Francis Lyster Jandron, C.S.B., of Detroit, Michigan
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The
Mother Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
The following lecture entitled "Christian Science Reveals God's Ever-Presence," was given under the auspices of Sixteenth Church of Christ, Scientist, of Chicago, in the church edifice, 7201 North Ashland Boulevard, Friday evening, January 22, 1937, by Francis Lyster Jandron, C.S.B., of Detroit, Michigan, member of the Board of Lectureship of The Mother Church The First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston, Massachusetts. The lecture is reprinted from a previous issue of the Leader.
Mr. Jandron spoke substantially as follows:
Christian Science enables us to prove that God is ever present with man. God directs, shelters, and sustains him throughout a never-ending life. Every one of us is free to understand the divine relationship which exists between God and man, and today is not too soon to become conscious of it. This spiritual understanding banishes fear and uncertainty, sickness and sin. The Old Testament tells us that Enoch "walked with God," and escaped the experience of death. The greatest freedom you can ever know comes with the inspired assurance that God is present. Christian Science teaches the importance and the unfailing power of God's ever-presence, and it makes clear how it can be put into practice. Those who follow its teaching gratefully acknowledge the improved health, conscious harmony, and joyful holiness which a closer acquaintance with God has brought into their lives. In his study of Christian Science, the Christian Scientist accepts the Bible without reservation. Christian Scientists are convinced that daily study of the Bible helps them to draw nearer to God. They have found that the Bible is a book which is not merely to be reverenced, but one which can be used in very practical and beneficial ways. Christian Science unlocks the treasures of the Scriptures and reveals their spiritual significance. The divine inspiration which illumines the Bible pages can be shared by all who seek it humbly, regardless of differences of age, place, or race. It speaks a universal language, and proclaims a healing message which brightens the depths of human hearts with gleams of divine radiance and power.
The Bible records the progressive unfolding of humanity's understanding of God. It contains the history of the ebb and flow of the spiritual progress of mankind. It tells of the unselfed power which accompanies obedience to God, and of the unhappy experiences which follow disregard of spiritual guidance. The Bible is not a textbook of geology or biology, to be outmoded and outgrown as new theories and discoveries come to light. While physical science is based on human reason and the testimony of the material senses, spiritual sense alone can testify of God's spiritual universe and of man's relationship to his heavenly Father. Physical science misses the glorious gospel of real manhood when it seeks cause and effect in matter and shuts God out of His own universe. In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy has written (p. 209): "Spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God."
Mrs. Eddy, it is well known, was from her earliest years a consecrated student of the Bible. Her momentous discovery of Christian Science in 1866, enabled her to become the most profound interpreter of the Bible in any age. The truths of Christian Science dawned on her spiritual discernment in just the same way as the word of God unfolded itself to the spiritual discernment of the prophets. Purified by suffering and exaltation, her thought became transparent to the light of spiritual revelation. Christian Science supplies a scientific definition of God, as well as the scientific proof that God, Spirit, is infinite Truth or divine Principle; and that every fragment of revealed truth, wherever and whenever perceived, proceeds from God and is forever in accord with God. God, Spirit, is the only real cause. Sooner or later everyone must understand God and honor Him. We must do this through Science, through spiritual understanding, or we shall do it by learning the lessons of our mistakes, as we follow the way of suffering, the way of experience. The Bible vividly represents these two diverging paths, so familiar in the experience of all of us, in the two accounts of the creation, which we find recorded in the book of Genesis. The first one tells the story of man as God made him, spiritual, perfect, and complete. God was his creator, and good his only experience. The second account tells of a supposed man, as the physical senses mistakenly conceived him, sinning, suffering, dying, and disappearing. Death and disappearance are the inevitable ending of every conception which originates with physical sense.
