The Hon. William G. Ewing, C.S.B., of Chicago,
Illinois
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The Mother
Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
So many requests having been received by the Argus for the production of Judge W. Ewing's lecture on "Christian Science," at the City Opera House, on Sunday afternoon, that the same is herewith produced, as promised in yesterday's paper.
Judge Ewing was introduced to the large audience by Alfred R. Saxton, who said:
In the third chapter of James, we read: The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits . . . The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that work peace.
Of this Christ idea, Milton has beautifully said:
"Peaceful was the night wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began."
A more recent author has given it in these words:
In mercy and peace, in the growing good
That sweetens the world today.
In the era of freedom and brotherhood
That comes on its shining way.
In the march of Truth and her victories
With the Christ thought leading the van,
Behold 'tis in these that the Spirit sees
The signs of the Son of Man.
For ever the burden of gladness grows,
And ever the sorrow dies,
And ever the soul that is quickened knows
The secret of sweet surprise.
Christian Science brings this peace to the sick through the assurance of hope, and hope by the understanding of their God-given dominion.
With a heart overflowing with love to God and man, the discoverer and founder of Christian Science began as early as 1862 to write down and give to her friends the results of her scriptural study, and what was there revealed to her the world is fast learning, for sweet indeed upon the lips of many thousands today, is the name of Christian Science and that of its founder, the Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy. God has set His signet to this science. So numerous and remarkable have been the cases of healing in Christian Science that few persons, and none who are well informed will deny that it does heal the sick.
The purpose of these lectures is to furnish the community with a correct thought in regard to Christian Science and the life and work of its discoverer and founder.
The speaker of the hour comes eminently clothed with these facts regarding this great truth and as a member of the Board of Lectureship of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, of Boston, Mass.
It affords me very great pleasure to introduce to you, Hon. Wm. G. Ewing, C.S.B., of Chicago.
Christian Scientists do not shrink from any responsibility attaching to their Christian belief and its practice. They do not invoke your sympathy nor supplicate your charity; they court investigation and demand justice. Serene in their purpose to be right, if wrong, they would be righted; if right, the good they have belongs to humanity, and should be distributed to its own. Hence their efforts in the simplicity and sincerity of brotherly love to tell you something of the joy that has sweetened their lives and made them, as we would say, not better than you are, but better than they were, and that will make you even better than you are.
Every Christian church has been compelled to struggle for its establishment, and in the presentation of our cause we are no more combated by honest opinion than your church was, whatever its name, in its effort for recognition. Now, as then, it is prejudice that brazenly confronts every new thought of God, every concept of the infinite Father born of individual conscience and in the blazing light of the latest and best day has gladdened humanity. Prejudice is the enemy of progress; it would mock equity, degrade charity, traduce truth, dethrone right, pollute justice; it is devilish, it is predetermination, judgment without evidence, conclusion without reason, conviction without thought.
And yet, it is because we realize quite as well as you do that many of our people, and especially many of the good people of the old churches, are greatly prejudiced against what they think Christian Science to be, that I invite your attention for a brief moment tonight. In fairness to myself and in fairness to the good of the people who challenge the spiritual authority of my position, I must say that I am not surprised that you antagonize what you think Christian Science is; for if it were indeed what you think, it would not be a very desirable thing. It is my hope to lessen this condition in some degree, and to place you in the only position that an honest mind can occupy to examine profitably any question worthy of thought, viz., in the mental attitude of the honest judge, who goes upon the bench to hold with even hand the scales of justice, and allow his judgment to be formed by the truth, and by the truth alone. It is no part of my purpose to take anything from you, but to add to the good you have; I have no quarrel with your church; I simply commend the sweetness and love and song of my own, and thank God for the sweetness and love and song of yours. I believe there never has been an association of conscientious men and women for the purpose of building up God's kingdom that does not today rest as a benediction on the world. My effort is not to make you think less of your church, but to correct your thought respecting my own. I speak no word in unkindness, but all in simple trust in the integrity of your purpose and my own.
