Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/217

Rh a manner unknown (and this is what religion commonly teaches), we are left without a rational proof of immortality. But God cannot be separated for an instant from man, the reflection of Himself. This knowledge holds our existence to be intact. All the myriad forms of mortal thought, made manifest as matter, are not more distinct or real, to the so-called material senses, than the forms that Soul creates are to spiritual sense, where Life is permanent.

The footsteps of Christian Science are not so much seen as felt. The “still, small voice” of Truth is uttering itself. We are either turning away from this utterance, or we are yielding to it and going up higher. To become as a little child, willing to leave the old for the new, renders thought receptive of the advanced idea. Gladness to leave the old landmarks, and willingness to let them disappear, this disposition precipitates the ultimate harmony. The purification of sense and self is a proof of progress; for none but “the pure in heart shall see God.”

Angels are not etherealized human beings, evincing animal qualities; but they are celestial visitants, who fly on spiritual pinions, not material. They are pure thoughts, winged with Truth and Love. Human conjecture confers upon them its own forms of thought, marked with superstitious outlines, making them human creatures with suggestive wings; but this is only fancy. It has behind it no more reality than has the sculptor when he carves his statue of Liberty — an image which embodies his conception of an unseen quality or condition, but which has no personal antecedent reality, save in the artist's own “chambers of imagery.”