Johnston Letters from 1946
LETTER FROM 1946
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New York, N.Y.
22 Jan. ’46
Dear Mr. ……..
The notice came yesterday about the pamphlet. Enclosed is $1.00 for two copies; I am sending this to you in . . . . . in the hope this will speed the sending, but I may be wrong. As you know, I am anxious to see it at the earliest moment.
I find that when Hamlyn resigned from the so-called materially organized Mother Church in 1924, he briefly set forth to the directors just what the Manual and the two deeds provide in organization; so don’t be surprised if the surmising directors come to say, “Oh this is just G. Hamlyn.” It makes no difference of course; and with the whole belief of ecclesiasticism having always to operate as personality, it would seem the anonymity of both P.R. and the notes are excellent. It is important that Hamlyn acted up to his Notes and resigned; words without deeds are not much, the truth we see that we act up to alone is truly effective and I was, as I told you earlier, delighted to know the Notes carried the courage of their conviction in action.
As you well said, even local church groups acting on their own without Boston dictation, if they also act from the standpoint of personality and its hypnotic dictation, are only practicing the same reversal of Christian Science which this Science denominates as malicious mental malpractice. The whole problem in belief in the C.S. movement is to gain and to practice genuine Christian Science. The reason Mr. Eustace stood correctly for the Manual and for Christian Science in the great test after Mrs. Eddy a generation ago is because he understood genuine Christian Science, man’s oneness with God as All-in-all, not directors or anything outside of God’s allness; and that is the vast importance of his explanation of that stand and of the genuine metaphysics of Christian Science in his two volumes, “C.S., Its ‘Clear, Correct Teaching’,” and “Whoso Readeth Let Him Understand.”
How can Mrs. Eddy better explain the evil of ecclesiastical directors, of looking to directors as God, and the result, than in these two statements: S.&H. 2nd Ed. 1878, p. 8: “Rejecting a personal God, to make a god of persons, is equally fatal to the science of being.”; S.& H. 16th Edition, 1886, p. 214: “The Apostle Paul refers to the personality of evil as the God of this world, and further defines it as dishonesty and craftiness, ‘handling the Word of God deceitfully.'” Is not C.S. ecclesiasticism doing just that? The personality of evil is of course the evil of personality, which Mrs. Eddy says again and again through the centuries has sunk man’s sense of true religion. And why, because in belief it is the exact reversal of the fact of man’s being, his oneness with divine Love. In the previous paragraph on pg. 214 of this 16th Ed., S&H states: “If we abide in Truth and Love, this hidden foe, or secret mental malpractice, will only serve the ends of Wisdom-whereby one learns how to master error. (my underlining). This uplifts and enlarges the human capacity for good, and so fulfills the Scripture: “They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not harm them.'”
These sincere hill-billies in the South who insist on demonstrating with physical poisonous snakes are on a very limited material level; but what can be said of a Christian Science movement which ignores and does not understand all there is to poison as evil, the “nature and position” of malicious mind and its malicious mental malpractice?
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In Mrs. Eddy’s wonderful instruction to the field in 1909, “The Way of Wisdom” (My. 356-7) she says: “The only incentive of a mistaken sense is malicious animal magnetism,–the name of all evil–and this must be understood.” Why, because only when all evil is seen as directed evil, maliciously directed by mortals, can one be properly aroused to reversing it to divinely directed good by so-called mortals, and so prove the truth that ‘secret mental malpractice only serves the ends of wisdom.'”
Quoting further from “The Way of Wisdom”, Mrs. Eddy begins, “The infinite is one, and this one is Spirit; Spirit is God and this God is infinite good.
“This simple statement of oneness is the only possible correct version of Christian Science…wherein matter has neither part nor portion, because matter is the opposite of spiritual means, manifestation, and demonstration.”
And Mrs. Eddy concludes this instruction: “Spirit is infinite; therefore Spirit is all. ‘There is no matter’ is not only the axiom of true Christian Science, but it is the only basis upon which this Science can be demonstrated.” The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston is Mary Baker Eddy’s Church, left as the perfect spiritual model for all mankind. As she puts it in the Manual, p. 102, “‘Mary Baker Eddy’s Church, The Mother Church or The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Mass.'” Could Mrs. Eddy have left “matter” in her church, left it to operate materially open to malicious mental malpractice as the true church ideal for mankind? You know she could not! She left it in line with the oneness which “is the only possible correct version of Christian Science,” she left it on “the only basis upon which this Science can be demonstrated.”
Then what has God been unfolding since Mrs. Eddy’s passing, through the great trial and since about personality, ecclesiasticism, malicious mental malpractice and genuine understanding of Christian Science? The truth about it all, of course; the very truth that Christian Scientists could not see while Mrs. Eddy was still here in the flesh as Leader, and so forced her withdrawal that the vital lesson be learned.
