Article April 21, 1906 Issue

Substance or Shadow?

WILLIAM B. TURNER.

ARE we thinking our thoughts in the realization of actual and vital at-one-ment with God, good; or are we contenting ourselves with mere intellectual or emotional musings about God? The answer to this question will determine for us whether our mental processes are making toward a live and effective Christianity, or tending to move us on, clad only in the vesture of superficiality. Simply thinking about God no doubt may claim its hour, but it will never bring us into saving and effective relation with good, whereby alone we can think to proof and profit in convincing demonstration. The Science of Christ's gospel teaches us that we must blend our thoughts with those of our Maker, if we would emerge from the illusive twilight of human theories and walk in light.

But how are we to know when we have passed from a mere thinking about to thinking with? Mrs. Eddy says, "As Christian Scientists you seek to define God to your own consciousness, by feeling and applying the nature and practical possibilities of divine Love" (Annual Message, 1901,p.4). We are, then, to feel something, and feeling, apply. And this something? The nature of divine Love God; but God, according to Christian Science, is Mind, and His active manifestation, the Christ-consciousness (the true Messiah) is continuously imparted to man in informing thoughts of Love and Truth. These we can feel and know. If, therefore, we are conscious of mental attitudes which experience indorses as divine and of which we can make immediate application in supporting proof, we may with reverence conclude that we are thinking in some measure with God, good.

These mental attitudes, God-blessed, find expression in the fruits of the Spirit, as Paul calls them,—"love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." Thus the divine attributes appear through man. They are naturally of good, and this is significant to us; for with the coming of spiritual understanding we have learned that good alone is real, alone has power. Conscious, at last, of the living "well-spring" within, and rejoicing in the knowledge of its eternal witness to the immanence of divine Love and power, is it any wonder that such an one bows in the sanctuary of uplifted thought and worships the Father? At such an hour he is "born again," he knows himself a son of God.

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