Page:Science and Health.djvu/171

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SPIRIT AND MATTER.
167

and ceremonies, or in proselyting for certain forms of belief: members of his church must answer to themselves, in the secret sanctuary of Soul, questions of the most solemn import. First, am I surely gaining a victory over matter, and present with Spirit, present with Love and Truth, supping with them and they with me, gaining this oneness with God, of which Jesus spake, thus rising superior to personal sense, and conquering sickness, sin and death; am I caring less and less for earthly pleasures or pains, and getting out with the sinner and in with the saint? The true answer to these inquiries will set us all right; they are the only signs significant of the burial of the body with Christ, and its resurrection with God, Truth, compared with which rites and ceremonies sink into insignificance. We have no record that forms of church worship were instituted by our great spiritual teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, and we learn the improbability of this, in the science of God, that he taught and demonstrated. Said he, “The time now is when they that worship the Father should worship him in Spirit, and no longer in Jerusalem,” (the wealth and learning) “of our temples”; a magnificent edifice was not the sign of Christ's Church.

Anciently the followers of Christ, Truth, measured their Christianity by the control it gave them over sickness, sin and death; whereas the more modern forms of religion leave out the first proof, and substitute observances for a test of the latter; but we are learning slowly, as the centuries pass, to leave forms and doctrines, and require the primitive tests of Christianity. If we accept the mere letter of moral and spir-