Mrs. Eddy, in her great work Science and Health, of which it is said that more copies have been sold than of any other religious work except the Bible itself, has supplied the key to the spiritual meaning of the Scriptures. The Christian Science textbook enables the student to divide between the lessons of truth and the experiences impelled by human will which separate mortals from God. Science and Health is not a book of dogma and arbitrary rules. It explains God's purpose, not through codes of rules and exceptions but in plain language which reaches down to the level of every individual need. Science and Health makes it clear that God's voice will always reach us in tones which we can understand, whenever we are ready to listen to it, no matter how far removed from God we may seem to be. The successive chapters of Science and Health, from the opening chapter on Prayer to the Glossary which concludes Mrs. Eddy's work, bring the truth about God and man within the reach of every stage and level of human thought and culture. Science and Health crosses the barriers of ignorance and prejudice to insist that no one who desires to know God need be for a single moment deprived of the divine presence.
Science and Health contains the Science of Christianity. It reveals the infinite divine Principle by which good becomes available to man. It explains the method and practice of Christ Jesus' teachings. No impostor could have written Science and Health. No book not in accord with the revealed truth of the Bible could have withstood the tests of application, demonstration, criticism, and hostility to which Science and Health has been subjected since it was first published sixty years ago. Thousands have been healed by reading it. As its sole author, Mrs. Eddy will always be gratefully known, and the ages will do her justice. As the indispensable textbook and companion to the Bible which enables humanity to understand and to prove man's God-given dominion over sickness and all other forms of evil, Science and Health is unique and final.
In her book "Unity of Good" (p. 3), Mrs. Eddy has written of God: "Now this self-same God is our helper. He pities us. He has mercy upon us, and guides every event of our careers. He is near to them who adore Him. To understand Him, without a single taint of our mortal, finite sense of sin, sickness, or death, is to approach Him and become like Him." God reveals His messages to messengers divinely prepared to receive them. Mrs. Eddy is the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. The infinite power which inspired the message, commissioned the messenger, and the two can never be separated.
One who for many years enjoyed the priceless privilege of Mrs. Eddy's friendship has said of his last interview with her (The Christian Science Journal, Vol. 53, p. 628): "As I sat quietly in Mrs. Eddy's presence . . . I gained a new sense of the word patience as I realized her rich kindness to me and her love for mankind. In the sixteen years of our friendship she had revealed to me the Christianly patience of the mother guiding the child with happy friendliness and good humor, rebuking mistakes with a clarity which produced not resentment but enlightenment. But her teachings are an open book for the whole world, and those who in humility receive the teachings can prove it for themselves and others."
You and I have our place in God's universe, a place which no one else can fill, with work for each of us to do. Through Christian Science we may find our rightful place, hold it, and use it to God's glory and in loving service to our fellowmen. God, the one infinite Mind, withholds no secrets from His children; all may enjoy free access to divine intelligence. As we turn away from what the physical senses seem to be saying, and lift our heads above human ways and policy, God's voice makes itself heard. God knows all. Man, made in God's spiritual likeness, has no need to supplicate Him for material benefits. In the infinite dominion which God gives, man can look out from his consciousness of God's allness, can see from the standpoint of the divine Mind, and can know himself as an indispensable part of God's divinely-ordered universe. No seeming barrier of mortality or physical dullness can limit this spiritual vision. It enables one to know all that he needs to know, and to know it at the right time; to do all that God has given him to do, and to do it wisely. In proportion to our understanding of God's nature, we are consciously bound to Him, and we become at-one with His purpose for us. Man's true place is in the divine Mind, not in vain dreams of self-glory or self-condemnation. Knowing that man reflects God, infinite intelligence, we are able to behold our rightful place. God, divine Life, inspires action and enables us to occupy our place; and, because God is omnipotent Love, He is forever present to protect us in the enjoyment of our place and in the just rewards of our unselfish labor.
It is within your own power to prove through Christian Science that because God is ever present, you need never lack useful, happy employment. Indeed, to understand God is the divinely-bestowed talent which if you use it faithfully, will always be abundantly sufficient to supply your human needs. It is a talent which will unfold and increase with use. To understand that God is All-in-all and that He is ever present, and to hold fast to this spiritual conviction, will enable you to meet every demand, every test, which you may be called to face. Spiritual understanding rests on a stronger foundation than any attack which evil can devise. To think otherwise is to believe mistakenly that divine power can become inactive.
