To the Romans, Paul wrote the twelfth lesson of the Science of Christ: “Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”
Jesus Christ said at the Last Supper: “Henceforth I call you not servants but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you.” His life was His doctrine.
Having so regarded it. He said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Giving all His doctrine to His friends, He gave them His life. Seeing their heavy miseries, He descended into heavy miseries to show them how to ascend out of their miseries. A fireman goes into a burning building to bring out the people who are in danger, as a good physician goes into a plague hospital to cure the patients.
Jesus was so full to overflowing with love that the plagues and dangers of this world did not terrify him in the least. He was not hurt by a single one of the miseries He threw Himself into. Love is stronger than death. He that hath love bath freedom from every ill. He that hath abundance of love, wherewith God fills the whole universe, can save his friends from every ill. He is an atmosphere wherever he walks. Love diffuses itself with all its powers. Having love we have life, so we radiate life. Having love, we have strength, so we radiate strength. Pure love for a child will save the life of a child; so the life of all is saved if a man loves God, for God is all.
Jesus loved God. Thus He had all of life, all of love, all of truth, all of substance, all of intelligence, all of beauty, all of health, all of inspiration. He, therefore, saved the whole world. Even to look at Him would cure, when He was manifest in the flesh. He, never having gone away from our side, we can look upon Him now, and be cured of whatever ailment we cry about. Some people cry with lonesomeness. He will cure that entirely, if they look upon Him. Looking at Him mentally is the way we look nowadays, though it is certain that some people even in this century have seen Jesus, the Healer, as present before them as He was before the two Marys at His tomb.
Looking, mentally, upon Jesus Christ as present, will cure poverty; it will cure blindness; it will cure deafness; it will cure palsy; it will cure rheumatism; it will cure insanity.
The amethyst is the symbol of the miracle-working power of love. It is the love stone in the sense that the chalcedony is the love stone, and in a still further sense than that stone. It is the stone of the resurrection, of ascension, of the New Kingdom, where love is filling man’s mind and overflows to the world, and awakens the same love to shine back. It is that love that is stronger than death, and when it enters into man’s love death is not possible. It is that love which, being entered into man’s, is stronger than hate, stronger than poverty, stronger than swords, stronger than crucifixion and the tomb.
The amethyst stone has the hues of all the stones. There is no stone which, as you look into the heavenly face of the amethyst is not seen shining in beauty. Twelve works of God as Holy Spirit are all manifest in the amethyst. John said the twelfth power of the gospel, showing forth in you, would be like the amethyst stone.
Whoever gets into the state of overflowing unquenchable love is manifesting Jesus Christ. He sees no evil in anybody or anything. He sees their Good only. He receives no injuries at anybody’s hands. He rejoices at everything that occurs. Everything has a light and a life and a joy and a renewal of pleasure in it for him, which nothing that happens to him can destroy.
If things grieve you, then you have not touched the twelfth sweetness of the Science. If things hurt you, then you are not in love with the Science. You are not alive with the ecstasy of the Science. If you are afraid of anything, you do not know the twelfth feeling of security. “Love casteth out fear.” If you are poor, or in debt, or old, or discouraged, you have not touched the resurrection stone of love that is stronger than death.
I told you that accusation would make somebody come to you looking sick and unhappy. Well, a joyous praise, felt in your heart, will bring somebody well and grateful to see you. If somebody comes the sixth time for help, you may be certain that you have been complaining and whining about something or somebody.
Complaining and whining are only exhibitions of great desert spots in your character. You must fill up deserts with rain and fertilizer. So you must transform your moments of complaining by praise and descriptions of the Good in the universe. The desert has not had rain enough, so you have not charity and mercy enough, if you feel like complaining. If things in your past have made you feel sad and hard, you must say the good they have done you makes you thankful.
Give great thanks.
Nehemiah told the people not to grieve or mourn at all. They must eat the fat and drink the sweet of their lives, just as if it had come to them. Jesus Christ taught that we must look upon our life, just as it has come to us, and beautify and inspire it with the red wine of gladness. Both Nehemiah, 445 B.C., and Jesus Christ Himself, knew that you and I need not mourn, if we do not choose to mourn. Jesus took the six stone water jugs and inspired the water to become wine. So you and I can take our conditions and inspire them with the twelfth lesson in Science.
At the sound of the twelfth lesson on the sands of the Sahara, roses and corn and grapes will spring up. At the sound of the twelfth lesson on the desolation of your heart, happiness will spring up within you, and radiate around you. The twelfth stone is the amethyst, symbol of happiness. We may see that the twelve lessons of Science are all intended to bring supreme happiness to the world.
