Paul Stark Seeley, C.S.B.,
of Portland, Oregon
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The
Mother Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
Spiritual law is a basic "force" that "lives in the consciousness of us all," a Christian Science lecturer declared in Boston Thursday night.
We feel this force or law whenever we think in a loving or intelligent way, he said. And it comes from God, "the one universal, causative Mind."
Paul Stark Seeley of Portland, Oregon, was the lecturer.
He spoke before a large audience in The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, after an introduction by Gordon F. Campbell, the present First Reader.
Mr. Seeley is a well-known member of The Christian Science Board of Lectureship. The title of his lecture was "Christian Science: The Revelation of Spiritual Law."
The lecturer spoke substantially as follows:
The title of this lecture, "Christian Science: The Revelation of Spiritual Law," informs you that we are to reason concerning the law of Spirit, God. We all know there is something called human, or man-made, law. It contributes much to an orderly society and individual security. But there is a higher, more basic law than the human law. It is the law of the one intelligent cause of creation and man. It is this law which Christ Jesus came to show us is available to outlaw sin, disease, and death when it is understood and rightly applied. This divine manifestation of God St. Paul defined as "the power of God . . . unto salvation" (I Pet. 1:5); and Jesus exemplified it as the Christ, destroying all error in human consciousness. We are going to seek answers to three questions: What is spiritual law? Where is spiritual law? How does spiritual law work?
Probably many people think of law as something best left to lawyers and judges. This is not so of spiritual, basic law. It is vital to the health and happiness of everyone and needs to be understood by you and me. The Psalmist says, "The law of his God is in his heart" (Ps. 37:31); and in Hebrews we read, "I will put my laws into their mind . . ." (Heb. 8:10). Here is something to think about — basic, spiritual law lives in the consciousness of us all. An illustration of the whereabouts of human law gives a hint as to where spiritual law is found.
You drive down the street and come to a traffic light. The light is red; you stop. Why do you stop? Because of the traffic law. But where is the traffic law? You do not see it; you cannot touch it; it is not in the light; it is not in your feet; nor is it in the brakes of the car. It is not even confined in a law book in some library. If it were and the law book were destroyed, there would be no law.
Where is the traffic law? It is in the thinking of the people. Traffic stops and traffic goes because men think the traffic law. Our lawmakers enact human laws which they believe are for the good of the people. We mentally accept these enactments and obey them. But law, be it human or divine, must be thought, to be law to us.
To find the substance of basic, that is, spiritual, law, we must understand its source, the basic cause from whence it derives. Probably we can all agree that the basic cause or reality must be intelligent. How could the cause of the universe and man be ignorant? If you agree that the basic cause must be intelligent, then must we not look to where intelligence is to find the one intelligent cause? Real intelligence exists only in pure Mind. Intelligence is the primal quality of Mind. A long time ago Job said of God, "He is in one mind" (Job 23:13). Basic cause is therefore not in unintelligent matter, but in universal, self-existent Mind. G-o-d is a word for what is indispensable to everyone, everywhere, the Mind that provides all worthy thoughts for all men.
You and I have come to this lecture to consider thoughts, ideas. Who makes them? Certainly neither you nor I make them. But something makes them and makes them equally available to you and me. I could not give out the ideas which constitute this lecture if there did not exist a natural and continuing unity between my consciousness and the Mind that provides the ideas that make up the lecture. You could not understand these thoughts and ideas if you and I did not have the same Mind.
If, in the not too distant future, some of you should be traveling to Venus or Mars, would you not be utilizing the thoughts and ideas of the same Mind that is providing you with worthy ideas here? Genuine Mind is universal. Bounds and limitations are words it knows not.
Some years ago I became intrigued with the question, How does God get things done? There is so much to get done in the affairs of our little earth and vastly more in the universe beyond. Continuously thoughts must be provided, things must grow, planets must revolve, order must be maintained. But how does the basic cause take care of the infinite detail of its universe and do all that must be done?
