Chapter 6
Fundamental Propositions
1. JESUS CHRIST taught certain great propositions as the law of God. He spent much time communing with God and knew more of God than any other who ever lived. To find out what He taught is to find true life. He declared, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me.” “The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me.” This substantiates John’s description of Jesus, “the Word became flesh.” Jesus declared that the Scriptures were full of the same teachings He was giving, and that Moses had rightly called God the creator of all. Moses had told the whole story of God, man, and life in the first chapter of Genesis. He taught, “In the beginning God created.” This is also rendered, “In the great forever, without beginning of years or end of days, God is revealing or creating.” In other words, God is responsible for all that is real.
2. Jesus said, “God is Spirit.” Spirit, then, is responsible for all that is real. “God is love.” Love, then, is Creator of all that is real. That which is not of love and by love is not real. God is Truth. So, Truth is Creator of all that is real, and that which is not of Truth and by Truth is not real. God is life. Therefore life is the great Creator and Cause of all that is real, and that which is not of life and by life is not real. God is the only substance. So, God being Spirit, Spirit is the only substance.
3. Now, that which is All must be omnipresent. That which is All can have no opposing power, so it must be omnipotent. That which is All must contain all wisdom, hence it must be omniscient. Allness sweeps the great circle of eternity clear of everything but Itself. What else can lay claim to any points within this great creative All? We have a law in physics which says, “Two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time.” You smile at the very absurdity of denying it. Yet, remember, there are those who, calling themselves scientific, yet declare that though “God is all and God is love,” there is still room for a devil; that though “God is all and God is life,” there is still room for sickness and death. However these persons manage to explain such inconsistencies to their own satisfaction matters not to us, for we know that they have departed from law and reason and that the shadows they are calling realities cannot stand as substance before the dawning of the great sun of pure reasoning.
4. Spiritual science, after starting out with the generally accepted basic principle, “God is all,” keeps straight on in pure and unadulterated logic. It puts fairly to everyone questions which from their own premises will each admit but one answer. Spiritual science says:
“If God is all and God means good, Genesis must read, ‘In the beginning good created.’ Can good create evil? If God is love, then ‘In the beginning love created.’ Can love create hatred and torment? If God is Truth, ‘In the beginning Truth created.’ Can Truth create error? If God is life, then, ‘In the beginning life created.’ Can life create death?”
5. If you have answered these questions in pure reason, you must admit that Genesis records no false creations. Now, put in order the glorious sequence you have never correctly arranged before. Call this great creative principle by any of its wonderful names: God, Life, Love, Mind, Spirit. It is ever present, all-powerful, all-wise, eternal. In it “we live, and move, and have our being.” It is the loving, wise, power-bestowing Father of whom Jesus said, “All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine.” It is the God “whom to know aright is life eternal.” It is the great Parent who has begotten us: “One is your Father, even he who is in heaven.” God, the great Mind, conceived us, generated us out of Himself. We are His. His perfect expression is coming forth into manifestation. This manifestation is the state called righteousness (right thinking). The Psalmist says,
“I shall behold thy face in righteousness;
I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with beholding thy form.” (Psalms 17:15)
6. Now, you have taken steps in right thinking. You have reasoned out the true of life. If you will obey Jesus’ direction, you will attain righteousness. He says, “Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” This means: Shut out of your mind that which looks real and hold firmly to the thought of what is real. Stop thinking that evil is real. Think of good as all. Stop thinking that matter is real. Know that Spirit is all.
7. To do this is to lift yourself into health and peace. “He that . . . shutteth his eyes from looking upon evil: he shall dwell on high.” “Except one be born of water and the Spirit [Mind], he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, There! for lo, the kingdom of God is within you.” Jesus Christ’s whole teaching bore upon the necessity of every man’s getting out of the sensual mind and entering into the kingdom of his Father (pure Mind). “He that is of God heareth the words of God.” “It is the Spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing.” “The words drat I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life.”
8. Jesus said to those who professed righteousness yet lived in the sensuous mind, and judged according to appearances: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and standeth not in the truth, because there was no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof.” Was there ever a broader, clearer denial of the unreality of all outside the geat Mind of Truth? If a lie were true or real, it would not be a lie, would it?
9. A thing to be true or real must have truth in it, then, must it not? If then, as Jesus distinctly states of the one whom He called the devil, “there was no truth in him,” how do you make him a reality? If his claims are all lies, and he is the father of lies, how can you conceive of sensuous man as a reality? If he is a murderer from the beginning, he is father of death. Does that prove that death is real? Can falsehood be the father of Truth? Jesus said: “If a man keep my word he shall never see death.” “I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father but by me.” “If ye abide in my word, then are ye truly my disciples; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Christ means Truth.
10. Now, through keen reasoning, we arrive at the real concerning life. Here we have Jesus Christ as authority to bear us out in our conclusions. He declares that the devil is a lie, which means an unreality. Sensuous man is the child of a lie (the creation of unreality). Everything spoken of this unreality or by this unreality is unreal. Now we are ready to turn our back on this lie and enter into the kingdom of the Father whose “righteousness is an everlasting righteousness.”
11. Put off, then, the lying tongue. Take up the words of Spirit, and of Life. Put off the habit of thinking lying thoughts; think of life, truth, and love as the only reality. Put off the habit of listening to unprofitable conversation. God within has the voice to which you should listen, the voice that will lead you into all Truth.
12. But remember that you cannot enter the kingdom of mind weighed down and piled high with old burdens of false notions and prejudices. As has been said, “It is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for” such a man “to enter into the kingdom of God.” It is only the pure in mind who see God. They who keep the oil of Truth burning in their lamps of understanding can enter into and partake of this marriage feast. They who would behold God’s face in righteousness must awake in this likeness of mind. We train the mind to such likeness by right words. We train the mind to righteousness by beginning back at its very Source and stopping every thought but the right one. There is no right foundation thought but the true thought of Creator, creation, and existence. God is Creator. We are creation. We exist or show forth our Creator. We are not showing forth, therefore, except as we show forth good. We show forth good by our word. “The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life.” “The Word was God . . . and without him was not anything made that hath been made.” The Word is God. We show forth God by acknowledging Spirit only. Stop every thought but the thought that Spirit is all. God is Spirit. God makes all. Spirit is the substance out of which all things are made.
13. As already stated, before we can enter into the kingdom of God (Spirit or Mind) which opens to us through this new way of thinking and living, we must drop old prejudices and old thoughts and sit meekly down to learn what is true. We must let go of old beliefs in sin, sickness, and death. We need not worry about what will become of them any more than we need give thought to the place where darkness flees when the light is brought in, or to where cold goes when the fire is lighted on our hearth, or to what becomes of ignorance when knowledge takes its place. When you realize that Spirit is all, that Truth shall set you free from negative conditions, they all go just where darkness and cold are when driven away by the energies of light and heat: nowhere.
14. Then shall you awake in the likeness of Spirit and behold in righteousness the face of Truth; then shall the genesis of your new heaven and earth satisfaction read: “In the beginning love, good, and life created the thoughts that people my world. Peace flows through it as a river; glory and gladness roof its skies; joy and health are the morning and evening stars; willing service is the moon that follows after the great sun of righteousness; understanding is the soil where springs forth the beauty of action. The angel that guards the Eden of my world is purity of thought. My love of life is absolute knowledge of Truth.” This is your world, created by the mind that was in Christ Jesus.
