Elizabeth Earl Jones

IMMACULATE ORIGIN AND BEING.
ELIZABETH EARL JONES.
I N the prophecy of Isaiah we read, "As the heavens are

higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your
ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." It is
generally supposed that every event in the career of Christ
Jesus is related to our salvation, excepting his immaculate
conception; but in the light of Christian Science we find
that the fact of man's immaculate origin and nature, as
humanly revealed through Christ Jesus, is the very key-
note of being, the corner-stone and foundation upon
which each of us, as did Jesus, must base and build all our
thought and demonstration. It is necessary to begin aright
in order to end aright. The two points upon the horizon
of human history at which Christ Jesus appeared and dis-
appeared, are the links between earth and heaven, the
Jacob's ladder up which, step by step, humanity passes
above and out of itself and all its false beliefs, into the
unbroken harmony of spiritual being.
The science of the immaculate conception relates to your
being, to my being, to all real being, and is manifested, to
a degree, in every demonstration of Christian healing.
The Nicodemus of to-day may find these things hard to
understand, but not so the true Christian. Webster gives
the following definitions, which wonderfully illumine our
premise and aid us in reaching a logical and practical con-
clusion: "Immaculate: Without stain or blemish; spotless;
undefiled; clean, pure." "Conceive: To apprehend by
reason or imagination; to take into the mind; to know; to
comprehend; to understand." "Conception: The forma-
tion in the mind of an image, idea, or notion; apprehension;
the state of being conceived; beginnings."
The four Gospels, like the petals of a splendid rose,
unfold, in orderly process, the spiritual nature and origin
of Christ Jesus, and its peculiar significance in relation to
humanity. Matthew the Galilean, the friend and fol-
lower of Jesus, begins his Gospel thus: "The book of the
generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of
Abraham." Then he gives us in full, from his store of
knowledge, the genealogy from Abraham to Joseph. As
descent was reckoned through the males of the family,
643
The Christian Science Journal, Vol. 26, No. 11, February 1909
Public domain Collection contents made available by The Ark: www.arkpublications.com
644 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE JOURNAL.
Joseph is mentioned therein rather than Mary, but as

Joseph and Mary were cousins through the same descent,
the record holds good. Matthew then traces, together
with the prophecies relating thereto, the boyhood of Jesus,
from his birth in Bethlehem to the flight into Egypt, and
then to the return of the little family into Galilee, their
original home; and so on to the end of Jesus' ministry.
All the while, however, Matthew never loses sight of the
son of David until the ascension.
Briefly this is the import of Matthew's Gospel, as bearing
upon the subject under consideration: the dual nature of
Jesus the Christ was of profound meaning, and was in
fulfilment of the human need of that age. For many
generations true Israelities had fasted, prayed, and striven
to keep the Mosaic Decalogue, all to the end that they
might bring forth in human experience the Christ, the
God-idea which would show to them and all mankind the
way of salvation. It is true that the methods instituted
by Moses, and which were intended to keep thought in the
right channels, had degenerated into mere forms and
dogmas in the majority of cases; but obedience, together
with watchfulness, patient endurance, hope, and prayer, had
purified and elevated thought sufficiently for human sense
to reach out and grasp, in a single instance, the forever
outpouring of the divine nature and attributes.
To illustrate this dual appearing of the human and the
divine, we may refer to the old legend of the shield which
was of gold on one side and silver on the other. The
different appearance which the shield presented to two
friends who chanced to view it from opposite sides, led
to a quarrel between them. Not until the knight upon the
silver side crossed over and saw the shield from his friend's
position, did he learn the valuable lesson that much depends,
in every case, upon the point of view from which one looks.
So it was that the world, looking from the view-point
of the five physical senses, and ignorant of the purely
spiritual nature of man as God's image and likeness, saw
the Christ in fleshly form as a marvelously perfect, pure,
tender, loving, and strong human being, walking among
men, and they called their view of the redeemer, Jesus.
But God could not look from a mortal, imperfect, ma-
terial, and unreal standpoint. He could never know aught
unlike His own deathless being, and so God's idea, the
IMMACULATE ORIGIN AND BEING. 645
Christ, was never subject to the flesh, was never scourged,