In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, states on page 417 "that all causation is Mind, acting through spiritual law." Spiritual law is then that by which and through which the one universal, intelligent causative Mind acts, gets things done.
But what is this spiritual law through which causative Mind acts? In her work entitled "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy includes an article on "Spirit and Law." In it she says (p. 257), "Law is either a moral or an immoral force. The law of God is the law of Spirit, a moral and spiritual force of immortal and divine Mind." Spiritual law, God's law, is then a moral, spiritual, intelligent Mind force.
It is that by which Mind gets things done, accomplishes its intelligent purposes. Then the question arises, where do we find this moral, spiritual, intelligent force by which God, causative Mind, gets things done. There is only one place where the force of Mind, or intelligence, can be found. That is where Mind evidences itself. Where is that? In its thoughts and ideas.
Today the moral, spiritual, intelligent forces of Mind are utilized to a considerable degree by many people. For instance, every right-thinking parent has the experience of helping his child discover that in his consciousness are thought forces called honesty, justice, kindness. The parent encourages the child to recognize these vital, moral, spiritual forces as native to his being, to honor and express them in his thought life. In the degree he does so he accepts spiritual law as active within him.
Where do these thought forces of honesty, justice, kindness, come from? The child does not make them, the parent cannot create them. Something makes them and continuously makes them available to every individual everywhere on this planet and on every planet where men may be. What is this something? It is the one ever-present, all-governing Mind that, with its thoughts, constitutes and governs the true consciousness of all men.
So we see there is nothing mysterious about basic law. It is the native force, or power, of the one intelligent Mind active in its intelligent ideas which constitute the true consciousness of every individual everywhere.
You and I live the law of God, spiritual law, in the degree we accept as the governing forces of our thinking the thoughts in which the moral, spiritual forces of intelligent Mind inhere. These lawful thoughts produce harmony, health, and happiness. Discord of every kind results from lawless thinking, thinking the lawless thoughts of the unintelligent material mind such as fear, sickness, hate, discouragement, selfishness, sin. Christian Science is proving that for every lawless, negative thought there is an angel, a Mind-supplied thought, to reverse and destroy it. Honesty is at hand to destroy dishonesty, justice is at hand to nullify injustice, unselfishness to cancel selfishness, and legions of right thoughts to overcome and destroy the many negative forms of thought that may even produce disease.
Said Christ Jesus, "What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch" (Mark 13:37). What are we to watch? Our thoughts. Each individual must police his own thinking, arrest and banish the godless thoughts of the godless material mind and accept as his consciousness the health producing and harmony producing thoughts of his genuine, positive Mind, his God.
Henry Drummond has said that the worst of all vices is bad temper. It ruins lives, wrecks homes, and spreads unhappiness wherever it is tolerated. What is bad temper but lawless thinking? Genuine Mind provides the positive ideas with which bad temper can be nullified and sunk into oblivion. Here is an example.
A businessman living in New Jersey with his place of business in New York City, had accepted a chronic grouch as his state of mind. Each day when he appeared at the breakfast table he rarely spoke more than a word or two to his wife, hurriedly ate his breakfast, and rushed for his train for New York. He always took his grouch with him, kept it at his office all day, and brought it back again at night. His home was not a happy home, and his office was not a place where men liked to go.
He had a friend, a student of Christian Science, who knew him well and knew that he had many fine qualities. One day the Christian Scientist said to him, "Can't you see what a fool you are, stubbornly to cling to this grouch day after day? It makes you mean, bad tempered, inconsiderate, discourteous, sometimes cruel. Where does it get you? Nowhere at all." The friend pointed out to him that if he were only willing to acquaint himself with God, his genuine, intelligent, Mind, and to claim as his own the intelligent thoughts that this Mind is always providing to constitute the consciousness of man, the grouch could be outlawed.