I talk tonight to men and woman who have the courage, the moral courage, the physical courage, and, what is more than either, the intellectual integrity, to take away from this meeting whatever is of value in it that meets the approval of their best judgment and ripest conscience; and the courage also to leave behind, far behind, everything that does not receive such approval.
Your thought of Christian Science is — just how you got it I do not know, and doubt very much whether you do, but still you have the thought that, in some way or other, Christian Science is antagonistic to the religion of Jesus Christ, and therefore you antagonize Christian Science. If your premise is right, if after conscientious investigation of our concept of God you reach the conclusion that Christian Science is in any degree inimical to the religion of Jesus Christ, then, in my judgment, it is not only your privilege, but your duty, to antagonize Christian Science, and never to allow your opposition to it to cease until either you cease yourself or Christian Science ceases. My reasonable demand is that you make the investigation before you make the assault. It is much easier to express an opinion after you have formed it. I remember years ago asking a juror for the purpose of testing his qualification, this question: — "Have you formed or expressed an opinion of the merits of this case?" He evidently wanted to serve, the contest between his ambition and his conscience was fierce for a moment; then, he turned to the court and said: "Well, judge, it 'pears to me I hev expressed an opinion about it, but before God I haint never formed any."
Through every chance and change, anchor your hope to the promises of the gospel of Jesus. If to do this, contention with principalities or powers must come, shrink not from the struggle. I believe and you believe also (your earnest faces make proclamation of the fact), that the religion of Jesus is of greater value to the world, is of greater value to you and to me, than everything else that has ever been or can be crowded into this universe; therefore, whatever lessens the sweetness, the love and song of that, will meet with my earnest, consistent, and persistent opposition, and, in all conscience, should meet with yours.
You have this other thought of Christian Science; that taken at its best, as you understand it, for all that its devotees claim, [it is] is but an ephemeral thing, for an ephemeral purpose; that it is something for the physical man, the man of clay, and nothing for the man fashioned in the image and likeness of the Infinite Father; that it is something for today, and today only, and nothing for the immeasurable tomorrow of God. If you are right, then Christian Science is a baseless thing, the siren's song of peace, "when there is no peace." But you are not right, you are wholly wrong; I assert that there is not enough genius in the world to frame a statement respecting Christian Science that would be wider the mark or more absolutely barren of truth than just what I have imagined your thought of it is.
The physical benefits of Christian Science, its medical virtue, its healing power, are but incidents of what it is, of its reality, and yet these incidents must not be undervalued, for all the world knows today that the healing which Jesus did, the surcease he brought to human sorrow, the hope he rekindled, were but incidents of the abounding redemption he brought, and the sweet gospel he preached of God's unfailing love. Yet these benefactions to men, though but incidents of a mighty mission, proclaim trumpet-tongued, demonstrate indeed, the divinity of the Messenger. And just as certainly the healing incidents of Christian Science, indisputably establish the co-existent relationship of Christian Science and the teaching of Jesus.
Wherefore Christian Scientists have the keenest appreciation of the prophylactic and therapeutic virtue of their religion, and earnestly contend, and indeed many of us do know, know as certainly as Paul knew, that his Redeemer lived, that Christian Science does bring surcease to the heart-ache and heart-break of men, give roses for ashes to men, peace for pain, love for hate, hope for despair, health (rosy cheeked) for gnawing disease, gives life for death to men. Yet neither of these benefactions, nor all of them combined is Christian Science in its essence, its infinite good. They are the results of Christian Science; they are the inevitable product, the unavoidable fruitage of Christian Science understood and lived; and understood only when lived. I assert in this magnificent presence, that there is not a phase of the religion of Jesus Christ represented on earth — I care not what your phase of it may be — that is worth the snap of your finger or mine, unless that religion is lived.
