George Channing, C.S.B., of San Francisco, California
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The
Mother Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
George Channing, C.S.B., of San Francisco, California, member of the Board of Lectureship of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, spoke Monday on "Christian Science: The Demand of The Times," at Cadle Tabernacle, under auspices of Second Church of Christ, Scientist, Indianapolis. Mrs. Elizabeth Anding introduced Mr. Channing whose lecture follows substantially as it was given:
You and I, who have come upon this present period of the world's history as participants in its unfoldment, are, or should be, little surprised that a great New England woman, whose spiritual status enabled her to be God's messenger to this age, has reminded humanity clearly and definitely that "the time for thinkers has come" (Science and Health, vii:13). In the world of our time, the demand, or insistent desire, of men is for these three things: namely, security, health, and love, and for the intelligence which supplies this demand. The human mind, so-called, is baffled. Its reputed intelligence promises so much but yields so little that seems reliable, satisfactory, and permanent. That is why thinkers are needed, and the time is ripe for their coming. For none would deny that true intelligence, perfect and incapable of error, can solve any problem, can unfold the health, security, and love which our times are demanding. Manifestly, then, the need of humanity is for increasing capacity to discern, outside the limitations of human thought, the presence here and now of true and perfect intelligence and to understand the availability of such intelligence to meet the demand of the times.
In such understanding, consciously and unconsciously pursued, is the sum and substance of humanity's long-time search for God — a search which Christian Science has crowned with success through revealing that true intelligence, the perfect, divine Mind, is Deity itself, expressed in that intelligence which is the primal and eternal quality of God. This achievement places the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, the humble, God-loving, undaunted Mrs. Eddy at the head of the march in this age of true thinkers whose time, she made plain, is here.
The way of true thinking is the way of right desire. It ultimates in the revelation to human consciousness of divine intelligence, or God, and the manifestation of the effects of God, which include love, health, and security. If, therefore, humanity is today being compelled to examine its desires, to submit its affections to be molded by wisdom, humanity is on the high road to true attainment.
"Desire," says Mrs. Eddy, "is prayer" (Science and Health, 1:11), and she says it out of the fullness of her understanding that prayer is answered. She knew that in a very profound sense our experience is determined by what we love — determined, if we love God, in terms of harmony or of complete dominion over all inharmony that may seem to appear to us. Remember the French proverb which, catching a glimpse of this fact, warns and at the same time promises: "Be careful what you set your heart upon, for you will surely get it." Remember, more importantly, the Scriptural admonition: "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life" (Proverbs 4:23), and also the Master Christian's coordination of experience with affection when he said, ". . . where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Matthew 6:21). Remember, too, the remarkable summing up of this truth by Mary Baker Eddy, already referred to here, whose textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," admonishes: "Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionately to their occupancy of your thoughts" (p. 261:4-7).
When Christian Science presents God as the one intelligence and focuses attention on man as the reflection of God, and the good that becomes manifest therefrom, it presents no archaic notion of religion, no false piety, no technical theology. It presents the living, vital truth which is justified by its effects in terms of unfailing good. It presents a full view of God and His man, including the universe, a view which is remarkably new only because it is remarkably complete.
Intelligence as has already been said here is divine. Nothing short of perfect intelligence can make a universe or hold it together. And nothing short of divinity can be perfect. The perfection of divinity is its completeness; and completeness means infinitude. Could intelligence be reliable which asserts its ability to be honest but not to be just, to be merciful but not to be wise? Could intelligence be able to save from sin and at the same time stand helpless before the ravages of disease? Could it make men shrewd and smart and cunning to the point of developing refined means for exterminating their fellowmen and themselves under the contradictory justification that intelligence demands it? The answer to these questions is obviously "No." It is a false sense of intelligence that answers otherwise — a mortal mirage supported by the illusive physical senses whereby the human mind is deluded into the notion that life flowers only to decay, that life must develop from nothing to greatness, only to decline from greatness to nothing and the grave.
What a mirage is the greatness thus developed! Fattened for the slaughter, so to speak! Built up in stature to became a larger morsel for that which devours! No wonder the human mind is fleeing the wrath of its own nature, seeking firmer foundations outside itself. Limited by its own educational systems, devoted to the proud human intellect whose refinements acknowledge and insist upon the assumption of destruction, human thought is nevertheless emerging today to a greater hope of salvation than it can ever give itself. I am not here condemning educational systems. Educational systems have a function to serve. "Academics of the right sort are requisite" (Science and Health, p. 195:19), says Mrs. Eddy. The truth is that in so far as educational systems assert and accept the reality of human sense, they are contributing to the refinement of human sense to the point where its nothingness is exposed. And at that point it is replaced by divine intelligence — perfect and infinite Mind — to which heaven itself appears.