The man thought it over and decided he would look into Christian Science. He studied Science and Health and read his Bible. Little by little he began to feel somewhat acquainted with God, who had always been a mystery to him. He began to see, in a degree, that God is the one genuine Mind of all men and that this Mind is naturally and continuously providing good ideas to constitute the real life and consciousness of man. Grouchiness, bad temper, meanness, self-centeredness, he saw never came from his true Mind, so were lawless thoughts he could outlaw with the thoughts of his real Mind, such as loving-kindness, cheerfulness, mercy, humility, good will.
One morning he came to the breakfast table with a friendly smile and said to his wife, "Good morning, my dear." She nearly fainted! But the ice had been broken and it was not long before the grouch and the bad temper disappeared. The home became a happy one. Where did the grouch go? It had seemed to be a grim reality to his wife, to his friends, to himself, then it was gone. What made it go? What outlawed it? Law! What and where was the law?
In the intelligent Mind-forces that were active in the good thoughts that he became willing to accept as his thinking. They included thoughts of kindness, consideration, courtesy, good will. Where did they come from? Some cause made them and made them always available to him as his thinking. What he had to do was to be willing to utilize his ability to recognize and accept them as the governing forces of his life.
Law, the force or power of intelligent Mind, acting in and through its ideas, outlawed the lawless self-centered thoughts that the grouch was made of. Would you not have it that way? Christian Science shows us that this positive, loving, intelligent Mind, which the Master referred to as "my Father and your Father" is the source and substance of all our lawful thoughts. These intelligent thoughts produce only harmony in mind and body. The Father-Mind is providing the positive ideas that will outlaw all lawless thoughts and their effects, unhappiness, sickness, fear, contention, and strife. Lawful thoughts demonstrate the supremacy of the law of God, intelligence, and the impotence of the so-called forces or laws of ignorance. That is all that negative thought forces are — ignorance. The grouch was a good example.
Paul thought deeply on this question of law. He said, "I delight in the law of God . . . , but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind" (Rom. 7:22, 23). Do we not all know what Paul referred to, the war in our thinking between worthy thoughts and unworthy ones, between the negative and the positive, between the thought-forces of the Mind that is God, good, and the erroneous thought-forces of the pseudo mind that Paul said is enmity with God?
Christ Jesus, in the forty-fourth verse of the eighth chapter of John, evaluates for us this trouble-making material mind and all that proceeds from it. Perhaps you remember that he uses three words to expose evil's nature. He was talking to the Pharisees, who were preparing to crucify him, and he told them that their thinking was fathered, or originated by, the devil. That is, they were accepting the evil mind's thoughts of murder and destruction. He put it this way. "Ye are of your father the devil" (John 8:44).
Then he used two other words to describe this devilish, material mind. He called it a murderer and said it always has been that. Their murderous thoughts were nothing new to the evil mind. One sees evidence of this all about us. Every day in the newspapers we see a column of obituaries, records of fatal accidents, and of murders committed, mortals destroyed by evil forces. The material mind claims to be a second mind, a second god, and to evolve a second sense of creation that is mortal, far from intelligent, material. It claims to produce, then to destroy what it produces. Mortals ignorantly accept as final the evil mind's claim that life is a temporary thing with a beginning and an ending because they have not yet come to understand, as the Master did, the supremacy of genuine Mind, God, and man constituted of the substance of Mind.
Then the Master proceeded to inform his hearers that this devilish material mind that claims to father all erroneous thoughts, not only is a murderer, but is wholly a liar. Said Jesus (John 8:44), "He . . . abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. . . . He is a liar." In other words, the evil mind's claim to be a cause and to produce and then to destroy what it produces is all a false sense of cause and creation.
Christian Science is helping its students to begin to prove the falsity of all forms of evil, just as the Master did. The reluctance of the human mind to challenge evil's claim to be a reality derives from the human mind's ignorance of what is real. It accepts material sense testimony with little or no question as to its being true. This is exactly what Christ Jesus did not do. We believe that he came to show us the way to think lawfully, truthfully. At every turn he challenged the claim of material sense testimony that it was offering the facts of existence.