All her last instructions are marvelously to the point of the genuine understanding of Christian Science which as she says in “The Way of Wisdom” is the only possible correct version of C.S., and the only basis that can demonstrate it. All her moves closing out channels for material organization of The Mother Church, and for maintaining purity of genuine practice of C.S. in local groups, is of this highest, absolute instruction. But take two examples, one published to the field in Sept. 1910, and the other, given at about the same time, according to Doorley from Dickey, but for some reason not finally published until Sept. 1917.
The 1st in My. 241-2, in answer to a letter “from a Christian Scientist in the West,” which years earlier (My. 197) Mrs. Eddy spoke of as “our far Western students, the Christian Scientists.” The student was denying that she still lived in her flesh, that “matter was any part or portion” of her being, that her flesh “lived or died” only according to the false belief entertained, the mistaken sense maliciously directed by malicious animal magnetism, that “to obey Christ was not to know as real the beliefs of an earthly mortal,” only to see and prove more of the infinity of God in the reversal of malicious animal malpractice, for it is and can only be the very activity and present of God, in reverse.
And so Mrs. Eddy instructs, “You can never demonstrate spirituality until you declare yourself to be immortal and understand that you are so.
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Christian Science is absolute; it is neither behind the point of perfection nor advancing towards it; it is at this point and must be practised therefrom. Unless you fully perceive that you are the child of God, hence perfect, you have no Principle to demonstrate and no rule for its demonstration.
A basic premise of this whole materially based and organized Mother Church, repeatedly affirmed by directors and others in the publications, is that this material church organization is necessary until Scientists get out of the flesh and matter; and so they demonstrate the concluding sentence of this instruction from Mrs. Eddy: “In practicing Christian Science you must state its Principle correctly, or you forfeit your ability to demonstrate it.” Thus has malicious mental malpractice proclaimed and interpreted in reverse, as it only could, Mrs. Eddy’s ideal in church in understanding, in practice of Christian Science, “‘Mary Baker Eddy’s Church, The Mother Church or The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Mass.'”
The second instruction, written according to Dickey at the same time, about Sept. 1910, is “Principle and Practice”, finally published in the Sentinel Sept. 1917. Mrs. Eddy in this, her last published instruction, says: “Christian Science requires understanding instead of belief; it is based on a fixed eternal and divine Principle, wholly apart from mortal conjecture; and it must be understood, otherwise it cannot be correctly accepted and demonstrated.
“The inclination of mortal mind is to receive Christian Science through a belief instead of the understanding, and this inclination prevails like an epidemic on the body; it inflames mortal mind and weakens the intellect, but this so-called mind is wholly ignorant of this fact, and so cherishes its mere faith in Christian Science.”
“Christian Science is not a faith-cure, and unless human faith be distinguished from scientific healing, Christian Science will again be lost from the practice of religion as it was soon after the period of our great Master’s Scientific teaching and practice. Preaching without practice of the divine Principle of man’s being has not, in nineteen hundred years, resulted in demonstrating this Principle.”
So what have we been having these years since Mrs. Eddy’s passing? We cannot leave a single thing or interpretation out of the “Infinite One,” for God is All-in-all. We cannot have another power, as malicious mind, nor another practice, as the ecclesiasticism of malicious malpractice. God alone is arranging and unfolding all. It is the same infinite truth, whether God appears positively or appears negatively. And during these years God has been unfolding the truth about His negative appearing as personality; the inability to reach such appearing in reverse having made it necessary for Mrs. Eddy to leave us.
In the trial, the understanding of C.S., “wholly apart from mortal conjecture,” and not a faith-belief, was shown forth and demonstrated, and this genuine understanding of C.S. has been accurately recorded and set forth in “C.S., Its Clear, Correct Teaching”, and in “Whoso.” During this time, no single Christian Scientist I am sure has had so large and free an association, and that because of genuine, correct C.S., as Mr. Eustace. It is not surprising that with the mass of Christian Scientists, God’s hand since Mrs. Eddy has first had to move as ecclesiasticism, because the materiality of belief in personality attached to Mrs. Eddy, the mental assassination she warned about, could only transfer itself to other personality, until the genuine understanding of C.S. dawns that all negation is God in reverse; and so the Scientist is enlightened to reverse directed evil, and thus finding it for what it really is,
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and all there is, God and His directed good.
In a way, we have more to be grateful for, than when Mrs. Eddy was with us in person; and let me say, the re-reading of the Sentinels and Journals through those years as I have been doing, with the setting of her marvelous messages, and the compelling, alive demonstration of Christian Science, the marvelous testimonies of healing, the direct healing with vital, present things,–error flying and falling in all directions–the days of Mrs. Eddy come back to one with a shock and a longing thrill!