In the parable of the talents Christ Jesus told a pointed story of one who neglected to use his God-given talent. This servant confessed to his master: "I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth." Thinking of his talent as his personal possession he became afraid of losing it, and when he attempted to safeguard it by burying it, it was taken from him. Whenever we bury our talent in the false sense that it is a personal possession, we are in danger of losing it. We may attribute our failure to inferiority, pride, lack of recognition, ill-health, inexperience, repression, heredity, indolence, favoritism, wrong education, or no education; but those are only names for the mistaken fear that God is not ever present. False thinking may succeed in forgetting God, but it cannot bury what God has given. The "earth," in which the servant in the parable buried his talent, is only the evidence of the physical senses. It can never really hide your God-given ability to understand and reflect God. The fear that opportunity is man-bestowed and man-possessed will disappear when you ascribe all power to God, and strive faithfully to let Him guide you. It is God who supplies your talent, places it, rewards it, and provides a useful background for it, that it may be used to His glory. God is everywhere, forever inspiring and sustaining His ideas with infinite wisdom and power. God is the only Mind, and this truth can be demonstrated by employer and employee, by buyer and seller. Human will, hypnotism, and high-pressure salesmanship, which outline material results and seek to coerce the mentality of others to accomplish them, have no place in Christian Science. The peaceful realization that God abides with all His children, reveals itself in harmonious action and in wise decisions which bless all alike.
Obedience to God's law unfolds and protects the full expression of our capacity for usefulness. It saves us from lack of recognition, and from frustration of our unselfish efforts to serve our fellowmen. Because God is ever present with man, there can be no failure, for God's law governs true self-expression, or the reflection of Mind. Self-expression is not attained by wantonly disregarding the laws of the land or the rights of others. It comes through unselfishness. No more convincing illustration of this could be found than the Old Testament story of Joseph, who when a lad was cruelly sold into slavery to satisfy his brothers' envy. Even unjust persecution failed to bury Joseph's talent, and for all ages he has become a type of true Christliness, because he refused to allow fear or resentment to dominate his thoughts. Not only was he delivered from persecution and injustice, but he rose from slavery to be second to the king in the land of Egypt. And there he used his God-given talent to protect his adopted people from famine, and to save his brothers who had misused him. Mrs. Eddy has referred to Joseph in Science and Health (p. 589) in this beautiful phrase: "pure affection blessing its enemies." The talent illumined by "pure affection blessing its enemies" cannot be undermined or suppressed.
Many years have passed since Mrs. Eddy boldly proclaimed her discovery (Science and Health, p. 468): "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all." There were few then who accepted this radical declaration of the allness of God, Spirit, and the nothingness of matter. Today we observe a growing tendency among physical scientists to abandon their ancient theories that matter is substance and exists apart from thought. There was once a time when it was believed that an apple fell because of some power within the apple itself, while a feather floated in the air for the same reason. Later on, with the acceptance of the physical law of gravitation, this belief changed, and it has since been generally held that the fall of the apple is due to the earth's attraction. Going beyond this point, there are some modern scholars who have expressed doubts as to the earth's power to attract. They have gone so far as to contend that if the earth were to revolve at greatly accelerated speed, a falling object might disappear into space, and never reach the earth at all. Human thought is forever plotting to escape from its prison-house of matter, and it vainly seeks the key in matter and materiality. The belief that matter has power and that it constitutes man is the root of all evil. Freedom from matter and materiality will never be won until thought is based on a standpoint wholly outside of matter and physical sense.
Christian Science teaches that the only truly scientific basis of thought is the allness of God, Spirit. From the very first moment when you accept this teaching, you quite naturally begin to question evil's existence and its supposed power to appear in God's creation and to defile man, made in God's own likeness. You have a God-given right to do this; and you owe it to yourself to exercise this right constantly. You will find that in proportion as you do exercise it, evil influences of every kind will appear less inevitable, less compelling. The seeming attraction of evil, or animal magnetism, will meet less response from you. As you proceed with your study of what Christian Science teaches about God, you will observe that sin, sickness, woe, and death stand on the same fictitious foundation as Aristotle's explanation that the apple falls to earth because of some intrinsic power within itself. The only power of evil is the human belief, still generally entertained, that it is real and that it has power to assert itself uninvited in human experience. Christian Science insists that evil and matter have no rightful existence nor power. Because man is spiritual, not material, he is in reality immune from evil and matter. Christian Science proves that as, step by step, we gain an understanding of spiritual being, our fear of evil diminishes, and evil proportionately ceases to trouble our experience.
