I continue to be grateful for Robert Peel’s
authorship. Peel enunciates spiritual concepts using refreshingly original
terminology, causing one to reassess how one thinks, and especially how one
describes Science to another.
This paragraph describing the Christ is
pertinent this week, since we are studying the Lesson on Christ Jesus:
“The Christ, she taught, had been expressed in
varying measure by prophet and sage and apostle; as the true idea of God, it
was still available for all men to express in the measure that they followed
the example of Jesus, thought as he did, drew on the same inexhaustible source
of good which he called “Father.” Nevertheless, though she emphasised the
universal availability of the Christ-power and the Christ-spirit, she held that
Jesus had embodied them with unique perfection, and this fact ensured his role
as Exemplar, or Way-shower, till the end of time. This uniqueness she
attributed to the spirituality of Mary’s conception of him……….” (Mary Baker Eddy: Years of Trial
p 27).
Such a perfect and concise description of the
Christ. And how about the arresting notion that we can draw on the same
inexhaustible source of good which he called “Father”!
Peel is also brilliant on p 33 where he explains
the way evil is classified in Christian Science. He comprehends the laws of
logic, and also is well-versed in the thinking of philosophers and mystics, and
so is able to draw on that knowledge to mount a convincing and clear argument:
“The metaphysical logic of Christian Science
left no place for evil to operate in the perfectly ordered universe of Spirit.
But in the relativities of human life this logic was confronted daily by the
empirical evidence of evil. Mrs Eddy’s answer to the riddle was that the false
evidence, not the true logic, must go. To minds trained in formal philosophical
disciplines such an answer was almost incomprehensible…But if one’s very acknowledgement of its
(evil’s) lack of absolute (ie spiritual) reality resulted in wiping it out of
relative human experience - possibly in contradiction to all known physical law
and psychological experience - then a “demonstration” of a different order had
been offered.”
When I draw quotes out of the context of the
whole, they lose some of their impact, but suffice to say, I find the book
illuminating. It matures one.
Marie Fox
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