This infinite Mind is God. Because it is infinite, it is perfect. It is synonymous with Love that is infinite and perfect; with Principle that is infinite and perfect; with Life, Spirit, Soul, Truth, in its infinite and perfect nature. For each of these terms, all of them used in the Christian Science textbook as synonyms for God, describes and includes the characteristics of the others. Mind, let us remember, is complete. Its completeness identifies it with Love, for that which is less than Love is self-destructive, while God, Mind, is self-sustained. Its completeness identifies it with Principle, for that which is less than Principle is inadequate to be the source of all. Its completeness identifies it with Life, for that which is less than Life is not living; with Spirit, for less than Spirit is matter, subject to decay; with Soul, for less than Soul is a limited sense; with Truth, for less than Truth is false.
This divine Mind which sees, conceives, and understands in terms of completeness is aware only of the universe :of its own creating. Imperfect, it could not exist itself; and existing, it conceives — that is, creates, in the nature, image, or idea, of perfection. Is there any evidence of this creation? Yes, in the fact that the universe survives. In the fact that Life is, and the universe, including man, is its expression. If the so-called mortal mind, which claims to see, conceive, and know in terms of incompleteness and self-contradiction, had ever projected a universe, the inherently suicidal, self-destructive nature of that so-called mind would have destroyed that universe in the making. Is there no significance in the appearance that the material universe includes the element of destruction? Can consciousness be aware of existence and also of non-existence? Can it know its own death if the very ability to know, to understand, is a faculty of Life, not death? Indeed, can there be any consciousness of unconsciousness? Can there be any reality in that which is impossible?
If existence must be perfect in order to be (and perfect existence entertains no contradictions of itself — no sense of non-existence), then perfect existence is real, and the Mind which conceives it is eternal. And this Mind is the infinite, divine intelligence which is reflected by man. It has no kinship with mortality, nor with conceptions of conclusions based on mortal premises. It is the center and circumference of being, which expresses its own untarnished nature in the universe it creates. It gives forth its own manifestation in terms of holy, indestructible qualities which constitute the eternal man. It blots out by its presence all illusion of imperfection, for, being infinite, it leaves no room for aught that is not included in its perfect presence.
From the divine, perfect Mind, the foundation of all, proceed true spiritual ideas. If these ideas were abstract, unavailable to humanity, and without practical effect, it would be useless to devote ourselves to considering the nature of the truths of Christian Science. But experience has proved them to have holy power. Utilization of them, in the degree that they are understood and truly accepted, has borne unfailing fruit in terms of the redemption of mortals from the destructive tyranny of the mind of mortals. And the present proof of their own power, in the experience of hosts of men and women, confirms the Biblical assurance of complete salvation from sin, sickness, and death. Nor would that compassionate, unselfish, deeply spiritual woman, who discovered Christian Science, ever have been able to check the ignorant march of mankind toward the unhappy goals of human thought — ever have been able to found, or have desired to found, The Church of Christ, Scientist, comprised in The Mother Church in Boston and its branches throughout the civilized world, if these spiritual ideas, divinely revealed to her, had not proved their efficacy in terms of spiritually intelligent living.
Therefore, I invite our attention here on this occasion to divinely spiritual ideas. For, the effect of these ideas, entertained in thought as real and true, is the fulfillment of our fondest hopes for victory over evil, for deliverance from the mercilessness of mortal illusions. In other words, I invite our attention to the Christ, for the spiritual idea of God, operating in the human consciousness to displace and destroy the errors of mortal sense, is the Christ. It is the Christ because it heals and saves, making "wise unto salvation" (II Timothy 3:15), to use the Apostles' phrase. It is the activity of the divine Mind with which Christ Jesus was endowed — Jesus, our great example, who knew God as his father, and saw and perceived as real only the universe which God, divine Mind, conceives, and who lived and had his being consciously in that universe. Because Mind sees and is aware of its own manifestations exclusively, Christ Jesus, whose Mind was God, so acknowledged and utilized by him, did not see as real the universe which is the seeming manifestation of so-called mortal mind.
