December, 2003
 WE
MINGLE
With the Hosts of Heaven On February 12, 1959,
Ernest Holmes gave the dedicatory address to formally open
the Church
of Religious Science in Whittier,
California. This speech is remarkable in Religious Science history
because at its end Holmes is said to have experienced a “white
light” or cosmic consciousness experience, in which the
church and the
congregation appeared to him as “a pool of light.” The following is excerpted from
Dr. Holmes’ address that
evening. I have the keenest personal interest in such an occasion as
this, and the most impersonal interest, in that I love it personally,
and I don’t feel that it has anything to do with me at
all, other than that it is a certain phenomenon which is taking
place in my day and which I have the privilege of being some
part of. Tolstoy in War and Peace, which is still called “the
best six novels ever written,” by all the writers, said
that any person today who appears to do anything worthwhile,
probably has the least of anyone of his age to do with it. He is merely something—an instrumentality—that the
principle of evolution probably leaves upon the shores of time
to see what’ll happen. If it happens, he has the opportunity
of being one who appeared to help. If it doesn’t happen,
he and it go out on the next tide, because only that which persists
in evolution—finally, that which is worthy—can remain.
As Tennyson said, “So careful of the type it seems, so
careless of the single life.” Our movement grows and expands very rapidly—as rapidly
as I think as is possible—because we would not wish to
mistake its end and purpose, which is not the building of churches.
It is not the dedicating of churches—it is what happens
in them after they are built, and after they are dedicated. It’s
what happens where there are groups of people in our conviction
who meet together for the only two purposes for which we exist—teaching
and practice. We are a teaching and practicing order in the Christian Faith,
who believe in two great fundamental realities—the Divine
Presence, personal to every living soul and uniquely personal
to each and every one of us. That’s the first great cornerstone.
The next is a Power for Good, and the Law of Good in the Universe
greater than we are, that we can use for definite and specific
purposes. The first one, everyone believes in. The second proposition,
probably about twenty million people in this country now believe
in, somewhat. And that two hundred thousand of them really know
what it is that they believe—I doubt it. It is our endeavor, through our educational system, to teach
people what this principle is, and how to use it. And there is a growing conviction in my mind that it should
and must become the endeavor of all of our leaders to exercise
some
kind of a discipline over their membership not as to their theology…because
that is not our endeavor, to convince somebody of our faith.
It is to prove something—first of all to ourselves; then
to the world—and we have no authority before the world,
and should ask for none—and will have none, ever—I
hope—other than the authority of the work that follows
the word. Should we become the most prosperous organization in
the world, and build temples that would make Taj Mahal jealous
and blush with shame…we should have become the most dismal
failure in the entire history of the evolution of man’s
concept of God. It is not at all strange that the time should
have come and it happened to come in our time; and we happen
to be those through whom and to whom it came. How fortunate we
are! We are a teaching order, not a preaching order. We are a practicing
order, not a proselytizing order, and the world has waited long
and too often vainly for something to happen; for some healing
power of the unseen magic of the Spirit to be evidenced at the
cornerstone… We have yet to see what the multiplied consciousness of a church
body can do, if they are properly trained, if they permit someone
to exercise an authority over them—not of their theology
for which I wouldn’t give a nickel anyway, not of their
private lives which are no one’s business but their own,
but of one thing only—there is a Law of Good. There is
a Power in the Universe greater than we are and we can use it;
and it will multiply its effects a thousand times, in my belief,
through the united consciousness of a group.
There are many wonderful religions in the world. We are not
better than the others. We are not more spiritual. We are not
more evolved.
We are not more anything, other than this one thing: we have
co-joined our consciousness with the eternal verity of the
Universe, that that everlasting and eternal Father of all life,
and the
Mother of all creation forever begetting the Only-Begotten,
is begetting Him in us, right now. And that the word of our mouth
is a word of Truth in such degree as it emulates and embodies
the Truth which sanctifies the word to its unique service of
healing not only the sick, but the poor in heart. We are dedicated to the concept that the pure in heart shall
see God—here; that the meek will inherit the earth—now;
that one with Truth is a majority; that every one of us, in the
secret place of the Most High, with center on his own consciousness,
has the secret with the Eternal, the Everlasting, the Almighty,
and the Ineffable: God and I are One. And I see you doing this;
and I see you uniting in one great hymn of praise, one great
union of effort, one crescendo of song, and one enveloping light
of consciousness…
I see it!
O God, the veil is thin between. We do mingle with the hosts
of heaven.
I see it.
And I shall speak no more.•
Ernest Holmes
|
