d _shadow_. Soul I denominated _substance_, because Soul
alone is truly substantial. God I characterized as individual entity, but
His corporeality I denied. The real I claimed as eternal; and its
antipodes, or the temporal, I described as unreal. Spirit I called the
_reality_; and matter, the _unreality_.
I knew the human conception of God to be that He was a physically personal
being, like unto man; and that the five physical senses are so many
witnesses to the physical personality of mind and the real existence of
matter; but I learned that these material senses testify falsely, that
matter neither sees, hears, nor feels Spirit, and is therefore inadequate
to form any proper conception of the infinite Mind. "If I bear witness of
myself, my witness is not true." (John v. 31.)
I beheld with ineffable awe our great Master's purpose in not questioning
those he healed as to their disease or its symptoms, and his marvellous
skill in demanding neither obedience to hygienic laws, nor prescribing
drugs to support the divine power which heals. Adoringly I discerned the
Principle of his holy heroism and Christian example on the cross, when he
refused to drink the "vinegar and gall," a preparation of poppy, or
aconite, to allay the tortures of crucifixion.
Our great Way-shower, steadfast to the end in his obedience to God's laws,
demonstrated for all time and peoples the supremacy of good over evil, and
the superiority of Spirit over matter.
The miracles recorded in the Bible, which had before seemed to me
supernatural, grew divinely natural and apprehensible; though uninspired
interpreters ignorantly pronounce Christ's healing miraculous, instead of
seeing therein the operation of the divine law.
Jesus of Nazareth was a natural and divine Scientist. He was so before the
material world saw him. He who antedated Abraham, and gave the world a new
date in the Christian era, was a Christian Scientist, who needed no
discovery of the Science of being in order to rebuke the evidence. To one
"born of the flesh," however, divine Science must be a discovery. Woman
must give it birth. It must be begotten of spirituality, since none but the
pure in heart can see God,--the Principle of all things pure; and none but
the "poor in spirit" could first state this Principle, could know yet more
of the nothingness of matter and the allness of Spirit, could utilize
Truth, and absolutely reduce the demonstration of being, in Science, to the
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