THE

PEOPLE'S IDEA OF GOD

ITS EFFECT ON

HEALTH AND CHRISTIANITY

BY

MARY BAKER EDDY

AUTHOR OF SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES

A SERMON DELIVERED AT BOSTON

BOSTON, U.S.A.

Published by Allison V. Stewart

Falmouth and St. Paul Streets

1915

Copyright, 1886, 1908

By Mary Baker G. Eddy

Copyright renewed, 1914

All rights reserved

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

SERMON

SUBJECT

THE PEOPLE’S IDEA OF GOD

Text: One Lord, one faith, one baptism. — Ephesians iv. 5.

EVERY step of progress is a step more spiritual. The

great element of reform is not born of human wis-

dom; it draws not its life from human organizations;

rather is it the crumbling away of material elements from

reason, the translation of law back to its original language,

— Mind, and the final unity between man and God.

The footsteps of thought, as they pass from the sensual

side of existence to the reality and Soul of all things, are

slow, portending a long night to the traveller; but the

guardians of the gloom are the angels of His presence, that

impart grandeur to the intellectual wrestling and colli-

sions with old-time faiths, as we drift into more spiritual

latitudes. The beatings of our heart can be heard; but

the ceaseless throbbings and throes of thought are unheard,

as it changes from material to spiritual standpoints. Even

the pangs of death disappear, accordingly as the under-

standing that we are spiritual beings here reappears, and

2 SERMON

we learn our capabilities for good, which insures man's

continuance and is the true glory of immortality.

The improved theory and practice of religion and of

medicine are mainly due to the people's improved views

of the Supreme Being. As the finite sense of Deity, based

on material conceptions of spiritual being, yields its grosser

elements, we shall learn what God is, and what God does.

The Hebrew term that gives another letter to the word

God and makes it good, unites Science and Christianity,

whereby we learn that God, good, is universal, and the

divine Principle, — Life, Truth, Love; and this Principle is

learned through goodness, and of Mind instead of matter,

of Soul instead of the senses, and by revelation supporting

reason. It is the false conceptions of Spirit, based on the

evidences gained from the material senses, that make a

Christian only in theory, shockingly material in practice,

and form its Deity out of the worst human qualities, else

of wood or stone.

Such a theory has overturned empires in demoniacal con-

tests over religion. Proportionately as the people's belief

of God, in every age, has been dematerialized and unfinited

has their Deity become good; no longer a personal tyrant

or a molten image, but the divine Life, Truth, and Love,

— Life without beginning or ending, Truth without a

lapse or error, and Love universal, infinite, eternal. This

more perfect idea, held constantly before the people's

mind, must have a benign and elevating influence upon

the character of nations as well as individuals, and will

THE PEOPLE'S IDEA OF GOD 3

lift man ultimately to the understanding that our ideals

form our characters, that as a man "thinketh in his heart,

so is he." The crudest ideals of speculative theology-

have made monsters of men; and the ideals of materia

medica have made helpless invalids and cripples. The

eternal roasting amidst noxious vapors; the election of the

minority to be saved and the majority to be eternally pun-

ished; the wrath of God, to be appeased by the sacrifice

and torture of His favorite Son, — are some of the false

beliefs that have produced sin, sickness, and death; and

then would affirm that these are natural, and that Chris-

tianity and Christ-healing are preternatural; yea, that

make a mysterious God and a natural devil.

Let us rejoice that the bow of omnipotence already

spans the moral heavens with light, and that the more

spiritual idea of good and Truth meets the old material

thought like a promise upon the cloud, while it inscribes

on the thoughts of men at this period a more metaphysical

religion founded upon Christian Science. A personal

God is based on finite premises, where thought begins

wrongly to apprehend the infinite, even the quality or the

quantity of eternal good. This limited sense of God as

good limits human thought and action in their goodness,

and assigns them mortal fetters in the outset. It has im-

planted in our religions certain unspiritual shifts, such as

dependence on personal pardon for salvation, rather than

obedience to our Father's demands, whereby we grow out

of sin in the way that our Lord has appointed; namely,

4 SERMON

by working out our own salvation. It has given to all

systems of materia medica nothing but materialism, —

more faith in hygiene and drugs than in God. Idolatry

sprang from the belief that God is a form, more than an

infinite and divine Mind; sin, sickness, and death origi-

nated in the belief that Spirit materialized into a body,

infinity became finity, or man, and the eternal entered the

temporal. Mythology, or the myth of ologies, said that

Life, which is infinite and eternal, could enter finite man

through his nostrils, and matter become intelligent of

good and evil, because a serpent said it. When first good,

God, was named a person, and evil another person, the

error that a personal God and a personal devil entered

into partnership and would form a third person, called

material man, obtained expression. But these unspirit-

ual and mysterious ideas of God and man are far from

correct.

