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Christian Healing
Lesson 11
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Lesson Eleven
Judgment and Justice
1. Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment
ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye
mete, it shall be measured unto you.--Mt. 7:1,2.
2. And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the
Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be upon Aaron's heart,
when he goeth in before Jehovah: and Aaron shall bear the
judgment of the children of Israel upon his heart before
Jehovah continually--Ex. 28:30.
3. The Urim and Thummim (Lights and Perfections). These
were the sacred symbols (worn upon the breastplate of the
high priest, upon his heart) by which God gave oracular
responses for the guidance of His People in temporal
matters. What they were is unknown; they are introduced in
Exodus without explanation, as if familiar to the
Israelites of that day. Modern Egyptology supplies us with
a clue; it tells us that Egyptian high priests in every
town, who were also its magistrates, wore round their necks
a jeweled gem bearing on one side the image of Truth, and
on the other sometimes that of Justice, sometimes that of
Light. When the accused was acquitted, the judge held out
the image of him to kiss. In the final judgment Osiris
wears around his neck the jeweled Justice and Truth. The
Septuagint translates Urim and Thummim by "Light and
Truth." Some scholars suppose that they were the twelve
stones of the breastplate; others that they were two
additional stones concealed in its fold. Josephus adds to
these the two sardonyx buttons, worn on the shoulders,
which he says emitted luminous rays when the response was
favorable; but the precise mode in which the oracles were
given is lost in obscurity.--Bible Glossary of Antiquities.
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4. The law as given by Moses is for the guidance of man in
the evolution of his faculties. The figures, personalities,
and symbols represent potentialities developed and
undeveloped on various planes of consciousness. The high
priest stands for spiritual man, officiating between God
and sense man. The breastplate in an armor protects the
most vital part, the heart. The heart is love, the
affectional consciousness in man; it may be subject to the
force of weak sympathy, unless balanced by another power in
which is discrimination, or judgment.
5. The breastplate had on it twelve precious stones,
representing the twelve tribes of Israel. This clearly
means that the twelve faculties of the mind must be massed
at the great brain center called the solar plexus. It means
that all the intelligence of man's faculties must be
brought into play in the final judgments of the mind. The
Urim and Thummim (Lights and Perfections; under the
Egyptian symbology, "Truth and Justice") are the oracular
edicts of Divine Mind that are intuitively expressed as a
logical sequence of the divine principles, truth and
justice.
6. A modern metaphysician would interpret all this as
signifying the omnipresence of Divine Mind in its perfect
idea, Christ. Truth is ready at all times to give judgment
and justice. As God is love, so God is justice. These
qualities are in Divine Mind in unity, but are made
manifest in man's consciousness too often in diversity. It
is through the Christ Mind in
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the heart that they are unified. When justice and love meet
at the heart center, there are balance, poise, and
righteousness. When judgment is divorced from love, and
works from the head alone, there goes forth the human cry
for justice. In his mere human judgment, man is hard and
heartless; he deals out punishment without consideration of
motive or cause, and justice goes awry.
7. Good judgment, like all other faculties of the mind, is
developed from Principle. In its perfection it is expressed
through man's mind, with all its absolute relations
uncurtailed. Man has the right concept of judgment, and
ideally the judges of our courts have that unbiased and
unprejudiced discrimination which ever exists in the
Absolute. A prejudiced judge is abhorred, and a judge who
allows himself to be moved by his sympathies is not
considered safe.
8. The metaphysician finds it necessary to place his
judgment in the Absolute in order to demonstrate its
supreme power. This is accomplished by one's first
declaring that one's judgment is spiritual and not
material; that its origin is in God; that all its
conclusions are based on Truth and that they are absolutely
free from prejudice, false sympathy, or personal ignorance.
This gives a working center from which the ego, or I AM,
begins to set in order its own thought world. The habit of
judging others, even in the most insignificant matters of
daily life, must be discontinued. "Judge not, that ye be
not judged," said Jesus. The law of judgment works out
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in a multitude of directions, and if we do not observe it
in small things, we shall find ourselves failing in large.
9. Judging from the plane of the personal leads into
condemnation, and condemnation is always followed by the
fixing of a penalty. We see faults in others, and pass
judgment upon them without considering motives or
circumstances. Our judgment is often biased and prejudiced;
yet we do not hesitate to think of some form of punishment
to be meted out to the guilty one. He may be guilty or not
guilty; decision as to his guilt or innocence rests in the
divine law, and we have no right to pass judgment. In our
ignorance we are creating thought forces that will react
upon us. "With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged."
