Johnston Letters from 1948

29 Jan., ’48 – Thurs.

GOD’S SIMULTANEOUS POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE

Dear . . . .

Does God move positively, and then sooner or later the negation come along? Or does God simultaneously move positively and negatively?

You know of course He is one and simultaneous, declaring His infinity in His what is and what is not. My thought heretofore has been, to think in a general way that a new positive unfoldment starts, then somewhere along comes the negators and negation, going along together until God separates the chaff from the wheat, in his full recognition of His positive by all. Aspects of Doorly’s career began to point my attention to how God picks up both the positive and negative simultaneously, and then I began to see a wide series of examples. I ran through CCT and WHOSO. Everywhere it is the same. CCT: “there instantly arises” (119); “the negative which always accompanies the positive” (120); “the negative, having no independent existence” (120); “Basic isness, Mind, carries with it its suppositional opposite” (122); “the automatic contradiction of the true, its use being to identify” (128); “it automatically false in line as the negation” (124). They thus go on and on, always together. P. 135 sums it: “There is no point where the negation ceases…its only seeming cessation is its translation, by reversal.”

WHOSO has as many or more, but this to suffice: “the enemy negatively is just as active. The only way to defeat this enemy is to reverse it by translating it back to God…It automatically does in reverse everything that God does directly.” In fact these two paragraphs from p. 88 to 89 are especially to the point. And such pages as 55, 56, 57, 84, 159, 185, 59 etc.

Now what are these Doorly confirming facts? Tracing Doorly’s important moves in Christian Science as he gives them in his Jan. 1946 statement as he verifies his position in institutional negation, he seems always to be picked up on this, at the very instant of positive institutional action. Within the very week that Mrs. Eddy’s goodbye made positive her institutional plan for the movement without her control, Doorly stepped right into that forbidden Normal class taught by the “cct” negator, Bicknell Young. It is a question whether that class or the directors’ Dec. 10^th statement they had been legally advised they could and would go right on with the Mother church government, were the first of these two immediate negators to God’s final Founding moving without Mrs. Eddy. But the negation was simultaneous.

Doorly next negated institution in 1914 by accepting the Boston lectureship but I don’t know the positive there, except you must by that time have had your eyes pretty well opened and girding for your stand. In May, the 21^st if I recall, in 1918 the directors renewed their supremacy demand, this time to go right through with it. Not later than May surely they decided on the forbidden M.C. President of the June meeting two weeks or so away. Doorly was the man. The record shows the Trustees made each positive stand, the directors moving in reverse, and we see Doorly again instantly negating the institutional founding as you take your final stand. In 1929 as the line of light was publicly founded in impersonalizing both Mrs. Eddy and Christian Science, Doorly again moves on institution – at the same time of course – resigning from lecturing, in effect stating jut the reverse of the line of light, finding the people dead and not healing and hoping to find the thinkers who would bring the movement to life. His next point I find re the movement or institution is May 1942. As you establish impersonal teaching, the directors start with Doorly on what becomes his excommunication from the institution, and he starts in ’46 an institution apart from what Mrs. Eddy founded. I don’t know the positive there, except this work started in fall of ’45. It often times time to see what has really been going.

Then the examples of the negative moving right with the positive began to multiply.

In May 1884 in the Chicago class in which Mrs. Eddy herself planted the direct, immediate seed for “clear, correct teaching”, along with picking up Laura E. Sargent, the class also picked up Ursula Gesterfeld, the most insidious of the three negators of the teaching the next five years, until Mrs. Eddy fulfilled her material dissolving for the spiritual bond. The very seed for “cct” simultaneously embraced one whom Mrs. Eddy later had to openly brand as a Jesuit. I sent you Mrs. Eddy’s Journal statement. Already in Dec. ’83 Emma Hopkins had been gathered, and in Sept. ’85 Mary Plunkett was included, the three prime “cct” negators, all taken in in Mrs. Eddy’s there year founding stretch from ’83 to ’85, before she turned in 1886 reaching beyond Boston to the world, as she pointed out in her Nov. 28^th, ’89 letter to her Boston Church requesting dissolution for the spiritual formation. Gesterfeld, the German, was the most subtle of the lot, writing a book to explain and better adapted than SCIENCE AND HEALTH, and she was picked up, or negatively declared right with the seed planting.

The same thing happened in the Dec. 22, ’84 class. Josephine G. Woodbury was taken right in with Ira and Mrs. Knapp, and also for that matter, Laura E. Sargent again and Joseph E. Easteman. Bliss K. as I mentioned previously I think, makes positive that what brought such allegiance by the Knapps and Ira in particular to Mrs. Eddy, was Ira’s keen sense of the Bible and his conviction in seeing that Mrs. Eddy’s work was fulfilling of the prophecy in Rev. Chapter 12. I am sure that is the case, and in a general way even if not much of an analogy, it made me think of what the Trial meant to me, in such deep conviction of “clear, correct teaching”. Paine was always impersonal to me, found through what I came to identify as his in Home Forum articles, and from the start of the Trial and your generous first meetings in Jan. 1920, in that way I was absolutely with you. But when I saw Paine was getting off a bit on the Trial stand, that if the Trustees and you in particular had been just a bit more of this or that and less with others, – I instantly knew he was off his “nut”. I hadn’t tossed my “last” nickel to the Interpreter, knowing it would never in that form come home, for something I had no conviction on.

