Mary Baker Glover

“ Until this point is gained in the science of being, man will go on in belief, a pendulum between joy and sorrow, sickness and health, Life and death, even as at present. Is man tottering and ready to perish, or sick and sinning, the likeness of Omnipotence? are Life and all our faculties measured by calendars, and beauty a thing of decay? or is there a mortal man that grows, matures and decays, out of which springs the perfect and immortal man? ”

“ Who can say that man is alive to-day and to-morrow dead? What has touched Life to such strange issues? matter may destroy itself, but cannot destroy Spirit. What, then, has unstrung this harp of many strings? Theories stop here, and science alone rolls back the mystery and solves the problem of immortal man. Error bites the heel of Truth, but cannot destroy it; Truth bruises the head of error and kills it; error is mesmerism; one lie scaring off another and taking the rule itself; but Truth is science walking over all lies. Christianity is open seige with the world ”

“ Soul, owns man now and forever; let the owner of man then govern him, and the body will be harmonious and eternal. Neither a blade of grass appears, nor a spray buddeth within the vale, nor a leaf unfolds its fair outlines, nor a flower starts from its cloistered cell, without the Principle of man, even that Intelligence which the winds and sea obey, hath done it; naught but universal Soul, that numbers the very hairs of our head, and marks the sparrow's fall, can govern man. ”

“ Personality is not man, therefore the body mortal is but a belief of man, and not the reality of him. Life, Truth, and harmony are the reality of being, and man is the idea of these; hence the body mortal is but belief and error, discord and death. Shakespeare's description of age presents a picture of mortal man; our bodies are not the repositories of us, else all would go down to dust. I is Spirit and not matter, and Spirit never for a moment entered or animated matter. If happiness is personal sense, joy is a trembler and builds on sand; or if materiality is man the very worms do rob us. ”

“ Beauty, wealth, or fame is incompetent to meet the demands of the affections, and should never waver the balance against the more honest claims of intellect, goodness, and virtue. Happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love; it is unselfish; therefore it cannot exist alone, but requires an object to cherish. Our affections are not poured forth vainly, when meeting no return; they enrich the being, enlarging, purifying and elevating it. The wintry blasts of earth may transplant the flowers of affection, or scatter them to the winds ”

“ To raise the dead, restore the sick, or reform the sinner, we should understand science in its first statement, namely, that nothing is real but God, and His idea; aught beside is illusion, error andbelief, that disappear. Recognizing the nothingness of sickness, sin, and death, is all that will ever bring out the harmony of man, or enable him to conquer them. With this scientific starting-point we shall master disease and temptation, or blush to be conquered by what is unreal. Understanding discord unreal, and harmony the only reality, emboldens us to fight the good fight. ”

“ Over eighteen centuries ago the mere religionist was willing to hail Christ, Truth, with pomp and sceptre, but it came not thus, and though the modern scourge is a scoff, instead of the lash, the doors of some churches are quite as effectually closed against Christ to-day as then. Truth bids man watch, but is there guard or control held over personal sense by mere religionists? The Christianity of Jesus was the science of being; it destroyed sickness, sin, and death, denied personal sense, bore the cross, and reached the right hand of God, even the perfect Principle of man. ”

“ The evermore of Truth is changing the universe; thought is expanding beyond words; we are losing our swaddling clothes, asking for more light; yea, reaching forth to the stature of Soul outside the body. “Let there be light,” is the demand of Life and Love, changing chaos to order and discord to the music of the spheres. Progress takes off all shackles, and the finite yields to the Infinite. Advancing to a higher plane of action, thought grows new, and rises from the personal to the Impersonal; from the mortal to the Immortal, which is from the material to the spiritual idea of God. ”

“ Truth is liberty; its followers hoist the standard of freedom; engraven on its banners we read, slavery is abolished, my body is no longer my master, I claim the freedom of the Sons of God. What power opposed to divine Wisdom is it that binds man to conditions of sickness, sin, and death? Is it not the body material? Then is not this body an enemy to man? But this foe is not stronger than Omnipotence, and is not a tyrant without a master. The humble Nazarene rebelled against its power, and through his demonstration of healing proved matter a fable ”

“ So from Soul's loftier summits shines the pale star to the prophet shepherd, and it traverses night, over to where the young child lies in cradled obscurity that shall waken a world. Over the night of error dawn the morning beams and guiding star of Truth, and “the wise men are led by it to Science, to that which repeats the eternal harmony reproduced in proof of immortality and God. The time for thinkers has come; and the time for revolutions, ecclesiastic and social, must come. Truth, independent of doctrines or time-honored systems, stands at the threshold of history. ”

“ Science forbids such feats of imagination, and looks us in the face with reason and revelation.
“As the tree falleth, so shall it lie;” as man goeth to sleep so shall he waken; when the belief of death closes our eyes on this phase of the dream of Life in matter, we shall waken, not to a final judgment or resurrection, not with a single change in character, but for the same judgment of Wisdom to go on in process of purification as before, until Truth finally destroys error. When the final triumph of Soul over sense is achieved, the last trump has sounded, and not until then ”