The world has worshiped evil far too long. The gods of mythology, the gods of pestilence and war, the gods of accident and old age, germs and glands, material riches and want, sin and sense, are false gods. They have no power to make man sick or sinful. They cannot make him die. It is the mistaken belief, individually held, that they have that power, which makes sickness and sin seem real. In the clear atmosphere of thought when God, divine Love, is seen to be the only real power, the falsity of evil's claims can be seen. And mark this: when you see evil for the falsity which it actually is, — not ignoring it, not condoning it, not lightly dismissing it, but boldly recognizing it as a lying impostor, — then you become conscious that God is present with you, and the evil with which you have been contending disappears. Evil cannot exist in God's presence, any more than darkness can be found in the sunlight.
God reveals Himself to us through the ever-present Christ. The divinely-appointed Way-shower for humanity was Jesus, who was, as Mrs. Eddy has written in Science and Health (p. 30) "endowed with the Christ, the divine Spirit, without measure." The New Testament contains a graphic account of how Jesus tested and proved human ability to resist and overthrow the temptation to believe that man can be compelled to be evil, to think evil, or to do evil. Our Master shared the experience of all humanity when he met temptation in the wilderness. Through his understanding of God's allness, temptation did not overcome him at any point. In the Bible account of this great testing experience, Jesus is represented as suffering from hunger, from famine, yet he refused to accept the evidence of physical sense that his life depended upon material food. He is again depicted as tempted by an evil suggestion to do evil that good might come. And thirdly, he is described as tempted to believe that the devil, evil, was able to give him power over his fellowmen. Jesus admitted none of evil's claims; he submitted to none, and he compromised with none. He proved that evil is powerless to enforce its demands when those demands are resisted with the spiritual understanding that God is ever present.
We, too, can do what Jesus did. Mrs. Eddy has written in Science and Health (p. 242): "In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error, — self-will, self-justification, and self-love, — which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death." The Bible tells us that after the temptations had been successfully surmounted by our Master, "angels came and ministered unto him." When our sincerity has been tested and proved, we become able to follow the path of the Christ, and to see the angels which have been guiding us unseen. Temptation to do evil ceases to pursue us when we become able to see that it is unreal, and no longer fear to obey it. In proportion as we understand that God is ever present, human will and hypnotic suggestion lose their supposed power to influence or to harm. Animal magnetism, or the "carnal mind," as St. Paul calls it, can find no place in the presence of the Mind of Christ. Through reliance on God and spiritualization of thought we can put on this Mind of Christ, as Jesus did.
To understand our at-one-ment with
the Christ, Truth, our great need is to
love more. Fear and resentment are evildoers, which bar the door of human
consciousness against the Christ. There is always an adequate and ready
safeguard against fear and resentment: Love more. When you are fearful, you are
forgetting God; you are forgetting that He is All-in-all and present with you.
It is your duty to God to remember that His strength is your strength; His
wisdom your wisdom; His perfection your perfection. When you resent an injury,
or hate a neighbor, you are forgetting that God, the divine Mind, is your Mind,
reflecting itself in your consciousness through loving, healing thoughts. God
is present with you when you are seeing yourself and your fellowmen as God sees
you and them, as neither wrongdoer, victim of wrong, nor medium of wrongdoing.
You can safely trust God to guide you in the paths of justice and uprightness.
In the presence of God evil destroys itself. Its unreality becomes apparent as
soon as the Christ-light of spiritual understanding is turned on it. To fear evil
or to resent it is to give evil a place in your consciousness, to admit that it
can be somebody or do something. Your duty to God is to give glory and power to
God alone. God is infinite Truth, and Truth must have the last word in every human experience. God will not walk with
you to overcome evil when you are not able to say, "I love."
Self-righteousness may expose and rebuke evil, but it cannot heal it, for it
merely adds sin to sin.