The expectant children of men the world around are grasping the fact that the religion of Jesus Christ is not a religion of words, of ceremony, of platitudes, professions, confessions, or creeds, but a religion of works, of fruits, of demonstration.
It may have been heresy yesterday, but in the brighter today it is not, to say that it will do you no good simply to confess religion, it will do you no good merely to profess religion; you may repeat your creeds, the creeds of men, from now until the very flashing break of doom, and it will do you no good, unless your lives are so ordered, that day by day and hour by hour you may know, and your neighbors may know as well, that you do indeed believe what you profess to believe, and know it by what you do.
This is the only way given whereby you may know what you think of eternal things, what your real concept of the Infinite Father is, by what you do, and not by what you say. The great Master laid down the rule long years ago in his pilgrimage among men, and it must be equally gratifying to us all, whatever our denominational name, to know that Jesus never established a rule for the government of your conduct and mine that he did not apply to his own.
Repeatedly he said to his disciples and when he spoke to them he as certainly and directly spoke to you and me — "By their works ye shall know them." And with striking fidelity and picturesque force, Jesus applied this severe test to himself. In a crucial period of his mission, one of his own raised the startling and impious question as to whether he was the Christ or a pretender?
Then your human judgment and mine would have said, now, now is the auspicious moment, when this Messenger of God, this master of all learning, all logic, and the master of all minds of men, too, may easily make an argument that will satisfy the learned and unlearned world alike that he is the Christ, the son of the living God. It is the moment of all the centuries. The world stands aghast with the stupendous issue of its redemption hinged upon the answer. What shall it be? Listen! Men and women hush the beating of their hearts to hear it — the mightiest speech of all the ages, spoken with the simplicity of a child, the sublime assurance of a God: "Go, tell John that the lame do walk and the blind do see." That was all it was, not more brief than conclusive. It touched the high level of the momentous occasion, and crushed to silence through all the march of the years every imposing question of the Christ's divinity.
Have you ever thought of it for a moment that this is the only argument that Jesus ever made in this world to establish his divinity? Think of it now. He said, indeed, he was the Christ, that he was in the Father and the Father in him, but the only argument he ever made to establish the the truth of his declaration is found in the simple assertion of the patent fact, "The lame do walk and the blind do see." And that is the argument, the impregnable argument of Christian Science to the doubting Johns of the world today. "The lame do walk and the blind do see" today, as they did walk and see nineteen hundred years ago, and by the virtue of the same limitless power and the same boundless love that they did walk and see then; and so long as we can say this in truth, as in truth we can say it tonight, just so long every shaft aimed at Christian Science, coming from whatsoever source it may, will fall harmless to the ground.
From what I have said, it is apparent that our contention is that Christian Science is a religion pure and simple, a religion of works, a nearer approach than men have known for seventeen hundred years to the religion that Jesus taught in the temple, that he preached throughout all Judea, that he so lovingly and tenderly practiced among all his people; and if it is all of this, then you want it, every one in the world wants it; and if it is less than all of this, we do not want it, no one in the world wants it. Wherefore this contention of ours is the only debatable question respecting Christian Science: Is it the religion Jesus brought, taught and practiced?
In the discussion of this question we are somewhat embarrassed by inherited religious opinions; by that peculiar and almost universal condition of mind, best known as pride in ancestral religious belief. It is so much easier to have some one think for you than to think for yourself; to have a religious belief, doctrine or creed handed down to you as a garment, decoration, title or jewel might descend from father to son, instead of earning your own garment, winning your own decoration, deserving your title. It is so very easy and therefore inviting, to put aside the whole matter with a sweep of filial pride, "My fathers were good and pious people and a religion that was good enough for them is good enough for me."
But the religion of your father is not good enough for you, and if good enough for your fathers, it was only because they had the best that the times in which they lived and the locality in which they lived afforded. You live in a brighter day than ever gladdened your fathers — at a period in the world's progress that your fathers never knew. A moment's consideration should satisfy you that there is no reason why the religion of your fathers should be good enough for you any more than the wooden shoes and leather clothing of your fathers are good enough for you or that your father's ignorance of the laws of gravitation, the form of the earth, the rules of navigation, the power of steam or compressed air, and electricity is good enough for you.