Increasingly Paine has shown his negation of “clear, correct teaching”. But it never touched me, if anything the reverse. Now Ira along with Johnson was – Laura Sargent must be the 3^rd. here – the all the way through helper to Mrs. Eddy, Ira on the business side and Johnson with her following, and because of all that long outside history with others, God took them both before Mrs. Eddy. I don’t know what held Johnson in language of conviction, though I suppose the record shows it, but for Ira to see Mrs. Eddy’s work as the positive fulfilling of Rev. prophecy could do no less than hold him with iron grip to the line, to his best light. No wonder if they are now thinking of it, the directors in some way are groping to lean on that fact in protecting the founding. But the material sense of it is never it, of course, and any such negative activity will only confirm and drive to by reversal. Would be just again the divinely serviceable negative identifying.

That we now see is why J.C. Woodbury went right along with Ira K. and the others. Bliss K. says not too long after the class Dec. ’84, she came to their N. H. home, that Ira saw her worldliness and materiality expressed the Babylonish sense, that Ira wrote Mrs. Eddy who called him to her at once, then called J.C.W. in for correction. What love Mrs. Eddy used in the 90ies to help this woman, even having the Church take her back after voting her out, etc.

But God moves both positively and negatively as His omnipresent infinity, and this must be tangible, seen, and identified to conviction, every step of the way. That visit soon after class to Ira must have been just the identity to his conviction, and look how gloriously in 1899 Mrs. Eddy was moving from the “motherhood”

position of special significance of the 19^th century, this identification of the worldly sensuous sense as church must have helped Mrs. Eddy and all to the oncoming position of the God-crowned woman or absolute purity and spirituality. I have pointed out long ago seeing that Mrs. Eddy’s greatest metaphysical works apart from S. & H., all in the large came in 1887 – Un., No., Rud., and the Mind-history or m.m.m. of Ret. Think of the negative identification or guidance to Mrs. Eddy and all, these three negators, Hopkins, Gesterfeld, and Plunkett, the chief one in metaphysical negative identification being instantly expressed in the planting of the “cct” seed in May, 1884 in Chicago. Because God is the positive and the negative of metaphysical Science, so indeed we must as Mrs. Eddy instructs, “let us declare the positive and the negative of metaphysical Science; what it is, and what it is not.” (Mis. 172) How could we, unless God simultaneously and spontaneously is constantly and always expressing and defining what is and what is not as one, and so the forever law of reversal to all supposititiously contrary and apart?

One interesting thing in this ’83-’86 period, is to see how those gathered in, express and define this period, rather than the next one. Those who were to be prominent in the work of Mrs. Eddy’s second period as such, completion of founding to world practice the “clear, correct teaching”, started to come after this period. Even those of the ’83-’86 period who carried all the way with greatest service, as Ira K. and Mrs. Sargent, in this sense never seem to mark “cct”. This point of course is not the main one of this letter, God’s simultaneous negative with the positive one appearing. For example, Dr. and Mrs. Fluno were taught Nov. 16, ’85. It was their point telegram Mrs. Eddy answers p. 202 My. At that they must have been pretty good to have been used with Mrs. HWE, but they are not “cct” and Mrs. Eddy’s answer is according, as lines 25-30. But Elizabeth Webster of Chicago one of the two “twins” so helpful there was taught Aug. 30, ’86 and more illustrative, Ruth Ewing and Edward P. and Mrs. Bates in ’87. Neither one were straight metaphysicians, but it is a question of how they were used.

To return to the main track…This is no round up of examples of the simultaneous positive and negative, just hit and miss what’s handy.

1899 – The moment Mrs. Eddy made the first large transfer of positive voting church powers to the directors, she simultaneously estopped the By-law directors exercising these powers to her own period of control. This is an excellent example of God revealing His oneness then to Mrs. Eddy as what is and what is not to be. No. 30 muffs the clarity of this basic point, that at the very origin of these church director voting powers, in transfer or away from the first Members, right with the powers simultaneously went the is not or estoppels. A slight change can bring that out, if they reprint it, and the ’98 Deed on 25 should precede Mrs. Eddy transfers on 24, that and 26 being joined together.

1902 – This is the twentieth year or volume No. of the Journal. Twenty as you know is the symbol in number of the world founding of “clear, correct teaching” in word and institution. The Journal “designed to put on record the divine Science of Truth” (My. 353), correctly records this founding. Naturally your record book must be record to record, so the Journal starts in 1883, a full year before the May 1884 class in Chicago sowing the immediate seed for “cct”. It took the proper three years for this ’83 Journal for the world founding start to get Mrs. Eddy ready for 1886, where as she says she turned from Boston to the world. The Christmas quote I sent on the card on what the real star of Boston is I find is Jan. ’85, showing Mrs. Eddy’s clear translation of Boston then. I put it on the card for that substance, but supposed then it was probably 1896 (Mis. 320-321)

Now I had seen how the twelfth Journal included every element and channel so vitally needed to do the world work of this spiritual Mother Church understanding, namely to bring to world acceptance the practice of “clear, correct teaching”. What made this so astonishingly clear was that EAK dominated this 12th vol. as none

had been before by other than Mrs. Eddy, in other words by one from this field for world founding. Mrs. Eddy used four issues from April to Dec. to print all of EAK’s great Bloomington, Ill. discussion, address and answers, the like of which had never heretofore in the Journal occurred. The Journal emphasizes the top importance of this element, not only in being in the 12^th vol., and spreading it so, but especially concluding it just before Mrs. Eddy defines in dedication on Jan. 6^th, what this spiritual understanding is that is to do this world work. Thus it is no chance also, that HWE is gathered into the record of this understanding as so defined, on the last call, Dec. 29^th, ’94.

