The law of God is not a law of mandate or of prohibition; “shall” and “shall not” come not within its scope. The one for whom it exists is not constrained by it, yet it is as unyielding as adamant. Obedience to it is ideal freedom; its slightest infringement is death. It curtails not a wish of him for whom it is made, yet even a wrong thought is instantly followed by the direst penalty. It speaks not of punishment for the breach of a single clause, yet on every side is it hedged in by destruction to him who living under it makes one false step. What is this law which permits all, that orders nothing to be done, prohibits nothing, and yet is so terrible when the slightest deviation from its precept occurs?

It is the law of real existence, of harmony, which is the essence of all divine forces, in combination making the true and only Life. It is the secret of immortality, the vital of man, the Principle in which he exists, the basis of eternal being, and last, the resultant joint and several of all those spiritual powers which Science says God is.

Perfect being only can have perfect life, and perfect life can only be through perfect harmony. In mortal, so-called life we know that friction is one with the invincible law of destruction; it is one of the essentialities of supposed material existence. Without it mortal man could not seem to live. The vital necessity of friction in this life of error, be it that of so-called thought or matter, is the very antipode of the essential of Life, or Spirit. Without friction perpetual motion would be possible, but only by friction can any motion be made effective. This is one of the thousand examples of so-called mortal law; the necessity that is the cause, is the destruction of the result; the best and vital being but error, like all error, kills itself.

Even in this grating, jarring life most of us can imagine a harmony in which conceptions of matter play no part, yet there is no understanding of what living under its law would be; it is only a vague, ideal peace, a happiness that must be exquisite because sorrow and conflict are unknown to it. Yet this is the immortal law of God for man, by which he lives, and moves and has his being in God,—is His expression, and reflects Him, all through that perfect harmony by which alone God is and man exists.

God is Life eternal, and man the co-existent expression of that Life. Discord, error and disease are the enemies of all existence, the destroying companions of decay, the forerunner of death, the essence of wasting sorrow, manifest alone in mortal mind and its expression. These maggots of belief feed upon their own progenitor, who knows not the law that stops their breed. Only eternal Life has no destruction, no decay, and anything that knows these gnawing terrors cannot be within the law of harmony. Everything that for a moment seems to live except in perfect peace must wear away in time, hence harmony means the sense of Life in which eternity is realized. Can there be real harmony which is not everlasting? Not unless we say discord has entity and can outlive harmony. One of the two must exist; one of the two must be the stronger and outlast the other. Both cannot be, for discord cannot live with harmony, and harmony with discord is but discord’s self. Harmony is perfect and can be nothing else. “Sweet bells” maybe “jangled, harsh and out of tune,” but we no longer know them sweet “when time is broke and no proportion kept.” If discord is reality then must death be also, whose servant discord is, and life is limited and there can be no God.

Life which has beginning or end is a contradiction within itself. The pangs and travail of birth, the throes and struggles of death, are but discordant limits to material existence, a believed state which mortal mind has formed in which to monarchize a little while, and show itself a mighty ruler to its own shadow,—king and subjects being but flimsy phantoms of a dream. Such cannot be true Life, for it has not a phase of thought which savors of reality. Limited by time, mortals are from first to last discordantly tossed and buffeted by the chaotic fancies of belief, awake to the realities of seeming terror, asleep in “dreams that murder sleep.” Blinded through ignorance they put boundaries to their little sphere, whose bourn they fear to pass, yet in the wisdom of conceit call all beyond, the mysteries of Life which they think solved by guessing. God is the Life, but He knows not this counterfeit, which is deception even to its name. God is Life, eternal harmony is heaven, where the government of Principle gives all freedom in the atmosphere of Soul.

God is absolute, unerring and eternal verity,—Truth, the uncovered,—She alone whose purity makes Her nakedness Her glory; fearless, and immaculate, She walks through the mire of the seeming and unreal, crushing beneath her unsullied feet the lying counterfeits of her own self, which falsehood makes. She is the light of Science, the fulness of understanding, unchanging reality, and man is Her reflection. Can discord find a place in Truth’s abode? She knows it not. As light destroys darkness so Truth destroys the false, and by Her presence is every nook and cranny of the universe made light. Every dark, unhallowed thought and deed, which mortal mind can conjure into the unreality of belief, is dissolved to its native nothingness, when in the presence of even our conception of the Truth. The highest human conception is but a poor resemblance of Truth, yet by it we judge the weight and worth of all we know and have, and pin our confidence to only that which by its rule we think cannot be false.

