Carol Norton, C.S.D.
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The Mother
Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
The Grand Opera House was filled with a large and intelligent audience of Capital City people, public officials and members of the legislature on Sunday afternoon to hear Carol Norton, of the Boston Lectureship Board of The First Church of that city, discuss progressive and liberal Christian thought, as expressed through Christian Science.
The third lecture on this subject is given fully below, because the thought is new, and in some respects at variance with popular belief. The lecturer is a distinguished and educated gentleman of one of the old, historic New England families, that has been noted for producing preachers, teachers and fighters for their country, as well as enhanced ideas in all lines of human thought.
Carol Norton is easily in the first rank of public speakers, and was a distinct revelation of what is possible in presenting an aggressive defense of pure Christianity, without in the slightest degree intruding on the sectarian feelings of others, or claiming to have the only step-ladder to heaven. He gave credit to all physicians, surgeons and nurses who are laboring honestly for the alleviation of human suffering, and claimed only to present a better way of doing good, a Christianity with a promise of a greater harvest of benefits to humanity.
Hon. Wm. H. Holmes, a prominent lawyer and public-spirited citizen of Oregon, introduced the speaker:
Ladies and Gentlemen: When I learned that a distinguished speaker was to be with us today, and favor us with an address, it was the occasion of no surprise to me whatever, but when I learned that I had been selected to present him to this audience, I must confess it was more or less of a surprise. I, nevertheless, cheerfully, and without hesitation, accepted the kind invitation.
You are my neighbors, and know that I am not here with any peculiar orthodox notions. I like to see investigation of things, and hear the reason therefor.
The gentleman who is to address you, as I understand it, although I have never had the pleasure of hearing him, never had the pleasure of his acquaintance until a few moments ago, I conceive to be of that class of individuals who undertakes to give a reason for the faith that is in him. Respecting the doctrines which he undertakes to promulgate much hesitation is indulged in, especially with reference to the healing power, which the Science undertakes to carry with it.
I know there are people among us, perhaps in this audience, who regard it as a sacrilege to use the name of Christ and connect it with a science of this sort. The polite way they have of expressing it is to say it is a misnomer. It is not for me to offer any suggestion upon that part of the subject. I am here to make a few introductory suggestions of a personal nature, and allow you to listen to the gentleman whose audience you are.
A great variety of people still inhabit the earth, who are not classed in the category of those who follow the Nazarene. They have their peculiar notions and views upon different subjects; they have inherited them, and there is too much of a disposition, in my estimation, to adhere to the teachings of our forefathers. We are apt to remain too orthodox; we are apt to accept those things as true because we have heard another say so.
Without taking your time further ladies and gentlemen, I take great pleasure in now introducing to you Mr. Norton, who will address you.
Mr. Norton's lecture is given as follows:
Mr Norton said in part:
Can the religion of Jesus Christ be termed an applied Science? Is Christianity capable of rational demonstration? Christian Science, as discovered and founded by Mary Baker Eddy, answers these questions in the affirmative. This afternoon I desire to submit to your just and impartial consideration a series of simple propositions relating to a scientific sense of Christianity. The men and women of this era can no longer be provincial in thought. Modern means of communication with all parts of the globe — the annihilation of space and distance by telescope, telegraph, telephone, cable, wireless telegraphy, increased extension of the world's railroad lines and ocean steamship routes, the modern press, commerce and the progress of popular education — have all joined in one great force toward the delocalizing of human interest, suffering, aspiration and advancement. We think in continents, where our forefathers thought in townships. Mentally we feed the life motion of the larger part of humanity.