The glorious Godhead is Life, Truth, and Love, and

these three terms for one divine Principle are the three in

one that can be understood, and that find no reflection in

sinning, sick, and dying mortals. No miracle of grace can

make a spiritual mind out of beliefs that are as material as

the heathen deities. The pagan priests appointed Apollo

and Esculapius the gods of medicine, and they inquired of

these heathen deities what drugs to prescribe. Systems

of religion and of medicine grown out of such false ideals

of the Supreme Being cannot heal the sick and cast out

devils, error. Eschewing a materialistic and idolatrous

THE PEOPLE'S IDEA OF GOD 5

theory and practice of medicine and religion, the apostle

devoutly recommends the more spiritual Christianity, —

"one Lord, one faith, one baptism." The prophets and

apostles, whose lives are the embodiment of a living faith,

have not taken away our Lord, that we know not where they

have laid him; they have resurrected a deathless life of

love; and into the cold materialisms of dogma and doctrine

we look in vain for their more spiritual ideal, the risen

Christ, whose materia medica and theology were one.

The ideals of primitive Christianity are nigh, even at

our door. Truth is not lost in the mists of remoteness or

the barbarisms of spiritless codes. The right ideal is not

buried, but has risen higher to our mortal sense, and

having overcome death and the grave, wrapped in a pure

winding-sheet, it sitteth beside the sepulchre in angel

form, saying unto us, "Life is God; and our ideal of God

has risen above the sod to declare His omnipotence." This

white-robed thought points away from matter and doc-

trine, or dogma, to the diviner sense of Life and Love, —

yea, to the Principle that is God, and to the demonstra-

tion thereof in healing the sick. Let us then heed this heav-

enly visitant, and not entertain the angel unawares.

The ego is not self-existent matter animated by mind,

but in itself is mind; therefore a Truth-filled mind makes

a pure Christianity and a healthy mind and body. Oliver

Wendell Holmes said, in a lecture before the Harvard

Medical School: "I firmly believe that if the whole materia

medica could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be

6 SERMON

all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes."

Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse writes: "I am sick of learned

quackery." Dr. Abercrombie, Fellow of the Royal Col-

lege of Physicians in Edinburgh, writes: "Medicine is the

science of guessing." Dr. James Johnson, Surgeon Ex-

traordinary to the King, says: "I declare my conscientious

belief, founded on long observation and reflection, that

if there was not a single physician, surgeon, apothecary,

man-midwife, chemist, druggist, or drug on the face of

the earth, there would be less sickness and less mortality

than now obtains." Voltaire says: "The art of medicine

consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the

disease."

Believing that man is the victim of his Maker, we natu-

rally fear God more than we love Him; whereas "perfect

Love casteth out fear;" but when we learn God aright, we

love Him, because He is found altogether lovely. Thus it

is that a more spiritual and true ideal of Deity improves

the race physically and spiritually. God is no longer a

mystery to the Christian Scientist, but a divine Principle,

understood in part, because the grand realities of Life and

Truth are found destroying sin, sickness, and death; and

it should no longer be deemed treason to understand God,

when the Scriptures enjoin us to "acquaint now thyself

with Him [God], and be at peace;" we should understand

something of that great good for which we are to leave all

else.

Periods and peoples are characterized by their highest

THE PEOPLE'S IDEA OF GOD 7

or their lowest ideals, by their God and their devil. We are

all sculptors, working out our own ideals, and leaving the

impress of mind on the body as well as on history and

marble, chiselling to higher excellence, or leaving to rot and

ruin the mind's ideals. Recognizing this as we ought, we

shall turn often from marble to model, from matter to

Mind, to beautify and exalt our lives.

"Chisel in hand stood a sculptor-boy,

With his marble block before him;

And his face lit up with a smile of joy

As an angel dream passed o 'er him.

He carved the dream on that shapeless stone

With many a sharp incision.

With heaven's own light the sculptor shone, —

He had caught the angel-vision.

"Sculptors of life are we as we stand

With our lives uncarved before us,

Waiting the hour when at God's command

Our life dream passes o'er us.

If we carve it then on the yielding stone

With many a sharp incision,

Its heavenly beauty shall be our own, —

Our lives that angel-vision."