"With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you."
Whatever thought you send out will come back to you. This
is an unchangeable law of thought action. A man may be just
in all his dealings, yet if he condemns others for their
injustice, that thought action will bring him into unjust
conditions; so it is not safe to judge except in the
Absolute. Jesus said that He judged no man on His own
account, but in the Father; that is, He judged in the
Principle. This is the stand which everyone must
take--resting judgment of others in the Absolute. When this
is done the tendency to condemn will grow less and less,
until man, seeing his fellow man as God sees him, will
leave him to the Absolute in all cases where he seems
unjust.
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10. The great judgment day of Scripture indicates a time of
separation between the true and the false. There is no
warrant for the belief that God sends man to everlasting
punishment. Modern interpreters of the Scripture say that
the "hell of fire" referred to by Jesus means simply a
state in which purification is taking place.
11. The word hell is not translated with clearness
sufficient to represent the various meanings of the word in
the original language. There are three words from which
"hell" is derived: Sheol, "the unseen state"; Hades, "the
unseen world"; and Gehenna, "Valley of Hinnom." These are
used in various relations, nearly all of them allegorical.
In a sermon Archdeacon Farrar said: "There would be the
proper teaching about hell if we calmly and deliberately
erased from our English Bibles the three words,
'damnation,' 'hell,' and 'everlasting.' I
say--unhesitatingly I say, claiming the fullest right to
speak with the authority of knowledge--that not one of
those words ought to stand any longer in our English Bible,
for, in our present acceptation of them, they are simply
mistranslations." This corroborates the metaphysical
interpretation of Scripture, and sustains the truth that
hell is a figure of speech that represents a corrective
state of mind. When error has reached its limit, the
retroactive law asserts itself, and judgment, being part of
that law, brings the penalty upon the transgressor. This
penalty is not punishment, but discipline, and if the
transgressor
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is truly repentant and obedient, he is forgiven in Truth.
12. Under our civil law, criminals are confined in
penitentiaries where it is intended that order, regular
habits, and industry be inculcated, and that what seems
punishment may prove to be educational. Men are everywhere
calling for broader educational methods in our prisons, and
this demand is an acknowledgment of the necessity of
purification through discipline and training in morals.
This purifying process is the penalty taught by Jesus--the
judgment passed on sinners--the "hell of fire." When it is
received in the right spirit, this fire burns up the dross
in character and purifies mind and body.
13. Metaphysicians have discovered that there is a certain
relation between the functions and organs of the body and
the ideas in the mind. The liver seems to be connected with
mental discrimination, and whenever man gets very active
along the line of judgment, especially where condemnation
enters in, there is disturbance of some kind in that part
of the organism. A habit of judging others with severity
and fixing in one's mind what the punishment should be
causes the liver to become torpid and to cease its natural
action; the complexion becomes muddy as a result. "There is
therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ
Jesus . . . who walk not after the flesh, but after the
Spirit." This statement held in mind, and carried out in
thought and act, will heal liver complaint of that kind.
Another form
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of thought related to judgment is the vacillating of the
mind that never seems to know definitely what is the proper
thing to do: "A double-minded man, unstable in all his
ways." There must be singleness of mind and loyalty to true
ideas. Everyone should have definite ideas of what is just
and right, and stand by them. This stimulates the action of
the liver, and often gives so-called bad people good
health, because they are not under self-condemnation.
Condemnation in any of its forms retards freedom of action
in the discriminative faculty. When we hold ourselves in
guilt and condemnation, the natural energies of the mind
are weakened and the whole body becomes inert.
14. The remedy for all that appears unjust is denial of
condemnation of others, or of self, and affirmation of the
great universal Spirit of justice, through which all
unequal and unrighteous conditions are finally adjusted.
15. Observing the conditions that exist in the world, the
just man would have them righted according to what he
perceives to be the equitable law. Unless such a one has
spiritual understanding, he is very likely to bring upon
himself physical disabilities in his efforts to reform men.