“ We shall let the Principle of things alone interpret them, and never take an opinion or belief to steady the altar of science. The Principle of the universe and man embraces the understanding, and explanation of Soul and body, and is the basis of all science; but opinions and beliefs regarding God and man, or Soul and body, are the foundations of all error. There is no physical science, the Principle of science is God, Intelligence, and not matter; therefore, science is spiritual, for God is Spirit and the Principle of the universe and man. ”

“ These are some of the beliefs that serve as mile-stones to point out the rough places science must make smooth. The man of sin, sickness, and death is not “the image and likeness” of Love, Truth and Life; and all the vanity of the Gentiles, and doctrines preached under the sun, can never make that man immortal, or the image of God. Science lays the axe at the root of error and cutting down the belief of Life in matter, of Soul in body, and God in man, exchanges fable for fact, turns thought into new channels away from personality to Principle, through which alone man is able to reach Life. ”

“ That harmony, Intelligence and Life, are outside of matter, wholly apart and distinct from error, and mortality, even the leaf and flower, too beautiful to die, declare. A consciousness of Truth, Life, and Love, is Soul, not body. The Psalmist saith, “When I consider thy heavens the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him? thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet.” Matter is as clouds, and Spirit the sun, that appears to us only as the clouds disappear. ”

“ The rising sun of virtue and Truth is the morning of being, and its manhood eternal noon, unmarked by a setting sun. When beauty fades to personal sense, it is not lost to Soul, and affection marvels our friend could seem aught but beautiful. ”

“ Displace the belief of God in matter, or Soul in body, and happiness and immortality will be understood, and never can be until this is done. We gather not grapes of thorns; nor fill vessels that are unemptied.
To empty mankind of error so that Truth may flow into the mind, is the work before us; and those commissioned for this work will suffer tribulation such as has not been since the beginning. When Truth advances, error must recede, but will cry out as it goes: “Why art thou come hither to torment me before the time;” ”

“ When the sharp experiences of supposed Life in matter, its disappointments, and ceaseless woes, turn us from it as a tired child to a home in the bosom of Love, then are we fit to understand Life apart from vanity and lies; but without this weaning process, “who by searching can find out God?” If through the wholesome discipline of chastisement we become His children, understanding in part, righteousness and purity, we behold the Truth of spiritual science, where enraptured thought walks boundless, and conception unconfined has wings to reach its glory. ”

“ The world's hatred of Truth caused that moment of agony, harder to bear than the cross, up the hill of grief. A Life that was Love, all the good he did, rewarded with a cup of gall! Behold the sweat of blood falling in holy benediction on the grass of Gethsemane, and say, was Christianity then the privileged of earth, and can the followers to-day of that Truth so persecuted then, expect the world's approval? ”

“ Unless this terrible hour be met and restrained by Science, mesmerism, that scourge of man, will leave nothing sacred when mind begins to act under direction of conscious power. Sensuous man makes war to the death on his enemies; but the spiritual pours blessings on them unseen and unacknowledged; like the chamomile, that crushed, yields the sweetest odor, spiritual minds emit an atmosphere of Truth that blesses their enemies and destroys error while it is persecuting them; but stir the evil sensual mind, and worse than the deadly Upas are the plagues it emits. ”

“ It is the belief of sickness, sorrow, and of solar years, that mars the face and form. I say the belief, because science admits no reality in aught but God and His idea. To Spirit a thousand years are as one day; hence, a man of years and experience is ripening into higher beauty and excellence instead of growing old; mind is feeding the body with immortality, if it supplies it with Truth, and taking away the error of personal sense that says a day points to a nearer tomb; our body neither suffers nor enjoys. When will it be understood that “I” is impersonal, even mind and not matter? ”

“ We have slaves to personal sense, that are hopeless servants, knowing not how to obtain their freedom. The lame, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the sick and sensual are wearing out years of servitude, dragging their slow length along, chained to the belief the body is their master; and this belief must be abolished, or mankind submit hopelessly to the worst form of slavery. This state of man, however, is not legitimate, and cannot continue forever; even now, in prophetic vision, we see man free as the sons of God, and matter no longer his master ”

“ The dream of Life in matter, based on the evidence of personal sense, will vanish ere long, when we would gladly turn from its fading vision and the pains of sense, to peace and immortality; but the accumulated error of years dies slowly, and sometimes with severe struggles. As a general rule, man will not seek Truth until suffering shows him the need he has of it, or science opens the eyes of his understanding to see it; for science guides man safely over the quicksands and shoals, making Life what it is, harmony, and not discord. ”

“ Because science reverses the positions of personal sense, human reason acts slowly in accepting it, contesting every inch of ground it occupies, while error, self-complacent and applauded, sneers at the slow marches of Truth. Physiology is a name in our land. Institutions honor it, and materia medica bows the knee, but notwithstanding this, it has not improved mankind. We shall yet open our eyes to this fact in theodicy, that depending on matter for what Intelligence is responsible, is a mistake with grave consequences. ”

“ Truth's question to Adam, error, viz., “Is Life and Intelligence in matter?” rebuked and exposed this would-be material consciousness.
“The Lord formed man of the dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of Life, and he became a living Soul,” put Truth in error! Intelligence in matter! made the body mortal embrace the Principle of being that embraces man! Did the Infinite enter matter through man's nostrils? did God, the Truth and Life, enter the sick, sinning, and dying body? then Deity would be man, or man Deity, and Life mortal! this absurd belief is atheism. ”