Naturally, what concludes the twelve that shows the full workings of a particular spiritual idea will be its most important, as this 12^th, Journal shows, so remembering this as I looked at the 20^th Journal, it struck me this should be just as true in full competing all that was essential to the twenty world founding idea. It’s just what you find. The Extension Bld’g. Of course is pledged, two million as Mrs. Eddy calls it, of love currency, by the churches. The M.C. first reader and the periodical editor-in-chief both for the first time are drawn from the field instead of Mrs. Eddy’s Boston own, for both were to go on without the “mothering” in the world founding. The new 226^th SCIENCE AND HEALTH is recorded, now with its final chapter arrangement, the last major change, the final pattern forever. The Aug. ’02 Journal opens with the two articles now on My. 250, showing that Hanna’s ten year regime was of the special mothering period, that this permanent, world founding for the Readers is wholly democratic, impersonal, that the mental quality is wisdom, not mad ambition.

McKenzie is in for a corking fine article, the Pilgrim Fathers, correctly stating the background and its important to both our gov’t and C.S., the free self-governing. I am “stating” this. Ogden is in for an article, “One Lord, and His name One”. Especially significant is Ira Knapp’s The Divine Order of Christian Science, in Dec. issue. He was of the old first period, with Bliss K. now hopelessly bogged down with the limited sense of that. Ira had to go helpfully through. It is as though God forced him to see it in Scripture as right, even though he could not grasp it practically, and there you find him confirming via the Scripture record, this divine order now all completed to go forward to its final founding. Obviously Mrs. Eddy could not “plan” such things, she could only demonstrate them in the oneness. Mrs. Eddy says of this moment, “I am bankrupt in thanks to you…I never before felt poor in thanks” (to the churches for pledge but properly her highest appraisal for her seeing the fact of her world founding now in sight.)

It seems to me absolutely inevitable that the channel to complete the full impersonalization of the world and universal “cct” would have had to be picked up or expressed or gathered into this definition of completeness (20^th Journal vol.) for this task. So it is of course, for HWE was taken in that ’02 Normal class I see opened June 2. Two points as one most emphatically high-light this significance. A meeting of all Normal classes from ’02 to’99 were called for June 16^th, Monday, just as this class concluded. Of course these might have been called each year before, but I doubt it, for the four – ’99, ’00, ’01, ’02 – is the symbol I recently see, for right or “cct” teaching, five for the particular expression of it. The next point though is positively alone. I was amazed. You know I have been seeking the significance of Mrs. Eddy’s stopping Normal classes in 1903, the 29^th Manual, for three years, and finding it finally resumed in 1907 as in the Man. now, once only every three years. As the Dec. 1910 class was too late for Mrs. Eddy’s direction and signature, that left the 1907 Normal class the only one after Mrs. Eddy turned EAK from the Normal class to the final refinement in oneness of the General Teacher’s Association.

Now lo and behold, HWE’s of June 2, ’02 was the last one until 1907! The Sept. ’02 Journal carries these two teaching By-law revisions: 1) Only students now taught primary in the field will be taken into future Normal classes, and 2)

The annual term will open on the first Wed. in Oct., 1903. As Mrs. Eddy in July ’01 gave the three year deferment By-law on the Normal class, this means there were no more after HWE’s, until 1907, and that was the only additional one authorized. If you need a symbol, well, it came in five years, the symbol of the understanding of C.S. expressed.

Now the real point of this 1902 in this letter is that as HWE was picked up in this class in ’02 the 20^th Journal, Clifford Smith was made a member of the Mother Church. Simultaneous, and no elaboration is needed, it speaks fully for itself. Also what more natural, than that Doorly says this year he became interested in C.S. There is certainly no reason both could not have done this and come in on the right side, except that God simultaneously declares Himself positively and negatively, and while offences must be expressed, woe to that expressor. All had to be included in ’02 necessary to the negative as to the positive completion. Dittemore also became interested in ’02.

1903 – As EAK in Oct. 1903 starts the final oneness in three of Boston teaching, the first of the General Teachers’ Associations I find Smith and Rathvon are in this 1903 Board of Education Primary Class. Mrs. Eddy does not record it in My., so it must have been pretty negative. Certainly these two “missed the boat” in ’02 and had the negative role to play.

1905 – Long ago I pointed out that the same Sentinel page on which Mrs. Eddy carried her identification in “cct” of the understanding that will save C.S. from disappearing off the face of the earth, is also carried a Stetson letter, the very reverse or negative identification of this San Jose quality. (My. 197). Smith starts his first official work this year for the M.C. Five (5) of course relates to the real understanding of C.S., the understanding of “cct”, the five of Science that fulfills the seven of the Christian, giving us the God-crowned Christian Science. I am just noting these symbols in passing, but as you know I do not see they should be much used or played up in the full account. Wherever they help me to rightly see the spiritual substance I might overlook, they will serve me, but only this way. There is of course no substance whatever in symbol, something that confuses both Doorley and Orgain, but she is far more correct even if badly bound. That one additional Normal class after HWE’s, in 1907 as founded and authorized, in symbol points to the “cct” now understood. Ogden was in that class and as a good negative Rathvon was also in it.