The moral sense of life and conduct, as registered in what is known as the Hebrew Moral Code, is the crown Jewel of Hebraic tradition and history. It can be said without extravagance of thought that the essence or spirit of the moral law sits an undisputed ruler over the destiny of the world. What can be denominated the moral sense of life relates essentially to human acts and conduct. Morality in one sense is synonymous with temperance, honesty, mercy, righteousness and self-control, and in another and higher sense it is synonymous of monotheism, or obedience to and worship of a Supreme Being endowed with moral character. A right sense of the moral law as enunciated by Moses and borne witness to by the Major and Minor Prophets of Judaism, reveals Christianity according to its Founder, Jesus of Nazareth, as the logical spiritual outcome of the work of the Law and the Prophets. Hence the words of Jesus, "I come not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it." The Sinai of the Old Testament gave the Ten Commandments. The Sinai of the New the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus proved his genuine loyalty to the law in summing up the whole duty of man as love to God and love to his neighbor. He gave but one new commandment, which can be truly called the Eleventh, when he said: "A new Commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you." But few of the Hebrews of Jesus' time discerned the spirit of the moral law. They clung to its letter, but were asleep to its spirit. From the literal sense of the law Jesus deducted or removed the element of retaliation, which finds its best expression in the phrase, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." His new commandment introduced the element of forgiving affection and included a man's enemies as well as his friends. In a right comprehension of Christianity no sectarian sense of religion can abide. The true sense of spiritual Judiasm inevitably leads to a true sense of Christianity, for the two are one. This marriage was wrought two thousand years ago by a member of the priesthood of Melchisedec, known to men of that day as Jesus the Reformer; to the men of this period as Jesus the Christ. An eminent authority in Judiasm, writing editorially in one of the leading Jewish papers of America, has recently said: "Christianity must stand or fall with Christian Science: the two cannot be logically separated."
The temporary seeming triumph of wrong is often perplexing, but in the cycles of time the operation of cause and effect is inevitable, and right always triumphs, though men are often impatient with the processes of the Eternal. The lawless actor and sensual immoral thinker is not only a law of friction to himself, but is also a social suicide. He allows the lower self, "the old man with his deeds," spoken of by the Christian Apostle Paul, to cruelly and arbitrarily dominate and keep under his real selfhood. Thus his torment, poverty and mental hell are largely self-inflicted. On the other hand, there is too much vicarious suffering in the world — suffering caused by the wrong doing of others often victimizing the innocent — to argue that all suffering is essentially self-inflicted. Upon this perplexing problem Christian Science throws luminous light, "rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's." In the prevention and cure of criminal instinct — prenatalism, heredity, childhood's environment, book and personal companionship and influence demand most exact and prayerful study.
Present day reform methods are often too patient and lenient with such impersonal evils as brute passion, selfishness, fear, mere personal ambition, love of power and cruel methods in human association, and far too impatient and unfeeling with the men and women who are bound by these inborn and, perchance, cultivated evils. We are yet far from Jesus' magnificent and manly capacity to hate the sin and love to his saving the sinner. Sin is its own punishment, and creates its own bottomless pit of misery. Pain and bodily disease in themselves are departments of hell, and in the words of the Bible, "the wages (or payment) of sin is death." Christian Science reveals the action of the law of cause and effect in human affairs, and thereby removes the veil of mystery from the great problem of earthly discord. Herein is the simple reason for its striking growth in Christendom.
The life of Jesus, resplendent in its pure, courageous manhood, was a living protest against the deification of the human passions in the gods and goddesses of the pagans of his era. The commanding presence of the Teacher of Nazareth tended to uncover the materialistic religious tendencies of the day as a great light illumines the dark corners of a room. He sounded the heights and depths of Love, he lived Love, breathed its healing atmosphere, and revealed its union with the right sense of justice. This same abiding, saving, healing love bases, surrounds and inspires the work of Christian Science. Herein is its spiritual animus.
Christianity, according to Christ, is a system of thought, rather than one of dogmas. The religion of Jesus worked physical marvels through metaphysical processes. Practical operative Christian Science, as set forth in the writings of Mrs. Eddy, operates in exactly the same way. Upon this beneficent operation it is destined to rear the religion of the future. Jesus taught the idea of God as universal Spirit, as omnipotent Truth. The worship of such a God must mean the destruction of all evil through the operation of Good, and the superseding of the life of sense by that of Soul or Mind. Jesus never taught that the evils of the world were the growing pains of Good or that evil was good in the making, but at all times dealt with it as a negative element void of actuality or power of its own. Hence his words, "Be not overcome of evil but overcome evil with Good." Christianity according to Jesus is constructive, generous, loving, and its homeland is the spiritual kingdom within the purified mind of man and woman. The spiritual code of Christ relates especially to the thought world and demands that men shall have a mental moral code as well as a physical moral code.
