"One Holy Church of God appears
Through every age and race,
Unwasted by the lapse of years,
Unchanged by changing place.
"From oldest time, on farthest shores,
Beneath the pine or palm,
One unseen Presence she adores,
With silence or with psalm.
"Her priests are all God's faithful sons,
To serve the world raised up,
The pure in heart her baptized ones,
Love, her communion cup.
"The Truth is her prophetic gift,
The soul her sacred page;
And feet on mercy's errand swift
Do make her pilgrimage."
--_Longfellow._
The next day Mr. Hayden, with great interest, read the letter containing
the first lecture, which was given the day after the reception reported
in the last chapter. Pertaining to the lesson he read:
"How I wished you were with me yesterday, and could see the fifty eager
faces as they gathered in the class room and waited for Mrs. Pearl.
"Some sorrowful and careworn, some filled with the marks of suffering
and pain, some hopeless and despairing, some careless and gay, some
merely curious, but all expectant and interested.
"It matters not with what varying motives a mass of people meet
together, there is a common chord of sympathy, which, if rightly
touched, will cause the many to think and feel as one, and herein lies
the secret of a teacher's power. Mrs. Pearl has this faculty of
gathering and holding the thoughts of her audience, and I could not help
noting the calm and satisfied expression as they went out after the
lecture.
"The first lesson is about The True Foundation, and while much of it is
what we have known and believed, it is stated in a new and interesting
way. I will give it, as nearly as possible, in her own words:
"It is necessary to have a common premise in order to sustain a
harmonious argument, and the first thing is to find a base or foundation
from which and upon which to build. Our doctrine is to be established by
sound reasoning and scientific argument, and we must go back to the
beginning and learn something about the First Cause of all things.
"In ancient times students devoted themselves to the study of pure
reasoning, and they found that by putting themselves in harmony with
First Cause, they attained a power, by certain lines of thought and
through the speaking of words, to perform wondrous works, healing the
sick, having dominion over all creation.
"They discovered the different results of speaking words of science,
which are words of truth, and words of error or words contrary to
reason. Right, true words brought forth right and true conditions to
everyone around them, but deviation from this line of reason, would
bring discord and trouble and undesirable conditions. These wise
thinkers declared Mind to be the First Cause of all creation, and
announced the study of Mind and the words and ways of Mind, to be the
profoundest theme that could engage the attention of man.
"We find this philosophy and these conclusions corroborated by the
Bible, which we shall consider and prove to contain revelations of
changeless, eternal truth.
"Truth is universal, and whatever is true in one part of the universe
must be true in all parts. That which has been understood and conceded
to be true in all ages and climes is what we call universal truth.
"Because the first chapter of Genesis, then, agrees in all essential
particulars with the accounts of other nations and among other peoples
we consider it universal truth.
"Because it is so beautiful, logical and spiritual, we revere it;
because our own inner consciousness of truth agrees with its statements,
we concede it to be as accurate and reasonable an account of Creation as
we have, and we are therefore willing to use it as the basis of our
argument.
"We read: 'In the beginning God created,' but a more literal and
spiritual rendering would make the pivotal statement, 'God creates.' Now
we know there can be no beginning or end to Omnipotence, hence there
must be a continuous creating, and thus the term 'beginning' could only
refer to the manifestation of what had already been created. How was the
creation manifested? By the Word. 'God said, let there be light, and it
was so,' and by every 'God said,' was manifested the thing which He said
was to be.
"The word God is an abbreviation of the Anglo-Saxon of Good, the two
words in that language being identical. To many this will be an aid to
realizing the omnipresence God, and add to the reverential sense of that
personal nearness which makes the Deity a Father and an ever-loving
Friend.
"God is not person as to form or personal limitations, yet personal in
the sense of Presence and intelligent communication with intelligent
beings. Jesus said truly, 'No man hath seen God at any time, because the
eye of the flesh cannot perceive spirit.' Through the quality or
influence of Good, Intelligence, Love and all we may name as soulful, we
perceive and feel God's presence.
"Thus in the spiritual sense, the 'pure in heart may see God.' We can,
too, perceive the quality of God in Good, as we perceive the attributes
of the sun in its light. As the light of the sun warms the dark earth,
making it fruitful, so the divine Light (Intelligence), shining upon our
earth nature, makes it fruitful because of the presence of its Creator.
"Some there are who call this ever-present Intelligence or Good the
living Principle. As the Infinite, it wears all phases and adapts itself
to every conception of the Finite, so in the sense of omnipresence and
unchangeableness it might from this point of view be called Principle.
This is the cold, mathematical conception of God as Law, which without
Love would be incomplete. We must, therefore, know the duality of God if
we are to understand either Law or Love. Some things can only be known
by intuition, without the aid of the senses, and because of an inherent
idea in our consciousness. For instance, every nation worships Deity in
some way. Since we cannot know God through the senses, by which we gain
knowledge of visible things, how can we know there _is_ a God?
"As Paul says: 'Likewise the spirit itself beareth witness with our
spirit that we are the children of God;' and what better answer could we
have?
"Spirit, according to Webster, is: 'Life or living substance considered
independent of corporeal existence--vital essence, force, or energy as
distinct from matter.' God is the vital essence, God is spirit, and God
is substance--'the real or existing essence,' 'the divine essence or
being.'