Carlyle says there is a higher condition than happiness. He calls it blessedness. But blessedness and true happiness are identical terms. Nothing is left for us to wish for, when the twelve lessons of Science have poured out their twelve results upon our life.
It is gratification to know that if an accusation will bring a sick person, a thankful and praiseful word, felt sincerely, will bring a happy and healed case to our sight. It is a good thing to know that there are healing thoughts we can think which will fill our mind when it gets to complaining and whining. We need not deny, if we feel low-spirited and dissatisfied — we need just describe the Good of our lot. We have lost sight of our Good for a moment. Describing our Good will bring it to our sight again. One thing remember: you will feel less spiritual inspiration when you are mourning, whining, and complaining, but when you praise and describe the Good you will feel full of spiritual fervor.
If a case appears the sixth time, you must praise him for every virtue, every power, every beauty you can think of. You need not deny his disease. You need not deny your complaining. You must just praise and describe the Good in him. The denials you have been giving have made some good chinks in his cottage, through which your sunlight can penetrate. Happiness will bubble over and glisten from you, through a mind that comes the sixth time for treatment.
A deaf and blind person stands for some wilfulness of yours. You would not see a plain truth and you would not hear what somebody told you, once upon a time. You persisted in seeing things your own way. But now your daily denials of accusation will break down your stubbornness. You will listen meekly, gladly, willingly to every voice. You will be quick to detect the true and the false ring in what you hear. The false will not count with you — you will forget it.
Now, you know that accusation takes different forms of expression, or writings, on faces and in people. You remember that yesterday’s lesson spoke of the jacinth as standing for beauty and judgment. Good judgment marks the face with lines of beauty. Falling short of good judgment marks the face with weakness and homeliness. So, if you see a homely face, it is certain that you have been accusing people of being foolish and ignorant. If you yourself are homely, you have accused yourself of being foolish and ignorant. Homeliness and weakness may come down to disease, they are so dependent upon accusations of foolishness and ignorance.
You see an immense herd of plain looking people in our cities. They do not look much diseased. This signifies that you have, all your lifetime, been accusing people and yourself in a general way, not at all maliciously, but enough to show forth. You see many elderly and old people.
They show your accusations against certain ones, that they know little, or nothing. Your own accusations against yourself will have the same effect as against others. The effect of praise of the spiritual intelligence is to bring beauty and good judgment to view everywhere.
We look at a strong man, and, if we remember how his strength looked to us, we catch his strength. There is a text which reads, “In thy light we shall see light. “It can be carried out also in the strength which people show. It can be the same with beauty — “In thy beauty we see beauty” — which means that as we recognize beauty, we soon show forth the same beauty.
There is a story of a child who kept a picture of a beautiful woman in her room and looked at it and talked to it so much that she became like the picture. A young woman found an ideal face of Jesus Christ, and carried it around with her. She looked at it and loved it so much that her face began to resemble the face of Jesus Christ remarkably even to the fine shining light which always transfigures it when we think of it. Ingratitude is a painter of hard lines on the face. Soon all the curves and smiles will change. We must have a grateful feeling towards everybody and everything. In the story of “The First Violin,” by Jessie Frothergill, the hero, who was supernaturally handsome, is pictured as always grateful for everything that anybody did.
Cynicism is a species of ingratitude that brings the most extraordinary people around us. Give thanks to the universe, to your ancestors, to your neighbors, to yourself, to animals, to everything that you have dealings with. Its spirit is your good, loving provider. Sometimes you must stop giving thanks to the supreme God and name everything as giving you bounty, for God seems afar off sometimes, and not speaking and breathing through our world and every object in it. By stretching the mind forth to be grateful to our idea of God we do well, but we do well to look at the God near at hand also.
The Divine Intelligence marks the orbit of the distant Canis Major and rounds the little moons of Mars with the same tender care. Divine beauty paints the North Star and the violet with impartial tenderness. So, you will be grateful to the man who steals your purse as well as to the father who provides for your youth. Why? Because God is the Life, the Spirit, the Intelligence of each alike, without difference of goodness from the hand of the Lord. If you have not seen this, it is true just the same.
Did you ever see a calm, benignant countenance? It shows how once you said calm, peaceful words, and thought that way, in harmony with your words. Look over your list of acquaintances, those you can call by name, and see what there is that is lovely in them. Then remember awhile how that loveliness looked. “Bring all the tithes into the storehouse,” said the prophet to the Jews. If you gather all the beauty of one woman into your memory, all the smiles of a friend into your memory, you will have all the tithes in your storehouse. The prophet said that whosoever should do this would spill over with blessings, for he would not have room enough to keep them to himself. This constitutes happiness. Happiness is the stone of freedom. The amethyst touches the blue of the sapphire, shines aglint with the red of the ruby, gives the white of the diamond, last; as it has all the colors in one it is the last stone of Revelation. It leaves out most of the green, for green stands mostly for works.