Jesus saw the eternal spiritual facts. They were indigenous to his nature, and he so recognized them. This made him wise. It identified his thought wholly and exclusively with Truth and thus marked him as the most intelligent man who ever trod this globe. All his thought or consciousness proceeded from the divine and perfect Mind. The result of this intelligence was that reality was ever before his gaze and unreality never had a chance to be supposed by him to be true. Wars and rumors of wars, sin, sickness, and death, hatred, malice, and sorrow were unable to limit or disturb his awareness of the perfect qualities of the divine Mind he reflected, nor to interfere with his demonstration of the presence of the consciousness of harmony. Unable to impress him, the illusions of evil were simply, to his consciousness, false; and his understanding of their falsity, through his beholding of divine reality, wiped out the appearance of their existence for those who sought his help. Is not this the intelligence for which humanity is pleading, which you and I are needing, and which, in a word, is the demand of the times? Is it not the infinite, divine intelligence which is Love, reflected in that love, which is the most needed and yearned for thing in the world — love that is so true that it erases the unloved qualities of so called mortal man and recognizes and exalts the true man as both lovable and loving? Consider the Mind which was reflected by Jesus, unfolding its ineffable love for his human disciples; and, in his contacts with his disciples, exemplifying the effectiveness of divine Love's activity, healing and saving mankind. Consider the case of Thomas, that doubting disciple. Here was one of the twelve, who, like the others, had enjoyed the friendship of Jesus, had listened to his incontrovertible explanations of the indestructibility of divine Life which Jesus embodied, and which is expressed by every individual aware of his own spiritual status. Here was one who had not only heard these explanations but had seen them practically applied by Jesus in the restoration of the sense of life to individuals, who, mortal sense had said, were dead, and in the erasure from the thought of the onlookers of their acceptance of the notion that that particular individual had died. Yet, Thomas when he, shortly after the murderous assault upon Jesus, known as the crucifixion, saw Jesus walking and heard him talking, failed to discern the glorious fact that Life, the divine Life which Jesus was conscious of expressing, had not been destroyed. In this failure he refused acknowledgment of the one fact which made his Master's mission a success. Yet, Jesus loved him even at that moment. He loved him so much, indeed, that he permitted him to see the risen Lord — permitted him to see in the way his dull senses could at that moment comprehend — permitted him to identify what Thomas' clouded human sense saw only as a fleshly Jesus through the wounds in the hands where the nails had pierced and the hollow in the side where the spear was thrust.
Thomas wanted to see the Christ. His desire was right. Jesus knew that. So he let Thomas see, in the way Thomas could. He let him see the Christ, or rather the evidence in the flesh that Jesus, in overcoming death, had demonstrated the Christ, the spiritual idea of divine, indestructible Life, or Mind. And Thomas saw it in the degree that the thought of Thomas was aware of desiring the Christ, even though that desire seemed woefully small. It was nevertheless there, just as it is here in your thought and mine. We, too, are permitted to see the Christ, the consciousness of sonship to God, which enables us to inherit the divine Father's bounty in terms of ever-present awareness of good, in the degree that the desire to see the Christ in us, or, in other words, to be Christlike, is genuinely our desire. The faithful Mary, treading her daybreak path to the tomb where Jesus was laid, yearning to see the Christ, with which, she knew, the mentality of Jesus was exclusively endowed, saw him in glorious amazement and appreciation at the point where human sense yields to spiritual Truth and the infinite evidence it supplies. She had her reward in the exaltation of her own life to the realization that her immediate need was consciously met. Thomas, with less spiritual desire and therefore less spiritual discernment, but nevertheless with some spiritual desire, also had his reward in the improvement of his sense of life to the realization that his immediate need was met. It is important to note that the experience of the faithful Mary and of doubting Thomas left neither where it found them. Each progressed in spiritual discernment, true intelligence, from his present standpoint of thought; Mary crying out in the immediacy of spiritual recognition: "'Rabboni'; which is to say, Master" (John 20:16); and Thomas, in penitent appreciation for the patience of his Lord, capitulating with the acknowledgment, "My Lord and my God" (John 20:28). Thomas needed to grow to the point where material sense did not seem to dominate him and thus contribute to his acceptance of the illusion that he saw the Christ materially. But the fact remains that he saw the Christ, because his honest desire found response from Love. And he doubtless learned much from the loving rebuke from the Master " . . . because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed" (John 20:29).
