I had learned that thought must be spiritualized, in order to apprehend
Spirit. It must become honest, unselfish, and pure, in order to have the
least understanding of God in divine Science. The first must become last.
Our reliance upon material things must be transferred to a perception of
and dependence on spiritual things. For Spirit to be supreme in
demonstration, it must be supreme in our affections, and we must be clad
with divine power. Purity, self-renunciation, faith, and understanding must
reduce all things real to their own mental denomination, Mind, which
divides, subdivides, increases, diminishes, constitutes, and sustains,
according to the law of God.
I had learned that Mind reconstructed the body, and that nothing else
could. How it was done, the spiritual Science of Mind must reveal. It was a
mystery to me then, but I have since understood it. All Science is a
revelation. Its Principle is divine, not human, reaching higher than the
stars of heaven.
Am I a believer in spiritualism? I believe in no _ism_. This is my
endeavor, to be a Christian, to assimilate the character and practice of
the anointed; and no motive can cause a surrender of this effort. As I
understand it, spiritualism is the antipode of Christian Science. I esteem
all honest people, and love them, and hold to loving our enemies and doing
good to them that "despitefully use you and persecute you."
FOUNDATION WORK
As the pioneer of Christian Science I stood alone in this conflict,
endeavoring to smite error with the falchion of Truth. The rare bequests of
Christian Science are costly, and they have won fields of battle from which
the dainty borrower would have fled. Ceaseless toil, self-renunciation, and
love, have cleared its pathway.
The motive of my earliest labors has never changed. It was to relieve the
sufferings of humanity by a sanitary system that should include all moral
and religious reform.
It is often asked why Christian Science was revealed to me as one
intelligence, analyzing, uncovering, and annihilating the false testimony
of the physical senses. Why was this conviction necessary to the right
apprehension of the invincible and infinite energies of Truth and Love, as
contrasted with the foibles and fables of finite mind and material
existence.
The answer is plain. St. Paul declared that the law was the schoolmaster,
to bring him to Christ. Even so was I led into the mazes of divine
metaphysics through the gospel of suffering, the providence of God, and the
cross of Christ. No one else can drain the cup which I have drunk to the
dregs as the Discoverer and teacher of Christian Science; neither can its
inspiration be gained without tasting this cup.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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