With the last polish of the lessons on your character, you see that there is nothing whatsoever to do. All was, and is, and ever will be, the finished work of the Divine Mind. “God saw everything He had made, and behold, it was very good.” Divine Mind never sees any evil, and sees nothing to do. While we see evil, or see something to do, we must think according to denials and affirmations. When we love greatly, love supremely, we see nothing to do; and finished, beautiful life satisfies us, everywhere we walk. Like the clear innocent amethyst, we let the happiness of the Divine Mind sift its innocent light through us.
As you look through the amethyst you see all the colors of the rainbow. As you look through the topaz everything looks laughing yellow even the shadows look happy. As you look through the amethyst the happiness of the topaz is accompanied by the intelligence of the sardius and the inspiration of the ruby. The green of green stones symbolizes completed work.
Now, do not lay too much stress upon stones, nor upon any other kind of symbol. Money is a symbol of the riches of God, the bounty of God. The topaz tells you to laugh, because everything is supplied with its natural good. The amethyst tells you everything is good and wise and satisfied, as well as able to do all things. But none of these is the thing itself. Gold is the symbol of the bounty of Jehovah. When you look at gold, speak its meaning. That is its life and substance. If it does not increase for you, then you are ungrateful, cynical. Its nature is hidden from you as deeply as Lazarus was buried.
Do you remember how Jesus Christ gave thanks, when Lazarus was cold and still? Well, when your conditions are cold and unyielding, after you have been treating them faithfully, you must go into a room by yourself and give thanks to the Spirit that it always does everything good for you, that it supplies you, pays your debts, and in every way blesses you. Then speak to the gold, or to your affairs, or to your sick neighbor, or to your family trouble, with a loud voice, praising its real meaning, and call it to come forth with new life, new kindness, new bounty, and good conditions.
Read over the story of how Jesus raised Lazarus, in the eleventh chapter of John. It tells how Jesus tarried, when He knew that Lazarus was sick, in order to symbolize or tell how people sometimes neglect to give thanks and feel grateful so long that things get, seemingly, very bad for them. We have all the hardships because we have been neglectful of the vitalizing power of right words. But, even here, said Jesus, there is a way to make things into new life. It is the highest evidence of power to be able to take seemingly dead conditions and wake them into happy life.
“The last enemy to be overthrown is death.” When you have learned the last lesson you will not only have power, but ALL power. You are not free from one accusation only, you are free from accusation utterly. You see the whole ground of the law beneath your feet, so, “Love is the fulfilling of the law.”
George Herbert sang the twelfth light of Revelation:
“Oh, now I know how all thy lights combine
And the configuration of their story;
Seeing not only how each world doth shine,
But all the constellations in their glory.”
You have run with the winged feet of mind from mountain top to mountain top of the shining lessons of Science without halting, but at the twelfth lesson you are like an eagle that folds its wings over the earth, so far beneath, and surveys the landscape in peaceful security. There is absolute security, if you understand and feel the twelfth lesson of Science. The amethyst stands for security. Only the heart that is above condemnation feels secure from condemnation.
The axiom of the twelfth lesson is: He that knows Me, transcends Me. It means that whoever truly knows Me is transcendently beyond the God he imagined Me to be. You know that even you feel that those who love you find in you virtue beyond what you feel yourself to possess.
The man who sees in his neighbor great virtues, has in himself those very virtues. It is himself he sees. He may not appreciate goodness and greatness as rich germs in his own nature, needing only to see goodness and greatness outside of himself to be fed with increasing good. Within yourself is the germ of beauty. If you see beauty outside of yourself, without carping at it, or complaining that you have it not, your germs are fed, and beauty begins to show in you. You have touched the twelfth lesson in Science.
This is the old art of animation of the particular from the universal, sought after by the ancients, but not found.
It is recognized good that makes us good enough to show goodness. The great wisdom-power within you is ready to spring up, fed with the increasing principle, when you see wisdom expressed in a book, or a man, or, even if you see for a second the wisdom expressed by the flies and the spiders in your house.
If you look straight into the face of the all-pervading wisdom of the universe, you will feed your germs, which are like little mouths waiting for food, with their own kind of aliment, and your wisdom will increase rapidly. So with happiness. You look into the child’s happiness, and do not lament because you are not happy, but just thank the happiness you see for showing itself to you, and your germ or love of happiness, innate within you, will be fed.
