"Yes, my dear," and Grace rose and paced back and forth in deep abstraction. "There is but one Truth and we can not establish a falsity.

But I want to carry my reflections a little further concerning this universal worship. To my mind, the power inherent in everything and recognized in some way by every individual is the supreme, perfect Power in different phases of manifestation. The man who trusts an unseen power to bring the seed he plants to full fruition, is believing in the true G.o.d, though he may not know it.

"The whole world lives on faith from one year to another, for there is not enough food produced in one season to last more than one year, and if men did not know every succeeding season would provide, they would be desperate indeed. What is this but believing in a supreme Power? Even materialists admit that the great First Cause is beyond matter. Herbert Spencer speaks of it as the 'Universal Reality, without beginning and without end.'"

"All people reverence and admire the sentiments of love and justice and truth and mercy. Let us agree they come from the same cause and are everywhere present, and we shall come nearer to worshiping G.o.d in spirit and in truth, than we ever have before. Now let's have your opinion, Queen Katherine," concluded Grace, looking at Kate with a playful smile as she finished her long dissertation.

"There is nothing I can add to that, and it seems a very good conclusion to our first lesson. I did not know you had thought so much about religious things, Grace."

"I always had a fondness for looking on the forbidden side of things, and I am afraid I was more curious than religious, but I am rather glad if there is an explanation to these things that have always puzzled me."

CHAPTER XV.

"A lie can not exist--it only appears. Truth is consciousness consistent with itself in every relation; error is consciousness inconsistent with itself in some relation."--_Judge H. P. Biddle._

"And what an end lies before us! To have a consciousness of our own ideal being flashed through us from the thought of G.o.d! Surely, for this may well give way all our paltry self-consciousness, our self-admiration and self-worships! Surely, to know what He thinks about us will pale out of our souls all our thoughts about ourselves!"--_George MacDonald._

MARLOW, September ----.

"Dear John: I hope you are as anxiously awaiting this letter as I awaited the second lecture. It was splendid, so comprehensive, and above all, so practical. It throws light on many puzzling points, and I am delighted so far with what seems so plain and true.

"Some of the members of the cla.s.s seemed quite shocked at some of the statements, but it is not strange that they should seem startling to one who has never thought on the subject, for indeed, I should think it would take a good while to get used to reasoning that is directly opposite the world's first conclusions; still we are looking for results that are quite contrary to what the world looks for, so we can afford to collide with its opinions. When Mrs. Pearl came into the cla.s.s room, all turned to look at her and every ear was ready to listen.

"In yesterday's lesson we made a statement of G.o.d as the only Mind of the universe, the Great Reality beside whom there is absolutely nothing in existence; but as we look around at the scenes of suffering and poverty and ignorance, we are mightily tempted to disbelieve such a statement.

"'Talk of omnipotent Light in the midst of midnight darkness!' you exclaim. Ah, but you are to remember we are talking of the real creation; the invisible and unapparent instead of the visible and apparent; the changeless and eternal instead of the evanescent and decaying.

"If G.o.d is the only Reality, His creation is the only real creation. The word real is applied to that which actually exists, which forever is, not to that which seems or appears; therefore, in speaking of the real we mean the changeless and invisible.

"If G.o.d is the only Mind, His are the only real thoughts, and thoughts are invisible to the eye, but discernible to the mind or consciousness.

"If G.o.d is everywhere, there is no possible place or s.p.a.ce in the universe where G.o.d is not; hence He is all there is. One of our modern prophets wisely wrote: 'Has not a deeper meditation taught certain of every clime and age that the Where and the When so mysteriously inseparable from all our thoughts, are but superficial adhesions to thought; that the Seer may discern them where they mount up out of the celestial Everywhere and Forever. Have not all nations conceived their G.o.d as omnipresent and eternal, as existing in a universal Here, an everlasting Now?

