Chapter XXIV
THE HIDDEN MYSTERY
W. John Murray
The
Realm of Reality
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1922.
“The image of the invisible
God, the firstborn of every
creature.”
--Col. 1:15
[287]
Nothing is so fascinating as the
mysterious, and for this reason the mind
of man is ever striving to get away from
the commonplace. All progress is the
result of reading out beyond the known to
the unknown, for we instinctively feel
that the known is only a small fraction
of the unknown presented to our senses.
When Newton observed an apple fall to the
ground, the mystery of gravitation was on
the eve of being solved. He might have
treated the incident as had countless
millions of the earth’s inhabitants
before his birth, but he did not, and
hence we not only know that apples fall,
but we know why they fall.
The
appearance and disappearance of the stars
was a mystery, so long as men believed
they were stuck like pins in a
pin-cushion in a solid body of blue sky,
but the mystery vanished when it was
learned that the stars were like our
earth, revolving in space, and supported
as is our planet, not upon pillars like
the floor of a building, but upon [288]
the ample breast of ether on which all
natural things rest in motion. The stars
do not go away in the morning to some
remote corner of the universe and come
back in the evening, as children suppose.
The mystery then is, why do we not see
them? And the answer is, we do not see
them in the daytime because of the
stronger light of the sun.
The world is
full of mysteries, but God has furnished
man with a certain sense of divine
curiosity which will not let him rest
under the delusion that the mysterious
must ever remain so. There are those who
declare it presumptuous to attempt to
solve the mysteries of the spiritual
world, and yet Jesus says, “Ask and
ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find,
knock and it shall be opened unto
you.” It is certain that we shall
never know anything concerning the
kingdom of God unless we inquire, and if
we can believe the statistics of Bible
Societies and the statements of those who
sell books which serve as keys to the
inspired writings, the number of
inquiries is steadily on the increase.
From reliable sources we gather the
information that never before was there a
time when so much spiritual literature
was in healthy circulation.
There is a
hunger and a thirst after spiritual
knowledge which indicate the unsatisfied
longings of the soul of the world. Realms
of mind are being more generally explored
than ever before in the endeavor to solve
the mystery of the Christ, and in some
measure we feel that this mystery is
[289] being opened in a way which is
leading to a new and firmer grasp on the
things which count. Paul declares that he
reckoned all things of trifling
importance by comparison with a knowledge
of Christ, but by Christ Paul meant not
one special man, but the
Life-Principle which governs all
men. The word Christ is loosely used, so
much so that it suggests almost
universally the idea of a particular
personage in human history. We think it
is the name for the particular man
Jesus when, as a matter of fact, it is
the title for what has been called
“The divine Collective
man.” It is significant when an
ecclesiastic signs himself, “Yours
in Christ” and not “Yours in
Jesus,” for it signifies a unity in
the spirit, rather than a oneness in the
flesh.
The hidden
mystery of the Christ is not an
incommunicable secret, nor an
incomprehensible question, nor an
unascertainable Truth. It is
simply a condition which is not generally
understood, but wherever it is
understood, it is the power which makes
for right thinking and healthy living. If
the mystery of Christ in man was
not revealed until Jesus came, it was not
because it could not have been revealed,
but because of a crafty priesthood which
refrained from communicating it. Then, as
now, there were those who believed that
the most precious Truths of God were for
what were called the “elect.”
They were like those secrets of secret
societies which are made known only to
those who have reached [290] certain
degrees of initiation, and who are bound
under pain of oath not to divulge
them.
The mystery
of the Christ in the individual was, to
the ancients, like the discovery of a
rich mine from which only a few were to
derive benefits, and not like the
revelation of a great Truth to which all
men are entitled and through which all
men have a right to expect emancipation.
The mystery of the Christ in the
individual was, to the initiates of old,
like some secret formula in chemistry,
kept hidden in order to enrich the few at
the expense of the many. The plea that
there are some truths which, like some
combustibles, are not safe in the hands
of the ignorant, sounds very plausible
until you realize that it is only as
Truth is explained to the ignorant that
they rise above their thralldom.
There is a
considerable difference between dynamite
and divinity. In the case of the one
there may be a possibility of injury, but
in the case of the explained divinity of
the individual there can be no greater
commotion than a moral uprising and a
bodily rejuvenation. If there is any
danger connected with the explanation of
the hidden mystery of every man’s
place in the divine order, it is the
danger of making the universal which a
few men would like to consider private
property. It is an almost common
temptation for us to derive some comfort
and take some pride in the thought that
we possess some information which
is not generally known. If we
speak of it it is [291] in hushed tones,
and with the admonition to those to whom
we confide not to divulge it.
Whether it
is a choice bit of gossip about our
neighbors, or a New Thought about God, we
communicate it as a confidence which we
“do not wish to go any
farther.” It has been said that the
real offense of Jesus, and the one for
which he suffered most, was the act of
taking what was supposed to be known only
to the priests and making it the common
property of all mankind. We may doubt
that there are minds base enough to keep
secret that which would lessen human
suffering and increase human joy, but the
history of some of the most helpful
discoveries in the medical world is that
they were used first to enrich their
discoverer, after which they were handed
down to the discoverer’s family. To
the credit of the medical profession it
is only fair to state that this practice
is contrary to its highest ethics, and we
refer to it only to show that, even in
the most dignified professions, the
tendency to preserve the mystery of
things is not rare.
It is
astonishing that as soon as a mystery is
explained we wonder why it had to
be explained, why we should not have
known it for ourselves.
