Classification

LET classification be done by divine Science, and not by human knowledge so called. The latter sins against Truth and tyrannizes over mankind. Custom classifies persons as good or bad, young or old, strong or weak, healthy or diseased, wise or foolish. It differentiates according to sex, color, race, nationality, religion, personal appearance, height or breadth. In some cases it even seems to delight in separating human beings into masters and slaves, in herding them into antagonistic professions and rival occupations, in creating menial servitude, in exalting one type and depressing another. Such classification may pretend to follow lines supposed to be mental as well as physical, but in reality it must deal wholly with material conditions because dictated by a supposititious material mind.

Thus for the sake of convenience, customary classification tends to create classes into which individuals can permit themselves to be thrust and from which they can be prevented from emerging except through spiritual understanding. Mortal mind describes persons much in the same manner as Adam named “every living creature” in the Scriptural allegory of the false creation, and with the Adam name goes the Adam nature and the Adam law of sin, sickness, and death. Therefore one of the principal objections to the customary classification is the swarm of Adam laws which accompanies such classification. The numerous physical sciences are special sinners against mankind in this respect. Mistaking man for material instead of spiritual, they classify him as subject to material law and thus entangle mortal man in a network from which he can be saved only by Spirit’s proper classification, which reveals the real man to be the idea of divine Mind, subject only to the spiritual law of God.

Mrs. Eddy gives the cure for false classification in the following words : “Spirit diversifies, classifies, and individualizes all thoughts, which are as eternal as the Mind conceiving them; but the intelligence, existence, and continuity of all individuality remain in God, who is the divinely creative Principle thereof” (Science and Health, p. 513). Spiritual understanding of the nature and attributes of God provides the standard of true classification for man. Then if the sinning or sick person appeals for help, what should be the scientific mental attitude of the helper? The sin and the sickness are only mesmeric conditions of personal sense; therefore they can be separated from the person who needs to be saved or healed. The wrong classification can be corrected. Spiritual intuition reveals the real man of God’s making as ever expressing divine qualities, thinking true thoughts, obeying spiritual law, and so dwelling in the gracious security of Mind undefiled.

Paul made some striking classifications when, in the epistle to the Galatians, he listed “the works of the flesh” over against “the fruit of the Spirit.” On page 252 of “Miscellaneous Writings” Mrs. Eddy states, “Christian Science classifies thought thus : Right thoughts are reality and power ; wrong thoughts are unreality and powerless, possessing the nature of dreams.” In the epistle referred to above, Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” Here then is the true classification, which does not draw a line of separation between man and man or man and woman, but between the Son of God and Adam, between truth and error, reality and unreality, between the divine law and the beliefs of law based upon pretended human knowledge.

Mortal mind in attempting to classify, condemns. It is constantly trying to weave a web of restrictions and limitations. or to confine mankind to a fatal groove, to the routine of sin and death. The divine classification admits no extraneous considerations, but goes straight to the mark. It declares, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.” What if “the world knoweth us not”? God does know us for He has classified us as His image and likeness.