"'Think well, thou too wilt find that s.p.a.ce is but a mode of our human sense, so likewise Time. There is no s.p.a.ce and no time. _We_ are--we know not what; light sparkles floating in the ether of Deity. So this so solid seeming world, were, after all, but an air-image--our _me_ the only reality.'

"This me is the spiritual self, the individual idea of G.o.d, His image and likeness.

"What then, about this body, which is not spiritual, you ask? What about the material universe?

"Wait a moment. Think of the premise. As G.o.d the invisible is the changeless, what is the variable, fleeting, visible unreality? The real is everlasting, the unreal is transitory. The real is called Spirit, the unreal matter.

"What is Spirit? The underlying omnipresent substance that we call G.o.d.

"What is matter? The counterfeit, shadow, emblem, showing that Spirit exists or is.

"We read in a very ancient Hindoo Scripture: 'Those who have understanding, whose thought is pure, see the entire universe as the picture of Thy wisdom;' and the thoughtful Carlyle said: 'All visible things are emblems.... Matter represents some idea and bodies it forth.'

"These thoughts are in perfect accord with the principles laid down in our premise, hence we find that as we believe matter, believe the body to be the real creation, we are believing a falsity. This is the idol we are worshiping instead of the true and only G.o.d. The grand visible universe in which we see so many beauties, so many charms, is but the mighty object lesson before us by which we may learn of the infinite, invisible All. As Theodore Parker said: 'The universe itself is a great autograph of the Almighty.'

"The characters used in mathematics do not const.i.tute the science but merely represent to the senses the invisible ideas of the principle of mathematics. The visible does not const.i.tute the invisible, but may carry its messages as we learn to read its poetic and mystic pages. The visible speaks to the mortal nature, but the invisible beyond and above, speaks to the immortal nature.

"Since we find matter to be so totally opposite the real, there is no other name for it than as the unreal, and the unreal being a counterfeit of the real, must be a lie, as the nature of a lie is to make false claims, pretending they are true.

"Matter is a counterfeit because it is not genuine or of G.o.d, because it is changeable and fleeting, because being limited to a visible form, it must have finite limitations and can merely give finite conceptions.

"Taking it as a _sign_ of something infinite, we learn of the infinite.

All the students, teachers, learned men and women of the world have added to the world's spiritual ideas revealed by their study of the finite as well as their intuitive knowledge of the infinite. Charles Kingsley gives us a hint of how to learn: 'Do not study matter for its own sake but as the countenance of G.o.d. Try to extract every line of beauty, every a.s.sociation, every moral reflection, every inexpressible feeling from it.'

"Our ideas of matter must then be entirely changed, and we must learn to look beyond the seeming, to the true. We have believed in the reality of matter and material environment because of reasoning from the false basis that man is material or that he is a mixture of material and spiritual. To believe that the flesh and blood of our sister or brother is their real self, is to believe G.o.d capable of creating something utterly unlike himself (John iii, James i.) which may suffer, sin and die, and if He is all perfection, He can not know imperfection. If He is all spirit, He can not know or be matter. Keep before your mind the perfection, omnipotence, omnipresence of Spirit, G.o.d or Principle, and you will see more and more clearly the inconsistency of anything opposite Him emanating from Him.

"Believing in matter as a reality, we have endowed it with all the power of the real, have ascribed to it life, substance and intelligence, when it possesses neither.

"Where is the life when the body dies? If life were inherent in the physical body, could it ever cease to be? G.o.d the eternal life principle can not cease to be. The life manifested through the body is the life which is G.o.d and can not be affected by the decay or disappearance of the body.

"The invisible essence of life is also the true substance, the reliable and changeless something, upon which we may forever depend. We use the word substance in its etymological sense (from _sub_, under and _stare_, to stand), and since Spirit or Mind is the reality that underlies every material or sensible object, there is no substance to the object itself.