Christian Scientists do not call evil good. They do not shrink from
exposing evil. They do not seek to cover it up and ignore it. They are
earnestly striving to let God, divine Love, govern them as they face evil in
themselves and in others, and endeavor to overcome it with good. God's plan of
salvation is for all; the divine
plan is fulfilled in the destruction of evil in the individual consciousness
through repentance, reformation, and understanding.
Our greatest need is spirituality. Only righteousness and equal-dealing should have a place in our relations with our fellowmen. No one need be afraid that spirituality will put him at a disadvantage in his relations with others. True spirituality is not dreamy idealism or emotional ecstasy; it is spiritual seeing, knowing, and acting. It is infinite intelligence in action, and understood. It is working, watching, and praying with the divine assurance that evil will not triumph over good. This active, vital spirituality saves us from imposing on others and being in turn imposed upon. We cannot strive too earnestly for the humility which will open the gates of consciousness to let in spiritual light, for the Christ-light never leads men or nations astray. The power of spirituality grows in our lives with every victory over self. In a beautiful passage in Mrs. Eddy's writings, our Leader has said (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 127): "One thing I have greatly desired, and again earnestly request, namely, that Christian Scientists, here and elsewhere, pray daily for themselves; not verbally, nor on bended knee, but mentally, meekly, and importunately. When a hungry heart petitions the divine Father-Mother God for bread, it is not given a stone, — but more grace, obedience, and love."
Through Christian Science we can prove that God overrules the false belief that for nations or for individuals, fear must be met with aggression and hate with violence. Righteous thinking can always open the way to salvation and safety. In the face of injustice we must go on loving, endeavoring patiently and forgivingly to keep within our own hearts "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding." Then we shall not fail to hear the divine command which will enable us to overcome evil with good. There are no lost sheep in God's universe. Within the heart of infinite Love there is always a place and a welcome for every penitent and honest seeker. Through suffering or through Science, through experience or through understanding, all must at last yield to God's plan of salvation, and proud human will must at last bow at the feet of Christ.
Christ Jesus told, in a parable, of the repentant prodigal who returned in penitence to his father's house. The father, you remember, went out to meet him and welcomed him joyfully. There are many of us today who are seeking to reach our Father's house through a better understanding of God. There may be times when we need help along the way. We shall not be helping our fellow wayfarer, if we criticize his slow progress; or censure him unlovingly because he turns sometimes and looks backward longingly; or envy him because he seems to be walking in comfort on the shady side of the road while we trudge along in the burning sun. But we can always help him by reminding him of the royal welcome which the Father has prepared for him. We can help him and help ourselves by laying aside our own useless baggage of wrong thinking and saying "I love."
Healing in Christian Science is of the greatest importance: it proves our understanding of God's love for man. The belief that man is sick or sinning goes hand in hand with the misconception that he exists in matter. Matter is the opposite or supposed absence of God, Spirit. It has no place in the divine Mind, and it is no part of Mind's creation. Moreover, matter has no mind of its own. It cannot think, and it cannot know itself. It was never a man. All that anyone can know of himself must come through thought, and the closer our thoughts approach the divine Mind or intelligence, which is God, Spirit, the more healthy and harmonious we shall be. Matter can never become mind. Matter is atheism or ignorance of God. Since it cannot think or act, it is powerless to destroy health. Christian Science teaches that health is not dependent on matter and can be scientifically demonstrated in human experience through spiritual understanding.
Christian Science heals disease. It heals in a way which all may practice and which all should understand. You can practice Christian Science for yourself; or, if you wish, you can receive the benefits of healing through the spiritual understanding of another. The allness of God, Spirit, is never expressed in sickness or discord; it expresses itself spontaneously and inevitably in ideas of health and holiness. In the proportion that your thoughts are guided into its atmosphere of spiritual reality, you will awake to see that a supposed consciousness of inharmony has been replaced by conscious well-being and freedom. You will be healed and you will know it.
