{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_35081/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_35081","id":"gutenberg_35081","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35081","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Health & Medicine","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Christian Science","Christianity"],"text":"</pre>\n\n\n\nProduced by Gerard Arthus and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n  THE\n\n  PEOPLE'S IDEA OF GOD\n\n  ITS EFFECT ON\n\n  HEALTH AND CHRISTIANITY\n\n  BY\n\n  MARY BAKER EDDY\n\n  AUTHOR OF SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES\n\n  A SERMON DELIVERED AT BOSTON\n\n  Published by\n  The Christian Science Publishing Society\n  FOR THE TRUSTEES UNDER THE WILL OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY\n  BOSTON, U.S.A.\n\n\n\n\n  Authorized Literature of\n  THE FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST\n  in Boston, Massachusetts\n\n\n  _Copyright, 1886, 1908_\n  BY MARY BAKER G. EDDY\n\n  _Copyright renewed, 1914_\n\n  _All rights reserved_\n\n\n\n\nSERMON\n\nSUBJECT\n\nTHE PEOPLE'S IDEA OF GOD\n\nTEXT: _One Lord, one faith, one baptism._--EPHESIANS iv. 5.\n\n\nEvery step of progress is a step more spiritual. The great element of\nreform is not born of human wisdom; it draws not its life from human\norganizations; rather is it the crumbling away of material elements\nfrom reason, the translation of law back to its original\nlanguage,--Mind, and the final unity between man and God. The\nfootsteps of thought, as they pass from the sensual side of existence\nto the reality and Soul of all things, are slow, portending a long\nnight to the traveller; but the guardians of the gloom are the angels\nof His presence, that impart grandeur to the intellectual wrestling\nand collisions with old-time faiths, as we drift into more spiritual\nlatitudes. The beatings of our heart can be heard; but the ceaseless\nthrobbings and throes of thought are unheard, as it changes from\nmaterial to spiritual standpoints. Even the pangs of death disappear,\naccordingly as the understanding that we are spiritual beings here\nreappears, and we learn our capabilities for good, which insures\nman's continuance and is the true glory of immortality.\n\nThe improved theory and practice of religion and of medicine are\nmainly due to the people's improved views of the Supreme Being. As the\nfinite sense of Deity, based on material conceptions of spiritual\nbeing, yields its grosser elements, we shall learn what God is, and\nwhat God does. The Hebrew term that gives another letter to the word\n_God_ and makes it _good_, unites Science and Christianity, whereby we\nlearn that God, good, is universal, and the divine Principle,--Life,\nTruth, Love; and this Principle is learned through goodness, and of\nMind instead of matter, of Soul instead of the senses, and by\nrevelation supporting reason. It is the false conceptions of Spirit,\nbased on the evidences gained from the material senses, that make a\nChristian only in theory, shockingly material in practice, and form\nits Deity out of the worst human qualities, else of wood or stone.\n\nSuch a theory has overturned empires in demoniacal contests over\nreligion. Proportionately as the people's belief of God, in every age,\nhas been dematerialized and unfinited has their Deity become good; no\nlonger a personal tyrant or a molten image, but the divine Life,\nTruth, and Love,--Life without beginning or ending, Truth without a\nlapse or error, and Love universal, infinite, eternal. This more\nperfect idea, held constantly before the people's mind, must have a\nbenign and elevating influence upon the character of nations as well\nas individuals, and will lift man ultimately to the understanding\nthat our ideals form our characters, that as a man \"thinketh in his\nheart, so is he.\" The crudest ideals of speculative theology have made\nmonsters of men; and the ideals of _materia medica_ have made helpless\ninvalids and cripples. The eternal roasting amidst noxious vapors; the\nelection of the minority to be saved and the majority to be eternally\npunished; the wrath of God, to be appeased by the sacrifice and\ntorture of His favorite Son,--are some of the false beliefs that have\nproduced sin, sickness, and death; and then would affirm that these\nare natural, and that Christianity and Christ-healing are\npreternatural; yea, that make a mysterious God and a natural devil.