In the light of this narrative let no one despair whose heart is sincere, even though the light seems slow in coming. You and I, like Thomas, see and feel the love of God for us, the love of the divine Father for his spiritual child; and you and I, perhaps like Thomas, need to grow to the point where material sense does not deceive us into accepting the illusion that health and harmony come from matter. God gives us nourishment, security, health, and harmony. Oh, may our hearts be so filled with the desire to know God and to express our spiritual at-one-ment with Him that we never lose the sense of nourishment, security, health, and harmony, but only the illusion that these are material. For the sincere desire for the spiritual Truth is rewarded in whatever way our honest desire can appreciate the spiritual consciousness of good. May we always use the spiritual understanding which recognizes it as the consciousness of good, spiritually and eternally indestructible. May we come out from among material sense and be separate from the fear that good is physical, and therefore limited and subject to withdrawal from man. May we have the wisdom to know God, divine Mind, as the controlling influence over our thought and our lives, and the intelligence to identify ourselves with His qualities, thus improving human experience until it is educated out of itself, swallowed up, or displaced, by the uninterrupted spiritual sense of God’s eternal good. May we, even when sense says we doubt, like Thomas — may we at least desire the Christ with the honesty of Thomas and thus, through Christ's loving response, progress to the alertness of Mary, to the conscious identification of ourselves with all that expresses the infinite Mind that is also Truth and Love.
Perhaps, at this point, someone will still feel prompted to say: "This is a beautiful statement, but how can it be used? What practical approach to using it can I make in the clashes, disappointments, and limitations that accompany the daily grind of my life? I know that love is a demand of the times. I do not need to be persuaded to love, but I do need light on how to love." My friends, you are not alone in your query. We all need light on how to love, and Christian Science gives that light, explaining in its textbook, already mentioned in this lecture, the steps that show us victorious. First, and immediately effective, is the desire to love. We must purify our desire and make it unselfish and spiritual. Keeping the desire active in thought improves the desire and brings it to fulfillment. Next, and overwhelmingly important, is the model before our thought, for all of us, consciously or unconsciously, work toward thought models and we bring out in ourselves the nature of the model. Therefore, my friend, let our model be perfect. Keep God before the thought, and the conscious activity which expresses God's presence. Know the nature of God as infinite Love. The Christian Science textbook helps us to the true conception, and our reason, intuition, and experience confirm its truth. Look at our model continually. See divine Love in its impartial, intelligent, generous, unselfish, tender, compassionate, purifying aspect. Rejoice in our improving ability to see our model more plainly and we shall presently be rejoicing in the evidences of love in ourselves, and the effects of Love, such as security and health in our experience. The activity of divine Love in us is, let me say it again, the manifestation of the Christ. It reveals our sonship to God. It dispels in our thought the illusion of its absence, until we are conscious of its occupancy of the whole of our mentality.
The Mind which Jesus manifested was God, and that manifestation of God, healing, saving, banishing the notion that there is any other mind, is, as we have said, the Christ. This Christ is the true model of man, expressing the presence of God. Let it be your model, my friend, for it is natural to you. It will bring out your individuality — what it is in you that makes you, you. It will lead to self-discovery — your individual status as the child of God — and will reveal to you your talent for expressing true being, thus making manifest in daily experience your resourcefulness, wisdom, security, health, and love — in a word, your job.
In view of what has been said here, identifying spiritual love as the demand of the times, something should be said also about the health of mankind. For, just as surely as Christian Science teaches and demonstrates that true intelligence is divine Love (from which the expression of spiritual love proceeds), it proves that true intelligence is the antidote for disease. God, divine Mind, is true intelligence. He neither knows nor permits disease, nor is He deceived into the notion that disease exists. Disease expresses the mortal supposition of a lack of ease, or a condition of incompleteness or lack of wholeness. That which is whole (the Anglo-Saxon tongue calls it hale) is healthy. God is whole. If He were not so, He would not be God. If He were impaired, deficient, or, in a word, diseased, neither He nor the universe would exist. For, the universe is, as is taught and revealed in Christian Science, as is being explained in this lecture, as has been and is being demonstrated by a host of men and women, and is open to demonstration at all times by you and me — the universe is the manifestation, or idea, of perfect, infinite Mind. Hence the non-existence of matter, for matter is the illusory universe conceived by imperfect, mortal so-called mind, which cannot and does not exist in spiritual reality, since perfect, divine Mind is all. Perfect Mind is whole. It knows its own wholeness. If perfect Mind is recognized and utilized as the Mind of man, man knows his own wholeness. And this truth heals disease. The healing of disease is the healing of thought. It is accomplished through the displacement of whatever appears to be imperfect, mortal, or death-full, mind governing human consciousness by the immortal (with-no-death-in-it) Mind.