If anybody speaks to you critically, listen carefully. There is a ring of Divine Intelligence at your door. You will get a piece of news about your faults, and you will take those faults and deny them. This may leave you a little melancholy. Now you want to thank God for speaking to you. Give thanks for His wisdom expressed to you. This causes your love of wisdom to feed in delight.
When you see adversity as the hand of God bestowing bounty, and give thanks to God, and call to the bounty of God to come plainly to your sight, you have touched the lights of all twelve lessons at once. It is not that God chooses adversity through which to give you riches. No, it is that, having neglected to give thanks and be grateful at the right time, you have covered your prosperity with a cold shell. But, there is no death of prosperity. It is alive in your adversity, and by your dealings with this state of affairs, you can bring out your prosperity.
It lies within adversity to bring your bounty to feed your love of prosperity, innate within you, like a hungry germ. It lies within criticism to feed your love of wisdom, innate within you, like a hungry germ. The love of strength, the love of health, the love of security, the love of skill, the love of harmony — all abide within you. When you see health or strength or prosperity, or see power of any kind, and do not whine or carp or complain that you do not have them, you are fed instantly, and soon will be all that you see. Also you will see more. It is the beauty of health that if you see it, it increases to your sight.
Have you ever noticed that if you see a lame man on the street, you soon see half-a-dozen lame men? Things increase by seeing them. It never rains, when you let things come without ugly feelings, but it pours. When you see health, peace, prosperity, everywhere, you are in the absolute Mind of God. If you practice every Saturday afternoon praising your world, telling you are satisfied with it, describing it as the perfect creation of Divine Mind, you will soon see more good than you have been accustomed to seeing.
So, I believe there is a “Don’t” in the Science which has no denial with it, but only silence, and that is, “DON’T COMPLAIN.”
The word of the Lord came to Haggai the Prophet “The desire of all nations shall come; and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.” You can see that, like the rest of the prophets, he saw that a time would come when the doctrine preached by Jesus would be understood. You can see that if the air, skies, trees, men, women are all filled with the Spirit of Good, we shall increase our love of God by seeing this Good. It is the opening of our eyes, ears, mouth, to be filled with satisfaction.
Sometimes it is wise to say that everything we see, hear, smell, taste, feel and think, delights us, we are satisfied utterly. This is breaking the barriers down. Our eyes have power to see much beyond what we use them for, and it is so with all our faculties.
Ibsen wrote a play called the “Master Builder,” in which his motive is to prove that man is a limited being, and must not aspire to get beyond his limits. This is quite opposite to Jesus Christ’s instructions:
“Behold, I have set before thee an open door and no man can shut it.” “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne.” “I in you.” “That where I am there ye may be also.” The twelfth lesson sets aside the doctrine of limitations.
You can see for yourself that if a man sets his mind steadfastly to the premise that he is a limited being, that word “limit” will stop his career somewhere.
You have seen great men rise to heights of knowledge, like Emerson and Ruskin, and then drop suddenly to nonentity. All the powers of intellect, which intellect is the simulation of spiritual Intelligence, fly to sustain any premise put by mind. So the world intellect has flown to support the ideas of limitation. But the spiritual nature of man has no doctrine of limitation. Take your choice which nature to take your premise from. By the spiritual law you have no bars put anywhere to your expansion. The love of harmony within you may be fed with harmony itself, till the great masters are left far behind.
The wisdom within you is the love of wisdom. Feed it by sight of wisdom itself, and your wisdom will expand and multiply to the omniscience of God. If you are capable of eating some of God, are you not capable of eating all of God? Jesus Christ said: “God is within you,” and “I am within you.” Then you are able to take in all of God. This is only one form of expression which gives a different turn of the mind. It is not that you eat God in a material sense, but Jesus Christ called it “bread” which He would have all the world eat of — speaking figuratively.
We have a marvelous birthright. We do not show our intelligence, our judgment, until we lay hold upon our birthright. We can hold this knowledge within our mind and then it will work through all the mind of the world. A false idea falls somewhere and fails. A true idea lives on and on forever. If we take the premise, within our mind, that there is no limit to our power, even though each day we see things seemingly acting against us, we nevertheless have the doctrine that will triumph.
A piece of ice may be found in the crucible of intensest heat. If the ice holds its own, and increases by constant renewal the crucible heat must fail, leaving clear ice. So in the fires of the martyrs, they kept cool and steadfast. Pain got no hold upon them. Even racks and the flames could not hurt them. In the center of the blazing, violent sun there is a place that is beyond expression, absolute stillness. This stillness will conquer the violence of the sun eventually. So, the Spirit that is within you will conquer the miseries of the human lot. They shall be visibly nothing just as they are truly nothing.