"God, therefore, is the Divine Power that creates and sustains all
things--the All-Power, the All-Intelligence, the All-Mind, the All-Love,
the All-Substance, the All-Harmony, the All-Life, the All-Good,
omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. This is the one Creator, 'one God
who is Father of all, over all, and in all.'
"Though we cannot see this God or Good Principle, we can apprehend it
through the signs or manifestations that we see. As we look about, we
everywhere see the signs of life--not Life itself, but the signs of
it--that tell of the presence of God or Good. Now Life is Good in and
for itself.
"We often see the divinest love manifested through every deed of love,
every heroic act of higher living, every grand sacrifice of
self-comfort, pleasure, even life itself. Jesus says: 'Greater love can
no man have than to lay down his life for his friend.' Such love is a
manifestation of the one, only Love, which is God--Good omnipresent.
"Every glimpse of Truth which the whole world seeks to know and wherever
found, is a realization of the omnipresent Truth, which is God.
"Intelligence, in its highest or lowest form, is but a manifestation of
God as Intelligence; for whence comes our intelligence if not from the
great and only Intelligence, which is ever flowing to us and through us,
which is ever being generated in us, whenever and wherever we are
willing to let it manifest itself.
"Emerson says: 'There is one mind common to all individual men. Every
man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once
admitted to the right of reason is made a free man of the whole estate.
* * * * Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is
or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.'
"So we reason about health and strength and justice, or any of the
divine qualities, which we may claim as a part of our inheritance,
because they are inherent in the All, in which 'we live, are moved, and
have our being.'
"Having something of an understanding as to the nature of this divine
Creator, we can, to some extent, apprehend that the essence of all
things manifesting it, and manifested by it, must be good like itself,
must be of the same quality as itself; as light emanating from light,
must be of the same essence and quality as that from which it emanates.
God, like light, is always the same, and cannot send forth or create
anything opposite Himself.
"The nature of God embraces every good quality of masculine and
feminine character, as also the impersonal life Principle. It is
therefore proper to use the masculine, feminine or neuter pronoun when
referring to Deity. As different phases of the one Love, we see
manifested, the strong, all-protecting, intelligent father-love, the
tender, restful, patient mother-love, the innocent, confiding, trustful
child-love, each complete in the whole, which can be recognized by all
or one of these attributes.
"The great Mind of which the ancient philosophers tell us and which
Emerson so plainly realized, is the the Origin and Force of all
Creation, the Mind for which we have found so many synonyms and so many
offices, the Great Invisible of which all visible things are but signs
or symbols.
"There is but one great Mind, one great Thinker. All thoughts of this
Mind, which is Infinite Goodness, must be infinitely good, and man is
the crown and apex of the wonderful creation--is made in the image and
likeness of God.
"If we concede the Creator, God, to be omnipresent, omniscient and
omnipotent, the only Power there is, perfect, unchangeable and eternal,
we must necessarily concede that all which He creates is good, and must
remain so because everything connected with, emanating from, or similar
to Him is, and must be like Him in quality and essence.
"The true man is spiritual, perfect like his Father, and can only be
subject to perfect conditions. If we continually and persistently
recognize the true creation which is invisible, we make manifest the
perfect conditions in the sign of the true, which is the visible. In
doing this, we are, in the most essential sense, acknowledging God,
worshiping the one Deity.
"Because we have so long recognized the other powers we have become
idolators, and must now turn back to the only true God. 'If thou return
to the almighty, thou shalt be built up, thou shalt put away iniquity
far from thy tabernacles.... For thou shalt have thy delight in the
almighty and shalt lift up thy face unto God.'
"We have become filled with false beliefs, because we have judged
according to appearances, and hence drawn false conclusions. How can we
know spiritual truth without spiritual knowledge? How can we have
spiritual knowledge without spiritual perception; how can we have
spiritual perception without recognizing Spirit, Substance, God, as the
supreme Essence back of all visible forms?
"This is the fundamental principle of healing--this recognition of
spiritual being and spiritual law. Grasping only the surface meaning of
this grand truth, we recognize and admire the mental power which
produces cures, hence it is frequently called mind-cure, because,
through the agency of mind, the cure is wrought, as we say, water-cure
or sun-cure for the same reason; but as we proceed in the study, we will
go beyond an intellectual to a spiritual perception of what is meant by
_met-a-physical_, which pertains not only to a science of mental
phenomena, but the science of real being, and has to do with the
spiritual or real self of man.
"Now John, if you don't understand, just wait and study, for really we
must study these statements, without prejudice, too, for that is the
only way, and of course we cannot expect to understand at once. The
great essential is to keep uppermost the _desire_ for truth, but I need
not tell you that, for what an earnest truth-seeker you are, nobody
knows better than myself.
"This is the best I can do toward giving the first lesson, but you must
think well upon it and get a good foundation laid for what is to come
next. This science is to be developed rather than learned.
"I want to put in every moment I can get for study, so must close. Hand
this to Kate and Grace. I do hope they will be interested.
"Tell me all about your progress, and the precious little ones--how are
they?
"Your loving MARION."