Sec. I. re-presenting God's ideas, expressing our ideals in new creations or groupings. This redistribution of God's thoughts is the source of infinite happiness, individual and universal. 5 Happiness can be differentiated into four principal divisions:First, every spiritual being loves his fellow-man, even one met for the first time, with a love of which the material man can hardly 10 form even a faint conception, because it is the perfect love of God. Secondly, we are always interchanging perfect ideas with those we love, either individually or otherwise. Thirdly, we are continually manifesting God's power of grouping together new combinations of glorious ideas, so giving our fellow- 15 men fresh happiness, and consequently gaining the highest happiness ourselves. Fourthly, we can wander with those we love amongst infinite worlds of incalculable beauty. These four chief sources of real happiness are counterfeited by four in the material world. First, we have the love towards our fellow-man; secondly, the interchanging of ideas with those we 20 love; thirdly, even the making of a rag doll for a child gives us a sense of happiness that would not follow many a greater action prompted by a lesser motive; and, fourthly, who has not been lifted heavenwards by the beauty and grandeur lying behind. Nature's handiwork? The reason for this is, that all the love and happiness, of which we get only glimpses in this material world, is real, though our 2 sense of it is limited. Souls that are gentle and still Hear the first music of this Far off, infinite bliss" (Sir Edwin Arnold). Reality of Good." For all that must be called good belongeth to none but the true eternal goodness which is God only" ("Theologia Germanica"). Now all that this material world indicates of good is real; the love, the life, the beauty, the joy, etc.* We get at times glorious glimpses of this reality through the mist; wonderful love, marvellous beauty, unspeakable joy. "For now we see through a glass darkly" (I. Cor. 13, ver. 12), and "through every grass-blade the glory of the present God still beams" (Carlyle). "Earth's crammed with heaven and every bush afire with God,' Mrs. Browning has said. As we progress, the mist gets thinner, and with the millennium dawns a foretaste of God's world. To limit future good is unquestionably to limit God. Matter, apparently hinting the existence of the spiritual realities, only hides their perfection from us, giving us a false sense of the real world, and as the matter is dematerialised the glorious realities of these perfect ideas gradually appear clearer and clearer. "The ideal is the real well seen (Carlyle). "The realities of existence can be conceived, and they are probably assisting us, stimulating and guiding us in ways of which we are only half conscious, and some of us not conscious at all"† (Sir Oliver Lodge, D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S.). A thing of beauty is a joy forever; (Keats). Pope little knew the depth that lay behind his words "One truth is clear, whatever is, is right." "We do not see much of the real man here for he is God's man; while ours is man's man" ("Unity of Good," p. 46, line 5. Mary Baker Eddy). Lecture delivered at Liverpool, 19th March, 1914. 5 Sec. I. Proof of Our Knowledge of Heaven." That one who, outside pure mathematics, pronounced the word impossible, is wanting in prudence. Reserve is above all a necessity when he is dealing with the animal organisation" (Arago). 1 Page Line 54 43 60 16 The way to prove whether or not your knowledge of heavent is true is this: if anything is going wrong in the material world, and you realise clearly enough the spiritual perfection of the reality, 466 30 of which that "wrong" is the counterfeit, the instantaneous dis- 56 26 appearance of the trouble will indicate your realisation to have been correct. This means that the difficulty in the material world is immediately put right. This is one important difference between true knowledge and that put forward by the various schools of religious thought; namely, that you are now able to prove your theory by direct experiment, and have not to rely solely upon 492 14 logical deduction. Another important difference is that, if the mortal called "you' is thinking scientifically, realising constantly that you-your real 312 36 spiritual self, not a material "you"-are led by God, then, through the action of God in destroying evil, the mortal " you" appears to be led by God, the Principle of good, just in the way that a young child 343 39 is taught and protected by its mother when learning first to walk. The "you" may have its troubles and difficulties, but there is steady progress, and every now and then "you" will pause and recognise with satisfaction the progress made, of which "you" were not conscious at the time of the struggle, when the mental faculties were clouded as the "you" passed along, battling its way through a seeming mist of wrong thoughts. Movement Instantaneous. All stars and mountain peaks are thoughts of the Eternal Mind" (Paracelsus). Being a mental world, man can go