Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/270

258 drug or an instrument, and yet the tumor was wholly removed in two days.

Jesus triumphed over the belief that matter is anything in and of itself, or has any authority over man. His kingdom was not material but spiritual. He understood both Soul and body. He conquered the flesh and the devil. He was the master of sense, sickness, sin, and death. He came teaching and fulfilling the law of being, so establishing the kingdom of heaven, the reign of harmony on earth. His demonstration of Life is the strongest proof of Divine Science — of perfect manhood, of a Life without death, and holiness without sin. He not only taught, but exemplified, the possibility of meeting the command, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in Heaven [the Principle of man] is perfect.”

Theodore Parker has a remarkable essay on Naturalism, Supernaturalism, and Spiritualism, using the term spiritualism, not in its modern, narrow, sectarian and material sense, but in its primitive and proper sense, as indicative of that spiritualism which is the opposite of materialism. In this essay, speaking of the power of divine faith and Spirit, he says with much force: —

It is no vulgar superstition to say men are inspired in such times. They are the seedtime of life. Then we live whole years through in a few moments; and afterwards, as we journey on in life, cold and dusty and travel-worn and faint, we look to that moment as a point of light; the remembrance of it comes over us like the music of our home, heard in a distant land. Like Elisha. . . we go long years in the strength thereof. It travels with us, a great wakening light, — a pillar of fire in the darkness, to guide us through the lonely pilgrimage of life. These hours of inspiration, like the flower of the aloe-tree,}}