1909 – In July within the moment, the highest teaching, the “cct” was simultaneously identified with its most subtle inversion, its direct, deepest negation. Naturally Stetson would have forced Boston to draw on some one. That is not the point at all. It had to be the highest in the law of God’s simultaneous expression: “The greatest wrong is but a supposititious opposite of the highest right.” (S&H. 368)

1908 – To go back one, the laying down of the law of practice, the law to the negation (S&H 442:30-32), saw Dickey immediately brought to P.V., and Smith made the Pres. of the Mother Church for three years. God takes no chances on His negatives, whether it is Judas, Russia, a Dickey, Doorley, Smith, a Young or A Corey.

1910 – Mrs. Eddy’s great positive leaving, that highest, hardest step in her founding to fulfil it, on Dec. 3^rd., immediately brought its negation in violation, in the holding of that forbidden 1910 Normal class, which the Manual ex the estoppel made Wed. the 7^th, probably the day of the public funeral. Sat. the 10^th, simultaneous enough, the Directors issued the statement to the world, on legal advice they were going right on just as usual. The teaching violation was most significant, for teaching of course touches at the highest point in C.S., its “cct”, (Service was Thurs. 8^th of Dec. 1910). (an after note by the writer) – so properly was the first immediate violation or negation that could be expressed simultaneously to define Mrs. Eddy’s wondrously impersonal act. (Young was the teacher). The

negative has no choice. It must as God moves, borrow from and define His positive in reverse. I cannot conceive two negatives more accurately so doing and right with. Young presided over this negation at the highest point, and both Smith and Doorly, also Ruth Ewing, the daughter. Just now I spot a good negator in that final Normal class, 1907 – Rathvon. If you’ve forgotten, he carried the fight that last month for Smith up to the Mar. 17^th removal. It is his notes that give such glowing testimony for HWE in his final conference with them in Mar. 11, ’18. How perfect in His moving that Carey should be the child of this teaching negation in Mrs. Eddy’s great goodbye. 1950 would give forty years of that and five to Corey, which ought to be enough for both of them.

1927 – HWE holds the first conferences for line of light as Smith issues his Permanency of The Mother Church, its direct negation of this line. The attackers “on Mrs. Eddy” simultaneously start, 1932 – as HWE starts a CCT., the final impersonal teaching word, Smith starts the negative Bureau of History and Records. Incidentally Rathvon passes on in ’39 as WHOSO comes forth, and Smith in ’45 also passes on as God starts the more active unfolding of the true founding of “cct” in both word and institution, especially the latter. This same year sees Doorly completely off the tangent.

1568 – As the Separatist Pilgrims are rapidly gathering strength in England, Unitarianism is founded in Hungary. The same year Queen Bess sent Mary to Scotland, and in 1588 beheaded her as Drake, it was ’87 for Mary, defeated R.C. in the Armada. In 1620 the Pilgrims and slavery simultaneously landed in America, that positive and negative in the line of light going side by side, until God in the Civil War “met and mastered by divine Truth’s negativing error in the way of God’s appointing.” (Mis. 208) Slavery may have been introduced late in 1619, but approximately the same time. How marvelously God thus laid His negative simultaneously with His pilgrim, ultimately so perfectly to define America. We never could have risen to it without the Civil War, in its infinity of definition and identification, any more than to “cct” without the great 1919 Trial.

1821 – Unitarianism seems to have been Mrs. Eddy’s first church contact, as in Lynn in 1870, naturally it is the more “open minded” or was then. But also there is some subtle fixity of negation, likely there. At least a correlation of movement. Any effort to throw off the divinity of Christ Jesus, as with trying to attach materiality to the founding of Christian Science, is vicious, however harmless in its guise.

Here Unitarianism starts in the back of Europe, less mesmeric than Judaic Freudianism, but of the line, and right along in 1568 with the Scrooby Yorkshire country. As America brings forth Mary Baker in 1821, simultaneously American Unitarianism is born, and formally in England too I believe. Especially significant in this positive and negative oneness, is the fact that in Russia Dostoevsky is born. As you know he is ranked close to Tolstoy as a novelist and writer. These books on Freud last Nov., as I found in that psychiatric clipp. review, hold that Dostoevsky is the mental genesis and mind-father of Freud. How momentous this era is further shown in the Monroe Doctrine proclaimed in Dec. 1823. It must have been there in ’21 for we had a long negotiation with Canning who initiated the idea as a joint Anglo-American one. Emerson in his high simulation of truth simply had to be negatively identified in the founding, whereas Whittier and the Quaker belief involved no such necessity. Only recently I “stated” from the Journal a Whittier letter on religion, and you can see his humility and spirituality opened him to Mrs. Eddy’s divinity. Emerson the Unitarian, Whittier, the Quaker; Mrs. Eddy healed Whittier but Emerson rebuffed Mrs. Eddy’s request to heal him. And this Lieber essay faked or otherwise, in its language I suspect is touched with this. That must be the case if Lieber wrote it, for over thirty years his closest friend here apparently was a German who in 1830’s had become a Unitarian minister.

1875 – As SCIENCE AND HEALTH was launched, the Russian Blavatsky launches modern theosophy, the Theosophy Society, whose sole purpose was to impregnate the

U.S. and England also, with this ancient belief. Also, Freud then was 19 or 20, and as the brilliant Jew, must have been at the point of starting his mental science that seems the foundation of the “modern prairie fire psychiatry”.