In a Western city, the parents of a boy who was very ill of pneumonia were told one night by five attending physicians that nothing more could be done to save the child, and that he must die within a few hours. The nurse at the bedside, a graduate hospital nurse, had seen something of the healing power of Christian Science, and she turned to the parents in their extremity of anguish and implored them to dismiss the physicians and call a Christian Science practitioner to aid the child. The parents consented and a practitioner was called. No sooner did fear of certain death give place to the practitioner's calm assurance that God, divine Life, was present with that boy than the lad's condition began to improve. Before daybreak the joyous parents saw their boy entirely healed. When the devoted, family physician heard what had taken place, he said, "There are some things which we doctors don't understand." There is one thing which all of us, doctors and laymen, need to understand: matter can neither make nor enforce a law of sickness or death.
With the help of Christian Science mortals are able to prove that there is no pleasure in sin, and that a sinful habit is not the master of man. This understanding has set thousands free who, through fear or ignorance or love of sin, had become victims of their own wrongdoing and wrong thinking, or of the wrongdoing and wrong thinking of others. Christian Science heals the sinner of his desire to sin and of the consequences of sin in the measure that he departs from sin and in true sincerity wakes to understand that God made man sinless, stainless, and free. The lofty and uncompromising moral standards of Christian Science are never a hindrance to freedom, for they bring out the best in human character and make it responsive to the, "Be thou whole" of the Christ.
In a sublime passage in the opening chapter of Science and Health our Leader has said (p. 1), "The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God, — a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love." That is the prayer which Christian Scientists are earnestly striving to live, the prayer which never goes unanswered. It rises above the false theory that man is made up of matter and that his life is dependent on physical structure and organs. It realizes the omnipotence and the omnipresence of divine Love. It awakens the sick and the sinning with its inspired assurance that God is ever present with man. The truth about man, spiritually understood, is more than a match for sickness or sin. Prayer in Christian Science tells the truth about man.
To abide in God's presence, to dwell in the consciousness of His allness, will sweeten and sanctify your home. The dark shadows of human discord disappear when our mental abode is illumined by this Christ-consciousness. The anxious mother, whose thoughts are forever dwelling on the physical and material needs of her children, needs to look to God as she goes about her daily tasks. Christian Science enables us to prove that there is power in every right thought when we entrust it to God, and the child who is brought up in this consecrated reliance on God has received a priceless inheritance. Experiences which come from God must bring everyone sooner or later into a right sense of home complete with helpful, wholesome friendships. We shall not gain this right sense of home as long as we are thinking that home is made up of bricks and mortar, amusements, clothes, or money. When one finds his thought selfishly dwelling on a supposed lack of companions or pleasures or opportunities, it is well to remember that where God abides there is always completeness. We must establish home in our own hearts by understanding better that God withholds nothing from us which we can use unselfishly. In the home where God abides there is freedom, because there is obedience and unselfishness. Obedience and unselfishness supply wholesome and indispensable discipline which keeps human thought from straying.
The world sorely needs better homes, homes in which God is acknowledged and obeyed. In the home where God reigns, the infinite attractiveness of Spirit makes itself felt. As higher proofs of love and duty find their place, the mean, discordant thought and deed become less frequent intruders. The home in which God is acknowledged and obeyed is a safe shelter from every storm of adversity and hate. Within it you can always hear songs of joy and gratitude.
Lack finds no place when God is present with man, for God is forever pouring out of His spiritual abundance to His children. In God's kingdom there is neither waste nor insufficiency. Through Christian Science we can prove for ourselves that scientific prayer for right thoughts, spiritual ideas, is always met with a supply which corresponds to the human need. When mortals seek their income through a better understanding of God, He does not fail them. If we have been looking vainly to matter to supply our needs, and if we foolishly allow fear or envy to blind our eyes, we should remind ourselves that God, Spirit, is near at hand, ready and willing to share His infinite treasures with us as soon as we turn to Him wholeheartedly. It was because of his spiritual understanding that Christ Jesus was able to pay his taxes when they fell due; to make the water wine; to feed five thousand unexpected guests in the wilderness; and to wear a seamless robe. To understand God confers power to do good and to receive good.
God is never in matter, and never manifests Himself through matter. Christ is the divine manifestation of God, the spiritual idea which testifies to man's imperishable substance and spiritual understanding. It comes to us, as the Christ must always come, in ways which satisfy the human need. When we understand God, we can always declare, "I am satisfied."
