Hi Friends -
Here is Spiritual Gifts, a chapter in Emilie Cady’s Lessons in Truth, as which was first published in 1895. What is new is that embedded within the text is audio commentary by Vera Dawson Tait, who is generally regarded as the best scholar/student of Lessons in Truth ever produced by Unity. These two resources—the original text and expert commentary—form what I call the Lessons in Truth “Study Edition.”
You can download and read a PDF of the text from two sources: the text as it appeared in the July 1895 issue of Unity Magazine and as it appeared in the subsequent book form and reprinted in Unity’s "facsimile edition." You can read and listen to Vera Dawson Tait’s commentary in "Vera Dawson Tait Teaches Lessons in Truth—Spiritual Gifts" and you can read and listen to all of this in the "Lessons in Truth Study Edition—Spiritual Gifts.” I know that’s a lot of links. The last one is the one to follow if you wish to dive deeper into Emilie Cady’s Spiritual Gifts.
Emilie Cady’s essay on spiritual gifts is important because she describes spiritual gifts much differently than we typically view them. If we look up the word “gift” in an English dictionary, we will see two definitions. A gift may be a “talent” or it may be a “present.” The point is that most people see spiritual gifts as a talent, whereas Emilie Cady and Charles Fillmore see spiritual gifts as a free gift from God.
Many of us are familiar with the well known passage in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, where he speaks about the gifts of wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, etc. These are commonly perceived as talents. But even though they are freely given as a gift and they are given for the benefit of all, we have come to believe that God gives talents to some and not to others.
If God gives spiritual gifts to some and not to others, then God is playing favorites. We are back to the notion that some people are favored and others are not, that some people are of the elect and others are of the depraved.
But Charles Fillmore and Emilie Cady put it differently. They say that all of us have been given the same spiritual gifts and that the differences in talent is a result of differences in expression, not due to God giving gifts to some and not to others. Here is the commentary from the Fillmore Study Bible for I Corinthians 12:
Those whose “gifts” or inherent talents are diverse and show the same Spirit. All may have the same Spirit, the desire to know the truth and to live accordingly, irrespective of differences in inherent talents or traits. Truth belongs everywhere, and no legitimate activity or bent can be outside its field... there are diversities of workings, but the same God, who worketh all things in all. God has given all His attributes to man; it rests with each individual whether he expresses them or not. God is no respecter of persons.
That idea, that we have all been given the same gifts but express them differently, is helpful and egalitarian, but it can be troublesome for those of us who don’t seem to have a particular gift, such as the gift of healing. Here is how Emilie Cady put it:
The power to heal the body has heretofore been, as I have already said, set up as a test of one’s spiritual understanding. It has been held up before students of truth as the object to seek; and everywhere superficial minds are criticizing those who fail to heal... This has brought great disappointment not unmixed with considerable humiliation. But, my dear friends, do not let such an experience discourage you... Healing is truly a branch of the Vine but it is not the only branch. There are many branches, all of which are necessary to the Perfect Vine which is seeking through you and me to bear much fruit. What God wants is that we shall grow into such conscious oneness with Himself, such realization that He who is the Substance of All good really abides in us; that “ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you.”
These words were removed by Unity in later editions and then restored in the last edition. I suspect that they were removed because “gifts of the spirit”, such as the ability to heal, had come to be understood as God-given talents, not as expressions of God-given gifts.
God does not give us talents. God gives us spiritual gifts; and God gives the same spiritual gifts to all, without favoritism. Charles Fillmore and Emilie Cady have “democratized” Christian teaching on the spiritual gifts.
But they have also provided a way to understand how it is that we have differences in talents, without experiencing disappointment or humiliation. That we have differences in expression is a sign of the “Perfect Vine” always “seeking that we shall grow into such a conscious oneness with Himself ... that we shall ask what we will and it shall be done unto us.” If we are not able to heal, it is not because God hasn't given us the talent, but that we have not fully received God’s gift.
Sunday, June 2, 2019