The fallacy of your position is somewhat graphically illustrated by the effort recently made in one of the European parliaments to re-establish capital punishment for some of the minor offenses. The proposition was, of course, quickly assailed as an effort to return to barbarism of the fathers. Whereupon a pious advocate of the measure closed an impassioned recitation of the fathers' penchant for decapitation with the declaration "I do not hesitate to have my constituents advised that if hanging is good enough for my fathers, it is good enough for me."
The fact is the world has drifted away from the gray of the morning to the greater light of its noonday; we have drifted away from our fathers' thought respecting all questions of moral, social, political and civil government, and by reason thereof, have reached a higher civilization, and, a nearer approach to the perfect good of men, than any yesterday has ever known; and clearly the ultimatum of human attainment will be accomplished only when we assert our inherent right, our inherent duty to determine for ourselves with what thought of God we will stand before His great judgment bar, when the books are opened and all secrets revealed. For it is by our own thought, under our own opportunity, and not by the more circumscribed thought or under a lesser opportunity of our fathers, that we must be justified.
It is quite apparent that the antagonism of the good people of the old churches to Christian Science grows out of their impression that it is neither Christian nor scientific. If it is not Christian, it is of little importance whether it is scientific or not. If it is Christian, that is if it is the religion that Jesus Christ taught and demonstrated, then it would require not only a very bold but a very reckless Christian man to question its scientific attitude. Let us then meet the important question: "Is it Christian?" If it is not, it is not only open to your antagonism, but invites and should receive it.
I propose to test its Christian character from your professed estimate of the Christian religion, and if it reaches your standard, some one else and not you, must continue the antagonism. I make the assertion that there is not a single principle that any intelligent man for five hundred years has regarded as essential of the religion of Jesus Christ, that any conscientious person of average intellect, in the old churches would have to surrender in accepting all that is claimed for Christian Science. If this is true, it places us at once upon a common plane of belief, and necessarily excludes antagonism, ends discussion.
Now what are the essentials of the religion of Jesus Christ? Evidently a prime essential to the religion is belief in God, all powerful and everywhere present. "Who made all that was made and pronounced all that He made good," infinite in wisdom, power, justice, mercy, truth and love — a Spirit to be worshiped "in spirit and truth." Christian Scientists believe in worship and adore such a God. Do you? Another essential of the religion of Jesus requires belief in the Christ, belief, too, in the sense which Jesus used the word, — trust, faith, reliance; belief in and reliance upon his Messiahship, his redemption and the salvation he brought. We accept this wholly, absolutely. Do you?
Another essential of the religion of Jesus requires the acceptance of the word of God, contained in the Old and New Testaments, as God's revelation of Himself to man, for man's guidance to eternal life. Christian Scientists do this. Do you? Another essential of the religion of Jesus commands the acceptance of the Ten Commandments as God's laws of requirement and restriction, to be resolutely kept, one not less than another. We do this. Do you? Another essential of the religion of Jesus is that you shall believe in the efficacy and duty of prayer. We do this. Do you? Still another essential of this religion is that you shall love God with all your heart and mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. To the keeping of this great commandment we bend the energy of our lives. Do you?
I have stated the essential requirements of the religion of Jesus, every one of which is an integral of our religious belief, and which combined, form the rock upon which Christian Science rests unshaken, the impregnable fortress behind which Christian Science is secure. It would be unkind, possibly impertinent, not to assume, accept without saying, your professed belief in these essentials of the Christian religion; and if your belief is real, trustful, reliant, when tested by your works, then relentless logic will drive you either to change your religious belief, or cease your assaults upon ours; and if your belief is not real, not proven by your works, might there not be a suggestion of safety to you in the caution to "dwellers in glass houses"?