instantly from what, to use material symbols, may be called place to place, in heaven. There is no necessity for such apparent bodily action as accompanies physical movement from place to place. A man moves mentally. For instance, one spiritual being can draw the attention of another spiritual being to the spiritual reality of what is in the material world called the planet Mars. Instantly both have all the effect of what may be called being in Mars; that is to say, without any other movement but the mental one, they are conscious of some of the perfect ideas of the spiritual reality of the planet Mars. When the thought of this spiritual planet or compound ideat comes to a man, it does not appear as something distant. He is fully conscious Annual Bureau of Longitudes." + Jesus gave seven parables explanatory of the Kingdom of Heaven, and in reply to the question of the disciples, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given" (Matt. 13. ver. 10, 11). At the end "Jesus saith unto them. Have ye understood all these things? They say unto him, Yea. Lord. Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure, things new and old" (Matt. 13, v. 51, 52). Science and Health," p. 585, line 8 (Mary Baker Eddy). 29 29 Page Line Sec. I. of, and shares with his fellow-man, all the beauties that are delighting him, to an infinitely greater degree than the human being does when in the midst of beautiful surroundings. When the enjoyment has been obtained from being conscious of these lovely ideas, the other spiritual being, desirous of returning 5 the happiness that he has received, and being reminded of past enjoyment of heavenly beauties, can draw the attention of his fellow-man to the spiritual reality of some ideas in another planet, say Jupiter. All that is necessary, then, is to think of those ideas, and at once they are both conscious of the new ideas connected 10 with the spiritual reality of Jupiter. "Let us Practical Results an Undeniable Proof. not reject experience on the ground of dogmatic assertion and baseless speculation "* (Sir Oliver Lodge, D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S.). The proof of the above being true is found through its practical 15 application. If in the material world you find that you have lost your train or apparently have not time to go from one place to another, you can get over the difficulty by turning in thought to God, denying the reality of the trouble and realising that in heaven man goes instantly from one idea to another, or you can realise 20 that man is always in the right place. Then, through this reversal of thought and your recognition of the action of God as taking place in heaven, the wrong ethereal thoughts that appear as forms of trouble are destroyed, and you find yourself out of the difficulty, although you cannot be certain that what usually happens will occur. 25 For instance, sometimes you will find on going to the station that there is another train that you knew nothing about, sometimes that a slip coach has been put on to a later express, or the difficulty disappears in some other way. Sometimes the unrecognised action of God results in your finding that there has been no need to go at 30 all, and that the object of your going has been effected in some unexpected way. Perfect Sequence of Thought.-In heaven an individual called, never says he cannot come, but it is always exactly the thing most desirable, as there is always a perfect sequence of thought, and the two 35 with mutual rejoicings blend in true unity of joint appreciation of the wonderful ideas of God. To indicate the perfect sequence of thought it may be stated that when you have finished listening to, for instance, a glorious sonata-we have to use material expressions -and are called to admire a beautiful piece of scenery, this 40 scenery is an exact visual (we must again, unfortunately, use a * "Christian Revelation from a Scientific Point of View." Address delivered before the National Free Church Council. at Portsmouth, March 9th, 1911. Page Line Sec. I. material expression) representation of the sonata,* and a further unfoldment of perfection. Whatever one does, it brings infinite happiness to all concerned. In this material world we move with trouble and even danger from one place to another, and often, 5 whilst thinking of something totally inconsequent, politely cover a yawn with our hand whilst our neighbour points out what he thinks the beauties of nature. Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein, 466 1 See Note G on page 571. 483 79 65 35 21 40 Each to each other like, more than on earth is thought" (Milton). Everything in the material world only counterfeits and hints the existence of spiritual reality. For instance, the spiritual reality of the hand is the power to grasp an idea. The reality of the 1 teeth is the capacity to analyse and dissect the ideas your material digestive organs counterfeit the power with which you digest, assimilate, and understand the ideas, and the arm counterfeits the 466 17 power with which, in the reality, you re-present them, that is, call the attention of your fellow-man to them, or pass them on. The 2 spiritual reality of the lower limbs is the power to move in thought from idea to idea. That is, as mentioned, you can call the attention of your fellow-man to lovely ideas, even the spiritual reality of any planet or star, and directly you think of them you have all the effect of being there and enjoying them together. 