of all being: the many represents the universe with all its varying forms of apparent being, none of which have any real existence apart from the one from which they are derived. They do, however, in various ways, portray the one, and in them alone can He be understood: for the One, the self-existent, the source of all that really is, is a living Person. In His absolute nature and being He is unknowable by man (or any of the many) but He is relatively knowable so far as He is revealed through the medium of the universe which derives its existence from Him and in some measure reflects His nature and attributes. Such relative knowledge as is in this way attainable shows Him to be without origin, the cause of all that is, also spiritual and eternal, and above all else absolutely good. His very essence is love. "From this ethical conception, which is at the back of all his theology, Origen argues that He (God) must impart Himself. Love cannot be thought of except as giving. Goodness desires that all shall share in the highest knowledge. And so there must be some medium, some channel by which he effects the revelation of Himself. As the required organ He chose the Logos. It is for the very purpose of revealing God that the Logos exists, and for this reason he has a personal subsistence side by side with the Father, and must be (if he is to reveal Him truly) as regards his being, of one essence with God. He must be, in his own being, God, and not only as sharing in the being of God. He is thus, as being the perfect image of God, the reason and wisdom of God, himself too, really God. "His generation as Son is effected as the will proceeds from the Mind as the brilliance from the light, eternal and everlasting. It cannot be said that there was any time when the Son was not. No beginning of this generation can be conceived-it is a continuous eternal process." This definition of the Christ, according to Origen, is one to which Mrs. Eddy's concept is closely allied. She makes a distinction, however (as Arius did not), between the divine, eternal Christ, and the human Jesus. In her Message for 1901 (pages 8 and 9), she writes: "CHRIST IS ONE AND DIVINE. Again I reiterate this cardinal point: There is but one Christ, and Christ is divine-the Holy Ghost, or spiritual idea of the divine Principle, Love. Is this scientific statement more transcendental than the belief of our brethren, who regard Jesus as God and the Holy Ghost as the third person in the Godhead? When Jesus said, 'I and my Father are one,' and 'My Father is greater than I,' this was said in the sense that one ray of light is light, and it is one with light, but it is not the full-orbed sun. Therefore we have the authority of Jesus for saying Christ is not God, but an impartation of Him. . . "The Christ was Jesus' spiritual selfhood; therefore Christ existed prior to Jesus, who said, 'Before Abraham was, I am.' Jesus, the only immaculate, was born of a virgin mother, and Christian Science explains that mystic saying of the Master as to his dual personality, or the spiritual and material Christ Jesus, called in Scripture the Son of God and the Son of manexplains it as referring to his eternal spiritual selfhood and his temporal manhood. Christian Science shows clearly that God is the only generating or regenerating power." The Jew has for centuries been prevented from accepting Christ because he has feared that he would lose his clear concept of the oneness of God. Christian Science preserves the oneness of God intact, and defines Christ the image and likeness of God as the forever Son of God, as creation reflecting or expressing the Creator, coexistent and coeternal with God but never the Principle, always the idea, the emanation of Principle. The modern query is not so much concerning the nature of the image and likeness of God, but as to how Jesus could be manifested in the flesh without a human father. Physical science proclaims the utter incredulity of the proposition that life can come about in any other way but by the way of material law. On this subject the faith of the seventeenth century was beginning to wax dim, and it almost entirely flickered out in the eighteenth, giving place to the darkness of infidelity and atheism. When Christian Science came in the nineteenth century, it restored law to its rightful classification in the realm of Spirit. Many theologians eagerly caught gleams of the new light and gratefully acknowledged that there might indeed be higher, more sovereign laws which could entirely dominate the material, so that the human, looking upward, could perceive the divine order, receive the rays of eternal Truth, and express this fuller understanding in improved human conditions. But this progression was not taking place in 1718, the year in which our author was vindicating himself against the self-satisfied followers of ancient creeds. He and his flock were only pilgrims, disquieted with the sleep of the centuries, and ready to set out on a spiritual journey in quest of the truth. The Bible was their chart. They were willing to walk by faith in the inspired word when sight was denied. Yet Reason dogging their steps soon demanded proof as well as faith, and proof that satisfied became ever increasingly difficult to find. How wisely has Mrs. Eddy written in Science and Health, (page 325): "When spiritual being is understood in all its perfection, continuity, and might, then shall man be found in God's image. . . . The time cometh when the spiritual origin of man, the divine Science which ushered Jesus into human presence, will be understood and demonstrated." This does not mean that another virgin birth is necessary or to be expected. It means rather that through the more spiritual origin of Jesus, and His precious life and teaching, we are now able to perceive that the Adam-dream is the myth of evil's creation, the lie about the truth, and-as Mrs. Eddy states: "this revelation will . . . usher in Science and the glorious fact of creation, that both man and woman proceed from God and are His eternal children, belonging to no lesser parent." (Science and Health, p. 529.) This discernment is prophesied by St. Paul when he says: "Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." Eph. 4:13. To the human mind, weary with reasoning round and round in a circle of doctrinal definitions in which matter and spirit are mixed with pantheistic confusion, these words bring the balm of clear vision, an unutterable peace. B CHAPTER XXIII THE SPIRITUAL SECRET OF METHODISM ETWEEN genuine liberty of conscience and liberty to criticize and condemn the conscience of others, there is a great gulf fixed, and into this gulf it would appear that the Puritan revival of Cromwell's day had fallen pell mell, where it lay argumentative but supine, at the opening of the eighteenth century. Sectarian bitterness had crushed out spiritual joy, and punishments occupied the place of blessings. Christians, instead of looking for God's image to be revived in their fellows, had concentrated on perceiving the sins and excesses of the carnal mind, Adam condemning Adam, but they could not by this means bring in one ray of reform or regeneration. The Calvinistic doctrines of predestination and damnation increasingly obtained among Nonconforming bodies, and shed a gloom over evangelical religion, while the Church had become formal and worldly and merely a means of livelihood for the younger sons of the nobility. We feel the dull stupor of the century steal over us as we attempt to delve into its literature. If we open, let us say, Volume V of Dr. Jortin's Sermons, and wish to ascertain this Archdeacon's opinion on Exodus 20, verse 7, we shall read: "In order to explain this law, and to give you right notions of it, it will be proper to consider, I. What is directly forbidden in the commandment: |