\n\nLet us rejoice that the bow of omnipotence already spans the moral\nheavens with light, and that the more spiritual idea of good and Truth\nmeets the old material thought like a promise upon the cloud, while it\ninscribes on the thoughts of men at this period a more metaphysical\nreligion founded upon Christian Science. A personal God is based on\nfinite premises, where thought begins wrongly to apprehend the\ninfinite, even the quality or the quantity of eternal good. This\nlimited sense of God as good limits human thought and action in their\ngoodness, and assigns them mortal fetters in the outset. It has\nimplanted in our religions certain unspiritual shifts, such as\ndependence on personal pardon for salvation, rather than obedience to\nour Father's demands, whereby we grow out of sin in the way that our\nLord has appointed; namely, by working out our own salvation. It has\ngiven to all systems of _materia medica_ nothing but materialism,--more\nfaith in hygiene and drugs than in God. Idolatry sprang from the belief\nthat God is a form, more than an infinite and divine Mind; sin,\nsickness, and death originated in the belief that Spirit materialized\ninto a body, infinity became finity, or man, and the eternal entered\nthe temporal. Mythology, or the myth of ologies, said that Life, which\nis infinite and eternal, could enter finite man through his nostrils,\nand matter become intelligent of good and evil, because a serpent said\nit. When first good, God, was named a person, and evil another person,\nthe error that a personal God and a personal devil entered into\npartnership and would form a third person, called material man,\nobtained expression. But these unspiritual and mysterious ideas of God\nand man are far from correct.\n\nThe glorious Godhead is Life, Truth, and Love, and these three terms\nfor one divine Principle are the three in one that can be understood,\nand that find no reflection in sinning, sick, and dying mortals. No\nmiracle of grace can make a spiritual mind out of beliefs that are as\nmaterial as the heathen deities. The pagan priests appointed Apollo\nand Esculapius the gods of medicine, and they inquired of these\nheathen deities what drugs to prescribe. Systems of religion and of\nmedicine grown out of such false ideals of the Supreme Being cannot\nheal the sick and cast out devils, error. Eschewing a materialistic\nand idolatrous theory and practice of medicine and religion, the\napostle devoutly recommends the more spiritual Christianity,--\"one\nLord, one faith, one baptism.\" The prophets and apostles, whose lives\nare the embodiment of a living faith, have not taken away our Lord,\nthat we know not where they have laid him; they have resurrected a\ndeathless life of love; and into the cold materialisms of dogma and\ndoctrine we look in vain for their more spiritual ideal, the risen\nChrist, whose _materia medica_ and theology were one.\n\nThe ideals of primitive Christianity are nigh, even at our door. Truth\nis not lost in the mists of remoteness or the barbarisms of spiritless\ncodes. The right ideal is not buried, but has risen higher to our\nmortal sense, and having overcome death and the grave, wrapped in a\npure winding-sheet, it sitteth beside the sepulchre in angel form,\nsaying unto us, \"Life is God; and our ideal of God has risen above the\nsod to declare His omnipotence.\" This white-robed thought points away\nfrom matter and doctrine, or dogma, to the diviner sense of Life and\nLove,--yea, to the Principle that is God, and to the demonstration\nthereof in healing the sick. Let us then heed this heavenly visitant,\nand not entertain the angel unawares.\n\nThe ego is not self-existent matter animated by mind, but in itself is\nmind; therefore a Truth-filled mind makes a pure Christianity and a\nhealthy mind and body. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, in a lecture before\nthe Harvard Medical School: \"I firmly believe that if the whole\n_materia medica_ could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be\nall the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes.\" Dr.\nBenjamin Waterhouse writes: \"I am sick of learned quackery.\" Dr.\nAbercrombie, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh,\nwrites: \"Medicine is the science of guessing.\" Dr. James Johnson,\nSurgeon Extraordinary to the King, says: \"I declare my conscientious\nbelief, founded on long observation and reflection, that if there was\nnot a single physician, surgeon, apothecary, man-midwife, chemist,\ndruggist, or drug on the face of the earth, there would be less\nsickness and less mortality than now obtains.