1865 ~ The year a new thought of God and man and the universe was born.

In 1849 Dr.Chalmers, one of the most noted divines of the Anglican Church, gave it as his opinion, based upon mathematical observation of spiritual truth in the Bible, that in the year 1865, or thereabouts, Jesus would again manifest himself to the earth in person. So careful had Dr.Chalmers been in spiritual investigations and observations, as well as mathematical calculations, that when Jesus did not appear in person in the year 1865, 1866 or 1867, he became discouraged and said on his deathbed that it was one of the  greatest disappointments of his life, because everything in the Holy Scriptures pointed to the second advent at that time.

Others prophesied the same thing, and it is very remarkable that these prophecies were made concerning the years about the time that Dr.Chalmers predicted the second coming. The second appearance of Jesus of Nazareth did not materialize, so those who have devoutly hoped for it and fervently prayed for it, from time to time, have become discouraged until, today, the second coming is rather scoffed at by some. Strange to say, there are still others who believe profoundly in its possibility.

Is  it possible that we have not understood what Jesus meant when he said he would come again? Is it possible that our eyes are holden, that we cannot see? Some one has said that the expectation of a second appearing of Jesus is like looking out upon the horizon by means of a telescope for something which is as near to us as our hands and feet.

All Divine Scientists are sure that spirituality is the only Substance; that Good is the only law; that Love is the only force; and so, when they  come together in one place, they are all of one mind on these essential, fundamental principles of Being.

The second coming has been experienced all through the centuries wherever minds and hearts and souls have been ready to receive it. It is not like a new comet--a something appearing suddenly so that millions and billions of people may see it. It can be perceived only by the awakened spiritual soul.

And a cloud received him out of their sight.” Our text is thus interpreted: “And when ye see these things”--such things as are now transpiring in Europe and America: famines, strikes, agitations, crimes and perplexities--“look up, and lift up your head; for your redemption draweth nigh,” and “the Son of man cometh in a cloud.”
These clouds are not black spots in the atmosphere; they are the various phases of mental opaqueness--spiritual density--not outside of us, but in us. It is a cloud in us which makes it difficult for us to perceive the presence of Christ, and so it is not without great and deep spiritual significance that “A cloud received him out of their sight” and “he cometh again in a cloud.” What does it mean? Christ has never been absent; it simply means that we have indeed been looking out upon the great and distant horizon with a telescope in order to locate and discover that which is within us. The greatest error of the human mind is a tendency to look out from itself for something that can be found only within itself.

“The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. You shall not say of it, Lo here or Lo there; it cometh not with observation.”

What are the signs of the times? Were ever the prophetic utterances of Jesus more significant of any time than they are of the present day? Was ever the world at large in such a state of distress and agitation: nation against nation, brother against brother, father against child? One could easily become discouraged if one could not see the end thereof. One could easily feel that it is indeed the fulfillment of the prophesy, and the second coming of Christ is nothing more than this: the end of the world.

That is another thing which men have prophesied but which has not yet come to pass, because the prophecy has been so variously and almost universally misunderstood. The end of the world has appealed to us as the rolling-up as of a scroll of this physical earth and the disappearance thereof in a mist. I do not think that Jesus was speaking in this sense at all. If one looks up the word world in the Greek lexicons he finds that it means age. Jesus was not speaking of the world quite so much from a physical point of view as he was of the age of materiality--the age of sensuality. And when he was prophesying the end of this age through the second coming of Christ; through the revelation to human consciousness of the fact that Spirit is the only Substance and that matter is an ephemeral presentation--a phenomenal result of irregular and unscientific thinking--he was prophesying the disappearance of materiality--of human consciousness; not the rolling-up of the physical earth and the disappearance thereof, but the destruction in the human mind of everything that is unlike God and, through this destruction in the human mind, the revelation of the New Kingdom--the New Heaven and the New Earth. We have looked for the destruction of this; we have expected some great cataclysm of nature to wipe it out of existence and leave us like specks in a world of etheric space.
What hides the New Heaven and the New Earth from us today? The old idea of Heaven and the old idea of earth form the curtain which now hides from our spiritual vision the presence of the Kingdom of God and the presence of the earth of God’s creation, in which there is nothing poisonous, nor impure, nor imperfect.
The second coming of Christ is the spiritual means and methods by which this curtain of materiality is rolled up and discloses to our present view the Kingdom of God which has always existed and will ever continue; which exists now in all its beauty, harmony, continuity and power.

Whatever is clouded is in us. The sooner we admit it, the sooner we realize where the cloud is, and the sooner we seek enlightenment in order that it may be dissipated, the better for us.

And now let us come to the prophecy of 1865 and see if Dr.Chalmers was so grievously mistaken. I think the only mistake the dear man made was in believing that the second coming would be personal. In 1865 human thought had  reached the place where it was ready for a new revelation of God, and whether it came through P.P.Quimby, or Mary Baker Eddy, or Warren F. Evans; or whether it was floated in on the waves of Emerson’s philosophy, it matters not. THE THING ARRIVED IN 1865. That was the year in which this new thought of God and man and the universe was born.

You mission is a marvelous one.
The second coming is taking place every day you study, every day you search the Scriptures, every day you enter into the silence and realize your unity with God.

We become consciously identified with the Source of all Power and can affirm:
“All good gravitates in my direction, for I am One with God. I love It, I work with It, I attract It. It is now working through me to will and to do of Its own good pleasure; for this is its intention, and my intention is to bring all my thoughts into harmony with it, so that whatsoever I think or do shall be done to the glory of God, the all-Good.”

Rev William John Murray

The Realm of Reality

Divine Science Publishing Assoc.

1922

Seems relevant in this current period of time.