He outlawed insanity, leprosy, blindness, dumbness, deafness, all forms of disease, and death itself, in the face of all that negative, material sense testimony said as to their reality and finality. And in the verse mentioned in John, he put the tag of liar on all evil, for your benefit and mine. All we need is to be willing more fully to use our ability to understand, through spiritual sense, that reality is not in the mortal, the temporal, the unintelligent, and mindless, but in the immortal and spiritual, in everlasting Mind and its manifestations, its thoughts and ideas.
The Master has told us, as I have said before, that the purpose of his mission was to fulfill the law, — a simple, thought-provoking statement. We understand that to mean that his objective was fully to prove the availability to every individual consciousness of the omnipotent forces of intelligent Mind, inherent in the ideas of this Mind, to destroy all the lawless, mindless thoughts of the material mind expressed in sin, disease, and death. He came to show you and me how to think lawfully, truthfully, spiritually, and thereby to overcome all that is lawless, truthless, godless. How willing are you and I consistently to utilize our ability to do this? That is the big question.
Spiritual law demands that every individual genuinely love his neighbor as himself, not to love what the lying material mind may say his neighbor is, but to love that identity which God causes his neighbor actually to be. When he was asked one day by an inquirer, "Who is my neighbour?," Jesus related the parable of the Good Samaritan. You remember it, of course. A traveler was waylaid on the highway, robbed and left half dead. A Levite, of a class then highly regarded, came that way, looked upon the unfortunate one and passed by on the other side. Then a priest came and he too looked at the one in great need, and he passed by on the other side. Then came a Samaritan, of a class then not much respected by Jews, and he saw the man's need. What did he do?
He went to where the man was, bound up his wounds, put him on his beast and took him to an inn, paid for his keep and promised to pay more when he came that way again if there was a further need. Where was the law of God recognized and obeyed? You will agree, I am sure, that it was recognized and obeyed by the Samaritan. He had compassion, consideration, good will, a sense of brotherliness, and helpfulness. What was the matter with the thinking of the Levite and the priest? It was proud, selfish, unloving, blind to the thoughts of unselfed love, the law of God.
The Master then asked his questioner, "Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?” (Luke 10:36) When the inquirer answered, "He that shewed mercy on him," Jesus then concluded the parable with the meaningful counsel, "Go, and do thou likewise." Under the law of impartial Mind all men are basically brothers. Gradually we see this fact becoming more and more recognized. The forces of justice and good will that unify all are doing their work under the mighty impulsion of omnipresent, omniactive Mind,
In "Miscellaneous Writings" (119:8) Mrs. Eddy says, "Each individual is responsible for himself." Each individual is responsible for his every thought. He must stand porter at the door of consciousness accepting the lawful thoughts of his true Mind and rejecting the lawless thoughts of the false mind that is actually no mind at, all because it has no genuine intelligence.
Each individual must, Mrs. Eddy reminds us, become an attorney for himself. He must claim and plead his right to think and live in accord with the law of his Maker and to be free from every lawless thought-force of the godless material mind, whose lying suggestions actually have no part, place, or power in his true consciousness. How willing are you and I to make an honest consistent effort day by day, and hour by hour to think the lawful thoughts that express the good that is God, and produce health, harmony, unity and success, and to repudiate the lawless thoughts of godless evil?
Solomon saw a great basic fact when he said of man that as he thinketh so is he. Our thoughts condition us, nothing else can.
Human laws sometimes seem to be hard and not always entirely just. This is not so of the law of God, Spirit's law. It is always wise, kind, loving, absolutely just. Mrs. Eddy has said that the law of God is found through the affections (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 172).