The mystery
of the Christ is solved when we take a
more impersonal view of things.
The highest thought of today is that God
is not a distant ruler, but an
Omnipresent Intelligence, and that just
as the world is ruled by Mind, and not by
matter, so this Omnipresent Intelligence
is perpetually expressing Itself in
endless variety. [292] If we can think of
the Great First Cause as the universal
Divine Mind from which all creation
springs, as light emanates from the sun
or perfume emanates from flowers, it will
help us to understand the place of the
Christ in the scheme of orderly
unfoldment. When we speak of the Christ
as the first emanation of Divine Mind, we
mean that It is the first exhibition of
the Divine Will to project itself into
manifestation, and not a mechanical
efflux with no intelligent direction back
of it.
It is when
we think of our own minds and the way
they express themselves that we have the
best illustration of the Christ in us,
for just as Thought is the first activity
of our individual minds, so Idea is the
first activity of the Universal Mind, and
this Idea is the Christ. A simple
explanation of The Blessed Trinity which
does not involve us in the acceptance of
three Persons in One Person is to explain
the Trinity as, first, Creative
Intelligence, or God; second, Creative
Intelligence in action, or Christ; and
third, Creative Intelligence in
manifestation, or Jesus.
Through all
the centuries of Christianity in its
various forms the doctrine of the Trinity
has given more or less trouble to the
thoughtful mind because of the difficulty
of accepting the idea of three persons in
one. Those who do not wish to be bothered
by thinking accept it as one of the
mysteries of the Church and let it go at
that; but when the Trinity is explained
as Mind, Idea and Manifestation, the
mystery disappears and the [293] Trinity
becomes a law of necessity which is
transpiring under our very eyes. Speaking
of the Christ as the universal Idea of
God, and not as a particular person, Paul
says it is “The image (Idea) of the
invisible God (Mind), the first born of
every creature, for in Him (Mind) were
all things created (in Idea), in the
heavens and upon the earth, things
visible and invisible (as ideas and then
manifestations), whether thrones, or
dominions, or principalities or powers,
all things have been created by Him and
for Him. And He is before all things, and
by Him all things consist.”
In this text
we have presented the orderly method of
creation, for just as Thought is the
firstborn of every material thing, so the
firstborn of every man that cometh into
the world is “the image of the
invisible God,” or the Idea in
Divine Mind, without which he could not
come into being or partake of
immortality. Christ is the soul of man
without which the body could not be.
Christ is that Divinity in man which
preceded his birth and will survive his
death. Christ is that eternal reality of
man which is never separated from the
Father. It is that in man which never
sins and never suffers. The mission of
Jesus was to reveal this Christ in all
men, even as he had discovered it in
himself. He prayed, “That they all
may be one; as Thou Father art in me, and
I in Thee, that they also may be one in
us.”
The
discovery of one’s self in Christ
is the [294] greatest discovery of the
ages. It is when we feel that we are not
in the Christ, and the Christ is not in
us, that we are sinful, sick, and
unhappy; but when, through understanding,
we connect ourselves with the firstborn
of ourselves we become a new creature.
When it is understood that Christ is not
a person, but the living Idea back of
every person, we shall understand what it
means to be resurrected with Christ. When
we learn that the Christ is the eternal
son of God in every son of man, we shall
judge man, not by the sight of our eyes,
but according to Truth.
When Simon
saw in Jesus the Divinity which animated
and actuated him he said of that
Divinity, “Thou are the Christ, the
son of the Living God,” and when
Jesus saw in Simon the Divinity which
perceived Itself mirrored in himself he
said, “Henceforth thy name shall be
called Peter.” It was the mutual
recognition of the
“firstborn” in each. If we
will but remember that Universal Mind is
the Father, we shall have no difficulty
in accepting the Christ as the Idea of
Universal sonship, of which we are
individual expressions. Like drops
of the ocean, which possess all the
qualities and properties of the ocean,
each individual is a distinct
manifestation of the Christ-Idea. The
Christ-Idea may be likened to the hub of
a mighty wheel through which runs the
supporting axle, and out from which
extend numberless spokes.
If we can
think of the Universal Divine Mind, or
God, as the supporting axle which
underlies [295] and carries all creation
forward and the hub, or Christ, as that
without which neither axle nor spokes
could properly function, we shall be able
to understand our own place in the
creative plan. From the least unto the
greatest, each of us is a spoke in the
wheel of eternal progress, but until we
realize this we are thinking of ourselves
as that part of the spoke which is
nearest the tire. At this outer extremity
we feel the painful pressure of a too
close contact with the earth. One day at
this end of the spoke of ourselves we are
looking up into the heavens and hoping
for better things, the next we are ground
in the dust again. It is a series of ups
and downs with us always until we learn
to think of ourselves as the end of the
spoke which is firmly fixed in the
hub.
This may be
a poor analogy, but it conveys the idea
that man’s refuge from the discords
and diseases on the circumference of life
is in learning to find his Center in
Christ, the hub of the universe, and
resting in Christ as Christ rests on God,
the supporting Axle of all creation. When
we can do this we shall know what it
means to be One with the Father. We shall
no longer believe in two lives, a
physical one which ends at death, and a
spiritual one which can never end, for we
shall know that, like the spoke in the
hub, and the hub on the axle, our
“life is hid with Christ in
God,” secure from all harm and
unconquerable by death.
* * * * *
The Realm of Reality
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