaks the dream of the senses and reveals to us man as ever at one with the Father. Paul writes, "Pray without ceasing" (I Thess. 5:17). Mrs. Eddy writes, "Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds" (Science and Health, p. 1).
Christ Jesus, nearing the contemplation of his glorious career, praying in the presence of his disciples, said, "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee" (John 17:20,21) — a simple but profound statement of man's unity with God.
In the scientific understanding of man's oneness with the divine, we find the solution to all our problems. Jesus prayed that all mankind might recognize man's oneness with God. To be at one with God means to be comforted, protected, to have our every need supplied: the need for better health, more activity, the freshness and inspiration of Spirit, the need for wisdom, love, and spiritual understanding. Maintain this oneness, for it is your spiritual heritage. The Master, Christ Jesus, said, "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30). Man's indestructible unity with God is a spiritual fact. It is your strength and your salvation.
[1954.]