CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

Southland Times, Issue 23047, 14 November 1936, Page 12

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

REVELATION OF TRUE IDEAS. ADDRESS AT DUNEDIN. In the Town Hall concert chamber, Dunedin, a lecture on Christian Science was given by Mr Paul Stark Seeley, of Portland, Oregon, U.S.A., a member of the Board of Lectureship of the Mother Church. All the forms and identities of real life are spiritual and are reflections of God, included in God. They could not continue to exist as effects, detached or isolated from their life-giving cause, any more than a sunbeam could be a sunbeam detached from the sun, said Mr Seeley. “Many believe the life and soul of man to be in the unintelligent physical body. Dr Mayo states that he has taken the body all apart and put it together again, but has found no trace of man’s soul therein. Good reason: it is not there. Man is really in mind, the opposite of matter, because he is really an idea or manifestation of mind, and as such must be within mind, his own life and substance. Says the Bible, ‘The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way.’ Man belongs to God. He is mind’s eternal possession. As the digit six belongs to and is in the principle of mathematics, so man’s real life is an individual expression of mind, and is mentally in mind. The effect belongs to, and is always within, the cause. Man’s individual life blends with the universal life, truth, and love which is God. “If religion is of benefit to us God must be a present God. If God is eternal, God is now. Mortals forget sometimes that whatever is eternally true is the fact now. Moses had no thought of God as a future power. He perceived God’s nature to be I am, not I will be. Jesus thought from the basis of what is divinely and eternally true. Always he used the present tense when he told of God and man’s sonship with Him. Employment and Supply. “Employment involves activity, and activity is a product of thought. All invention, communication, transportation, commerce, result from thought action. There seems to be a wrong sense of mental activity which produces human business activity at times, then through fear stops its activity with resulting distress. Christian Science teaches that God, the true Mind, produces constant activity. Action is inherent in life. Life-action, God’s action, is evidenced in the activity of intelligent ideas. Man, the expression of life’s spontaneous action, can no more cease to be employed in his Godinitiated activity than God can cease to be. God is self-expressed in His perpetual activity of self-manifestation. Man is essential to, and is presently included in, this self-activity of God, fop man expresses that activity. He is therefore never, in reality, inactive or unemployed. “Jcfius’js statement of this fact is i

thus given in a modem translation. ‘My Father works unceasingly, and so do I.’ John said, ‘He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.’ To have the Son of God is to be conscious of the true idea of man as God’s perfect son, or image, and consistently to cling thereto. If to have the Son is to have true life, then to have the consciousness of man as ‘the Son’ is to have true lifeactivity, or employment. As we become more willing to cling to the true idea of God and man, mentally lean, rely on, trust to, mind and its supremely wise methods and limitless power, the obstructions and limitations which the negative material mind may claim, to be insurmountable can and will level away. “A fearful employer may have his fear displaced with confidence and see a need for our services. Our usefulness may be recognized and desired where formerly it gained no recognition. Now ideas for intelligent development of new business may appear. It is God’s will and law that each of us be eternally, successfully active. We have the right and capacity to earn, to express rightly rewarded activity. Says Daniel: ‘He doeth according to his will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?’ As we become conscious in some degree of the idea of Deity’s activity,—real business, —our belief in, and fear of, the ups and downs of material business lessons, and improved conditions in our human affairs result. Let us know that neither the depths of adversity nor heights of prosperity can separate man from his sonship with, his life-partnership with, life and its useful activities.”