If his feelings come to a point of "righteous indignation,"
and he "boils" with anger over the evils of the world, he
will cook the corpuscles of his blood. Jesus gave this
treatment for such a mental condition: "For neither doth
the Father judge any man, but he hath given
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all judgment unto the Son." This Son is the Christ, the
Universal cosmos; to its equity, man should commit the
justice that he wishes to see brought into human affairs.
Put all the burdens of the world upon the one supreme Judge
and hold every man, and all the conditions in which men are
involved, amenable to the law of God. By so doing, you will
set into action mind forces powerful and far-reaching.
16. If you think that you are unjustly treated by your
friends, your employers, your government, or those with
whom you do business, simply declare the activity of the
almighty Mind, and you will set into action mental forces
that will find expression in the executors of the law. This
is the most lasting reform to which man can apply himself.
It is much more effective than legislation or any attempt
to control unjust men by human ways.
17. Jealousy is a form of mental bias that blinds the
judgment and causes one to act without weighing the
consequences. This state of mind causes the liver to act
violently one day and to be torpid the next, finally
resulting in a "jaundiced eye" and yellow skin. We speak of
one "blinded by jealousy," or "blinded by prejudice." We do
not mean by this that the physical eyes have been put out,
but that the understanding has been darkened. Whatever
darkens the understanding interferes in some way with the
purifying processes of the organism, and the fluids and
pigments are congested and the skin becomes darkened in
consequence.
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18. The remedy for all this is a dismissal of that poor
judgment which causes one to be jealous, and a fuller trust
in the great all-adjusting justice of God. In this there
should be active trust, which is a form of prayer. The
disturbing elements that come into life should be
definitely placed in the hands of God. This is much more
than mere doubtful trust, or negative expectancy that
things will be made right. The Spirit of justice should be
appealed to and prayed to with the persistency of an
Elijah, or of the Gentile woman whose importunity was
rewarded. When the metaphysician sits by his patient with
closed eyes he is not asleep, but very much awake to the
reality and mental visibility of forces that enter into and
make the conditions of the body. This spiritual activity is
necessary to the demonstration of the law.
19. Success in the world is largely dependent on good
judgment. A prominent businessman was once asked what he
considered the most valuable trait of mind in an employee,
and he replied: "Good judgment." Everywhere businessmen are
looking for people who have judgment equal to the making of
quick decisions, on the spur of the moment. Years ago a
passenger train was wrecked near a little town in Texas.
The station agent in the little town showed his good
judgment by settling, right on the spot, with the injured.
He did this without authority from headquarters, but he
showed such excellent judgment that his ability was
recognized and he was
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rapidly advanced until he became president of one of the
largest railroad systems in the United States.
20. By clearing your understanding and acknowledging the
one supreme Mind in which is all discrimination, you can
cultivate the ability of your mind to arrive quickly at
right conclusions. Take the stand that it is your
inheritance from God to judge wisely and quickly, and do
not depart therefrom by statements of inefficiency in
matters of judgment. When you are in doubt as to the right
thing to do in attaining justice in worldly affairs, ask
that the eternal Spirit of justice shall go forth in your
behalf and bring about and restore to you that which is
your very own. Do not ask for anything but your very own
under the righteous law. Some people unconsciously
overreach in their desire for possessions. When they put
the matter into the care of Spirit, and things do not turn
out just as they had expected in their self-seeking way,
they are disappointed and rebellious. This will not do
under the spiritual law, which requires that man shall be
satisfied with justice and accept the results, whatever
they may be. "There is a divinity that shapes our ends"; it
can be co-operated with by one who believes in things
spiritual, and he will thereby be made prosperous and happy.
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Judgment And Justice Statements
(To be used in connection with Lesson Eleven)
1. "Teach me thy way, O Jehovah; and lead me in a plain
path."
2. The righteousness of the divine law is active in all my
affairs, and I am protected.
3. "Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth,
and having put on the breastplate of righteousness."
4. "The meek will he guide in justice."
5. "I will sing of loving kindness and justice."
6. My judgment is just, because I seek not my own will, but
the will of the Father.
7. "Judge not, that ye be not judged."
8. "Behold now, I have set my cause in order; I know that I
am righeous."
9. I believe in the divine law of justice, and I trust it
to set right every transaction in my life.
10. "There is . . . now no condemnation to them that are in
Christ Jesus."
11. I no longer condemn, criticize, censure, or find fault
with my associates; neither do I belittle or condemn myself.
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