Christianity, according to Christ, healed moral disease and depravity by the application of the curative principle of Good. The teachings, methods and life of Christ healed bodily disease, functional and organic, by the same method. The universal life of all that is real is God. Therefore, Nature in its real sense is synonymous with God, and if a law of Nature cures, God is the Healer. Herein abides the simple naturalness of the miscalled miracles recorded in the New Testament. Herein again exists a glad message to the humanity of this era, second only in importance to the sin-healing message of Christianity. All life being energetic or mental, it is resident in Mind. Therefore a sick, disordered body should be brought under the healing operation of the law of divine Creation or Mind, in the same sense that a watch needing repairs would naturally be taken to its maker, a jeweler, rather than to a blacksmith. Drug cures made of poisons and all allied physical or materialistic methods aiming at the cure of functional and organic disease and the establishment and maintenance of physical health among men find neither sanction nor foundation in Christianity according to Christ. The earnest men and women who practice and rely upon these methods are often from the moral and humanitarian stand point enthusiasts, for the betterment of humanity, but the misery caused by the continuation and spread of new forms of physical disease demand a restoration of the undivided garment of Christ, i.e., the physical healing as well as the moral regeneration.
Pertinently writes Rev. George C. Lorimer, of the Baptist Tremont Temple of Boston, Mass.: "On the theme of healing the Scriptures are definite and pronounced. The Almighty is over and over again presented as the source of strength and as the supreme cause of health. God, the ultimate Healer, will be more fully recognized as science attains to its maturity. Among curative agencies blessed of God a very high rank must be assigned to the moral and the spiritual. The ideal of a pure manhood is a long step as a help to healing. When the spiritual is supreme and Christians have little time to think of themselves or their cares, and when they are fully occupied with celestial visions, they usually keep well and hearty."
Does Christian Science respect and honor the humanitarian work of all honest physicians, surgeons, nurses and those who labor for the alleviation of human suffering?
Answer — It does.
Is Christian Science identical with the faith cure, mind cure, hypnotism, animal magnetism, or what is known as suggestive therapeutics?
Answer — It is the antipode of these methods.
Is Christian Science healing synonymous with the practice of medicine?
Answer — No it is not.
Why is it not synonymous with the practice of medicine?
Answer — In the words of the recent decision of the supreme court of Rhode Island, "Medicine in the popular sense, is a remedial substance. The practice of medicine as ordinarily or popularly understood consists of preventing, alleviating and curing disease or pain. It rests largely in the sciences of anatomy, physiology and hygiene; it requires a knowledge of disease, its origin, its anatomical and physiological features and its causative relations; and further, it requires a knowledge of drugs, their preparation and action. Popularly it consists in the discovery of the cause and nature of disease, and the demonstration of remedies or the prescribing or treatment therefor.
"Prayer for those suffering from disease, or words of encouragement, or the teaching that disease will disappear and physical perfection be attained as a result of prayer or that humanity will be brought into harmony with God by right thinking and a fixed determination to look on the bright side of life does not constitute the practice of medicine in the popular sense."
True spirituality includes bodily health, for a normal mind will make a body of like nature. Physical pain benumbs clear thinking. The spread of organic and functional diseases tends to increase depression, fear, sorrow and mortality among the sons of men. With holiness comes wholeness, with wholeness health, with erect moral and spiritual stature. Herein alone is apparent man in a state of natural existence, with practical dominion over his body as well as his morals. He who, bound by despair and manacled with chains of misery, has drunk at the refreshing and invigorating fountain of Christian Science healing after all else has failed to cure, alone knows the heights and depths of this solemn and sacred Truth. Such a one has practically tasted and proved for himself that God is Good, the healer of the physical body as well as of the moral organism of character. Let thoughts of purity, loving kindness, patience, unselfishness and honesty displace in a man's consciousness thoughts of sensuality, quick temper, dishonesty, and selfishness, and he will find himself capable of healing the sick through the power of divine Mind. He will thus be able to demonstrate to the world that the Ruler of the Universe is a working God, and can say of his reform and healing work, as Jesus said of his, "It is not I but the Father: the Father worketh hitherto, and I work." To these glorious truths Christian Science [bears witness. To the spread of these] saving ideals the Christian Science movement is committed.