spit upon, crucified, or buried. These brutalities mortal
man heaped upon his own highest human concept, which
was an ever-present rebuke to the lower sense. Through
the meeting and blending of human need and divine
supply, as manifested in Christ Jesus, humanity found a
mediator between God and man, learned the true idea
of Life as God, and how to overcome the false concept
with all its woes.
The prophets and seers of old, looking from the view-
point of spiritual sense, saw the Christ and foresaw the
inevitable satisfaction of every human need by divine Love
as manifested by Christ Jesus, and again as manifested in
the Science of being, Christ's impersonal appearing. When,
looking from the standpoint of spiritual sense only, and
seeing as God sees, Peter recognized "the Christ, the Son
of the living God," Jesus blessed him, and said, "Upon
this rock [i.e., spiritual perception] I will build my church;
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." It is
only upon this rock that we can build safely,—understand
and demonstrate the health, harmony, immortality, and
truth of being,—the rock of spiritual understanding, the
point of view which is forever golden and real. The
moment we see evil as real, or look from the standpoint of
material sense, we descend from the rock upon which the
church of Christ forever rests and prospers. The church
of Christ has not been dragged down by our temporary
descent, but we for the moment lose sight of the true
church thereby. From Matthew's narrative we gain a
wondrous insight into the nature of "Jesus Christ, the
son of David," and see how the Son of God, in each step
of Jesus' career, overcomes the son of man. But not yet
has the immaculate conception dawned, full-orbed, upon
the reader's thought.
Mark's Gospel is supposed to have been written under
the instruction of Peter, and it deals almost exclusively
with the works, the way of salvation, or the Christ as
demonstrated by Jesus. No mention is made of the
nativity or childhood of Jesus. The narrator works upon
Jesus' own line of reasoning: "By their fruits ye shall
know them." He prefaces his Gospel thus: "The begin-
ning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God," and
substantiates this declaration by a minute chronicling of
cases of healing and the overcoming of all so-called phys-

ical laws and limitations. It is in Mark's Gospel, furthermore,
that we find that declaration of the Master which
tells us in unmistakable terms how we may recognize
Christ, God's idea, in his every true follower: "And these
signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they
cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they
shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing,
it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick,
and they shall recover." Mark presents the Son of God
as the Saviour of the world, as the immaculate idea of
being which saves from every misconception; as the spot-
less, undefiled, divine concept of man which each and all
can apprehend and demonstrate. There are, however, two
more Gospels to be considered before the unfoldment is
complete.
Although Luke is next in the order given in the Author-
ized Version, yet it seems that, at this point of research,
John, the beloved disciple, lifts us right up into the heart
of divinity, and explains the science of the immaculate
conception. John sublimely ignores humanity's view of
Christ, and reasons and writes from the view-point of
Spirit, reality,—alone. From beginning to end John
antedates the human and interprets the secret of the spirit-
ual supremacy expressed through Jesus and all who follow
him in "the way." Taking as a premise the one immaculate
cause, God, John unfolds to us the immaculate effect, man
and the universe. "In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God." Goethe,
in his "Faust," makes Faust read the first chapter of
John, and he substitutes different translations for the
Greek word rendered "Word" in the authorized version of
the Scriptures. Finally Faust rejects all as unsatisfactory,
save the word "thought." "In the beginning was the
thought, and the thought was with God, and the thought
was God." Had Goethe known the practical import of the
Gospels he would have left the authorized rendering as it
is, because there could not be a word without a thought
back of it, and "the Word" implies God's thought ex-
pressed. It is impossible to separate Principle and mani-
festation, cause and effect; they are coincident and
coexistent, and the one proves the other.
The Standard Dictionary tells us that mind is "that
which thinks, feels, and wills." Therefore the great First