It is our business to translate the spiritual Truth within into visible manifestation. We do this first by thinking the absolute Truth, then speaking it, then fixing it into everything around us. We must mix the idea we have in our mind with the right word that expresses that idea. For instance, if you mean that a man is well, but you say that he is sick, you carry, for the time being, the meaning of the word “sick,” and your mental report of it does not work with the man to heal him as quickly as the words you speak work to keep him sick. We are told by Solomon that the thoughts work, but Jesus gives us to understand that not only do our thoughts work, but words, which have certain meanings, will convey those meanings sooner than thoughts which dispute them. We must mean exactly what we say. “By thy words thou art justified.”
A man said this Science was true enough, but it would take a hundred years for it to work out with mankind. So, every attempt he made to do anything was slow. He mentally thought that Spirit could act instantly, of course, but his mental reservation counted for nothing for the time being. The heart must agree with the lips. Zoroaster said, “Taking the first step with good thought, the second step with good word, the third step with good deed, I enter Paradise.” If the thought and the word agree, we cannot help but enact good deeds. The lessons of Science lead you to absolute freedom from the results of the thoughts of the world, and from the material actions of the world.
Men may gather all the gold into a lump, and say you cannot have any, but by some way of the Spirit you will come out with more abundant riches than all the rest put together. They may hold arguments and try psychological processes to chain your mind or change it, but the Spirit will make a way with you to keep you free from all such attempts. You will elude every mental opposition as easily as you elude material things. Jesus came through their belief that he was dead.
Spirit does not need to go to school. It knows all things. If we speak and think from the Spirit, we are also wise without schools. The Spirit does not need commandments not to lie or steal. It is out of reach of commandments. The Spirit does not need to be told to be Good. It is above even goodness. The goodness that man deals with is badness under some circumstances. For instance, you can hate stealing so much that your goodness in not stealing is no virtue at all. It is a very subtle form of badness.
An old lady said she thought it very wrong to drink tea at church suppers. She did not drink tea, she hated it. Many people hate tobacco, until their hatred is far worse than chewing and smoking, for their own health and the happiness of their families. Sometimes people hate the wrongdoing of others so that they cannot possibly see their virtues. It makes an acid in the blood and eats up the strong gray particles of the brain. Hate is the premise we have to let fall entirely. Hate nothing. God sees everything good. What are we that other peoples’ actions are so bad in our eyes? When we have a notion to which we would like to tie all the world, we are tied to that notion. It is as much bondage to be tied to an idea as to a stake. Martin Luther believed in freedom from other people’s ideas, but he wanted to tie all the world to his ideas. In Science we do not get chained to a single statement. They are all good, but we do not drag ourselves around by any of them.
As you know, faith is good. Faith is the salvation of man. The idea that faith will save man is a good idea, but when Luther would not shake hands with Zwingle because he did not think faith would save a man, he needed an idea beyond the idea of faith. He needed love. He needed the idea of love as the greatest of all. He tied himself to the stake of an idea and would not go on to the mountain of love.
The twelve lessons of Science are all ideas. The ideas have living meanings. Luther’s idea of faith had a living meaning, which he never got at all. The living meaning of salvation by faith is that faith in the Good enables us to see Good everywhere and in everything. Faith is God. God is Mind. Mind is Good and Mind sees Good. Mind knows God. The mind that has not the living essence of its ideas is as dry as sticks. Zwingle did not believe in the doctrine of faith, so Luther wanted to lift him out of salvation. So, our ideas of God have kept us chained. God is free. He is the skill of the healer. God is the Spirit that works out the health of the sick. God is the skill of all things. All action has a skill about its action, and that skill is the moving Holy Spirit. God does not see the outer actions. God sees only the heart.
The springs of life are fed by the meanings of words. Some people do not quite feel the meanings of the words they use, but the use of the words, by and by, breaks their meanings out over the mind. Precious ointment was shut in the alabaster boxes. Striking the boxes broke them, and the precious ointment fell out. So, striking the right words together breaks them open, after awhile. It is the meanings of the words that go over the world like angels of mercy, changing all the thoughts of men. The higher the truths we tell, the finer and more precious their meaning. Breaking open the twelve lessons of Science, and receiving the ointment of the meanings, is getting at the actual teaching of Jesus Christ.
