— oe 
be 
ss oS ee 
nothing of understanding it—are futile. 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
mend that we offer to Professor Strong the alternative 
of repudiating this heresy or submitting his resignation.” 
President White: 
tion ?” 
Mr Green: I do sir. 
President White: Is the motion seconded? 
Mr. Black: Second the motion. 
Mr. Grey: Mr. President, I think that this action 
is premature. I would suggest further questioning of 
Professor Strong. This is a serious matter. 
Other members of the board voiced similar senti- 
ments and Mr. Green withdrew his motion, The ‘inter- 
rogation proceeded. Dr. John Smith, pastor of a large 
church in a neighboring city, asked: 
“What would you do with the ministers in the mean- 
time?” 
Professor Strong: Let them attend to their pas- 
toral duties as usual, but allow them to preach no for- 
mal sermons, ‘This will give them time for personal 
_ visitation. 
Rey. Samuel Jones: How would the pastors’ sal- 
aries be paid during those two years? 
Professor Strong: Instead of raising funds by 
church collections the members could volunteer subscrip- 
tions sufficient to pay reduced expenses during the per- 
jiod, ‘Those churches that could not or would not per- 
petuate themselves during this interval would deserve 
to pass out of existence. 
Professor Brown: Would the closing of the 
churches not have a very bad influence upon children? 
Professor Strong: I think not, They could be 
taught the Bible at home either by parents or Sunday 
School teachers. This would be an incentive towards 
the resumption of family prayers, saying grace at table, 
stricter observance of Sunday and more rigid rules re- 
garding conduct in general. It might dissipate the idea 
that all we have to do to keep our peace with God is to 
put on our Sunday garments and go to church once a 
week. Furthermore it would give the clergymen a 
chance to study their bibles and see if they can’t learn 
a little more truth regarding the gospel. In working 
out their own salvation in fear and trembling they might 
discover, the art of spiritual healing, If they learned 
that the battle would be half won. 
President White: Do you consider it advisable in 
view of the fact that physicians have grown up amongst 
us for the clergy to attempt to recover the art of spirit- 
ual healing? 
Professor Strong: I consider anything advisable 
that our Lord instructed his disciples to do, the chief 
of which was to heal the sick. 
Mr. Green: How is this art to be recovered? 
Professor Strong: By purification. It is pure 
mind that heals. Sin and disease and other illusions 
disappear before pure mind like mist before the morn- 
ing sun. The Church of the future will be the church 
that can do most for its members, If we can heal 
men we can hold them in our congregations. Sermons 
by those who do not practice what they preach—to say 
The only 
churches that draw to-day are churches in which heal- 
ing is done, or where the members are held together 
by feal or ritual, or in which particularly good music or 
an unusually good pulpit orator is to be heard. 
Mr. Grey: You say the preachers of to-day do 
not understand the truth? 
Professor Strong: I do, sir. They know more 
than their predecessors but they have yet much to learn. 
Of course there are exceptions. Some of the most 
“Do you make that as a mo- 
learned men I know are clergymen. 
Mr. Grey: In what field of knowledge do you 
think clergymen are especially lacking? 
Professor Strong: In every field, but especially in 
spiritual understanding. 
Mr, Grey: What have they to learn in this field? 
Professor Strong: That is a broad question, but 
I will attempt to answer it as well as I can under the 
circumstanaces, In the first place I think that we must 
get a clearer idea of life. What is life? Herbert Spen- 
cer tried to answer it for science, but he did not make 
the meaning of life any clearer to the average man. 
Mind is life—as I understand it— eternal activity, per- 
petual motion. Its symbol is the sphere, and its symbo- 
lic organization is the sun and its advancing, revolving, 
rotating, vibrating planets. 
It is the real substance of everything animate and 
inanimate including minerals, plants, animals and man. 
What seems to be matter—even according to the physi- 
cists—may be reduced from the mass to the molecule, 
to the atom, to the electron, to imaginary forces float- 
ing in a suppositional ether, That is matter from the 
point of view of the modern materialist—the scientist. 
To spiritual sense what seems to be matter is Mind— 
it can be nothing else. This Mind which is Infinite in dura- 
tion and extension is continuous—call it flux, the stream 
of consciousness or what you will. It is in and through 
and of all things. ‘This is Life and, as spirit, it is Love 
and Truth. In a word it is Good—God, and man is the 
highest individualization of, this mind apparent to our 
present spiritualized sense, 
A proper conception of this Principle gives us con- 
cord or happiness—Heaven if you like. Resistance of 
finite mind against this Principle creates discord, unhap- 
piness—Hell if you will. It is not necessary to die (to 
pass permanently out of the range of so-called material 
sense) to experience either the one or the other. 
This spiritual understanding eliminates all errors 
of sin, disease and death as realities, for their nothing- 
ness is revealed, They are illusions—nothing more. 
Cast them out of pure Mind and, sooner or later, they 
will disappear from the body, for all error first appears 
as finite mind and then is projected in finite body. Eli- 
minate the cause and the effect goes with it. These 
principles must be mastered if we are to make real pro- 
gress in spiritual growth. 
Dr. Strong’s conception of Life was made so clear 
to the trustees that in spite of a disposition to differ no 
one even ventured to dispute it. Mr, Grey, however, 
did say: “In other words, real life is not the life that 
we perceive with material sense?” 
Dr. Strong: No. Jesus said: ‘Eyes have ye and 
ye see not; ears have ye and ye hear not, lest ye under- 
stand and be converted, and I heal you.” 
Mr, Brown: Heaven—you do not consider as lim- 
ited to the hereafter? 
Dr. Strong: No, sir. It is a state of mind whica 
may be experienced before and after the phase of finite 
mind called death. It is pure man’s eternal state in Im- 
mortal Mind. 
Mr. Smith: How are we to eliminate sin, disease 
and death as realities? I did not quite understand that 
point. 
Dr. Strong: By disavowing their claims. We 
know that they have no place in the Eternal Mind for 
if God is Good He cannot create evil, Man is God’s im- 
age. Hence evil (sin, disease and death) can have no 
place in man’s mind. 
The discussion then turned in another direction. Dr. 