Cause or creator must be Mind, and man and the universe,
as products of divine Mind, must be divine ideas, or God's
thoughts expressed. Moses taught that the Lord our
God is one Lord and that "there is none else beside him."
Therefore God, being infinite and One, His thought must
embrace all true being, and be as perfect as is He. Fur-
thermore, if divine Mind, God, were for a moment to stop
thinking, or if His ideas were to become confused, degen-
erate, diseased, and thought at random, without definite
purpose and intelligence, then, according to human stand-
ards, the divine Mind would be temporarily unbalanced.
This is too absurd to consider, and we can but conclude that
all the divine ideas are as perfect as He is, and forever
remain so. John tells us, even as Christian Science teaches,
that "in the beginning was the Word [God's thought
expressed], and the Word was with God [never for a
moment separated from the parent mind], and the Word
was God [God expressed]." Therefore the real man
antedates the flesh and was "in the beginning with God."
The real man has never left the bosom of the Father, but
was, is, and ever will be God's perfect idea. Knowing
this, we may rise and look fearlessly from God's view-
point and ask ourselves at every test: What is God think-
ing? and therefore what am I and what is my fellow-man?
What is God thinking? God is forever thinking good;
Truth is forever truthful; Love is forever loving; Life
expressing Life.
What am I and what is my fellow-man? Man is the
expression of God; of Life, of Truth, therefore his con-
ception is immaculate. Says our revered Leader, "The
time cometh when the spiritual origin of man, the divine
Science which ushered Jesus into human presence, will be
understood and demonstrated" (Science and Health, p.
325). John draws back the veil of the flesh and of all mys-
tic philosophy, thus revealing the simplicity of Christ and
explaining the immaculate conception as applied to each and
all, and as the "Science which ushered Jesus into human
presence." This Science of divine knowing and its reflec-
tion heals the sick, cleanses the lepers, casts out devils (all
evils), raises the dead, and preaches to the poor the gospel
of God's abundant, overflowing love for His idea. It heals
mortals of their fear of starvation and death, of limitation,
debt, and want How can the mind or body of man, who
is the continuous going forth of the divine perfection, who
is ever renewed, sustained, supported by the divine activ-
ity, be diseased, weary, inflamed, decomposed, blind, lame,
halt, and destitute? When we know the nature of man,
the healing ministry of Christ Jesus and his promise that
all true believers should do the works that he did are ex-
plained ; as is also the assurance and confidence of the Chris-
tian Science practitioner, who speaks to "disease as one
having authority over it" (Science and Health, p. 395).
John tells us that "the true Light . . . lighteth every man
that cometh into the world;" it was not for Jesus alone.
John also tells us that "the Word was made flesh [per-
ceived from the view-point of mortals], and dwelt among
us, . . . And of his [the Word's] fulness have all we re-
ceived." The beloved disciple also portrays, more than
all the others, the infinite love, tenderness, and compas-
sion which the Father forever expresses through the Son
and to the Son. Toward the close of his glorious ministry
Jesus prayed: "And now, O Father, glorify thou me with
thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before
the world was." Jesus was continually insisting upon and
reiterating man's unity with God, and if our Wayshower,
Christ Jesus, thought and prayed thus, ought not we his
followers to think and pray likewise? The Father's busi-
ness, the embodiment and expression of Life, Truth, Love,
is the sole mission of man and the sole reason for his
existence; while the work of the Father is to support,
protect, perpetuate, and express His allness in man and
the universe. We need never fear that God will fail in
His work, and we should take heart, trust Him, and press
forward to the fulfilment of our work, humanly and
divinely knowing that divine Love worketh in us, both to
will and to do of His good pleasure.
In taking up Luke's Gospel, we descend once more to
earth, but this time it is in the company of angels, and we
can never forget the dazzling glory of "the pattern showed
to thee in the mount" of John's Gospel. It is long since
the prophets foreshadowed the coming of Immanuel, and
many weary years of bondage, hardship, and strivings have
marked Judah's pathway, but with these passing years the
time foretold has drawn near. All were eagerly anticipat-
ing the advent of the Prince of Peace, but then as now
there were many strange theories as to the nature of his

coming and of his plan of salvation. It had been said that
"the seed of the woman" should bruise the head of the
serpent. The other Gospels lift us into the strong, loving
arms of the heavenly Father, Luke brings us under the
wing of the divine Mother and this motherhood reflected
in mankind. When God is referred to as the infinite I AM,
the All-in-all, that divine Principle which is the basis of all
law and authority, and which governs the universe and
man, His almightiness and fatherhood must appeal to
thought. When referred to as thinking all creatures into
being, as nourishing and sustaining every manifestation of
Life, and as embracing all in that infinite compassion
which was revealed and illustrated by Christ Jesus and
which is supremely emphasized in Christian Science,—then
His loving motherhood appears, to round to the full in
human thought the compass and completing of the divine
nature, and to explain that wondrous phrase, "Let us
[Father-Mother] make man in our image;" and "male and
female created he them."
It is supremely natural and in fulfilment of both prophecy
and reason that, humanly speaking, woman should present
the Christ to the world. At the close of a long period of
hope and expectation among the Jews, there suddenly ap-
peared upon the pinnacle of Jewish thought, upon the peak
that was nearest heaven, a lovely maiden, who, like some
rare, beautiful flower, has filled universal consciousness with
the sweetness of her pure life-motive and the perfume of
her prayers. Mary served in the temple and contemplated
the deep things of God. Her young heart was fed and
filled with Love divine. By this companionship with God,
the divine nature and its ceaseless outpouring were re-
flected in her. She beheld man, God's idea, in spotless
vestments, in angelic form, as "the Son of the Highest,"
a "holy thing" of whose "kingdom there shall be no end."
"The Holy Ghost" came upon her and "the power of the
Highest" overshadowed her, as she dwelt upon this vision
of celestial being. It was the human mother instinct of
the Hebrew maiden that clothed her conception in fleshly
swaddling-clothes and laid him in a manger. But her
presentation of man as the Son of God met the need
of that hour and paved the way for the further revelation
of Truth.
The prophet Isaiah thus foretold the birth of the Mes-