Looking at your state of mind, you will see how full you seem to be of heavy ideas. Your breath seems to have brought in anxieties. Now hardships meet you at every turn you think. The ancients advised people to breathe outward, to entirely empty their lungs of breath, and then draw in the breath with some affirmation of Good. Then, when they breathed out. ward again, they would only have a healing breath going through their bodies and affairs. The breath, they said, is vitally connected with our happiness.
You will sometimes find yourself praising and blessing your affairs for your prosperity, their life in God. You will find yourself consigning all your affairs into the hands of the Spirit, Whatsoever we do, we are not to lament, not to wail, not to mourn. There is nothing that will slice out of your feeling of power like grief. You cannot cry and heal at the same moment. Shakespeare said: “Grief, that’s beauty’s canker,” and judgment is beauty. People make the worst mistakes of their lives when they are wailing. All the time the Spirit sits in calm security — in perfect happiness.
When we are happy, through some accomplishment directly from the hand of our doctrine, we have the amethyst stone of character. We are in intelligence and peace. They together make happiness. All despondency, all melancholy, all depression of feeling, must be met by breathing in and out words of praise of the great realities of life. The spiritual nature of man is his reality. The reality is understanding. Understanding is formless, but it formulates. This is very metaphysical. Let me repeat it: “My understanding has no form, but it formulates me and my affairs. I have no affairs and no substance except what my understanding formulates.”
Now, those affairs formulated by pure understanding are not visible to my fleshly eyes, which see things imperfectly, since they are limited. This sight in itself is a fine piercing ray from my understanding. Let me give the right word, and that sight will extend to touch perfect objects. So with hearing. It is no good to limit my hearing by not giving my understanding its absolute sway with me. Understanding can radiate through us till our faculties touch things in an entirely different way from what they do now.
The more freedom we give our understanding, the more delight we have in life. Our understanding being set free, it feeds upon the great universal light. There is enough understanding in the universe for feeding our faculties forever. The step toward setting free our understanding of the world in which we live, and the understanding of ourselves at the same time, has been taken when the eleventh lesson of Science has been practised.
It is being set free from accusations of foolishness and ignorance. There is no acid in the mind that has no condemnation, either of itself or anybody else. It is the acid of thinking evil that makes the blood corrode, and the bones and skin and sinews to fail. It is possible to nullify all our strong feelings by some exactly opposite idea. If you find yourself thinking that somebody is entirely wrong in using material remedies when you know that the word of the Spirit is the only healer, let the idea fall out of your mind. It is the same with not using them. You will find you are free as God is free, if you depend upon nothing at all for your health. Your simple freedom is enough of a spread of the Truth.
Some find themselves having new diseases, new pains, new trouble every day. They can all be traced to the bondage of the mind, to some one idea or another. The Sunday affirmation of Science is good for such people. It is one you also must keep for Sunday. It is:
“While knowing all things and doing all things,
I am independent of all things.
I am absolutely free.”
This will take you out of the clutches of your old drugs. It will take you out of the clutches of your idea that it is wicked to use drugs. You will be free from the need of remedies bodily, and free from any idea of remedies mentally.
It is the same with old age. The word of the Spirit is eternal life. There is no old age in Spirit. The knowledge of this will set you free from the clutches of old age physically, and from the clutches of old age mentally. The same is true of riches. Outwardly you will be well provided for, then you will feel free. Mentally you will never think of coming to want. You will never get to imagining what you would do if you should come to want. This is real freedom.
We must get free from our ideas. God is freedom from ideas. God is the free substance that penetrates and pervades all things. If you are afraid to do anything because somebody might not like it, you are tied to their ideas. You must do as it is right to do because you are pleased with the right, or you have not learned the twelfth lesson of Science. You are not happy if you are not free.
You must begin the description of the perfection of the world in which you live. You are glad that the free Spirit is flowing through the airs. Tell it you are glad. You are glad there is a way to speak to the Spirit to bring it into your being. Tell it you are glad. You think your neighbor is a beautiful soul. Tell her soul, mentally that you are glad it is so beautiful. The skies are lovely. Their loveliness is spiritual. Tell their loveliness how glad you are that it is visible to you. The stars resting on their black beds are wonderful. Their wonderfulness is spiritual. Tell them how glad you are that it is visible to you. The deep night, half towards morning, is stately peace.
Though you stand on bare sand, there is Mind whispering rich secrets. You do not need to be lonesome. Jesus Christ is whispering every instant some wonderful message into your ear. It would be a good plan for you to listen to the Voice of the Spirit. No matter if you are riding in the street cars you can be listening to what the free Spirit is speaking, as plainly to you through the earthquake as through the stillness. Only we do not think we can listen to a voice within a sound as well as to a voice within stillness.