\" Voltaire says: \"The art\nof medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the\ndisease.\"\n\nBelieving that man is the victim of his Maker, we naturally fear God\nmore than we love Him; whereas \"perfect Love casteth out fear;\" but\nwhen we learn God aright, we love Him, because He is found altogether\nlovely. Thus it is that a more spiritual and true ideal of Deity\nimproves the race physically and spiritually. God is no longer a\nmystery to the Christian Scientist, but a divine Principle, understood\nin part, because the grand realities of Life and Truth are found\ndestroying sin, sickness, and death; and it should no longer be deemed\ntreason to understand God, when the Scriptures enjoin us to \"acquaint\nnow thyself with Him [God], and be at peace;\" we should understand\nsomething of that great good for which we are to leave all else.\n\nPeriods and peoples are characterized by their highest or their\nlowest ideals, by their God and their devil. We are all sculptors,\nworking out our own ideals, and leaving the impress of mind on the\nbody as well as on history and marble, chiselling to higher\nexcellence, or leaving to rot and ruin the mind's ideals. Recognizing\nthis as we ought, we shall turn often from marble to model, from\nmatter to Mind, to beautify and exalt our lives.\n\n    \"Chisel in hand stood a sculptor-boy,\n      With his marble block before him;\n    And his face lit up with a smile of joy\n      As an angel dream passed o'er him.\n    He carved the dream on that shapeless stone\n      With many a sharp incision.\n    With heaven's own light the sculptor shone,--\n      He had caught the angel-vision.\n\n    \"Sculptors of life are we as we stand\n      With our lives uncarved before us,\n    Waiting the hour when at God's command\n      Our life dream passes o'er us.\n    If we carve it then on the yielding stone\n      With many a sharp incision,\n    Its heavenly beauty shall be our own,--\n      Our lives that angel-vision.\"\n\nTo remove those objects of sense called sickness and disease, we must\nappeal to mind to improve its subjects and objects of thought, and\ngive to the body those better delineations. Scientific discovery and\nthe inspiration of Truth have taught me that the health and character\nof man become more or less perfect as his mind-models are more or less\nspiritual. Because God is Spirit, our thoughts must spiritualize to\napproach Him, and our methods grow more spiritual to accord with our\nthoughts. Religion and medicine must be dematerialized to present the\nright idea of Truth; then will this idea cast out error and heal the\nsick. If changeableness that repenteth itself; partiality that elects\nsome to be saved and others to be lost, or that answers the prayer of\none and not of another; if incompetency that cannot heal the sick, or\nlack of love that will not; if unmercifulness, that for the sins of a\nfew tired years punishes man eternally,--are our conceptions of Deity,\nwe shall bring out these qualities of character in our own lives and\nextend their influence to others.\n\nJudaism, enjoining the limited and definite form of a national\nreligion, was not more the antithesis of Christianity than are our\nfinite and material conceptions of Deity. Life is God; but we say that\nLife is carried on through principal processes, and speculate\nconcerning material forces. Mind is supreme; and yet we make more of\nmatter, and lean upon it for health and life. Mind, that governs the\nuniverse, governs every action of the body as directly as it moves a\nplanet and controls the muscles of the arm. God grant that the\ntrembling chords of human hope shall again be swept by the divine\n_Talitha cumi_, \"Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.\" Then shall Christian\nScience again appear, to light our sepulchres with immortality. We\nthank our Father that to-day the uncremated fossils of material\nsystems, already charred, are fast fading into ashes; and that man\nwill ere long stop trusting where there is no trust, and gorging his\nfaith with skill proved a million times unskilful.