Books by Mary Baker Eddy

THE NEW BIRTH
page 13

THE NEW BIRTH

   St. Paul speaks of the new birth as "waiting for the
adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." The
great Nazarene Prophet said, "Blessed are the pure in
heart: for they shall see God." Nothing aside from the
spiritualization - yea, the highest Christianization - of
thought and desire, can give the true perception of God
and divine Science, that results in health, happiness, and
holiness.
   The new birth is not the work of a moment. It begins
with moments, and goes on with years; moments of surrender
to God, of childlike trust and joyful adoption
of good; moments of self-abnegation, self-consecration,
heaven-born hope, and spiritual love.
   Time may commence, but it cannot complete, the
new birth: eternity does this; for progress is the law
of infinity. Only through the sore travail of mortal mind
shall soul as sense be satisfied, and man awake in His
likeness. What a faith-lighted thought is this! that
mortals can lay off the "old man," until man is found
to be the image of the infinite good that we name God,
and the fulness of the stature of man in Christ appears.
   In mortal and material man, goodness seems in
embryo. By suffering for sin, and the gradual fading out
of the mortal and material sense of man, thought is developed
into an infant Christianity; and, feeding at first
on the milk of the Word, it drinks in the sweet revealings

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of a new and more spiritual Life and Love. These nourish
the hungry hope, satisfy more the cravings for immortality,
and so comfort, cheer, and bless one, that he saith:
In mine infancy, this is enough of heaven to come down
to earth.
   But, as one grows into the manhood or womanhood
of Christianity, one finds so much lacking, and so very
much requisite to become wholly Christlike, that one
saith: The Principle of Christianity is infinite: it is
indeed God; and this infinite Principle hath infinite
claims on man, and these claims are divine, not human;
and man's ability to meet them is from God; for, being
His likeness and image, man must reflect the full
dominion of Spirit - even its supremacy over sin, sickness,
and death.
   Here, then, is the awakening from the dream of life
in matter, to the great fact that God is the only Life;
that, therefore, we must entertain a higher sense of both
God and man. We must learn that God is infinitely
more than a person, or finite form, can contain; that
God is a divine Whole, and All, an all-pervading intelligence
and Love, a divine, infinite Principle; and
that Christianity is a divine Science. This newly
awakened consciousness is wholly spiritual; it emanates
from Soul instead of body, and is the new birth begun
in Christian Science.
   Now, dear reader, pause for a moment with me, earnestly
to contemplate this new-born spiritual altitude; for
this statement demands demonstration.
   Here you stand face to face with the laws of infinite
Spirit, and behold for the first time the irresistible conflict
between the flesh and Spirit. You stand before the

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awful detonations of Sinai. You hear and record the
thunderings of the spiritual law of Life, as opposed to
the material law of death; the spiritual law of Love, as
opposed to the material sense of love; the law of omnipotent
harmony and good, as opposed to any supposititious
law of sin, sickness, or death. And, before the
flames have died away on this mount of revelation, like
the patriarch of old, you take off your shoes - lay aside

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