Article September 6, 1900 Issue

Like Produces Like

Coos County (N. H.) Democrat.

THE Principle of existence is Love. Applied to human affairs, its fundamental command reads thus: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself." Add to this the declaration of John, that "God is Love," and we have the statement that we shall love Love. This indicates that the true relationship between man and God is a spiritual relation of love. The sensations of the physical senses are not spiritual, and in the highest sense, are not to be considered in religion, they are not modes of divine consciousness and communication. Pagan religions associate the indulgence and gratification of the physical senses with the worship of God, or gods, but not so Christianity. There is a difference between spiritual joy and sensual pleasures.

Christian Science holds that cause and effect correspond in quality and quantity. It holds to the integrity of the Divine character, that like produces like, and not its opposite. A spiritual cause cannot have a material effect. If the Cause is good the effect is good. Perverse logic makes evil proceed from good, and good from evil. But the law of Christ declares that Truth does not change character and that we may know a tree by its fruits. "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit." "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" Again it is asked "Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?"

If Love is Cause, it cannot have for its effect hate. If God is Love and His creation reflects Him, it reflects love, not hate or evil. The senses give false testimony when making evil a seeming reality. What is real is true, a lie is not true, it does not express Truth, it is a denial simply of what is true. The only way to destroy a falsehood is to expose it and efface its false evidence. So long as a lie seems true we hold to its deception and are unwilling to give it up. The very word lie means something that is not true, a something pretended, a falsehood, a counterfeit which would pass for the genuine, but which is not a reality, not a fact, but an erroneous, false sense, assuming the importance of an eternal reality. And herein lies the awful character of evil, that it deceives, leads astray, seeming to be something—equal with Truth, when it is nothing.

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