“BUT IF YE HAD KNOWN”
“But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless.”
Mrs. Eddy’s unpublished sermon based on Matthew 12:7 quoted above harmonizes completely with Micah 6:8’s call for justice, mercy, and humility to be inseparably united in my service to God. Here are some excerpts from that sermon:
The great question determining and encompassing all fact resolves itself into this inquiry: What is God? A person or a Principle?
But if God is a person influenced by a petition or prayer and loves you more for the asking, He is not unchanging.
And this Truth, this Life, and this Love, yea, this Principle that is God must be understood to be demonstrated, brought out in our lives and, when understood, we shall know what this meaneth: “I will have mercy and not sacrifice,” and cannot know until we understand God as a Principle instead of [believing] in God as a person . . . .
Justice is the true demand of mercy and we should only help those who help themselves. Justice condemns sin while mercy points out the escape from sin, but unless justice joins hands with it, mercy is a mistake: a word without the spirit of the word, and a deed that is uncharitable. The history of religion is replete with examples proving the sad results of believing God a person and that this person pardons sin. If God pardons criminals while yet the motive and malice lie latent to reenact the crime, their blood would be upon His hands according to scripture . . . .
As we near the boundary of Science wherein Soul instead of sense furnishes the conclusions of man and the explanation of God, we shall improve our sense of sacrifice and gain the true definition, and reach exercise of mercy.
The only sacrifice we shall then retain will no longer be a demand on others, but a requirement of one’s self in obedience to the command, “Take the cross and follow me”: it will be a forgetfulness of self, and this is science. Self-abnegation is indispensable to science, and why? Because the first chord — the keynote — of Christian Science is: put being into the hands of Principle instead of person, and this Principle or God demonstrated by what is good only, and by works rather than words.