The human history of the ages is the record of man's increasing and ascending escape from his lower self. The business world of Christendom, expanding amidst the tremendous financial and commercial development of the era in which we live, is showing inspiring signs of acquiring more humane methods in the daily intercourse peculiar to business life between man and man.
Business methods need not only purification and elevation to a higher plane of honesty, justice and moral rectitude, but need to be freed from current methods of harshness, cruelty, intrigue, cut short methods, which in countless instances work havoc to the health and peace of mind of those participating in business detail. There is too much of the Shylock spirit and too little of the element of mercy; too much of the insatiable desire for the historic "pound of flesh" and too little of the spirit of "other ism" — the just consideration of the other man's side in the operation of the Golden Rule. While many assert that competition is the life of trade and that the genius of competition is the outrunning of one's neighbor in the survival of the fittest, yet modern industrial expansion, permeated as it is with the spirit of modern society, is more and more introducing the element of human co-operation, and, through it, proving that the purely selfish spirit is one of practical loss, not gain. In notable instances wealth is nobly meeting its obligations. Greed, undue love of money, envy, heartless ambition and cruel methods in defending one's rights, or gaining one's desired end, are essentially remnants of crude selfdom. They are in reality no part of human self-preservation even in this world, and certainly not in that which is to come. The reasonable protection of one's interest never demands the heartless sacrifice of another. The humanity of Jesus and the logic of life brand this cruel philosophy as of earthly parentage.
Well says our deeply respected Chief Magistrate, President Roosevelt:
"Each man must work for himself, and unless he so works, no outside help can avail him; but each man must remember also that he is indeed his brother's keeper, and that while no man who refuses to walk can be carried with advantage to himself or anyone else, yet that each at times needs to have the helping hand outstretched to him."
The worldwide advance of moral civilization evolves new responsibilities for the individual. Our so-called civilization needs Christianizing. Human passions and hate, the spirit of retaliation and the surviving promptings of brute force in human nature are invariably found arguing for the perpetuation of human warfare as a means for settling international disputes and righting wrongs. On the other hand, the general growth in human consciousness of such soul elements as mercy, love of and reverence for law, order and humanitarian modes of dealing with the affairs of individuals and nations tend to minimize the possibility of war and encourage peace methods of arbitration for economic as well as politico-ethical reasons. The latent thought of "might as right" and the inherent selfishness of the mind of mortals when no longer allowed by advancing humanity to sacrifice the best interests of the race to the god of war, desert the plane of physical warfare to take final stand on the mental plane. Herein is the sane explanation of the causes of prevalent commercial feudalism, monopolistic greed, tariff warfare, reprisals, and the evil spirit of I-am-holier-than-thou-ness. Christianity as an applied science through the introduction of the Golden Rule standard of conduct will democratize our whole social structure, reveal the rights of man and give equal possibility of advancement to both sexes. The present epoch is teeming with evidences of the new Era of man's just rights. On every hand are signs of the Golden Age of human co-operation.
There are cheering signs of a general reaction from much of the scientific materialism of the 19th century. During its early days the world of Jewish, agnostic and Christian thought went through an extreme reaction from the primitive and crude ideas of a special providential creation, a personal God ruling through arbitrary law and a youthful universe and race but a few thousand years old. Organic material evolution explains neither the origin nor ultimate of individual man, nor even that of any single identity of life in the universe. It is at best but the record of an observed mode or process. Prof. Max Muller writes: "Before there was a single tree someone must have thought the tree. * * * Evolution can never be more than the second act; the first act is the Volition or Thought of the universe, unless we hold that there can be an effect without a cause, or a Cosmos without a Logos."