Supposing the reality of sorrow, can we not always, by sifting through the complication of its causes, find a lie, an untruth somewhere hidden under the disguise of fact? Do we not know through Science that pain, sin, disease, nay, even death itself are but untruths, and but effects of supposed causes that throw us out of harmony with others and ourselves, and bring us into discord with our God? The peace, the happiness, the harmony which is not built on Truth lives in the imagination only for a day, then crumbles before the eyes of him who rests upon it and brings him face to face with discord, war and sorrow. From these he cannot flee. Swift-footed as the thought that gives them birth and tries to shake them off, they cling, dead weights to progress, and drag the poor mortal down to misery, where in anguish, bereft of hope, he prays for the relief of death that is not, for the grave that has no victory. For him time will last as long as sorrow. There is a grave that has a victory, there is a death that brings relief, but both are for his thoughts and not for him. Conquer he can and must. But how? Manifest the Truth.

God is Love, the substance of all good, the Principle of Unity, “for Love is heaven and heaven is Love;” the heart of Life loving all that is. Unconscious of Herself except in Her reflection, She loves the perfect, and by the perfect knows Herself expressed. Seeing as Mind, discerning as Spirit, She lives forever in the light of Truth, floods the universe with purity of Love, and makes Life in happiness the only Life that is. To once look on Love is to catch the contagion of Her power, to ever after reflect Her charm, to be forever held in Her benign embrace, to feel no impulse that is not of Love, to have no thoughts that are not born of Her, to be exhaustless in out-flowing good. In Her realm there’s no such word as self. God’s forces are expressed through Love, Her strength divine, unfelt in gentleness, binds the whole of God’s great universe, all there is or can be, into one,—the unity that knows not space, and that is beyond the reach of time. Thus held together all move on in infinite progression, growing into Life and Truth and Love, sweet harmony of everlasting peace, the living Trinity of eternal Good. Discord cannot enter upon Love’s domain, for She is proof invincible against all thought that is not perfect in its harmony with Love, and all that Love controls.

Who in mortal life, amidst the strife that on every side seemingly confronts us, has not felt sometime the peace and comfort, and the rest which a little love has given, though poor in contrast with the Love of God? How it has kindled into life hopes long since dead, and awakened the disheartened from helpless sleep-walking in darkness, of sin and error. Has mortal man ever had a care or pain of heart that Love could not assuage? At her gentle touch the sinner’s brow is cooled from fever into calm, each wrinkle smoothed away. What is the motive of all good offices, kind acts and thoughtful charity? Love, if the acts and thoughts are worthy of the names of good, kind and thoughtful. Love is the greatest, yes, the only safeguard against temptation, the only talisman by which to detect the wrong, the only conscience that we know. Without Truth there could be no Love, and without Love, Truth would be useless and both are non-existent without harmony.

Contention, discord, strife, are the children of hate, the revengeful partner of self, the master in this world, of every sin and error of thought or deed. The ceremonial law, made terrible by penalties of death, born midst the fires that played about the cloud-bound summit of Mount Sinai, was but restrictions shackling self in the grossest of its desires, and it left un- trammelled the greater and the worse part, for mortal man could still think wrong. The crime was all in doing. This law forbade the act begotten of base thoughts, but left desire to rage rampant in the heart; the outward show of discord was alone restrained.

The law as formulated by Jesus deals with thoughts and impulses, and thus lays the axe at the roots of the tree. The “Mighty One” of the Old Testament is revealed as the Father of man, and speaks in other tones, yet the voice is the same; it is human consciousness of God that has changed. Listen to the gentle accents in which the law is voiced through the ideal, spiritual man, conscious of the Truth of being. “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

In every word is peace, is harmony, in every word is Love. God is Life, Truth, Love and the law of harmony is the essence of all, for without it none could be. Can mortals waken from this dream where all is shadow, and their best conceptions but meagre counterfeits of what we know true man reflects? The way is clearly pointed out and all can follow in it. But how? By practically applying our highest understanding of the Good. Honest practice of what is seen to-day to be best gives knowledge of a better and thus we grow, living to-morrow by the standards that the sense of the best of to-day has given, and by to-morrow’s living gaining higher standards for the next day’s life.