It may be said that I have given you some of the points of doctrine upon which the old churches and Christian Scientists agree, but that I have not told you anything about the many points upon which they do not agree. The failure to do this was not an oversight. It is a part of the ethics of my profession, that a lawyer shall willingly, smilingly, even gleefully lose his own case rather than deliberately slaughter his own logic. I have made an effort for a few moments at least to satisfy you that upon the essentials of the religion of Jesus we do agree. It is apparent to us that in the religion of Jesus we do agree. It is apparent to us that if you have the essentials of that religion, then we each shall have the gospel supplies, and it is just as apparent to your logic as to mine that if we are in accord respecting the essentials of the religion of Jesus, then there is not anything essential for us to disagree about, and there never is an opportune time to discuss non-essentials.
Again you might ask: "If we are in harmony respecting the essentials of religion of Jesus, what is the necessity for a new church, why do you, as nine-tenths of the Christian Scientists have, [go out of the old churches." If we] really believe alike respecting these essentials there is no answer to the question; there would be no reason, for a church would be new, "transformed by the renewal of your mind," all one; for when all the people think alike and think aright of the one only living and true God, there will be and can be but one church, the heavens is its dome, the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb its temple; the redeemed nations shall walk in it, and the Glory of God shall light it.
You will observe, however, that in my comparison of the old churches' belief and ours, I speak of declarations of belief; and there is a vast difference between what one says he believes and what he really believes. Religious belief, belief in God, can not be ascertained from human speech. What you do, not what you say, determines the status of your real belief in God, your concept of God. A declaration of belief in the Infinite is but a futile attempt to express in finite language the creature's obedience to God, trust in God, and reliance upon God.
There is no human language, tongue or speech, image, sign or character, that can express it. "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."
Your worship of God is the infallible test of your belief in God. I venture to illustrate my position. Suppose some gentleman should arise and say to this splendid audience, "My friends, l believe that alcohol has brought more sorrow into this world, more heartache and heartbreak, has desolated more homes, wrecked more lives, drawn more tears than all other things combined. I believe in my very soul that every place where intoxicating liquor is sold as a beverage is but a ticket office to hell, and that the face of every honest man and woman should be turned as flint against this horrible ghastly practice," and having said this should go out of the house and stop at the nearest ticket office of this character and buy a few tickets for himself and some for a few near friends, from whom he does not wish to be separated wherever the transportation might carry them, would you not know, every one of you, every child in the house know, that that man did not state his real belief, or if he did, that he was amazingly attracted to the lurid terminus of the transportation purchased? The illustration I have employed is not far-fetched. Few of us indeed, have escaped furnishing example of the same inconsistency.
Apply the test to yourselves! As the years have come and gone, you have said so many times with Paul, "In God we live and move and have our being," which is simply saying and only saying in God we have life, health and immortality. Yet, you have gone from every such declaration to the doctor, the druggist or climate, for the life and health that you declared you had and only had in God. Do you then believe it? If you say that you believe that your life and health is in God and then go to some human agency, some dull clod of earth for your life and health, would you be greatly surprised if your neighbors should say that you are either mistaken in your belief or that you place a very low estimate upon the value of what you have in God? How many many times have you all joined in the most beautiful invocation, "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer?"
Do you really think you believe that God is your strength and your Redeemer, and yet hesitate to go to God, and God only, day by day, hour by hour, for your strength and for redemption from every ill that comes to humanity? If you do I am sure you are mistaken in your belief. Your belief, your trust, your faith is in the agency you go to; your real belief is that the doctor is your strength, and the druggist your redeemer. You cannot serve two masters, and you cannot escape the inexorable rule, "By their works ye shall know them." What you really believe, you do. "As a man thinketh, so he is."