1901 – In McKinley’s passing, Mrs. Eddy by request of the press and public memorials had to proclaim the truth of prayer, as recorded now in My. Tomlinson was the C.S. Hall reader but also assistant to Mrs. Eddy at P.V. At the same time of her statements, a woman came to T. for treatment, then shortly sued him for $6,000 for treatment by prayer. In 1906 the New York World must have simultaneously hatched its attack on Mrs. Eddy with the dedication of the then World founded impersonal word and practice as “cct” is, for it broke the attack in Oct., and these things take a little scheming. The 1901 attack must have clarified in the public mind the prayer of Christian Science Mrs. Eddy set forth re McKinley. The New World attack was found as the glorious negative that cleared both Mrs. Eddy and C.S. for its full, final world acceptance as she had given it, its “cct”.

What does this mean to me? It certainly calls for instant awareness of what is and what is not, for God thus ever infinitely in oneness declares Himself. It can never be first one and then the other. There is danger in the sense that one goes forward positively, and then from over there a negative sense sees it and goes to work to negate it. There can be nothing over there to come along, see the good and the real unfolding, then set out to reverse it. Any concept that leans that way is dangerous of course. How different to see at the very outset and at each moment, God’s infinity is His what is not fulfilling what is, and His what appears as the wheat and tare of it go right together, until He negatives in His own way, until the double appearing no longer appears or seems because of His oneness positively and negatively right from the start and all the way. On the negation it comes right down again to starting each thought with God, so both the positive and the negative, and so starting they will be found as they are. His oneness as all there is.

Then this means to me that each treatment and all analysis and knowing must embrace and always include what is not, the law of reversal to what is not, infinitely to identify in conviction what is. If God so simultaneously declares Himself in His infinity, man as His idea must reflect or declare it. Rarely does HWE in the books exclaim. To ever acknowledge God’s negative with His positive should fulfil your prayer: “Oh that pen could express the infinite importance of being alert! What a change would take place with the Christian Scientist! Apathy would vanish and confidence would reign, and finally evil would cease its arguments, having been reversed, – translated into its true language – good.” (WHOSO 178). What you start right with, you never can get wrong with and in fear. That must have been, and could only have been, Mrs. Eddy’s position right straight through the forty-five years from the discovery in the full founding.

No matter what it means to me now, fact is fact, what is is, and events verify this isness of God positively and negatively as one infinite is, so being infinite by the law of progress, this oneness or negation reversed with the positive will ever unfold. You recall how close to the outset in Nov. ’45 I was forced sort of unconsciously to take about twelve hours off, from 10 A.M. to midnight, fully to state to myself what the negation meant to me. It was instinctive compulsion. Especially I see in it the realization that there was no ecclesiasticism over there for twenty-five years, but right here as God Himself moving, and all that was moving. But that view here is certainly clearer and more in understandable conviction. I know God, Truth must be demonstrated. There is no other knowing. If you are reaching out to the real, it must be instantly expressed.

I am grateful for two experiences the last half of last year. The Russian across the hall, the Colonel, to whom I loaned S&H. two years ago, and then CCT.,

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who said he could get nothing from them, but was glad to see me working on “ecclesiasticism” as he thought of it in C.S., gradually weakened, was taken to the hospital, and after a period, one afternoon his wife met me, said she was just returning from the hospital, the Col. had been unconscious for days, and the doctors had jut told her he could not live out the day. It came to me with such a challenge of my sense of Life, the only Life all. The impact of the negation seemed to force instant conviction. I gave her a note of a few lines to read to him when she found him conscious, really for her, that God was his Life and he knew it. The next day she said, instead of dying, he had his first improvement since he went to the hospital, came out of his unconsciousness and was in good shape. After a few weeks, however, I could see with her as with Him, there was no response, so I saw I should leave it with God and turn from it. In a few weeks while we were away he passed on.

The old man of the mountain across the road whom we’ve so greatly enjoyed and who has kept his eye on Frog Pond Farm, had slipped a bit recent years. He is 85. Last summer we found him in bed and unconscious or unable to recognize or converse. His regular Doctor said it was just a short time for him. His functioning was without control. It made me realize I had to recognize Life, and stick with it as the reality of this negative statement. The turn was slow. I went over each week-end for a short spell. When he got so he could cognize, I’d talk to him very simply that he knew God was his Life. He has a fine sense of humor. I said, Gramp if you insist on this nonsense and don’t hold to God as Life, I’m going to your funeral. I know that the minister is going to say, that you were a good Christian. But I’ll stand up and say, Why that old faker, I talked to him. He knew God is his Life, but there is no honesty or faithfulness in him. Each week we found him stronger, finally slowly outside. The week we closed up in Nov. he walked over for the first time to see us, and a few weeks ago the other near neighbor wrote that Gramp said he had not felt so well for several years. And God is the spontaneous law of reversal to the implication that there was ever worse years or something ever to heal. This is really semi-Informal memo.

(signed) Joseph E. Johnston

* * * * * * * * * *

HOOT MON!

[Note handwritten by Paul W. Ambuul across the top of the page: “Sent to me by JEJ in 1971. Said that while written in ’48 he wanted me to accept it as written for me and he told me if I can demonstrate “successor” as one man to give him credit as the one man for following the research into the O.V. and as God, through HWE, unfolded it for him; and for me, as a mortal, to demonstrate and teach its truths.”]