"Plato taught that '_ideas_, are the only _real_ things.' Ideas are expressions of thoughts, and thoughts are expressions of mind, and this reasoning brings us back to G.o.d as Mind and Mind as Cause. Admitting Mind or Spirit to be the life and substance back of or expressing itself through the body, we may easily see that intelligence can not exist apart from Mind, and hence can not belong to matter.

"That the mind or intelligence is seated in the gray convolutions of the brain, is held by the materialists, and yet Dr. Layc.o.c.k affirms 'that matter is fundamentally nothing more than that which is the seat of motion to ends, of which mind is the source and cause.' Professor Huxley crowns the statement by saying, 'That which perceives or knows is mind or spirit, and therefore, that knowledge which the senses give us, is, after all, a knowledge of spiritual phenomena.' Professor Faraday held to the immateriality of physical objects.

"In the language of Jesus the Christ, we are told, 'Spirit is all, the flesh profiteth nothing;' thus from all cla.s.ses of conscientious but confessedly diverse thinkers, we find statements of universal truth, and this is what the hungry, starving world is seeking with more earnestness than ever before.

"Since there is no life, substance or intelligence in matter, it will be comparatively easy to prove that there can be no sensation, for where there is no life in the body, there can be no feeling. Even the physiologists tell us mind must know pain before it can be located in the body. We state therefore a theorem which is practically demonstrated; there is no sensation in matter.

"As we visit penitentiaries, reform schools and hospitals, as we read and hear the startling statements of press and pulpit, we grow disconsolate and heavy-hearted over the awful power and reality of evil, forgetting again that He who is perfect goodness can not behold evil or in any way permit its existence, any more than heat can permit cold, or light can permit darkness.

"Granting the omnipotence of Good, where is there any room for its opposite?

"If there is but one Power, and that omnipotent and perfect, there can be no evil _in reality_; hence we are dealing with another lie when we judge according to appearances, which Jesus said we should not do. It is really disloyalty to G.o.d to impute to Him all misery, pain, sickness and suffering caused by the evil and ignorance of man. We are told: 'Let your soul be subject to the higher powers, for there is no power but of G.o.d.' Because we have not done so, but have believed in every claim power, we suffer from 'evils which our own misdeeds have wrought,' as Milton wrote, or, in the words of Emerson, 'we _mis_create our own evils.'

"Jeremiah said: 'It is your sins that have withholden the good things from you.'

"According to Webster, 'sin is a transgression of the law of G.o.d.' There is but one law--the perfect and unchangeable Truth. Any deviation from Truth is error, and error is sin. In proportion as we deviate from the strictly true, then, we sin. Because we admit things to be true which are not true, we _admit_, then _commit_ sin, and hence suffer for sin.

'Know ye not that to whomsoever ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are, whether of sin unto death or obedience unto righteousness,' wrote Paul. We first think wrong. Sin is of the mind, not of the body.

"To acknowledge the reality of sin or evil is a transgression of the law, because, according to our established premise, it cannot be true.

"Through a misconception of our relation to G.o.d, and a belief in the power of evil, we are obliged to admit the existence of sin, sickness, and death, neither of which can be true in the presence of G.o.d, as the only Reality, in which or in whom are all things that eternally are, not that temporarily appear.

"We have believed in a mind or power of thought opposite and contrary to G.o.d, when in reality there can be nothing opposite or contrary to eternal Mind. We have believed ourselves endowed with a mind separate from G.o.d, and ourselves subject to temptation from some cause not Good.

We have believed in minds, when there is but one Mind.

"This false force, this false mind, is variously called the evil or carnal mind, the mind of the flesh, the old man, the serpent, the devil, the adversary. It is simply the opposite or contradictory of the Good, the G.o.d of evil.

"Beside every true or positive statement there is a false or negative claim, and in so far as we are ignorant of the true, we are in bondage to the false. To _believe_ the claims of error is to be bound; to _know_ the reality of truth is to be free. To believe in a mind or power separate or opposite from G.o.d, is to be subject to any suppositions or beliefs formulated by that mind or negative thought.