Christian Scientists believe that their life is in God, that God is their strength and Redeemer, and know they believe it, demonstrate their belief by going to God and God only for life, strength and redemption from all sickness, sorrow and sin. You say you believe that God is the "great physician who heals all our diseases," but do you really believe it? If you do not go to the great physician, men will think and God will know you do not believe it. If the question were asked, every one of you would say that you believe that Jesus was sincere in his every declaration; said exactly what he meant and [meant precisely what he said. Do you really believe it?] Jesus said to his disciples: "The works that I do ye shall do also, and greater." Do you believe it? If you do, you will prove your belief in his sincerity by doing these works. He said to the eleven when giving them the great commission to carry the gospel to every creature, in order that they might know whether they were preaching effectively or not, "certain signs shall follow them that believe; in my name they shall cast out devils, in my name they shall speak with new tongues, they shall lay hands on the sick and the sick shall recover." Do you believe that he meant this, and yet have you never put it to the test?
What will you do, good people, with the sweetest and tenderest words that ever fell from the lips of God upon the ears of men: "Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest"? What does it mean? Is there one anywhere who will say that Jesus did not mean in their simplicity, sweetness and love the very words he spoke, that the blessed Master's invitation to his disciples was but a promise to the ear to be ruthlessly and wickedly broken to the hope? No! no! no! Then what do the sweet words mean, unless as we believe exactly what they say? Indeed, the promise has been kept. Hundreds of thousands of happy men and women testify to it today. Weary, worn, maimed, halt, and blind, they touched the hem of his garment, laid the burdens at his feet, "and bore a song away."
Christian Scientists have radically changed their thought of God; they no longer attribute to God qualities that no man among civilized people anywhere could acknowledge in himself and not meet the ostracism he deserved. We no longer indulge the belief that God makes us sick, lame or blind for some mysterious purpose of His own. It is not within the range of a reasonable concept of an infinitely good God, that He would deliberately hold in torture and crush in despair a pure, sweet mother for the purpose of making some man better. Being infinitely just, if He were administering punishment for reform and dispensing rewards for virtue. He would crucify the bad man, and enthrone the good woman.
We believe that God is not only the embodiment of good, but that He is good; the "Great Physician," "Who heals all our diseases," Who gives surcease to sorrow, Who literally wipes all tears away, and we confidently go to this Infinite Source of life, and strength, and joy for redemption from every ill that comes to humanity.
It is not difficult, I am sure, to understand that one who believes that God makes him sick would hesitate to go to the provoking cause for relief from the ill he suffers. If you believe that God fills your life with grief for some wise purpose, believing in His goodness, justice and power, you should bear whatever affliction comes to you without a murmur and should be reasonable and logical enough not to attempt to balk the purpose of the infinite God by seeking the service of some doctor, druggist or climate to make you well. If God makes you sick, when His purpose of doing so is subserved, He will make you well again, and your little children will tell you that, until His purpose is subserved, no medicine of man will make you well.
Our contention is that God is good, and that, if good at all, is infinitely good for "there is none other beside Him;" that if infinitely good at any time, He is infinitely good always and everywhere, for He is everywhere and "without the shadow of turning."
Christian Scientists believe that when Jesus went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and read from the prophecy of Esaias concerning himself, a prophecy written hundreds of years before his coming, telling of his coming, and of the office he should hold when he came, wherein it is written: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised," and closing the book, Jesus the Christ said to his congregation: "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears."
Now tell me, good people, for no one wants to be mistaken about a matter of such vital importance as this, if Christian Science is a myth, that will go out with the dawn of tomorrow's sun, then Christian Scientists all round the globe want to know that fact, and know it today, if may be. And on the other hand, if Christian Science is the sweet story that Jesus came to tell, then you good people of the old churches I am sure, want to know that fact, and know it tonight, if may be. Then answer to yourself when you are alone with your conscience: Is there longer any reason for you or for me to question what the mission of Jesus into this world was — with this prophecy concerning his coming and the declaration of Jesus that the prophecy was absolutely fulfilled by his own presence in the world, can you or I hesitate longer to believe that his great mission from the Father was to preach the gospel, and to heal the sick, and almost may we not say to preach the gospel by healing the sick? And if anything were lacking in our minds to establish this last proposition would it not be abundantly compensated in the sweet life of Jesus in the world; and may we not learn from that life of works of sympathy and kindness, and unfaltering ministry, just what his thought was of the redemption he brought, and his own way of giving it to the world?
