Description
This unique three-volume collection of Dr. de Lange’s Association addresses is very valuable for readers who are interested in understanding how Christian Science relates to individual experience as well as the experience of the global community.
The new eBook edition includes all three volumes – 22 addresses from 1936 to 1957.
Extracts:
Volume I – p.69
1938
Unity of Good 3:20 states, “God is All-in-all. Hence He is in Himself only, in His own nature and character, and is perfect being, or consciousness. He is all the Life and Mind there is or can be. Within Himself is every embodiment of Life and Mind.”
Mind beholds itself as itself, and this constitutes the infinite full, indivisible manifestation, or man. Man, therefore, has “not a single quality underived from Deity” (S&H 475:20 only), meaning, of course, that man’s experience is divine Mind experiencing itself.
Mind being one, man must be one, and this One simultaneously the one which is Mind and the one which is man. Mind and man are not two, there being no numbers in God. “Principle and its idea is one, and this one is God … Being” (ibid. 465:17-1, emphasis added). Consider Being from the standpoint of cause, and you may call it God or Principle; consider Being from the standpoint of effect, and you may call it man or manifestation. However, these two different ways of considering Being do not and cannot change Being. In Being itself such a consideration is not going on. There is no duality or plurality in Being. Being is always subjectively, one-ly, single-mindedly conscious of itself, in its unalterable, infinite oneness, or indivisibility. This Being is your Being. The different standpoints, the difference between God and man, cause and effect, are the result of human attempts to understand God, or Being. But Being is being its glorious radiant Self, without ever thinking of different points of view whence to consider itself.
Hence, Mr. Bicknell Young’s profound admonition, “Be, and by Being heal the sick.” In other words, when Being constitutes all there is to you, both as Principle and effect, Soul and body, then whatever seems contrary to this infinite perfection dwindles away into its spurious nothingness. In this manner, we do not assume too much; we do not assume creative force or power. On the contrary, we recognize restfully, joyfully the actuality of spontaneous, self-perpetuating existence, which existence we are and experience, without any effort to keep it going, or any aim to attain it. The infinity — and divinity — of perfect Being precludes both effort to make and aim to reach.
To experience and be this Being more and more naturally, constantly, easily, perfectly, all-inclusively, infinitely is the so-called aim of the Christian Scientist. The aim is attained in the measure that the sense of aim or effort is swallowed up in Being itself, subjectively experienced as the “I” of one’s existence. “If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light” (Matt. 6:22). There would be no objection to writing this “eye” with a single capital letter “I” instead of “e-y-e.” Thinking out from the singleness, or oneness of Mind, you will find Mind’s manifestation, or your body, full of light, that is, as Mind experiencing itself.
Volume I – p.148
1940
This is not the time for narrow personal views. Refuse to be mesmerized by personal thoughts and experiences. We cannot outline, but we can be all-embracing in our thought, and this generic understanding will change many things for all nations. Christian Science makes it possible for universal Being to prevail, but this means that there must be Science. This means that you are the light of the world — in the degree that you are this light! What a great opportunity is ours. It is boundless. The need for help appears to be a universal claim. For this reason, we simply have to be more universal in our thought. This fact does not relieve us of any legitimate work of healing what is called specific cases. We have both the power and the duty to gain in understanding until that understanding is equal to any and every situation. But, our views must be noble, big, and all-embracing beyond human conception. Our mental activity must be commensurate with the Science which empowers it. We must be radical in our thinking — we must see that there is no matter, no materialism, no materiality. This constitutes our spiritual inclusion and divine dominion, which go hand in hand.
Volume I – p.168
1940
The very highest contribution to the movement is living church subjectively, and thereby healing all forms of discord. This will do more for the prosperity and perpetuation of the movement than anything else. In the way I expressed it this winter in a number of addresses on “Church as Divine Activity”: “To do one’s part for the support of our churches, services, and activities, and at the same time rise above a mortal, material, personal sense of church, is a wonderfully helpful thing. It means the lessening of process, and thereby the experience of more spiritual spontaneity.” When thinking of church, do not think immediately of some human organization of which you are a member. You will wonderfully help this church and The Mother Church by let‐ting your consciousness be that which “rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle” (S&H 583:13). In the measure that you include church as a right idea and exclude a personal sense of movement, you will find the movement blest and improved. The improvement of the movement cannot take place merely by thinking of it as a human organization carried on by persons, and trying to improve these persons or this organization.
Movement, or organization, is a human concept about church — “the structure of Truth and Love” (ibid. 583:12 only). Knowing the truth concerning church, you improve the organization by lessening the beliefs about it. Humanly this appears as a more efficient and simple organization protecting its members, in the highest sense of that word, by letting them be their divine, impersonal, spontaneous self.
That which seems to hold our movement down in different ways — lack of attendance, lack of funds, discordant conditions within the churches, lack of membership — is an entirely impersonal error, or claim. The need, then, is for wiping out this claim on the basis of the one divine Mind, not by setting thought on getting more persons to go to church; not by trying to get more money; not by trying to get more harmony; not by trying to get more members. This is all putting the cart before the horse. Unfortunately, it seems that workers are not sufficiently aware of this. Let us handle this argument as a false claim. That is the reason for its being mentioned here.
The great necessity is to get away from personality. It is not mere numbers. Our Manual says: “According to the Scripture they shall turn away from personality and numbering the people” (Art. VIII, Sect. 28). It is the Christ, the depth of the Christ‐understanding, which one should cultivate by knowing that one already IS this Christ. This — alone — is capable of reducing the impersonal mortal mind resistance. With a lessening of the anti-Christ, our movement will blossom forth in higher usefulness and in fulfill- ing its great mission more rapidly and efficiently.