25 Man being made in the image and likeness of God, every aspect of God has its reflection in him. Consequently, the reflection of every aspect is counterfeited by some portion of the material man. These are all the portions inside the body. The limbs counterfeit the different powers of the spiritual man, and the different parts of the head the various capacities. 59 36 There are three great aspects of God-Life, Truth, and Love. 465 21 So, there are three important organs in man which counterfeit the real organs of the spiritual man. The real spiritual lungs are the reflection of God as Life, through which man receives the ideas of God; the liver, the reflection of God as Truth, through which 3 man arranges the ideas, and groups them together into new combinations, to be re-presented to his fellow-man; the heart, the reflection of God as Love, through which the circulation of the ideas goes on as man calls the attention of his fellow-man to the ideas he is enjoying, so that he participates in such enjoyment. This is an indication from which each person can himself work out the other 35 details as occasion demands. Further details are given in Appendix 465 IV., and note on page 571. A World of Four Dimensions.-" And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: . . . the holy city, new Jerusalem, ... Having the glory of God: ... and the city lieth foursquare,... And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it" 40 (Rev. 21, ver. 1, 2, 11, 16; and 22, ver. 3). Since writing the above I have heard that a Russian lady has learned to translate into musical sounds the colours of the sunset and the colours of the forest, so that on playing, the same emotions float through the mind as those with which the glory of the clouds in the sunset or the shadings of 45 the trees in the woods are associated. Music in its reality is divine. "Spiritual music" is the "music of soul" Carmen Sylva, the Queen of Roumania, in the "Nineteenth Century and After," wrote that whenever she heard music she saw colour, the shade varying according to the type of the music. 466 11 Page Line 272 8 279 44 Sec. I. For some years, reasoning from the analogy of an imaginary twodimensional being, conscious only of length and breadth, and unable to recognise height or depth, or anything above or below him, and therefore unconscious of the appearance of this three-dimensional world, various thinkers have suggested that there might be a 5 world of four dimensions, of which the seeming three-dimensional man was equally unconscious. It has been suggested by Mr. Wells that this fourth dimension is "Time." It may be more accurately expressed as spiritual infinity. Now heaven may be described mathematically as a world of four dimensions, wholly 10 spiritual. † Everything that we see now as three-dimensional is only ethereal, namely, the real four-dimensional world seen wrongly from a false material standpoint, since the material man is only conscious of three dimensions of it, and that consciousness itself is false and absolutely misleading. I 15 "If, therefore, we find the subject becomes more thinkable by assuming, say, a fourth-dimensional being than by following the ramifications of 'matter and force' into infinite space and time, we are quite justified in adopting the former method "§ (E. Carpenter). Though doubtful assumption is better than nothing, definite know- 20 ledge is an absolute necessity for true progress. In the same way that an imaginary two-dimensional being, appearing like a small, flat object, and only seeing the soles of your boots on the floor, would describe you as a straight line, say, 11 inches long, 3 inches wide, black, sometimes muddy, going about with a 25 twin-brother-the fellow sole-and constantly appearing and disappearing; so does the three-dimensional man describe his neighbour quite wrongly until he knows the truth. Should the two-dimensional being describe "the soles of the boots" as having no intelligence, no feeling, and being of little use, he would make the same mistake that we do if, talking of our fellow-man, we describe him as an ignorant fool, or otherwise, as it is called, malpractise, that is, "think" in a derogatory way of him. If the sharpened point of a pencil, held vertically, point upward, were placed by the side of this two-dimensional being, he would see it as a very short line. As the pencil was raised he would see this line increasing in length, and might speak of it as "growing." When the pencil had been sufficiently raised, he would see nothing, and might speak of it as dead. So in this three-dimensional world See "Flat Land," by Dr. Abbott; "Another World," by A. T. Schofield, 30 35 40 45 50 § For notes, see next page. |