“Reconcile: to bring to acquiescence; to content”

“RECONCILE: to bring to acquiescence; to content.” Webster. “The atonement of Jesus, reconciles man to God, not God to man.” Science and Health. “We pray you, in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.” Paul. “First, be reconciled to your brother.” Jesus.

Mortal man has ever cried out, “I need, I want a God,” but he has wanted that God to be according to his own ideal; consequently, he has ever “stoned the prophets” through whom came the revelation of the true God he was ignorantly seeking; in other words, “the Christ (Truth of God) has been slain from the foundation of the world.” Since mortal man is himself a respecter of persons, his ideal god is a respecter of persons: a god that can be persuaded, flattered; one whose favor can be purchased, or who can be moved to anger and revenge; one who is tyrannical because he has the power to make his subjects afraid. In fact, mortal man’s ideal god is like himself. Still, strange as it may seem, unrest, because of his inherent instability, compels man to seek for some immutable power upon which to rest.

The conflicting desires that demanded a persuadable god, yet one unchanging, led to the “gods many” of heathen religions, each with a special office in meeting the needs of man. Mortal man with his god that is a respecter of persons, is, in turn, himself a respecter of gods; and one god or another has at different times been most popular, that is, has had the greatest number of worshipers.

But, in spite of the desired pliability of mortal man’s ideal god, there has ever been an almost unacknowledged recognition of a God above the gods worshiped, whose attributes were unknown, but who still was feared. Only certain, specially endowed men who had served the gods long in the temples, dared even to speak his fearful name, or approach him in worship. An author of note puts in the mouth of one of his characters these words descriptive of this unknown God: “So wise! so hard and pitiless! so tearless and yet so just! . . . without mercy, incapable of love, unmoved by hate, implacable, emotionless, the fearful judge, the Truth!”

Mortal man is the son of lawlessness, hence is ever at enmity with the exactness, the inexorableness of Law, Principle, the God that is Truth. He has made unto himself “graven images,” (the work of his imagination) and has bowed down to worship them. The worship of false gods ever demands that the devotee look down to the ground, nothingness, whence mortal man came. This worship is always groveling, be the god what it may. The worship of the true God is a looking up from matter to Spirit.

The names of false gods are legion. Each and all promise to meet man’s recognized needs —life, freedom, peace; and, although he has proven and continues to prove every promise a lie, he still follows, hopes, faints, dies. While the promise of the false gods is to serve man according to his highest sense of good, instead, he himself becomes the gods’ most abject slave, bound with chains that gall and fret until he longs for the confines of the grave as the acme of freedom, for annihilation as heaven. In spite of the continued and disheartening betrayal of his trust in his ideal gods, mortal man is still so afraid of the unknown God, that he hugs his delusions, his chains, as tenaciously as ever.

There have seemed, also, to be men raised up, or set apart, or sent, to do the special will of one or more of these gods. Both names and offices of these messengers or ministers, as well as of the gods, have changed continually; every age and people presenting different gods, different ministers, and seemingly different services, while the one office of all was to forge heavier chains to bind blind, ignorant, foolish man.

From the foundation of this world, the Unknown God has never been without a witness among mortals. The fathers and prophets of old, saw dimly the Most High God, the God of gods, and proclaimed His glory (character); but man was slow to hear or see, and law labored through centuries to reconcile the world to one who might reveal the true God in His fullness. Yet that Mighty Counselor came to an unreconciled world, and gave an example of the power, life, freedom and peace of man reconciled to the Unknown God, so long sought, feared, dreaded. So unreconciled still was mortal man to the God that is Truth, that the Exemplar, the Prince of Peace was rejected, and darkness more dense fell upon the world again; and gods and their temples and temple servers were multiplied, and chains forged anew to manacle helpless mortals.

The mission of Jesus was to reconcile man to GOD — the unchangeable, the wise, the just, the Truth— the Unknown God who is exact, inexorable, and who will reign alone, the only God. To sin-bound man Jesus declared that worship of this God, whose “promises are sure,” brings freedom, not slavery; wisdom, not foolishness; peace, not fear; life, not death. He taught, and showed by his life (demonstrated) that this God may safely be accepted as He is.

In man’s ignorance of the Love that is God, he has conceived love to be ministry to self. He does not call it self-ministry; but careful analysis of even the best phases or manifestations, reveals self as the principal ingredient of the strange compound. This self so blinds man to the beneficence of the one immutable, inexorable God, that willingness to give up the persuadable gods whom he loves, or his unsuspected bondage to them, is difficult to attain.