The scientifically Christian disposition of the truth of evolutionary philosophy is neither iconoclastic nor condemnatory. A scientific grasp of the philosophy of Jesus resolves the general question into one of reality, of cause and effect. It enters into a rational, intermediate position, explains the gradations of phenomenon as they rise in the scale of Being from minutiae up to the grandeur of infinite Individuality as Mind. We are emerging from the dark ages in our theories relating to Cause, to true creation and the immortality of man. We no longer prostrate ourselves before everything that is labeled scientific, nor make of this word a fetish.
"The test of civilization is the estimate of woman," said George William Curtis. The civilization of the twentieth century is meeting this test and is not found wanting. Men and women are bursting the bonds of traditional serfdom and rising to their native dignity and dominion as creatures of Soul, not sense; of Spirit, not matter. William M. Salter sounds the keynote of genuine sex co-operation when he writes: "The true wealth of a State is not in its dollars, but in the self-conscious citizenship; in those who know the laws and obey them, and make for better laws; in its men — and this includes women. It is not maleness, but humanity that is the true basis of a State." Character constitutes the stability of society and character is not a thing of sex, but of inherent native divinity in the image and likeness of the eternal US, the Father-Mother, God.
Both manhood and womanhood exist above and apart from their material counterfeits. The time is rapidly approaching when men will be rated, not according to their wealth in worldly possessions, in mere executive ability or moneys possessed, but according to their character, moral courage, compassion, chastity and kindliness of thought and action, and the entire absence from their thoughts, words and acts of the brutal elements of passion, appetite, quick temper, the spirit of arbitrary domination, dishonesty and harsh brusqueness. The right and true type of manhood is rapidly gaining the ascendency in human affairs and the Christ stature is steadily becoming the unfolding model for all men. The manly man possesses the strenuousness of spirituality. He is mighty in love and Love's sweet nobility. He possesses the moral courage of "the lion of the tribe of Judah." This moral courage is tempered with kindliness of spirit and moderation in action, blending mercy with justice and love with moral righteousness. He is at all times found as an intelligent, spiritual partisan. The rise of woman to her rightful place as man's equal, with true independent feminine individuality, is manifesting itself in all departments of human existence. Triumphant spiritual democracy makes this result inevitable.
According to the Biblical record of creation, the origin of male and female was simultaneous through the operation of the eternal Spirit. As manhood's worst enemy is the so-called lower self or Adam man, or, as Paul puts it, "the flesh lusting against the spirit," so woman's worst enemy is the woman of the flesh, the mortal actuated by sense as contrasted with the woman of the Spirit. Women as well as men should pray to be delivered from wrong tendencies both within and without. Because there is no sex in righteousness, there is no sex in evil. Men can only pay the race debt to righteous womanhood by "keeping themselves unspotted from the world." They will then manifest on an ascending scale the manliness of the Christ standard, and learn Love's plan for Her creatures.
Christian Science is not an invention, but a spiritual discovery. It is the recovery of the primitive power of the religion of Jesus. The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science alone knows the spiritual cost of this recovery. The reappearance in human affairs of a lost art invariably meets, not only with opposition, but often with temporary rejection. That which is as old as the everlasting hills, because for a while lost sight of, is erroneously hailed as something new and revolutionary. The religiously catholic is denominated heterodox and the beneficial for a time considered harmful. The moral reformers throughout the ages encounter the same obstacles, though in different forms. Prejudice, conservatism and ignorance intrench themselves behind walls of unjust criticism, blind rejection and doubting investigation. But the march of events and the accumulation of evidence gradually permeates the thought which arrays itself against its own best interests, and progress takes the place of stagnation, prejudgment and opposition.