Spiritual understanding is never for a moment at the mercy of carelessness, dishonesty, loss, or fear. I know a Christian Scientist who was once passing through London on her way to another country, and while there she went to a hotel for dinner and discovered that a fur scarf which she had been wearing was missing. In the crowded dining room she silently turned to God and tried to realize that in the divine universe of spiritual ideas there is no room for a suggestion of loss or dishonesty to enter. No such suggestion, she reminded herself, has power to enter man's consciousness, because God is ever present. The loss of the fur scarf was relatively unimportant, but she knew that it was of the utmost importance for her to meet the challenge that a suggestion of loss could abide in her thought, since it was not in harmony with what she had learned about God in Christian Science. Through this scientific treatment all fear left her, and after relating the incident to the hotel management, she went on her way. Ten days later she received a letter from the hotel telling her that her fur had just been brought there and that it was awaiting her. Matter and human will did not enter into this proof of God's presence and power. Steadfast faith in God, a stanch refusal to accept sense-testimony, canceled the fear or suggestion of loss. It is by holding fast to God in this righteous way that we can also overcome the dread of financial disaster or loss of position. God is in reality man's only source of supply, and there is always satisfying compensation for doing the work which God has assigned to us. The Psalmist sang: "I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread."
The Christian Science church, which Mrs. Eddy founded and which she labored ceaselessly to foster and protect, has for its purpose to restore to humanity the spiritual understanding of God which heals sickness and sin as Christ Jesus commanded. In carrying out its mission, Christian Science is healing the ignorance of God, the fears, the selfishness, the cruelty, the self-indulgence and the poverty which underlie disease. The keys of heaven and earth will be won, as the Master foretold, through the fulfillment of this mission of healing. There is no other way by which Christ can reign in the hearts of mankind.
The grateful testimonies of healing accomplished through Christian Science which are told in the Wednesday evening testimonial meetings of The Mother Church in Boston, and its branches throughout the world prove beyond question that God is ever present with man. They afford eloquent and inspiring proofs that Christian Science is at work day after day bringing Christ into the hearts of men and nations through the destruction of sickness and discord. There is no other way to achieve the long-cherished ideals of the brotherhood of man and peace-among nations. Enlightened self-interest so-called, disarmament, collective security, treaties, armies, and guns, have not the power for good of a clear, humble realization that God's kingdom is come and is ever present.
Christian Science teaches that our fears and failures and mistakes cannot prevent us from doing God's will today, nor from receiving the blessing which is ours when we do God's will. God has appointed every one of His children to honor; and through humility, obedience, and universal love we can prove this in our own experience. In the Science of being man is at the very point of opportunity, endowed with power from on high to go forward, inspired by the divine energy which is God, divine Life, Himself. Do not carelessly reject what Christian Science teaches. Through it you can prove that there is health, strength, and safety in every thought and deed which you humbly consecrate to God's will; in every turning away from the fear that matter or human will has power to help you or to harm you. Through this teaching, you can see and hear the angels of His presence, for you stand in the illumination of Christ. Standing in this pure light, spiritual intuitions will come to you to warn you of danger and to save you from it, to avert wrong purposes and to guide your feet aright.
As you make God your daily companion, through the spiritual understanding which Christian Science gives, you will prove beyond all doubt that "the kingdom of God is within you" as the Master declared. You will hear Love's "Come hither!" even when your burden seems heavy and the way dark and lonely. You need never hesitate when you hear this summons. Obey it gladly: it will lead you safely home. It will bring you to the conscious realization that God is your Life, your Mind, your strength, and your sure reward. Press on boldly, rejoicing at every forward step, and you will see fulfilled in your own experience the limitless power of God, good. The Science of God's ever-presence will bring to pass for you all that the prophet foresaw when he declared: "He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil; he shall dwell on high: his place of defence shall be the munitions of rocks: bread shall be given him; his waters shall be sure. Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off."
[Delivered Jan. 22, 1937, at Sixteenth Church of Christ, Scientist, 7201 North Ashland Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, and published in The Chicago Leader, Jan. 7, 1938.]