Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/281

Rh and its government is divine Science. Man is the offspring, not of the lowest, but of the highest qualities of

Mind. Man understands spiritual existence in proportion as his treasures of Truth and Love are enlarged. Mortals must gravitate Godward, their affections and aims grow spiritual, — they must near the broader interpretations of being, and gain some proper sense of the infinite, — in order that sin and mortality may be put off.

This scientific sense of being, forsaking matter for Spirit, by no means suggests man's absorption into Deity and the loss of his identity, but confers upon man enlarged individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive love, a higher and more permanent peace.

The senses represent birth as untimely and death as irresistible, as if man were a weed growing apace or a

flower withered by the sun and nipped by untimely frosts; but this is true only of a mortal, not of a man in God's image and likeness. The truth of being is perennial, and the error is unreal and obsolete.

Who that has felt the loss of human peace has not gained stronger desires for spiritual joy? The aspiration after

heavenly good comes even before we discover what belongs to wisdom and Love. The loss of earthly hopes and pleasures brightens the ascending path of many a heart. The pains of sense quickly inform us that the pleasures of sense are mortal and that joy is spiritual.

The pains of sense are salutary, if they wrench away false pleasurable beliefs and transplant the affections