siah: "The people that walked in darkness have seen a
great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of
death, upon them hath the light shined." Many spiritually-
minded men and women in the time of the Virgin-mother
felt and saw in differing degrees this meeting of the human
and divine, but none save Mary saw the full vision and
heard the first scientific definition of man that was ever
announced to humanity. The prophet Zechariah depicts the
limited, bound-in sense of life, as seen between the cradle
and the grave, as "an ephah" filled with wickedness and
sealed by a great weight of lead upon the top thereof.
This represents the concentrated human belief in the
necessity and inevitableness of sin, disease, and death.
Then an angel directed the prophet's thought higher, and
he lifted up his eyes and looked, "and, behold, there came
out two women, and the wind was in their wings; for they
had wings like the wings of a stork: and they lifted up
the ephah between the earth and the heaven.'' When
Jesus ascended he promised that the Christ would be with
us always—"even unto the end of the world." Jesus the
human concept departed, but God's idea, Christ, will re-
main in our midst "unto the end of the world." It is
this God-idea, the Christ, which is again revealed in Chris-
tian Science. A physical personality could not meet the
world-wide needs of the twentieth century. It is the
Science of being, Christian Science, that alone can feed
all the hungry hearts and minds of this mature age, and
fulfil Jesus' promise that "when he, the Spirit of truth, is
come, he will guide you into all truth."
As of old, there have been and are many wise men,—
watchful shepherds, poets, philosophers, sages, simple
Christians,—who have seen the brightness of this star, heard
the angels sing, "On earth peace, good will toward men,"
and glimpsed in varying measures this second appearing;
but only one woman—our revered Leader—saw the forever
appearing, grasped its full meaning and application to
humanity, and heard and expressed the complete, God-
crowned annunciation of the Science of man in the image
of God. Why was it, that of all earth's sons and daughters,
she alone was freed sufficiently from the thraldom of the
senses to behold and bring forth the Christ-idea? Because
she was unselfish, pure, and loving enough to surrender
self completely in the service of God and humanity, and to

endure the world's piercing. On Calvary, in the dark
hours of desertion and disdain, where were the wise men,
the shepherds, the philosophers, the poets, and even the
followers of Christ Jesus? Had all fled save one? Nay,
womanhood was faithful unto the end.
The twelfth chapter of Revelation is prophetic of this
hour when the immaculate conception and virgin origin
of man is being understood and demonstrated, not by a
coming into the flesh, but by an overcoming of the flesh.
Christian Science reveals the motherhood of God which
is always bringing forth the ideas of Truth and Love;
and nothing can withhold the full manifestation of good,—
For God is the infinite Mother
W h o hath borne and carried us all,
W h o broods above with a tender love
Aware of our faintest call.
(Heartsease Hymns, by REV. W. P . McKENZIE.)
DIGNITY is,—
The visible poise of self-dominion.
Calm heroism of character facing the inevitable.
Serenity, strength, and simplicity in a crisis.
Pride in the hour of abasement, and humility in time of
exaltation.
The soul's consciousness of rectitude radiated in noble
bearing.
The armor of self-respect.
Walking calmly and courageously through the valley of
humiliation.
Character rising superior to conditions or circumstances.
William George Gordon.
NOTICE.
A number of pages have been added to The Christian
Science Journal during the past few months and the weight
of the magazine has thus been increased to the point where
it now requires three cents (3c.) postage on single copies
to all points in the United States, Canada, and Mexico,
and five cents (5c.) to other countries.

Elizabeth Earl Jones

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IMMACULATE ORIGIN AND BEING.

ELIZABETH EARL JONES.

I N the prophecy of Isaiah we read, "As the heavens are

Joseph is mentioned therein rather than Mary, but as

Christ, was never subject to the flesh, was never scourged,

cases of healing and the overcoming of all so-called phys-

which thinks, feels, and wills." Therefore the great First

there were many strange theories as to the nature of his

The prophet Isaiah thus foretold the birth of the Mes-

self completely in the service of God and humanity, and to

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