EXCERPT FROM LETTER TO A FRIEND

on SOME RULES OF THE

“CCT” (And The Kappeler Analysis Of Evil”)

July, 1948. Joseph E. Johnston

The substance of in effect dissolving, in 1906, Manual 57^th Ed., except for the one 1907 Normal class, any further Boston designated teaching is obvious, for teaching in organization is its highest point, closest to the all-vital door to the one Holy of Holies, man’s oneness and communion with God, his sole Cause as the consciousness of his whole conscious being. In the Founding Facts memo, you have quoted those two Oct. 29, 1889 College Dissolving Resolutions on teaching, that for obvious reasons were not included in the Ret. Text 48-49. Also, if no more teaching degrees except 1907 is the fact, it is one more of the fine complete chain right through from 1884, on the immediate thread of founding of the “clear, correct teaching.” [in May, in Chicago.-PWA]

That is the priceless gift of the field founded language of “cct”, now forever completely and perfectly founded in its full impersonality. The seed and line of light in the founding of this field language phase of “cct” is one, whole, and perfect, just as is with Mrs. Eddy the generic, “inspired Word” which wholly embraces the field phase, is absolutely one complete perfect whole, “seamless”, never deviating from the Revelation of its Principle and rule, all intact as the scientific new tongue for mankind forever. If Mrs. Eddy’s work were not complete and perfect, how in heaven’s name could another mortal and others correctly have come to the fount of the Science of the Christ, when their task has been and is but to digest the meat this angel-scribe of divine Love has spread upon the world’s table for its redemption and glory? For you to have the opportunity to do some drill work with the author and finisher as it has appeared, of the “cct” books in the final impersonality, is indeed God’s grace and infinite Love bestowed upon you, and I know you are eagerly taking off your mental coat, and reaching deeply and right to God as the All-in-all in your “cct” drill discipline.

You will increasingly find helpful, pinning down the rules for aware alertness in “cct”. Several of these are illustrated in the EAK article Mrs. Eddy corrected and also singles out for praise, which is enclosed, and also in the 1905 EAK letter also returned. This one I am returning shows how marvelously EAK gave the proof to Mrs. Eddy that SCIENCE AND HEALTH, “the inspired Word”, was adequate to accomplish the purpose whereunto God had sent Mrs. Eddy with it. As the Textbook says, it must be assimilated and digested to the point of understanding. So the deduction is also inescapable that the field language and proof of its understanding must also be embraced IN THE ONLY POSSIBLE ONE TEACHING AND UNDERSTANDING that infinite Christ-Science can have.

The 29^th Manual edition initiated the General Teachers’ Association, and if not in the 29^th ed., at least in the 33^rd which preceded its first convening under EAK in Oct. 1903, had the By-Law, “Uniformity in Teaching and Practice Required.” Here is the most emphatic evidence that the “field cct. language” was the hall-mark or doorway of understanding for those taught by Mrs. Eddy earlier and all the rest. Just one teaching and Mr. Kimball under Mrs. Eddy in charge of it. Mrs. Eddy did not even exempt those she had taught from this field cct. rod!

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Well, God exempts none of the rest of us, either. If we understand “cct” we understand Christian Science, even as it was first revealed to Mrs. Eddy in the founding. Now the rules of “cct” even as they are so found in the books, can be about endlessly stated, and this whether looking at HWE’s books or at Mrs. Eddy’s whole “inspired Word”. But the first one is without question, Always start each thought and act with God, cause! WHOSO p. 14 in its introduction in the short paragraph at the top of the page, gives this as the one main thing in all “cct”. Mrs. Eddy has founded this from her first to last established Word as, The First Commandment is my favorite text. This is simply as you know, Have no God, cause, origin, source, incentive, acknowledgement, or awareness but Me, the one God of the Bible charted or recorded in its “inspired Word”, SCIENCE AND HEALTH.

The second rule to me is seen in the fullness of Mrs. Eddy’s position throughout all her books on the First Commandment, which couples right with it, the Second or New Commandment, the one idea or love one another, founded infinitely as the Golden Rule (see the Manual and Choose Ye!), for there can be but one infinite idea to one infinite cause. Practically at the outset in Mis. Mrs. Eddy founds it: “That there is but one God or Life, one cause and one effect, is the multum in parvo of Christian Science; and to my understanding it is the heart of Christianity, the religion that Jesus taught and demonstrated. In divine Science it is found that matter is a phase of error, and that neither one really exists, since God is Truth, and All-in-all.” [25]

A few more rules stick out, as quick aides to be alert, to beware. Oneness: Here, never there; never get in a 3^rd; negative of God, never over there or unreversed as it appears; one claim only, that another or malicious mind is; realization is oneness, healing. Almost at the end, Jan. 16^th, 1909, our “inspired Word” immortally resummarizes it in its utter simplicity, on as they would say in America, a silver platter: “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.” (My. 356).

Now with a few “cct” rules at hand, let’s look at Mrs. Eddy’s penciled notations on the EAK article returned herewith. Two she marks “a lie”. Does this indicate EAK did not fully understand Christian Science? For the whole founding shows that every Christian Scientist has got to learn the fullness in impersonal statement of this very EAK language. But the correction does highly emphasize the value and wisdom of our “cct” rules. Both these statements start with effect instead of cause. This very article is its own full evidence that EAK had nothing beyond God and His idea as All, and that there is neither matter nor a malicious mind to conceive it. But what about the average reader starting off with effect? How likely is he to drop all this image of supposititious mortal mind?

When Mrs. Eddy underlines, “We have to see God through that which manifests good”, we are held to the oneness of cause and effect, just as when she also in the “Man is the understanding of God and is perfect”, sharpens the oneness by crossing out the several words to make it, “Man understanding God is perfect”. That phrasing makes it very hard to get in a 3^rd there, although as Mrs. Eddy foresaw and you and I have learned, ecclesiastical Christian Science can attempt anything and the impossible, but God sees in His infinite oneness a thus marvelous declaration of His

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one field or movement. In this connection, think of it! Neither you nor I would have “CCT” and “cct”, had not God thus moved negatively in His oneness, thus freeing “cct” from all ecclesiastical trappings and personality, that God of malicious mind.