But today God has shown us that Christian Science and church organization are wholly separate; that genuine understanding of Christian Science alone avails; that in line with inexorable divine Principle, sin is the author of sin, produces the scientifically exact product of sin, and that Mrs. Eddy knew her Science as always, when she captioned together, “Sin, Sinner, and Ecclesiasticism”‘ that the negation, malicious mental malpractice, is neither a mind nor an entity, but our very one and self-same God, appearing in reverse, the exactly right and most necessary language for man at that point to find and rise to God’s allness, for the negative of malpractice only forces man to find more of God where he would fall short, indeed to find Him as All-in-all, whatever he is dealing with, church or anything, as in the 16th Ed., “If we abide in Truth and Love, this hidden foe, or secret mental malpractice, will only serve the ends of Wisdom,–whereby one learns how to master error”; we now have experience infinitely to enlighten us on C.S., and especially all Mrs. Eddy’s final instructions on C.S., we know all this now, we didn’t know when Mrs. Eddy was here, we now know mental assassination of Christian Science to the world has failed. This is why in a way we should be more grateful and more consecrated.
In June 1906, one Mrs. Henderson, of Guayaquil, Ecuador, S.A. wrote Mrs. Eddy a letter awake to the evil of personality and Mrs. Eddy in publishing the letter in Vol. 8, No. 45 of the Sentinel, published with it her article “Personal Contagion,” now vastly illuminated through the history of Christian Science since Mrs. Eddy left us in person.
This appeal to Christian Scientists they could not rise to while she remained with us; but think how much more the vital truth there many who were hypnotized are now beginning to see:
“The following letter is so right and requisite that I hereby endorse it for the benefit of the reader.
“At a time of contagious disease, Christian Scientists endeavor to rise in consciousness to the true sense of omnipotence of Life, Truth and Love, and this great fact in Christian Science realized will stop a contagion.
“In time of religious or scientific prosperity, certain individuals are inclined to cling to the personality of its Leader. This state of mind is sickly; it is a contagion – a mental malady, which must be met and overcome. Why? Because it would dethrone the First Commandment ‘Thou Shalt have one God.!
“If God is one and God is person, then Person is infinite; and there is no personal worship, for God is divine Principle, Love. Hence the sin, the danger and darkness of personal contagion.
“Forgetting divine Principle brings on this contagion. Its symptoms are based upon personal sight or sense. Declaring the truth regarding an individual or Leader, rendering praise to whom praise is due, is not a symptom of this contagious malady, but persistent pursuit of his or her person is.
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“Every loss in grace and growth spiritual, since time began, has come from injustice and personal contagion. Had the ages helped their leaders to, and let them alone in God’s glory, the work would not have lost the Science of Christianity.
“What went ye out to see?” a person, or a Principle? Whichever it be, determines the right or the wrong of this following…
“My soul thanks the loyal, royal nature of the beloved members of my Church who cheerfully obey God and steadily go on promoting the true Principle of Christian Science. Only the disobedient spread personal contagion, and any imaginary benefit they receive is the effect of self-mesmerism wherein the remedy is worse than the disease.”
When Mr. Eustace closed his letter of October 17th, 1922, parting with the ecclesiastical Board of Directors, and all Christian Scientists holding to ecclesiasticism as Christian Science, he verified in words, as the Trustees had in their stand, the Principle of Christian Science, and its truth in reversal of personal contagion: (pg XXXVIII – “Clear, Correct Teaching”).
“Christian Science demonstrates Principle, not person, and the fundamental basis of Christian Science is man’s oneness with Principle. Nothing can substitute this as Christian Science. Apparently your concept of Christian Science and the entire effort of your Board has been to substitute the rule of persons for Principle and attempt to force this upon all Christian Scientists under the guise of calling it Mrs. Eddy’s purpose and plan of Church government.
“I believe the day will come when your Board may see this for each one of us must inevitably sooner or later face the judgment of our every thought and act by Principle. In such a judgment the unimportance of personal rule or interpretation will appear.”
And so the unimportance of personal rule and the truth or reversal of personal contagion in the Christian Science movement is appearing. In Christian Science the malicious mental malpractice of ecclesiasticism operating as a materially organized church is not an entity, is not a separate reality as evil, but is a negation, in reversal showing forth more fully what God is and man’s oneness with Him. This negation in the reversal of Christian Scientific prayer, “makes new and scientific discoveries of God, of His goodness and power. It shows us more clearly than we saw before, what we already have and are: and most of all, it shows us what God is. Advancing in this light, we reflect it;” (No. and Yes p. 39). To the right knower, malicious mental malpractice tells with scientific accuracy right where to work, for it is the patient to whose statement, I am the truth, Science reveals, I am the truth appearing as a lie, in reverse, and so the Scientist gains from opposite or negative phenomena, and reverses.
Note these words of Mrs. Eddy while in the thick of battle in 1885 (Mis. W. 172): “Dispensing the Word charitably, but separating the tares from the wheat, let us declare the positive and negative of metaphysical Science; what it is and what it is not. Intrepid, self-oblivious Protestants in a higher sense than ever before, let us meet and defeat the claims of sense and sin, regardless of the bans or clans pouring in their fire upon us; and white-winged charity, brooding over all, shall cover with her feathers the veriest sinner.”
Very sincerely yours,
Joseph E. Johnston
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