\n\nChristian Science has one faith, one Lord, one baptism; and this faith\nbuilds on Spirit, not matter; and this baptism is the purification of\nmind,--not an ablution of the body, but tears of repentance, an\noverflowing love, washing away the motives for sin; yea, it is love\nleaving self for God. The cool bath may refresh the body, or as\ncompliance with a religious rite may declare one's belief; but it\ncannot purify his mind, or meet the demands of Love. It is the baptism\nof Spirit that washes our robes and makes them white in the blood of\nthe Lamb; that bathes us in the life of Truth and the truth of Life.\nHaving one Lord, we shall not be idolaters, dividing our homage and\nobedience between matter and Spirit; but shall work out our own\nsalvation, after the model of our Father, who never pardons the sin\nthat deserves to be punished and can be destroyed only through\nsuffering.\n\nWe ask and receive not, because we \"ask amiss;\" even dare to invoke\nthe divine aid of Spirit to heal the sick, and then administer drugs\nwith full confidence in their efficacy, showing our greater faith in\nmatter, despite the authority of Jesus that \"ye cannot serve two\nmasters.\"\n\nSilent prayer is a desire, fervent, importunate: here metaphysics is\nseen to rise above physics, and rest all faith in Spirit, and remove\nall evidence of any other power than Mind; whereby we learn the great\nfact that there is no omnipotence, unless omnipotence is the\n_All_-power. This truth of Deity, understood, destroys discord with\nthe higher and more potent evidences in Christian Science of man's\nharmony and immortality. Thought is the essence of an act, and the\nstronger element of action; even as steam is more powerful than water,\nsimply because it is more ethereal. Essences are refinements that lose\nsome materiality; and as we struggle through the cold night of\nphysics, matter will become vague, and melt into nothing under the\nmicroscope of Mind.\n\nMassachusetts succored a fugitive slave in 1853, and put her humane\nfoot on a tyrannical prohibitory law regulating the practice of\nmedicine in 1880. It were well if the sister States had followed her\nexample and sustained as nobly our constitutional Bill of Rights.\nDiscerning the God-given rights of man, Paul said, \"I was free born.\"\nJustice and truth make man free, injustice and error enslave him.\nMental Science alone grasps the standard of liberty, and battles for\nman's whole rights, divine as well as human. It assures us, of a\nverity, that mortal beliefs, and not a law of nature, have made men\nsinning and sick,--that they alone have fettered free limbs, and\nmarred in mind the model of man.\n\nWe possess our own body, and make it harmonious or discordant\naccording to the images that thought reflects upon it. The\nemancipation of our bodies from sickness will follow the mind's\nfreedom from sin; and, as St. Paul admonishes, we should be \"waiting\nfor the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.\" The rights of\nman were vindicated but in a single instance when African slavery was\nabolished on this continent, yet that hour was a prophecy of the full\nliberty of the sons of God as found in Christian Science. The\ndefenders of the rights of the colored man were scarcely done with\ntheir battles before a new abolitionist struck the keynote of higher\nclaims, in which it was found that the feeblest mind, enlightened and\nspiritualized, can free its body from disease as well as sin; and this\nvictory is achieved, not with bayonet and blood, not by inhuman\nwarfare, but in divine peace.\n\nAbove the platform of human rights let us build another staging for\ndiviner claims,--even the supremacy of Soul over sense, wherein man\ncooperates with and is made subject to his Maker. The lame, the blind,\nthe sick, the sensual, are slaves, and their fetters are gnawing away\nlife and hope; their chains are clasped by the false teachings, false\ntheories, false fears, that enforce new forms of oppression, and are\nthe modern Pharaohs that hold the children of Israel still in bondage.\nMortals, _alias_ mortal minds, make the laws that govern their bodies,\nas directly as men pass legislative acts and enact penal codes; while\nthe body, obedient to the legislation of mind, but ignorant of the law\nof belief, calls its own enactments \"laws of matter.\" The legislators\nwho are greatly responsible for all the woes of mankind are those\nleaders of public thought who are mistaken in their methods of\nhumanity.\n\nThe learned quacks of this period \"bind heavy burdens,\" that they\nthemselves will not touch \"with one of their fingers.\" Scientific\nguessing conspires unwittingly against the liberty and lives of men.