“In mortal and material man goodness is in embryo; he must, by suffering for sin be developed into an infant Christian; and feeding at first on the milk of the word, he drinks in the sweet revealings of a new and more spiritual Life and Love.”The New Birth and Immortality, by M. B. G. Eddy.  Goodness in embryo is the little leaven that will leaven all, an infinitesimal foundation, yet infinite in strength, but the only one, for it is Life, and Truth and Love, that can support a structure that will reach to heaven. Firmly planted in our hearts it cannot die. Choke it with the cultivated weeds of sin and error, stamp upon it with envy, hate and malice, forget it and believe we live without it and in delusive pleasure, give up to appetite and passion; but it will live patiently awaiting the day, which will inevitably come, the seed will open and pushing forth the tendrils of Life, struggle through the wreck and debris of wasted hours and misspent days, to the loving light and grow forever in Truth and Love. There is not a human being who has not some conception of Truth, Good and Love, although it may be of the very lowest type, and seem crushed out by foul desire and malicious wrong. Yet it is there and can be reached, and through it salvation will be found, for “Mortals can never lose the sight and sense of what is real.”Science and Health , 40th ed, p.75. The labor is of Love, the light is of the Truth. Let Good but have the chance by once being recognized and she is able to do all the rest and will. Tear down the evil, expel the unholy thought by ever turning to the Good and holding fast to Love through Truth. Jesus came to men that he might formulate in words the law of harmony that they might understand God’s law; and by his mortal life illustrated the way and application of it to our every thought and act. He taught the way to elevate and follow our highest sense of Good, and rendered possible a life for man with God. Faith is the wire over which come messages from heaven, it is the “evidence” of reality beyond our sight, the “substance” of our hope of Life. The little that we know of Truth and Love, although but a mere suggestion of those pure realities, is, through mortal thought, distorted and obscured. Yet, meagre as it is, at times, it gives a strength unknown before, and a power to dare and do in the face of error and calamity, that which without it would have failed through helpless cowardice,—bondage to an awful nothing. Such experiences give faith, and foster and develop it. Seeing the might of such a little faith in Good, realizing the force of so slight an understanding of Love and Truth, it is shown that in their fulness they must be perfect in beauty, omnipotent in gentleness; unwithering, for they destroy waste; undying, for they conquer death; unlimited, for they are not in space.

Knowing that more is possessed to-day than was at one time dreamed of as possible, the process of acquisition is understood. Only by right effort has that been gained which now is real to us. Convinced as to the method of the past, inference is unerring, as to what must be the method of the future, pursuing which “the ripening of mortal man, drops the mortal for the immortal developing into true man, God’s reflection and expression.” Love ever responding to desire in Truth, Life ever flowing to a living in Love. “Mortals are not like immortals, created in God’s image; yet there is enough of Good, or Infinite Spirit, acknowledged by this mortal consciousness, to at least reveal the sense of being that is real and perfect, forever intact.”Science and Health , 40th ed, p. 169.

Study the words and life of Jesus and by them learn the Christ-Truth. Follow the example given, it is the only way. Bear the Cross, “for His yoke is easy, and His burden is light,” yet pain, sorrow and travail will be still your lot. Seek Life by killing self; seek Truth by blasting every hope of the seeming reality of what to mortal sense is most real; seek Love by turning from the things that have been loved most dear; seek harmony if need be through paths of reviling, and strife. Fight; fight self, fight unceasingly for peace. Humanity must be felt and realized; this can only be through self abnegation begotten of a love of Good. Love brings no pain, Truth cannot lead astray, Life presents no sickness, sin or death, yet they—God—are reached only by the annihilation of their opposites which are bound up in self, and last till self is dead. The stern commands of the Decalogue present no terrors to one who follows in the path of Jesus. The highest creation it has ever produced was the self-righteous Pharisee, before whom sinners will enter into the kingdom of heaven. But in the law laid down by Truth through Jesus Christ, the law of harmony is all in all expressed; Love others; know no such thing as self. The sorrow that must be borne, the wearing of the crown of thorns, is all within ourselves. The bitter cup has been brewed in our own hearts from the sour dregs of “pleasure,” lust, ambition, envy and covetousness. It cannot pass from us, for we must take it, and though it be like gall and wormwood, it serves us as a draught of present vigor for our life to come, which we but drink to our own better health. Our steadfastness will be sorely tried, for self must die a lingering death. We must be willing to meet opposition and ridicule from our fellows, and accusations sore to bear, but for Love, for Truth and Life we will accept the buffets and slurs. Faithfulness is but a boast in times not filled with trial, but how great a glory of strength it is, when it withstands the abuse of men and time. It is not born of this world, which is only its abode of probation, and outlasts its persecutors, who but wear themselves away in their struggles to destroy it. “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” “in which Mind and body are harmonious and immortal,” and we have but to strive with all our heart, soul, and strength for that beloved state and we are of it. Love with all the sense of love we have; devote ourselves to Truth with all our strength and hope, and Life will make us live.

These are the beginnings of Immortal law, these are the strivings of to-day which lead us to the “vaster issues,” where the battle rages in all its fury, where belief developed into faith yields us its strength, when we begin to realize that Life itself is the stake for which we contend. The law of godliness must control our steps, and within the ranks of Truth, the law of harmony must reign; then each advance is sure unto the last, when victory becomes our own and we forever live in holy peace; “for Christ is the end of the law of righteousness.” In “harmony, the ideal of Truth,” God forever holds sway; through perfect Principle of Life, He controls all in all within the pale of His effulgence, in peace and joy and happiness eternal as Himself. Man His likeness, reflects all his glory; through His expressed idea He directs the universe in Love, and “Love is the fulfilling of the law.”