Editorial April 8, 1905 Issue

An Impossible Blend

John B. Willis

There is nothing so definite and incisive as truth. It has unanswerable finality, is forever settling things, and hence is the basis of all right discernment. This is clearly seen in the distinctive character and universal significance which attaches to Jesus' words, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Here is a discrimination of truth which manifestly conditions all being, and it is therefore supported by all history. Subject to no gainsaying or evasion, it marks the eternal separateness of truth and error, and is as unvarying as beneficent, simply because it is divine. The range of the law Jesus thus enunciates is unlimited, its line "has gone out through all the earth." It classifies every expression of life, every product of human thought. It is true for all time, and it forever denies the possibility of any blend or combination of that which is spiritual and that which is material. Natural history and human experience seem to be constituted by an indissoluble union of opposing entities, and a stupendous mistake of theology, in all the years, has been the acceptance of the validity of this seeming. Erroneous belief has thus objectified evil, given it place and parts, legitimacy and law, by attaching it to good. This sowing has been to the wind, and the reaping has been to the whirlwind; for not only has evil's intrusive claim of privilege and power won a practical concession in every realm of nature,—the so-called physical life,—but the desolating demon has invaded the highest heaven of human sense, and secured recognition as real and eternal, an integral part of the divine ordering.

Jesus honored this law of the persistence of kind in reproduction, in his daily demonstrations. In his experience of human temptation he met the claimant with instant and annihilating rebuke, and he won thereby the ministry of angels. With the same truth-inspired assertiveness he banished sickness and suffering, the grievous effects of sin's confusion, and thus made it clear that the perception of the fundamental nature and law of being has an immediate relation to health as well as holiness. There is one infinite Spirit, by whom are things,—this is the profoundest dictum of revelation, the broadest postulate of Christian faith, and when it is seen that creation means continuity of manifestation, and that every divine idea, every "creature of His hand," has and must ever preserve the divine nature, then we cannot escape the conclusion that the real universe is spiritual; the basis of an inspiring idealism has been found in the all-inclusiveness and immutability of the Infinite, and we have dignified and exalted our concept of man by bringing it into at-one-ment with our highest and noblest sense of God. This, in Christian Science, is the initial of human redemption.

The serviceability of this law is not limited, however, to the establishment of man's inviolable likeness to Spirit. The awakening consciousness may have laid firm hold upon right fundamental concepts and yet find great difficulty in determining the true quality, the worthiness or unworthiness of many impulses, motives, and desires. Truth and falsity often seem to human thought so welded together, as to make analysis and separation very difficult, and in such an experience the determination of the source of an idea or impulse often proves the simplest and easiest way of reaching a definite conviction as to its inherent nature and leading. If, in the moment of sense-confusion and uncertainty, we honestly inquire into the probable parentage of the suggestion or desire in question, we shall often be surprised to find how readily and how surely the matter is settled. Our Lord's affirmation of unvarying likeness in generation thus comes to the practical aid of groping human sense, and one of the possible reasons for his emphasis of the law of lineage is thereby disclosed.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Letters

Letters to our Leader