and all--Christ Jesus came to save men,
through ever-present and eternal good.

Mortal man is a kingdom divided against itself. With the same breath he
articulates truth and error. We say that God is All, and there is none
beside Him, and then talk of sin and sinners as real. We call God
omnipotent and omnipresent, and then conjure up, from the dark abyss of
nothingness, a powerful presence named _evil_. We say that harmony is real,
and inharmony is its opposite, and therefore unreal; yet we descant upon
sickness, sin, and death as realities.

With the tongue "bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men,
who are made after the similitude [human concept] of God. Out of the same
mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not
so to be." (James iii. 9, 10.) Mortals are free moral agents, to choose
whom they would serve. If God, then let them serve Him, and He will be unto
them All-in-all.

If God is ever present, He is neither absent from Himself nor from the
universe. Without Him, the universe would disappear, and space, substance,
and immortality be lost. St. Paul says, "And if Christ be not raised, your
faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins." (1 Corinthians xv. 17.) Christ
cannot come to mortal and material sense, which sees not God. This false
sense of substance must yield to His eternal presence, and so dissolve.
Rising above the false, to the true evidence of Life, is the resurrection
that takes hold of eternal Truth. Coming and going belong to mortal
consciousness. God is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever."

To material sense, Jesus first appeared as a helpless human babe; but to
immortal and spiritual vision he was one with the Father, even the eternal
idea of God, that was--and is--neither young nor old, neither dead nor
risen. The mutations of mortal sense are the evening and the morning of
human thought,--the twilight and dawn of earthly vision, which precedeth
the nightless radiance of divine Life. Human perception, advancing toward
the apprehension of its nothingness, halts, retreats, and again goes
forward; but the divine Principle and Spirit and spiritual man are
unchangeable,--neither advancing, retreating, nor halting.

Our highest sense of infinite good in this mortal sphere is but the sign
and symbol, not the substance of good. Only faith and a feeble
understanding make the earthly acme of human sense. "The life which I now
live in the flesh I live