We were once on a steamer going to Australia. Almost everyone, after checking in at the purser's office, went on deck, found his deck chair, and settled down. The mental atmosphere was chilly. No one seemed interested in anyone else, there were no smiles or friendly greetings, just rigid silence. Then, of a sudden, a little boy, perhaps four years of age, appeared at one end of the deck. He had a loving, guileless smile which went out to everyone impartially. He came hopping and skipping down the length of the deck, smiling at this one, waving at that one. In almost an instant the scene changed. People began to smile back at him and then to one another. Soon a normal sense of friendliness and good will appeared.
What made this change? Law. Where was the law? In the thoughts of the child. He did not think it all out beforehand. He simply responded naturally and spontaneously to thoughts of love, kindness, and good will native to him. He radiated these thought-forces impartially to everyone. But where did the thoughts come from? Where did the power to unify men that was inherent in those thoughts derive from? The Love-empowered thoughts all were fathered by his real Mind, the Mind that is good, the Mind that is Love, the Mind that is the only God.
He accepted and gave out these Love-empowered thoughts as naturally as a sunbeam radiates the sun that originates it. His thoughts and acts were lawful, the mighty, gentle forces of unselfed good. Is there any reason why you and I should not, with equal naturalness, express this mighty power of Love's law daily, hourly? And remember, the adults felt and responded to his law-empowered thoughts. They felt their rightness for themselves and began to express them to one another. His thoughts possessed the power and substance of their source, genuine, intelligent Mind. Goethe has said, "Love gives in a moment what labor cannot provide in an age."
The Master once said "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein" (Mark 10:15). Do you think he knew what he was talking about? Or was he voicing some impractical theory? We believe he knew exactly what he was talking about. He saw in the innocence and good thoughts of a little child the basic mental qualities that show forth the presence and power of genuine Mind, active in its ideas. He was counseling us that only as we accept as our own the God-given thoughts which a little child so spontaneously accepts, do we enter into a sense of God's harmonious creation where His thoughts bespeak His law.
At a Wednesday evening meeting at a Christian Science church in a large city at the time allotted to giving of testimonies of benefits from Christian Science, a gentleman arose and said something like this:
"I wish to express my gratitude to Christian Science. It is changing the whole viewpoint of my life, and for one thing it is healing me of a bad disposition. Here is an example. The other day I drove into the city and needed to find a parking place right away; I had an important appointment. I saw a place and drove beyond it, preparing to back into it. While I was getting ready to do this, a man in a little car behind me drove in and took the place. Before I found Christian Science I would have gotten out of my car and said some things to him he would not have liked to hear. But I didn't do it this time.
"Christian Science has taught me to watch my reactions to all forms of evil, not to react with anger and criticism as I had done for many years. And so, I smiled at him in a friendly way, raised my finger and said, ‘Tut, tut.'"
What forces had changed this man's thinking from anger and ill-will to mercy and kindness? Law. Where was the law? In the kind thoughts, the merciful thoughts he found within him. He had learned he lived to express only the good Mind that is the one God. This Mind's forces were inherent in its thoughts, and when he accepted them, they outlawed the lawless thoughts that he previously had, in his ignorance, allowed to govern him. He did not make the worthy thoughts, but Mind made them and made them to be in his consciousness. All he had to do was to recognize and accept them. They were God's law in action, within him.
H. G. Wells, the English historian, has said that an individual's greatness depends upon the answer to the question, "Did he start men thinking along fresh lines with a vigor that persisted after him?" On the basis of this test, Wells accorded to Christ Jesus the first place in human history. "He started men thinking along fresh lines with a vigor that persisted after him."
Someone asked Wells if he could not include an American in his list, and his reply was, "No, America is still young." But America has provided in the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, one who fulfills Wells' test. She has indeed started men, a vast company of them, thinking along fresh lines with a vigor that has persisted after her. What are those lines? They are the identical lines of thinking exemplified by the great metaphysician, Christ Jesus. Christian Science brings to our remembrance his ideas of God, man and law, helps us to understand his words and sayings, and how to use the ideas he used to outlaw all that is not of God's making.