A subtle and agreeable flattery pervades the belief that man, by eloquent petitioning, may cause a powerful god to revoke an old decree or issue a new edict to meet the petitioner’s special demands. It is the self-ministry of man’s love for his ideal god. On the other hand, Principle (God) being Law, an unvarying rule for obtaining its benefits must be observed. Principle is “no respecter of persons;” hence, everyone observing this rule surely finds the promises of life, freedom and peace all fulfilled. A failure to receive is simply the evidence that the petitioner has “asked amiss,” — failed to obey the rule.

“To be reconciled to God, then, is to be brought to acquiescence, to content,” with divine, immutable Principle, and its demands just as they are, ever have been, and ever will be. The will of Principle — God — “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” becomes the will of man, and the reign of divine harmony is begun in him.

Again, the reconciliation of man to God, involves another reconciliation, that of man to man. “First, be reconciled to thy brother;” that is, the first evidence that man is reconciled to God, is that he is reconciled to his brother. While man has been making a god after his own ideal, has he not also been trying to make a brother after his own ideal? Each man has wanted a god to minister to himself, hence the making of “gods many”; so, also, man’s trying to make a brother to minister to himself, has involved many brothers after many kinds as a result. In other words, each man is trying to force as many as possible of his brothers to be shaped, moulded, disciplined according to his own selfish, or self-ministering ideal. Mortal man having a god without individuality, has no individuality himself, and permits none to his brother. Thus, parents exact that their children shall be after their own self-loving ideals; and when the children fail to be so shaped, the parents bow in sorrow — self-pity — the rest of their days. Husbands and wives exact of each other their own self-ministering ideals; and open failure — named separation or divorce — is the rule, while seeming success is the exception. Friends subject friends to the same selfish exactions, and the memory of each is filled with the sad details of broken friendships. Upon every relation of mortal man to his fellow, the mark of the false god is found.

“First be reconciled to thy brother” as he is. Leave his individuality untouched. HANDS OFF! He is the idea of the inexorable, just God, the God that allows no intermeddling. He alone is, the omnipotent, and He works in man his own individual good pleasure; hence, man is God’s ideal, and man must be reconciled to — brought into acquiescence with— that ideal both for himself and for his brother.

Christian Science reconciles man to God and to man; and one demonstrates that reconciliation before men, in a life of trust in God for ALL things — even for the salvation of his brother in God’s own way.

The first apprehension of the teachings of Christian Science is so apt to be a misapprehension, that the spectacle of a Christian Scientist (?) honestly striving to force men out of disease into ease in sense, is very common. Jesus never did anything to put mortal man at ease in error; neither does Christian Science. Jesus said, “Whosoever will, may come” so does Christian Science.

It is often seen, too, that one student of Christian Science is not at all reconciled to the order of the destruction of error in another student. He is not content” that Truth should remove for that brother one evidence of sin before another, but exacts that the work of salvation shall go on according to his ideal order of progression; hence, the spectacle of criticisms and judgments and injustice gives evidence of un-reconciliation both to God and the brother. That each must work out his own salvation, “for it is God which worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure,” seems either not to have been heard, or to have been forgotten. Trespass not on the domain of thy brother’s salvation. Put the shoes from off thy feet; for it is holy ground. We follow the example of Jesus’ atonement, when we leave our brother in Science alone with God. No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw (not drive) him. We cannot take the kingdom of heaven by violence for our brother, any more than we can for ourselves.

Again, students of Christian Science who have not yet apprehended the spirit of the teachings, are apt to exact that their teacher shall have been regenerated after their own crude and oft fantastic ideal, and are slow, or wholly refuse, to be reconciled to what God may be doing in and for that teacher — and through him, for them; and, vice versa, the teacher is not reconciled to the order or time of regeneration in the student. “First be reconciled to thy brother.” It is the only sure evidence that we have apprehended, and are in obedience to, the teachings of Jesus —Christian Science.

Instead of keeping Jesus, who is both the human and immortal model, ever before us for our own following, and leaving God to lead our brother to the same model as surely as He has led us, are we not setting up mortal and perishable models and exacting that our brother shall be like unto them? In other words, are we reconciled to —have we been brought into acquiescence with, into content with — the actual sharing of the world’s reproach of Jesus the Christ? That same reproach awaits the Christ-likeness wherever and whenever it appears in this world; for, it is an invader into a kingdom not its own. Moreover, it is an all-conqueror; and for this, alone, the ruler of this world would drive the divine likeness from its borders. Does not the marvelous fact that the banner of Christ has been set on the highest pinnacle of this world’s claim of power — Science — show that the scepter of the mortal ruler is departed; that the prophecy, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in Heaven” is now fulfilled?

“And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them: and has committed unto us the word of RECONCILIATION.”