There is a chance for the most unhappy person among you to breathe out your unhappiness and breathe in descriptions of the things you are glad about, till you hear the finer voice of nature, till you see the finer side of all things. You get above the ideas of your world. You are free from them. You get above even the idea of freedom. You see, the idea of freedom takes with it the idea of bondage of some kind. So you are neither free nor bound. You are not on that plane. You do not talk about riches, for that idea conveys the idea of poverty. You are neither rich nor poor. You do not live on that plane. You do not say you have dominion over all things, because the idea of dominion is the same as the idea that somebody is inferior in some way. You are neither inferior nor superior. You do not live on that plane. The Spirit never gets caught on any of those hooks. It is not inferior to your understanding, nor superior to it. The Spirit is one with your understanding. So the Spirit has no dominion over you. It is one with you. You do not talk of destroying your temper. You have no temper to destroy. You do not talk of getting free from poverty. You have no poverty to get free from.
This is the effect of using the twelfth statement of Science. You sometimes hear Scientists make these statements and they sound dangerous. They only show that they are thinking just as the twelfth lesson led them. Every Saturday afternoon you ought to have a special proclamation. If you have a good realization of the meaning of what you say that afternoon, you will keep free from complaining about your disappointments or troubles, even within your own mind. Why should you tie your mind to a stake and swing back and forth like a rag in the wind? If you tie your mind to a single idea, you will miss the twelfth lesson. There have been many people who have missed the twelfth lesson, because they have stopped to whine and to wail. They tied themselves to an idea that they did not like one thing, and howled all night long over it. Of course, these cases came for a sixth treatment and said they were not cured. Of course the same old affair faced them again for the sixth time.
You must not tie to an idea of anything being bad. If we speak of it, let us quickly give the twelfth lesson law to our mind. That is, we say nothing more about it. We think nothing more about it. We ignore it utterly and talk about something we like. We think about the true premise we have taken, whereby we propose to think that, if evil is not a reality, we do not mean to deal with it.
Now, whatever proposition you have made up your mind to, can you not stick to it? Of all things, if it is true that there is a substance of delight called Mind, within ourselves, and we can make whatever thought we please by thinking that way, we shall be very silly indeed if we do not choose a noble thought about ourselves, instead of an ignoble one. It is a noble thought to say:
“I am satisfied with the world in which I walk. All things please me. Near me is the presence of Good and afar off is the Good. You are all creations of the living God, perfect, harmonious, satisfying.”
You will find this is a good idea with which to work out your happiness. Having your mind filled with this idea, you cannot have another idea in it. This idea results in happiness.
It is the one to take when you feel like comparing your lot in life with what you wanted it to be.
It radiates your work with the green of the amethyst stone. It will gladden your home with the yellow sunshine of the topaz stone. It will make peace and harmony among your friends, like the sapphire blue of heaven. It will redden your business with the ruby wine of prosperity.
It is what was so gloriously demonstrated by Peter and John. They sang with great songs of joy, when they might have wailed because they were in prison. If you will notice people, you will see that they can hardly be made to laugh and sing when they contrast their lot, as it seems, with what they wanted it to be. People say they would be satisfied if they had this, or that, or the other. No such thing! If they mourn now, they would find something to mourn about then. Happiness is something that must come from the mind within, being fed and renewed by the Truth of life. Nothing but Truth will satisfy the mind. Complaining kept the Israelites of old from large inheritance. “They provoked the Lord with their complainings.”
The pleasant, happy mind is a health-giver, without trying to be. It knows its value in the world.
It does not heal without knowing what it is that heals. Jesus perceived when He was healing people who were behind Him. It is intelligence. Nobody is so wise as that man or woman who has refused the temptation to complain, and has, in his mind, spoken the twelfth lesson of Science. The meeting of melancholy with this statement is the best mixture for happiness that can be stirred up.
If your case comes the sixth time, tell him that you rejoice that he is giving the free Spirit unrestrained freedom through him. Knock at all twelve gates of his being through which he ought to be a shouting healthy life. Say to the case that claims to be cured the same treatment as to the case that seems to hang on, because you have felt hurt or grieved or have forgotten or neglected to give the right thoughts that would have made you an intelligent healer. This latter case should have the same treatment as the one that has been cured. It is the time for you to give thanks to God, and call out loudly to the true state of affairs to come into your sight. The cured case is easily told mentally that you rejoice in his health as God. The case that you are finding fault with and so keep on the sick list, does not seem so easy, but if you have made it hard you must soften it.