In the healing of disease, as in all other respects, Christ Jesus has set the example. He knew that the intelligence which knows all reality knows that reality is harmonious, holy, and diseaseless. Consequently, he applied this intelligence to expose disease as an illusion. By this means, the most effective means of healing the world has ever known, and, in fact, the only truly successful method, he healed a man sick of the palsy so that the man not only rose unaided from his couch but walked away, carrying his couch as he walked. He healed lepers who asked his assistance, and sent them back presumably to useful lives. In the presence of Truth, error cannot exist. Accordingly, he healed a woman whose imploring thought reached his pure consciousness of God's reality, when she touched the hem of his garment. He opened a blind man's eyes. And, in the words of Scripture, he went about healing all manner of disease among the people. He knew that the demand of his times, just as it is the demand of our times, was for the effects of God, divine Mind, or intelligence; but he also knew that mankind did not recognize God as the cause of these effects. He deplored this condition, but he loved humanity. Accordingly, out of his great love, he helped those hearts that desired the Christ, even though the desire was ever so little, to feel the power of God in their lives. By his marvelous healing of myriad inharmonies of mortal thought, he sought to turn men's affections and allegiance to the cause of those healings — to God, whose presence, reflected by man, reveals heaven here and now. He is succeeding. The message of his mighty works is thundering down the ages. It has thundered in human consciousness to the arrival of that historic spiritual unfoldment — the bringing to earth of Christian Science, the divine Comforter, promised by Jesus as coming to lead into all truth, and revealed to this age by God's own messenger, the God-ordained, spiritually minded, compassionate Mrs. Eddy. Through the necessities of our day, men are desiring, with increasing intensity, the effects of God — expressed as love, health, security. And through the ministry of Christian Science men are coming, at least in some degree, to understand God as the cause of these effects and therefore to desire Him, to love and obey and give the heart's fidelity to the infinite Source of all good, the Giver of every good and perfect gift, the divine Father, who makes and keeps His children secure.
Having considered the nature of love and health, let us now consider security, the third aspect of the effects of God, which constitute the demand of the times. What is the human demand for security except a reaching out for what can be found only in the degree that God is found? Is there anything secure but God? What is it that outlasts all false opinions of man? What is it that remains when human sense has fled? Man's security is in God, the divine intelligence he expresses. He is anchored in spiritual wisdom which, untouched by human will, reveals his daily footsteps. There is a woman of my acquaintance, who, bereft of husband and seemingly of support, looked into her own consciousness of God's presence for the wisdom that was to be her security. She recognized her individual talent for expressing usefulness, helpfulness, service, and other spiritual qualities that attest the immediacy of divine Mind. Then the mode of what was to be her daily activity took form in her thought. It led her to establish a business which keeps on growing and also keeps her alert to improve her perception of her true selfhood which reflects God, and is loved of God. Today she is demonstrating her security, and also her health, through utilizing the wisdom which God supplies.
Is there anything to prevent the spiritual demand of our times from finding its fulfillment? Can you and I desire and seek after divine intelligence, whose effects are love, health, and security, and be thwarted by some influence able to interfere? My friend, God is the only power; and God is the Mind of man, to be acknowledged and demonstrated. Man is never at the mercy of anything outside himself. It is your privilege and mine to think our own thoughts, to be at one with the Mind that is perfect. We do not need to accept notions, conclusions, assumptions which deny the reality of spiritual ideas which come from God. We can always and under all circumstances assert the reality and dominion of our divinely derived intelligence. If notions of mortality, limitation, unspirituality seem to knock at the gate of our consciousness, that is malpractice, whether seeming to proceed from ignorance alone or from malicious intention to harm. And the handling of malpractice is always the same — the recognition and utilization of immortal Mind as the only Mind of man, thus excluding the suggestions of evil. The suggestions of evil may seem to come often. They do no harm, but rather strengthen us in Truth, if unbelieved and completely rejected. They came even to the pure consciousness of Christ Jesus but he handled them with definiteness and finality, supplying us, as always, the perfect example. He knew that the handling of evil consists in the rejection of evil, and, accordingly, he declared " . . . the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me" (John 14:30) — nothing in his mentality which is akin to evil and therefore able to believe in evil. It is only the consciousness of limitation that can experience limitation, the consciousness of heartbreak and loneliness that can experience heartbreak and loneliness, the consciousness of disease or death that can experience disease or death. But the only Mind is the Mind which is God. In the degree that you demonstrate that fact, you will find no consciousness of evil in you, and therefore no evil affecting your life. And conversely, you will find all good appearing. The Discoverer of Christian Science has made it plain, that "the mind of the individual only can produce a result upon his body" (Christian Healing, 6:21-22). Let us persistently acknowledge the only Mind to be divine, producing by its law, the results of beauty and holiness.
