IN THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT

John B. Willis

The keynote of that royal fourth chapter of Paul's letter to the Ephesians is found in the word "unity,"—unity in the thought of God, in the knowledge of His Son, in the faith that relies wholly upon Truth, in the love that blossoms in brotherhood, in the purity that is blameless, in the humility that is childlike, in the manly living that is tender-hearted and compassionate,—such is the compass of a concept whose circle is so complete that though the rest of "the world's best book" were lost, this epitome of right thought and deed would supply the aspiring and obedient with everything essential to their triumph. Elsewhere, in a brilliant of sententious speech which glows with the fact and philosophy of human redemption, the apostle expresses the relation of Spriit to our human life when he says, "The spirit giveth life."

The identity of Christian Science teaching with this concept is declared in a remarkable passage in Science and Health, where Mrs. Eddy says, "One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself;' annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry,—whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed" (p. 340). Whenever Christian men have become confused, estranged from their Father, it has been because some symbol, some personal embodiment of the spiritual, as they may have been led to think, has been allowed practically to usurp "the throne of the creative divine Principle," and to insist "on the might of matter, ... the insignificance of spirit" (Ibid, p. 317).

A pertinent illustration of this tendency of men to become materially obsessed is found in the attitude of both Jews and Christians toward the Messiah. It would seem that no one could read the Messianic prophecies, especially those of Isaiah and Malachi, without reaching the conviction that the thought of these sages was quickened by their common realization that the Messiah was to be a divine idea, the manifestation of Spirit, and that the redemptive rule which he was to establish was to be in the consciousness, the heart of mankind. Zion, in their wording, is to be the habitation of Jehovah; the Redeemer of Israel is to be a fountain for the cleansing of sin and uncleanness, he is to purge the sons of Levi "like a refiner's fire."

Despite all this, however, the thought of the Jews came to be fixed on a human personality who was to become their earthly hero and ruler, and when this false sense of the Messiah's nature and work is corrected, and he is recognized as the redemptive fact and law of the divine appearing in human consciousness, then the traditional prejudices against the Nazarene can but fall away, and that the sons of Israel are finding the fruition of their Messianic hope through the coming of Christian Science is thus fully explained.

The attitude of Christian theology toward Jesus illustrates the same lapse from Spirit and the spiritual, though expressed in an entirely different way. Failing to perceive that the reign of the Messiah must be spiritual, the Pharisees condemned him who came to fulfil the promise of their most revered prophets. Failing in a kindred way to identify the Christ, scholastic theology has taught that the physical suffering and death of Jesus were demanded of him in satisfaction of a law of infinite Love! and to the escape from this belief as entirely discreditable to God, Christian Science is very largely contributing in its teaching that the forever coming of the Christ is the divine appearing in human experience. The world's supreme mistake has been in sacrificing the spiritual upon the altar of the material, in turning away from and forgetting the divine idea to exalt human personality.

John B. Willis.

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