In loving and understanding care, The Mother Church, its branches and activities, are placed. Your including the idea church, keeps it pure, uncontaminated, beneficial, one. Church is safe in your exalted understanding, in the glorious oneness of your Being, in the all-inclusiveness of your Love.
Volume II – p.365
1945
As Mind is All, and thereby all-inclusive, Mind is exclusive of nothing, and nothing is excluded from Mind. The proper way to define that which suggests itself as being different from the Love and infinity that are Mind, is not as things or persons or entities but as a misinterpretation of that which is. This is the case concerning the smallest false suggestion as well as concerning that suggestion shaping itself as a so-called external universe peopled by millions of persons, animals, countless things, and incredibly and complexly moving around in stellar spaces.
Divine oneness and indivisibility is misinterpreted by personal sense into the plurality and divisibility of men and things.
Divine eternality and continuity is misinterpreted by time-sense into the restrictions of past and future, and the disruptiveness of a time-now.
Divine infinity and integrity is misinterpreted by material sense into the limitations and resistance of matter and its disintegrating and deteriorating tendencies.
Oneness is the indivisibility of the infinite.
Eternality is the self-continuity of the spiritual now.
Infinity is the all-inclusiveness of the divine here, excluding anything dwelling outside, or objectively.
What appears as the world’s sense of security and well-being will increase by our seeing that the essentials for life, freedom, and happiness are infinitely, everpresently, continually available.
Volume II – p.528
1949
Mrs. Eddy has presented us with the final revelation of religion and science in one: God’s allness as infinite, indestructible good; the consequent nothingness of evil; the Christ-derived ability to experience as one’s own self all the goodness of God subjectively, by getting rid of a mistaken sense of existence. There is, indeed, nothing beyond this to be revealed.
Eternity, not time, reveals it; in other words, the subject has to be approached not as a future attainment, but as a present spiritual acknowledgment. See Science and Health 3:14: “To understand God is the work of eternity, and demands absolute consecration of thought, energy, and desire.” And, equally, only the Father, not the son, knows it (Mark 13:32: “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father”). The revelation is from the standpoint of Principle, not from the standpoint of idea, in accordance with Science and Health 272:28-29: “The divine Principle of the universe must interpret the universe.”
Thanks to this revelation, we know that man, including every- thing beautiful, lovely, good, joyous, harmonious, tender, clear, crystal, is not a material phenomenon, “of few days, and full of trouble” (Job 14:1), but the forever, the immutable, the eternal in nature and essence.
On the other hand, whatever appears as evil and ugly, fear-provoking and perverse was never a thing that was caused or made by God, and thereby able to persist in its perfidy and perversity. It was never anchored in the chain of causation; it was always mortal mind: “nothing claiming to be something . . . a suppositional material sense, alias the belief that sensation is in matter . . . the subjective states of error; material senses” (S&H 591:25-8).
And then in logical consistency with her humility in ascribing all power, presence, consciousness, entity to God and to God alone, Mrs. Eddy came to the final, breathtaking conclusion that, contrary to all material sense testimony, man was not a weak speck bewilderingly beholding the unchartable vastness of a stellar universe, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, trying to pierce through the unaccountable complexities of the atom—a thing nobody has ever seen. No, man was discerned to be universal as well as immortal, being “the compound idea of God, including all right ideas” (ibid. 475:14-15), “the full representation of Mind”
Volume III – p.791
1956
The “absolute and final” nature of Christian Science confronts us with demands so revolutionary in character, and so universal in scope, that they would be baffling if we did not know what we know in Christian Science. All of us assembled here today, without a single exception–otherwise we would not be here–do know that our capacity for understanding and living is the Christ itself. To recognize this fact is supreme humility, as shown forth by Christ Jesus when he declared:
He that hath seen me hath seen the Father (John 14:9).
Universality is predicated upon oneness. The origin of the word meaning turned into one, universality is understood and experienced when we are no longer looking at existence through the disruptive, finitizing, perverting lens of a so-called human mind, but from the standpoint of infinite, indivisible, divine Mind itself as Mind’s own faculty and function. Finality is predicated upon Divinity. It is the completeness of the infinitely real and the reality of the infinite to which no addition has to be made and which can be impaired by no deduction.
No greater, more fundamental, revolution is possible. It is total revolution, indeed, ushering in our total status of Principle in full and final self-expression.
Volume III – p.602
1951
The ability to recognize that Life is eternal, inexhaustible, infinite, joyous, and one, in contradistinction to the misinterpretation through objectivation into uncertainty, dimness, vagueness, and destructibility – that ability is called the Christ. The most comprehensive definition of the Christ Mrs. Eddy has given to us is Science and Health 332:11-15:
The Christ is incorporeal, spiritual, – yea, the divine image and likeness, dispelling the illusions of the senses; the Way, the Truth, and the Life, healing the sick and casting out evils, destroying sin, disease, and death.
Here are mentioned the three functions or offices of the Christ. Christ: Truth and Love, a synonym of God; Christ: the divine image and likeness, a synonym of man; Christ: the activity of Truth “healing the sick and casting out evils.”
It is truly wonderful to be able to state the allness and oneness of Being, together with its functioning, with one word: Christ. It shows the all-inclusiveness and, more than all else, the indivisibility of infinity. The Christ makes it possible to discern existence subjectively and simultaneously to be it. In being it, one’s very presence, or conscious, loving Being that is sheer joy, operates as the law of immediate annulment to everything and anything claiming to be unlike radiant reality.