To remove those objects of sense called sickness and dis-

ease, we must appeal to mind to improve its subjects and

objects of thought, and give to the body those better de-

lineations. Scientific discovery and the inspiration of

Truth have taught me that the health and character of

man become more or less perfect as his mind-models are

more or less spiritual. Because God is Spirit, our thoughts

must spiritualize to approach Him, and our methods grow

more spiritual to accord with our thoughts. Religion and

8 SERMON

medicine must be dematerialized to present the right idea

of Truth; then will this idea cast out error and heal the

sick. If changeableness that repenteth itself; partiality

that elects some to be saved and others to be lost, or that

answers the prayer of one and not of another; if incom-

petency that cannot heal the sick, or lack of love that will

not; if unmercifulness, that for the sins of a few tired

years punishes man eternally, — are our conceptions of

Deity, we shall bring out these qualities of character in our

own lives and extend their influence to others.

Judaism, enjoining the limited and definite form of a

national religion, was not more the antithesis of Chris-

tianity than are our finite and material conceptions of

Deity. Life is God; but we say that Life is carried on

through principal processes, and speculate concerning

material forces. Mind is supreme; and yet we make more

of matter, and lean upon it for health and life. Mind,

that governs the universe, governs every action of the body

as directly as it moves a planet and controls the muscles

of the arm. God grant that the trembling chords of human

hope shall again be swept by the divine Talitha cumi,

"Damsel, I say unto thee, arise." Then shall Christian

Science again appear, to light our sepulchres with im-

mortality. We thank our Father that to-day the uncre-

mated fossils of material systems, already charred, are

fast fading into ashes; and that man will ere long stop

trusting where there is no trust, and gorging his faith with

skill proved a million times unskilful.

THE PEOPLE'S IDEA OF GOD 9

Christian Science has one faith, one Lord, one baptism;

and this faith builds on Spirit, not matter; and this bap-

tism is the purification of mind, — not an ablution of the

body, but tears of repentance, an overflowing love, wash-

ing away the motives for sin; yea, it is love leaving self

for God. The cool bath may refresh the body, or as com-

pliance with a religious rite may declare one's belief; but

it cannot purify his mind, or meet the demands of Love.

It is the baptism of Spirit that washes our robes and makes

them white in the blood of the Lamb; that bathes us in the

life of Truth and the truth of Life. Having one Lord, we

shall not be idolaters, dividing our homage and obedience

between matter and Spirit; but shall work out our own

salvation, after the model of our Father, who never par-

dons the sin that deserves to be punished and can be de-

stroyed only through suffering.

We ask and receive not, because we "ask amiss;" even

dare to invoke the divine aid of Spirit to heal the sick, and

then administer drugs with full confidence in their efficacy,

showing our greater faith in matter, despite the authority

of Jesus that "ye cannot serve two masters."

Silent prayer is a desire, fervent, importunate: here

metaphysics is seen to rise above physics, and rest all faith

in Spirit, and remove all evidence of any other power than

Mind; whereby we learn the great fact that there is no

omnipotence, unless omnipotence is the All-power. This

truth of Deity, understood, destroys discord with the higher

and more potent evidences in Christian Science of man's

10 SERMON

harmony and immortality. Thought is the essence of an

act, and the stronger element of action; even as steam is

more powerful than water, simply because it is more

ethereal. Essences are refinements that lose some materi-

ality; and as we struggle through the cold night of physics,

matter will become vague, and melt into nothing under the

microscope of Mind.

Massachusetts succored a fugitive slave in 1853, and put

her humane foot on a tyrannical prohibitory law regulating

the practice of medicine in 1880. It were well if the sister

States had followed her example and sustained as nobly

our constitutional Bill of Rights. Discerning the God-

given rights of man, Paul said, "I was free born." Justice

and truth make man free, injustice and error enslave

him. Mental Science alone grasps the standard of liberty,

and battles for man's whole rights, divine as well as hu-

man. It assures us, of a verity, that mortal beliefs, and

not a law of nature, have made men sinning and sick, —

that they alone have fettered free limbs, and marred in

mind the model of man.

We possess our own body, and make it harmonious or

discordant according to the images that thought reflects

upon it. The emancipation of our bodies from sickness

will follow the mind's freedom from sin; and, as St. Paul

admonishes, we should be "waiting for the adoption, to

wit, the redemption of our body." The rights of man were

vindicated but in a single instance when African slavery

was abolished on this continent, yet that hour was a

THE PEOPLE'S IDEA OF GOD 11

prophecy of the full liberty of the sons of God as found in

Christian Science. The defenders of the rights of the

colored man were scarcely done with their battles before a

new abolitionist struck the keynote of higher claims, in

which it was found that the feeblest mind, enlightened

and spiritualized, can free its body from disease as well as

sin; and this victory is achieved, not with bayonet and

blood, not by inhuman warfare, but in divine peace.