\nShould we but hearken to the higher law of God, we should think for\none moment of these divine statutes of God: Let them have \"dominion\nover all the earth.\" \"And if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not\nhurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.\"\nThe only law of sickness or death is a law of mortal belief, and\ninfringement on the merciful and just government of God. When this\ngreat fact is understood, the spurious, imaginary laws of matter--when\nmatter is not a lawgiver--will be disputed and trampled under the feet\nof Truth. Deal, then, with this fabulous law as with an inhuman State\nlaw; repeal it in mind, and acknowledge only God in all thy\nways,--\"who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy\ndiseases.\" Few there be who know what a power mind is to heal when\nimbued with the spiritual truth that lifts man above the demands of\nmatter.\n\nAs our ideas of Deity advance to truer conceptions, we shall take in\nthe remaining two thirds of God's plan of redemption,--namely, man's\nsalvation from sickness and death. Our blessed Master demonstrated\nthis great truth of healing the sick and raising the dead as God's\nwhole plan, and proved the application of its Principle to human\nwants. Having faith in drugs and hygienic drills, we lose faith in\nomnipotence, and give the healing power to matter instead of Spirit.\nAs if Deity would not if He could, or could not if He would, give\nhealth to man; when our Father bestows heaven not more willingly than\nhealth; for without health there could be no heaven.\n\nThe worshippers of wood and stone have a more material deity, hence a\nlower order of humanity, than those who believe that God is a personal\nSpirit. But the worshippers of a person have a lower order of\nChristianity than he who understands that the Divine Being is more\nthan a person, and can demonstrate in part this great impersonal Life,\nTruth, and Love, casting out error and healing the sick. This\nall-important understanding is gained in Christian Science, revealing\nthe one God and His all-power and ever-presence, and the brotherhood\nof man in unity of Mind and oneness of Principle.\n\nOn the startled ear of humanity rings out the iron tread of merciless\ninvaders, putting man to the rack for his conscience, or forcing from\nthe lips of manhood shameful confessions,--Galileo kneeling at the\nfeet of priestcraft, and giving the lie to science. But the lofty\nfaith of the pious Polycarp proved the triumph of mind over the body,\nwhen they threatened to let loose the wild beasts upon him, and he\nreplied: \"Let them come; I cannot change at once from good to bad.\"\nThen they bound him to the stake, set fire to the fagots, and his pure\nfaith went up through the baptism of fire to a higher sense of Life.\nThe infidel was blind who said, \"Christianity is fit only for women\nand weak-minded men.\" But infidels disagree; for Bonaparte said:\n\"Since ever the history of Christianity was written, the loftiest\nintellects have had a practical faith in God;\" and Daniel Webster\nsaid: \"My heart has assured and reassured me that Christianity must be\na divine reality.\"\n\nAs our ideas of Deity become more spiritual, we express them by\nobjects more beautiful. To-day we clothe our thoughts of death with\nflowers laid upon the bier, and in our cemeteries with amaranth\nblossoms, evergreen leaves, fragrant recesses, cool grottos, smiling\nfountains, and white monuments. The dismal gray stones of church-yards\nhave crumbled into decay, as our ideas of Life have grown more\nspiritual; and in place of \"bat and owl on the bending stones, are\nwreaths of immortelles, and white fingers pointing upward.\" Thus it is\nthat our ideas of divinity form our models of humanity. O Christian\nScientist, thou of the church of the new-born; awake to a higher and\nholier love for God and man; put on the whole armor of Truth; rejoice\nin hope; be patient in tribulation,--that ye may go to the bed of\nanguish, and look upon this dream of life in matter, girt with a\nhigher sense of omnipotence; and behold once again the power of divine\nLife and Love to heal and reinstate man in God's own image and\nlikeness, having \"one Lord, one faith, one baptism.\"\n\n\n\n\nThe University Press, Cambridge, U.S.A.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<pre id=\"pg-footer\">","title":"The People's Idea of God: Its Effect On Health And Christianity","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":3632}