I might truthfully say that the case which comes the sixth time for cure is the outshowing of your disposition. A good disposition through and through is a happy disposition, and a happy disposition will cure anything. A happy disposition, mixed with scientific words, makes a quick understanding of how to speak mentally to a sick or unhappy being, and bring him instantly out into the right state. A good disposition, mixed with these lessons of Science, will make a perfect memory. A good disposition mixed with thoughts of the truths of life, put forth while you are alone each day, will make you very good and quick at speaking and writing the Science.
If your disposition is bad, or seems so to yourself or friends, the repetition of the twelfth premise in Science will make it good. Another thing, you will be able to quickly see if a man’s disposition stands in the way of his health. A lady who had trained her disposition to be smiling and cheerful had been treating a patient, who believed in sore eyes, for a long time. One day, she spoke mentally, very impetuously: “You, as Spirit, have no bad temper.” The next day the patient came, all cured.
That practitioner said she would sometimes be six weeks treating a case and not stir it; then, she would suddenly say, mentally: “You never could, as a spiritual being, feel dissatisfied with your son.” Or, she would say: “You, as Spirit, can say that you, as spirit, cannot be unjust with anybody.” These sudden thoughts she said, seemed to cut a tough thread that was holding the patient’s mind from thinking of health. These little cuts at the strings that hold a case in pain or sickness are what come from your mind as naturally as seed comes up into corn and wheat. No teacher can tell what to say in particular to a case. They can only give the general treatment. The general treatment leads up to the particular one. There is a verse that has helped a great many people into good courage. It is this:
“He who hath led me to this way,
Still on the way will show.
He who hath taught me of this way,
Still more will make me know.”
It means that if God, in His infinite kindness and mercy, has put this Science before us, and led us into it, He will see that we go on to its end. It is as with David when he was taken from the sheep-cote, from following after sheep, and put into the king’s palace. God elected him and fitted him for this place. So, if you have chosen to learn the Science, chosen to practice it, God, the Infinite Mind, will give you strength and fitness to fulfill each task set before you. Sometimes you will seem to be in great trouble, but you will never go under. Calamity will never overtake you. Probably the most prominent practitioners have had the very hardest troubles to encounter, but they never go under. They are always lifted safely over. A ship on the ocean dips low, and rides high. So you are built, if you have these lessons in your mind. They have gone out, like angels, to prepare your way for you. They have taken deep, eternal hold on your mind and body. Jesus said, “Fear not, little flock,” and so I say to you, be faithful to the lessons. Be faithful to this last lesson, which goes down into your deep nature, and takes hold of your disposition to make it divine.
If a case comes cured the sixth day, it is a sure signal that you have gained a victory over your disposition. You have won the amethyst stone. A very simple, trusting practitioner who had entirely given her life to the spiritual doctrine, had an amethyst given her. She took it as a signal that she had been victorious over her disposition. She thought, to herself, “It is a sign that, when I wanted to complain, I promptly spoke the last treatment of Science.” She had a topaz given to her. She took it as a sign that she had put cheerful, buoyant words out into her affairs, when they troubled her. “The outward conditions are so dependent on my thoughts,” she said, “that I feel as if there were sermons in brooks and books in stones, telling me how I am getting on.”
One teacher used to talk to herself first, as a newly born, perfect child of the Spirit; as she was when one year old, then two years old. She told the little thing what a miracle of God would be wrought for her some day. Then, when she came to the year of her age, according to the world’s reckoning, she would pronounce the whole miracle already wrought. She felt that it was very important that she be every whit whole in her mind, if she was to teach Science.
No matter what that patient of yours would say to you personally, if you were to see him or her now, you may give him the sixth treatment, which is the last lesson of Science. You will be faithful in giving it to your world every Saturday afternoon, and you will treat every case, no matter how it seems, to this teaching, if it comes the sixth time. Follow me. I will speak to that one who used to believe in disease:
You are a perfect creation of the living God, spiritual, harmonious, fearless, free. You reflect all the universe of Good.
From every direction, everywhere, come words of Truth, making you know that you are free, wise, and happy. You are satisfied with the world in which you live.
You show forth to the world health, wisdom, peace. You show to me perfect health in every part of your being.
You are fearless, free, strong, wise, and able to do everything that belongs to you to do each day. God works through you to will and to do that which ought to be done by you.
You are a living demonstration of the power of Truth to set free into health and strength for living service to the world.
You acknowledge to the world that you are every whit whole.
You acknowledge to yourself, and to me that you are well and strong and alive through and through.
God is your life, health, strength, and support forever. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I pronounce you well and strong.
As God saw the works of His hands Good, so I see you Good.
All is Good. Amen.