Above the platform of human rights let us build another

staging for diviner claims, — even the supremacy of Soul

over sense, wherein man cooperates with and is made sub-

ject to his Maker. The lame, the blind, the sick, the sen-

sual, are slaves, and their fetters are gnawing away life

and hope; their chains are clasped by the false teachings,

false theories, false fears, that enforce new forms of op-

pression, and are the modern Pharaohs that hold the chil-

dren of Israel still in bondage. Mortals, alias mortal

minds, make the laws that govern their bodies, as directly

as men pass legislative acts and enact penal codes; while

the body, obedient to the legislation of mind, but ignorant

of the law of belief, calls its own enactments "laws of

matter." The legislators who are greatly responsible for

all the woes of mankind are those leaders of public thought

who are mistaken in their methods of humanity.

The learned quacks of this period "bind heavy bur-

dens," that they themselves will not touch "with one of

their fingers." Scientific guessing conspires unwittingly

against the liberty and lives of men. Should we but

12 SERMON

hearken to the higher law of God, we should think for one

moment of these divine statutes of God: Let them have

"dominion over all the earth." "And if they drink any

deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands

on the sick, and they shall recover." The only law of sick-

ness or death is a law of mortal belief, and infringement

on the merciful and just government of God. When this

great fact is understood, the spurious, imaginary laws of

matter — when matter is not a lawgiver — will be dis-

puted and trampled under the feet of Truth. Deal, then,

with this fabulous law as with an inhuman State law; re-

peal it in mind, and acknowledge only God in all thy ways,

— "who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy

diseases." Few there be who know what a power mind is

to heal when imbued with the spiritual truth that lifts man

above the demands of matter.

As our ideas of Deity advance to truer conceptions,

we shall take in the remaining two thirds of God's plan

of redemption, — namely, man's salvation from sickness

and death. Our blessed Master demonstrated this great

truth of healing the sick and raising the dead as God's

whole plan, and proved the application of its Principle to

human wants. Having faith in drugs and hygienic drills,

we lose faith in omnipotence, and give the healing power

to matter instead of Spirit. As if Deity would not if He

could, or could not if He would, give health to man; when

our Father bestows heaven not more willingly than health;

for without health there could be no heaven.

THE PEOPLE'S IDEA OF GOD 13

The worshippers of wood and stone have a more mate-

rial deity, hence a lower order of humanity, than those

who believe that God is a personal Spirit. But the wor-

shippers of a person have a lower order of Christianity than

he who understands that the Divine Being is more than a

person, and can demonstrate in part this great impersonal

Life, Truth, and Love, casting out error and healing the

sick. This all-important understanding is gained in

Christian Science, revealing the one God and His all-

power and ever-presence, and the brotherhood of man in

unity of Mind and oneness of Principle.

On the startled ear of humanity rings out the iron tread

of merciless invaders, putting man to the rack for his

conscience, or forcing from the lips of manhood shameful

confessions, — Galileo kneeling at the feet of priestcraft,

and giving the lie to science. But the lofty faith of the

pious Polycarp proved the triumph of mind over the body,

when they threatened to let loose the wild beasts upon him,

and he replied: "Let them come; I cannot change at once

from good to bad." Then they bound him to the stake,

set fire to the fagots, and his pure faith went up through

the baptism of fire to a higher sense of Life. The infidel

was blind who said, "Christianity is fit only for women and

weak-minded men." But infidels disagree; for Bonaparte

said: "Since ever the history of Christianity was written,

the loftiest intellects have had a practical faith in God;"

and Daniel Webster said: "My heart has assured and re-

assured me that Christianity must be a divine reality."

14 SERMON

As our ideas of Deity become more spiritual, we express

them by objects more beautiful. To-day we clothe our

thoughts of death with flowers laid upon the bier, and in

our cemeteries with amaranth blossoms, evergreen leaves,

fragrant recesses, cool grottos, smiling fountains, and

white monuments. The dismal gray stones of church-

yards have crumbled into decay, as our ideas of Life have

grown more spiritual; and in place of "bat and owl on the

bending stones, are wreaths of immortelles, and white

fingers pointing upward." Thus it is that our ideas of

divinity form our models of humanity. O Christian Scien-

tist, thou of the church of the new-born; awake to a

higher and holier love for God and man; put on the whole

armor of Truth; rejoice in hope; be patient in tribulation,

— that ye may go to the bed of anguish, and look upon this

dream of life in matter, girt with a higher sense of omnipo-

tence; and behold once again the power of divine Life and

Love to heal and reinstate man in God's own image and

likeness, having "one Lord, one faith, one baptism."

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