Mrs. Eddy marks approvingly, “We can meet it all fearlessly, because God is meeting or destroying all these claims”, because of course at the very basic point of fear, what SCIENCE AND HEALTH TEACHES AS THE FIRST THING TO REMOVE, THUS giving up your own belief that malicious mind is, we at once start with Cause! The crossing out of the reference to handling church factions certainly is not because of the excellent metaphysics there. The whole of the founding record negations, and the way Mrs. Eddy left the Manual estoppels for the Church of Christ, Scientist, shows that as usual she was in on the ground floor on what lay before Christian Scientists and the movement from 1911 to 1948. likely it was just as well not to call the attention of the public to it, and there was and so she founded as she did, jolly little then could be done really to bring forth, “the definition of Church in Christian Science, and man as under the divine government alone.” Hoot mon, the thought even now, is just budding in its springtime. Mrs. Eddy probably was thinking that this sort of thing here at this time is just King Canute stuff, so we’ll pass it.

The point on the first page that Jesus when on the cross appeared to think God had forsaken him, “cct” now handles differently, but it is a minor detail unless people go as do the RC’s right for bewailing in the face of God. In EAK’s 1905 letter, the problem of language is now quickly solved, when it comes to “the idea back of something”, primary and secondary error, is material man less of a belief of malicious mind than inanimate matter, etc.? The back of is the Cause showing Itself forth as Its idea. The secondary errors are all belief appearances, whether as matter the beast or hypnotism the false prophet or false mentality. The primary error is the one thing in all problems and handling, malicious mind that one old deceiver of Revelation, the one belief that malicious mind is. God is All, He comes always as consciousness-all we have of anything is the consciousness of it-and this Consciousness is forever declaring Himself in His infinite positive and infinite negative as One, Principle and its idea is one, as Recapitulation opens on its first page.

All this basic clarity is of course fully founded in EAK’s teaching, or God would not have made him His angel-scribe’s assistant in teaching in the direct founding. Man as mortal may be satisfied to stand still or backslide but not the Infinite God, and so His law of progress. The simplicity of Christian Science then seen and grasped by the field was bound to rise right to its ultimate full impersonality. Under oneness of course comes the whole point of idea vs. ideas. Using the plural is akin to the musician tackling music made for the masters only, for the loss of any sense of oneness as God or idea is ruinous and fatal. A fine example of this is just at hand in the Doorly pamphlet, M N of Jun ’48, in the most interesting lengthy analysis of “Handling Evil” by this Professor of Zurick, Max Kappeler, pages 9 to 18, using 15 major headings, with a large number of listed quotes from Mrs. Eddy’s various works.

His 15^th heading is “The Methods of Handling Evil”, p. 15-18, very extensive. On p. 17, under “Scientific analysis”, he manages to convince himself and accuse the “inspired Word” in its larger proportion, of starting with the claims of evil, instead of starting and viewing all “from the divine point of view”: “4. Scientific analysis. While the two previous

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methods (argumentation and reversal) start from the claims of evil, the method of Science on the other hand deduces all from the divine point of view. The light of Truth is projected on the situation, and results in the analysis of it.” So gone is the one teaching and the oneness of all the “inspired Word”. Here we are told SCIENCE AND HEALTH uses several methods, and in but this last is “the light of Truth projected”.

Such thinking has missed the first “cct” rule to start with God, cause in every thought, statement, sentence, and act. Such thinking misses the Oneness of God and the oneness of Christian Science, in “Its Clear, Correct Teaching'”. How ridiculous to think SCIENCE AND HEALTH, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE could have more than one Mind. It is either all real Science and being, or all belief. It could not possibly be two. In all these 15 major headings and fine elaborate effort, not once is the “cct” rule on the negation even glimpsed, namely, that the negation declares God! It is thinking that starts with effect and has it over there.

That was the mistake in the first talk in saying, if I understood, that argument is belief and magnetism. We must start with God, cause, for all we know about argument, language, reasoning. Kappeler’s proposition about argument is what will lead one to start argument apart from instead of with cause, God: “It must be thoroughly understood that argumentation is not Science…Arguments never reach the heights of scientific demonstration.” (16). Certainly if arguments contrary to the rules of “cct” are used, if they start other than with God and fail to stay with Him all the way, they will only bury in belief instead of lead to the point of Christian Science realization. Why did Mrs. Eddy pass all teachers, her own and the new, through the G.T.A. rod under Mr. Kimball? For just one reason. Every last one of them has to start his argument right, from God as All-in-all, and hold it there as His one infinite omnipresent now idea, or he will never get to the realization of and in Christian Science, that heals.

To lump all argument as belief, as Kappeler does here, is but a subtle maneouvre of malicious mind to destroy the “clear, correct teaching of Christian Science.” Whether Dickey originated the phrase for Mrs. Eddy in her EAK statement, as Adelaide Still says, is of course of no moment, for it is God in the founding in Mrs. Eddy’s authentic, established word, and if Dickey lent a hand to it, I would suspect it was his greatest achievement on earth, adequate for that crumb of immortality man likes to think his footprint has recorded in the sand of time. But the founding trail of “cct”, with both EAK and HWE in its immediate field language, is marvelously complete, and this statement is but one important item just for its label. EAK’s place and position is founded on a whole huge Rock of founded achievings.