After many years of persistent effort better to understand God and His healing power, Mrs. Eddy discovered Christian Science in 1866. She put her discovery to practical test in its public practice over a period of nearly ten years before she published the full statement of this Science in its textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," a book of seven hundred pages, eighteen chapters. The message contained in this book is reaching millions of people who are hungry to find the deep spiritual meaning of the Bible and the practical applicability of the Master's thoughts and ideas to present day problems. This textbook has been translated into German, French, Swedish, Danish, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Russian.
Mrs. Eddy has defined Christian Science "As the law of God, the law of good, interpreting and demonstrating the divine Principle and rule of universal harmony" (Rudimental Divine Science, p. 1). This Science is the statement of basic law and the way to demonstrate it in daily life. It is the explanation of the forces of almighty Mind inherent in its legions of true ideas, destined to dissipate and outlaw every lawless thought of the godless, material mind, the one evil.
How does the law of God operate to heal sickness? First, let me say that Christian Science recognizes sickness as contrary to law. No intelligent forces produce it; therefore, it is lawless; and the power of Mind, absolute intelligence, the basic lawgiver, can outlaw it now, as it did in the time of Jesus. Basic law is timeless.
A woman living in New England, and under the necessity of earning her living, was crippled with arthritis. She went to one of the best clinics in the Boston area. The doctors were very kind, they did everything they thought might be helpful to her, but she grew steadily worse. She had heard of Christian Science but knew little about it. But, in her desperation, she decided to discontinue going to the clinic and go to the Public library and borrow a copy of Science and Health.
She started reading it. It appealed to her: it was logical. It taught that the supremely good, intelligent cause does not cause unintelligent evil, including disease. Therefore, arthritis does not originate with God. Because it does not originate with God, it can be outlawed by the forces of God, as the Master proved. Her faith in God grew, her fear of arthritis lessened. She improved; then she decided to have the help of a Christian Science practitioner.
They worked together for about three weeks, and all symptoms of arthritis disappeared. Soon after, she met on the street the physician who had given her particular attention at the clinic. He greeted her and said, "Well, how are you getting on?" She said, "I am healed." "What healed you?" "Christian Science." He said, "Would you mind coming to the hospital and letting me examine you?" She consented.
He found no trace of the arthritis. Then he went to the hospital files and got out her record and carefully looked it over. He turned to her and said, "What are we going to put on your record now?" She said, "I think you should put on my record, 'Healed by Christian Science.'" He thought for a little, and then said, "I think so too."
Where did the arthritis go? And, what made it go? The material senses were arguing very aggressively that here was a form of affliction difficult to heal. It was growing steadily worse; the doctors had no remedy, and then it was gone. What healed her? The law of God. Where was the law? Inherent in the better ideas which she found in the Bible and Science and Health, ideas that brought to light the truth concerning the one basic cause, God, man, and man's relationship to God. Here is the saving idea from all lawless evil. It is the Christ so intimately identified with and so fully demonstrated by Jesus.
She began to see in the Bible truths she had never seen before. Her fear of affliction began to lessen, dissolve, as her understanding trust in the supremely intelligent power of Mind increased. She began to be conscious to a degree that the only identity that was true she derived from God with whom her true being was forever at-one.
One of the common misconceptions of the human mind is that man is a few pounds of mindless matter — blood, bones, organs, and cells — making up a material body and separated from God. The Bible teaches no such thing. The Master said, "The Father is in me, and I in him" (John 10:38). We understand this to mean that the only substantial selfhood of man, which he came to explain and demonstrate, is naturally and always contained in the one great ever-present, universal, intelligent Mind; and that Mind is naturally and continuously evidencing itself in, through, and by the only real consciousness of man. As the woman with arthritis saw something of these basic truths concerning cause and effect, her fear of godless evil was destroyed. Some understanding appeared of the almighty forces of Mind, and its spiritual thought-forces which freed her from what was a lawless form of evil.