Have you ever thought for a moment of the tremendous import of the fact that Jesus never preached but one sermon in all his life, and never repeated that; far less than one-fiftieth part of His active life was given to the letter of the gospel, and all the balance of it to its spirit, to its practical application, to doing, not saying, to healing the withered hands of men, to breaking the jaws of death, and giving the sons and daughters of men back to life and love and hope? And so in the example of this ministering messenger of God, do we not find the cheering consolation to yours and mine, viz., that although we may not have the tongue to tell the sweet story that Jesus came to tell, still, if [we] but extend a cup of cold water in his name, we will preach the same sweet gospel that the loving Son of God preached, and preach it precisely the same way. Learn indeed, may we not, from the works of Jesus, that you and I were included in his declaration to one who questioned whether he had earned the redemption the Master came to bring, and the midnight of his doubt cried out to the Saviour. "When saw I thee hungry and gave thee to eat, naked and clothed thee, sick and ministered unto thee?" And by and by the still small voice that speaks to you and to me tonight, and has spoken to our fathers through all the ages gone, made reply: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." And this religion of works, of help, of love, is the redemption that Jesus brought to the world, and by the sweetest and holiest ministry humanity has known, impressed upon, left, with the world.
And now one word about Mrs. Eddy, the great woman who has with rare devotion to humanity, and marvelous spiritual conception, restored to the world an abiding sense of the sweetness, love and healing power incident to unfaltering reliance upon God. Mrs. Eddy does not seek adulation, she protests against it; her effort is not for self. The sweetest message in her marvelous teaching impresses the negation of self, glorifies the love of God and the love of man. She does not claim to have discovered the healing power, but simply to have found in God's word the means whereby every weary child of earth may successfully invoke that power. It is her "Key to the Scriptures" that makes her contribution to humanity absolutely exhaustless and absolutely imperishable, reverently I say imperishable; good is imperishable.
Great England's great Browning caught a glint of light supernal when he said: "There is no lost good." I believe it. Good is as unhidden, indestructible and everywhere present as God. Struggle on then, dear heart, in the sweet assurance that no word of helping kindness, no sweet thought put in action, no tear of pity (Love's pearl), shall ever perish. From your sense for a while it may disappear, mortal mists may cloak it, Lethe's waves may touch it, but anon, in some sweeter and better tomorrow, somewhere in the measureless realm of Our King, your sweet ministry unmasked, new in beauty, fresh in sweetness, will appear again, illuming the palace of the heart of man. And so let us go to our homes in the sweet and abiding belief that, "with that touch of human kindness that makes the whole world kin" we may reach out, are reaching out to the immortality of Love.
[Delivered Jan. 14, 1906, at the City Opera House of Mount
Vernon, New York, and published in The Daily Argus of Mount Vernon, Jan. 16,
1906, starting on Page One. Presumably to make space for printing the full
lecture, the editors omitted all of the subheadings and also frequently left
out paragraph breaks, resulting in unattractively long paragraphs in the
newspaper's report. The headings and the breaks have been re-introduced into
this transcript after consulting two other copies of the lecture. In addition,
numerous typographical errors were introduced by The Daily Argus, which have
been corrected, and in three places words or phrases were dropped, which have
been restored through recourse to the other copies. Also, where the words
"it is" appear in brackets, the words "and still" appeared
in the lecture as published in The Daily Argus; the words "it is"
appear in other copies of the lecture and allow for a sentence that makes
sense; "and still" does not make sense and has thus been removed. The
title of the lecture was supplied from a report in another newspaper.]