The whole founding record, as I stressed to you, shows the only and all casualties in Christian Science, as it would appear on what in the intro. to Mis. Mrs. Eddy calls its battlefields, lie in the area of ignorance of evil as the negation. I have invariably found this as the common denominator of all for the moment off the track. Yet in seeing this, you find and see practically all the basic “cct” rules violated. How great should be our gratitude that God has given us the language of understanding!

In all the Doorly material, especially his reasoned book, The Pure Science of Christian Science – as though some of Christian Science could be less than pure Science!-and especially in this Kappeler article in the quick

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glance only thus far, the ignorance is seen in the effort to get away from the negation, because they do not see it expresses God just as does the positive, only the negation declares Him negatively, that is, in the code of reversal, what He is not. How absurd to think that we understand anything, unless we know exactly what it is not in knowing fully, in full understanding of what it is. Thus instead of translating all appearing into the one cause and its one effect or infinite idea, ignorance turns its back increasingly on what comes as consciousness. The ultimate end of that trail always is to eventually break down both faith and hope to where no longer is even semblance that God is All-in-all, and that NOW are we the sons and daughters of God. It is only the “cct” that deprives evil of weaving the web for its victim, even as the confidence man weaves the downfall of his ignorance confiding sucker victim.

There can be no confusion over the point and fact that the Spirit of Truth and Love, and not argument heals, and its concurring point and fact that only the correct statement of Christian Science, which is its correct argument, alone ever scientifically leads and assures one at the point of the Spirit of Christian Science. Otherwise we might just as well practice as Christians without the language or “cct” of the “inspired Word.” Except for the oneness of the Word and the Spirit, the correct statement of the Principle and rule in its Spirit, how can we as the Manual directs each Christian Scientist, “strive to demonstrate by his or her practice, that Christian Science heals the sick quickly and wholly, thus proving this Science to be all that we claim for it.” (92).

Our “cct” is exactly what Mrs. Eddy defines as “the light and might of the divine concurrence of the spirit and the Word” (My. 246). It is always correct statement or argument but never any method or formula, and then realization in the Spirit alone: “A practitioner can never progress far in healing, who is looking to any source aside from God for power or direction. In the secret place of The Most High no person or book enters. Aloneness with God is there and the least divergence form this aloneness mars the tablet of thought and protracts the healing.” (A LETTER p. 7). Every analysis in the final impersonal class book, CCT., ends with the handling of the one claim, that malicious mind is, and in the victory of absolute and so the only, realization.

In the founding Mrs. Eddy shows fully the folly of being bogged down in argument, and even more the folly of the incorrect argument, the ignorance of the “clear, correct teaching”. In some material attributed to Mrs. Eddy taken I think for on the C. collection, is this statement: “We cannot talk about Christian Science now spiritually, for talk is material. I sometimes think arguments hinder the work by materializing the thought. Hold to the spiritual.” You can see why Mrs. Eddy was not directed to found this. You would have Christian Scientists running around as quakers or mummers. Rather SCIENCE AND HEALTH gives us 414:19-31, and 418:20-25. Or Ret. 61: “Posterity will have the right to demand that Christian Science be stated and demonstrated in its godliness and grandeur,-that however little be taught or learned, that little shall be right. Let there be milk for babes, but let not the milk be adulterated.” That last is also along with the whole of exact “cct”, the milk and meat answer to the belief that any amount of Mrs. Eddy’s or other words is any substitute for, or can, for understanding, what throughout as both the generic and the field language, was founded as the “cct”.

Kappeler in his “Scientific analysis” p. 17, is just substituting

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further statement or argument, the truth of which he were wants to reach, is realization. Right off in “Mental Treatment Illustrated”, SCIENCE AND HEALTH founds: “If Spirit or the power of divine Love bear witness to the truth, this is the ultimatum, the scientific way, and the healing is instantaneous.” (411). You may on this final vital “cct” rule enjoy these quotes: Ret.81:8-26; My. 158:16-23; Mis. 260:22-32; My. 23:16-19 or perhaps 9-6; and My. 153:27-30.

Certainly in “cct” one rule, perhaps not specifically given here, is the rule in “cct” that matter is completely out of the picture, for at most it comes to one only as consciousness, so is just a material sense, a sense of materiality, the claim that material or malicious mind is. In this Science language, matter is completely out from start to finish, out in premise, out in conclusion, out all the way. The Spirit quickeneth, the fleisch, as Wyclif spells it, profiteth nothing. But great, by the way, was Wyclif’s oneness. What else could have enabled him in the 14^th century, to break through the whole one world fog of ecclesiasticism, of ecclesiastical despotism, with the Holy Word for each one in language of his own understanding with no intermediary, no God afar off, but great purity in oneness.

He saw that church could neither own property nor be organized, and still be pure, be one with God. He gave one passage in Luke as, And every flesh shall see the health of God. He saw enough of God’s allness in the mystery of evil to stand on, “God does not will sin, for He only wills being, and sin is the negation of being”, but above all with matter he saw that “in giving, God does not part with the lordship of the thing given”. That oneness without its crowning Science, not crowned with the power of the Messiah, is indeed marvelous, and had Wyclif seen there is no matter, all is Mind, God, he would of course jumped his five centuries, and had our “cct”, wherein matter never enters. Any and all “cct” rules eliminate Christian Science ecclesiasticism. Where is, with no matter, a materially organized church? I recall in the Trial days, once writing a Home Forum metaphysical article, No Matter. That grand Trial was certainly enough to obliterate it, and its “cct” has gone right on, and right on doing so ever since.