But how about the case where mortal mind seems to succeed in being believed, and the results of evil seem to appear? Evil is always false, and therefore nothing, and the proof of that fact can be unfailingly made. Christ Jesus has already supplied the example. He permitted the crucifixion, which he might have avoided, only to show mortals the way to conquer the seeming presence of evil. He proved its powerlessness. By persistent recognition of his spiritual being he kept his sense of selfhood beyond the range of mortal hatred to harm. Evil could not impress his consciousness and therefore was robbed of its illusion of existing. This is the way of victory. It is not the way of the escapist, if by that term is meant the coward who runs, and leaves the sense of evil appearing to be something, to be real and capable of power. Christian Scientists are not escapists. They overcome. They face the illusions of material sense with the spiritual sense which erases the illusions. If they walk through the valley of the shadow of death, they, like the Psalmist, fear no evil, for they know that evil is unreal to God and must be so to man. They "fight the good fight" (Miscellaneous Writings, 278:6-7) by utilizing the activity of spiritual truth to blot out the material falsehood which seems to hammer for admission to thought. They do not release themselves from their so-called problems — run away from the field of battle. They set out with the courage of the Christ and the enduring weapons of divine warfare to prove their problems to be sense illusions; and God, in the immediacy of His own divine will, releases them from their problems. Through such warfare they grow in stature as the children of God — each in "his own niche in time and eternity" (Retrospection and Introspection, 70:18-19). They bring out in themselves the qualities which are identified with true character — the character of the Christ. They hold their ranks open with the joyous and unselfish motive of making plain the way of salvation to all who desire dominion, by spiritual means, over the tyrannical limitations of the flesh. We are not promised happiness in material allurements; but we are promised victory by spiritual means and victory is coordinate with joy. Robert Frost, the poet, has truly said: "The best way out is always through." Christian Science agrees, and adds to the meaning of the statement by turning it upside down. "The best way through is always out."
My friend, a word about humility — that glorious quality which robs you of pride but does not rob you of power. Your ability to demonstrate the truth about God and man is God-given. Recognize this fact, and be grateful to the infinite Giver; and you have attained humility. All of our power to witness Good's immortal presence, to banish the appearance of our subjection to evil, to show forth in us the alertness, vigor, true intelligence, wisdom, which increases our spiritual stature and attracts all good — all of this power is by the grace of God. Use it with all agility and consecration, but never be tempted to say or think it is a personal possession. Increase your ability. It is your spiritual duty. Acknowledge your importance as the eternal, individual expression of divine presence. Let your illustration in you of what God does for man be the most telling, persuasive illustration you can make it, of man's infinite mental proportions under God, but always bear in thought that your achievement is illustrating the doing of God, not of man. This way lies affluence, for it is the way of humility. It is the way of divine intelligence, unfolding its effects in terms of love, health, and security, thus meeting the demand of the times. It is the way of thinkers, whose time, we have agreed, has come. It is the way of Christian Science, meeting the needs of mankind, in agreement with all that is said, and also implied, in the comforting promise of Christ Jesus, a promise which is the benediction I leave with you, radiating assurance and dispelling in its spiritual significance all doubt of our divine inheritance — all doubt of our God's unlimited goodness to the hearts that desire His love: "Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom" (Luke 12:32).
[Delivered Dec. 2, 1940, at Cadle Tabernacle in Indianapolis, Indiana, under auspices of Second Church of Christ, Scientist, Indianapolis, and published in The Marion County Mail of Indianapolis, Dec. 5, 1940.]