In her work "No and Yes" (p. 11), Mrs. Eddy has said of man and law, "Man has perpetual individuality; and God's laws, and their intelligent and harmonious action, constitute his individuality in the Science of Soul." Have you not at some time wondered what constitutes your individuality? The carnal, material mind would argue that your selfhood is constituted of negatives, that mindless matter has conceived and borne you, that, like all mortals, you are doomed to die sooner or later. You may accept this and thereby anchor your sense of life in mortality. But this is not what the Bible teaches is the fact of being.
Jesus proved that God's laws constitute man. What enabled him to contravene physical forces and bring forth his body from the tomb? His understanding of God and of the laws or forces of God with which God constitutes man. In the quiet hours in the tomb he had an opportunity to realize that because man is the scientific embodiment or manifestation of genuine Mind, its forces and laws, he is forever lawful. He is filled with the mighty Mind forces of genuine intelligence that are forever making him superior to all negative, unintelligent destructive forces.
His enemies believed that they could destroy him by applying ignorant, material forces to the equally ignorant material body. Jesus understood that his only genuine life was Spirit, Mind, God, and was inseparable from God as God's manifestation. His clear understanding of his scientific, spiritual selfhood constituted by ever-present Mind of its almighty forces inherent in its ideas enabled him to demonstrate the spiritual fact of Life's superiority to the destructive forces of the godless material mind.
Christian Scientists are much interested in the great advances of physical science. We see much promise in these advances because they indicate that the human mind is consenting to put off to a degree its former self-imposed limitations. But if in the next twenty to thirty years you may go to the moon for a holiday or to some faraway planet, will not the basic problems of existence that presently confront you still confront you? How to be happy? How to be healthy? How to find a harmonious, satisfying existence? Physical forces may speed physical bodies to distant planets, but they have not the wherewithal to speed our transit from the problems of earth to the harmony of Mind's law-governed kingdom and man.
Only spiritual thought-forces can do this. The forces of real intelligence, genuine Mind. Fortunately you and I, and every individual everywhere, have something within our mentality that can acquaint us with those liberating forces and their utilization. It is inseparable from our God-constituted being. It is what Christian Science calls spiritual sense. It is the sensitivity that is given us by Spirit, pure Mind. It is with spiritual sense, Mind sense, that you and I discern something of what is genuine character, worthy ideals, thoughts that make up what we sometimes call our conscience. Christian Science proves the limitless ability of spiritual sense to bring to light within us the life, health, and happiness that are natural to man as the work of God, intelligent Mind.
When Paul said, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 2:5), we believe he meant that it is scientifically natural for every individual to find that he is given of God, the one universal causative Mind, the same ideas which Christ Jesus found and utilized as his consciousness. He showed us God's great gift to man, the Mind of Christ, the consciousness constituted of the thoughts and ideas in which the laws or forces of God are forever active. It is in these law-empowered ideas that we find the forces that liberate us from all of the limiting, negative, afflictive thought-forces of the carnal, material mind.
At the beginning of this hour,
three questions were stated. What is spiritual law? Where is spiritual law? How
does spiritual law work? I have endeavored to present the answers to these
questions: To the first, "What is spiritual law?" it is the natural,
continuing force, or power, of genuine Mind. Second, "Where is spiritual
law?" it is naturally and perpetually active in all of the thoughts and
ideas which evidence and manifest genuine Mind. Third, "How does spiritual
law work?" as the individual accepts as his consciousness, moment by
moment, hour by hour, day by day, the true thoughts that are constantly
available to him there, which derive from his ever-present intelligent Mind,
his being is governed, enlightened, protected, provided for, by these mighty
intelligent thought-forces. His living becomes lawful instead of lawless. He
finds that harmony, health, and happiness are native to his law-ordered being.
He finds his selfhood naturally aligned with the great lawgiver, infinite Mind,
of whom Paul said, "In him we live, and move, and have our being"
(Acts 17:28).
[Delivered Sept. 27, 1962, at The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, and published in The Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 28, 1962, under the headline "God's Spiritual Law Explained as Available to All".]