That Christian Science is a Comforter to sin-bound, weary and diseased humanity is abundantly shown by the widespread comfort that it distributes with Love's generous hand to the heavily laden sons and daughters of earth. It heals the sick, weak body and floods with the light of strength, hope and heavenly certainty the mind shut within the tomb of living death and hopelessness. It liberalizes thought, interprets art, democratizes human methods of association and church government, quickens the moral sense and reveals the Saviour of man as ever present in the Spirit of Truth to heal and cure. Christian Science enables the former agnostic to say, "I know," the infidel, "I believe," and the metaphysical dreamer "I rationally understand." Christian Science heals sin by destroying it. It separates the tares of pagan ideas about God, man, health, this earth world, and the future life, from the wheat of Hebrew-Christian spiritual teaching.
There is no real prejudice against the restoration to health of a suffering, hopeless human being. There is no opposition in the mind of a humane man or woman to a spiritual educational process, that transforms, purifies and upbuilds moral character, thereby ushering men and women into the righteous realm of useful living, charity, and loving fraternity. There is no hatred of an interpretation of Christ's teaching that makes the Bible the most loved book in the homes of hundreds of thousands of people. Nobody is against a system of religious teaching that proclaims true loyalty to Christ as obedience to his commands to heal and reform men through spiritual God-given means alone. On this whole earth there is no real opposition to such good works as these. Therefore, there is no well founded opposition to the activities of Christian Science, for such is its work. But there is and will continue to be prejudice against many erroneous theories and methods often confounded with it. Christian Science is based on the inspired word of the Scriptures. It declares the immanence of God and the perpetual efficacy of Christ's atonement.
Christianity, as Jesus lived, taught and demonstrated it, and the scientific demonstration of Christian Science made manifest in the healing of disease and the destruction of sin through the power of God, are one. Popular criticism of Christian Science assumes many phases and pronounces almost countless judgments on its teaching and work. It is not infrequently asserted that Christian Science is but a passing fad, craze or mental epidemic. The world of humanity is heart-hungry, health-hungry and spiritually hungry. Christian Science satisfies this hunger with something practical. It is, therefore, not strange that an interpretation of the teachings of Christ that appeals to the masses should move with momentous force among the peoples of earth. A health epidemic is better than a disease epidemic, and moral, spiritual and health contagion are better than that of immorality, materiality and disease. Therefore, Christian Science is neither a fad, craze, nor a mortal mind epidemic. The Christian Science movement, its churches, institutional expansion and activity, its healing and reformatory work are often referred to as the growth of a cult or as one of the new sects of Christendom. Acquaintance with the ethical and spiritual standards of Christian Science, intimate knowledge of its curative therapeutics, would at once dissipate this type of misjudgment.
Christian Science as the Science of Christianity, is already unifying Christians, Jews and all intermediate types of thought in one grand brotherhood and fellowship under the spiritual leadership of Jesus Christ as interpreted through the luminous writings of Mrs. Eddy. The human mind phenomenon of spiritualism, mind-reading, clairvoyance, and thought-transference are physical or mental antipodes of Christian Science teaching, which not only denies the possibility of intercommunication between the dead and the living, but classifies and correctly interprets the subdivisions of mortal mind. Theosophy, a modernized form of Buddhism, partaking of many of the essential elements of oriental metaphysics, in premise, trend and deduction, wholly differs from the philosophy and teachings of Christian Science. Previous material incarnations are explicitly denied by Christian Science and the idea of Nirvana has no place in its idea of heaven or in the eternal unfolding perfection of man as the image and likeness of God.
Faith cure, prayer healing, anointing-with-oil healing and so-called divine healing are one and all based on the idea that God is not only cognizant of human suffering and woe, but allows it for some good and wise purpose. These systems appeal to God as a humanized personal Creator, and affirm that if there is enough faith in God's willingness to heal, He will reward such faith in given instances by bringing about the recovery of a sufferer. Drugs and material methods are not infrequently associated with these modes of so-called mental healing, and the essential scientific teachings of Christian Science vigorously denied by their adherents.
Mortal or human mind cure, mental science, auto-suggestion and suggestive therapeutics in varying form and in different degree use the cultivated will power or strength of the human mind of the individual as a curative instrument. The operation of this system of so-called mental healing is accompanied with reactionary effects which harm both physically and morally. Much that is denominated mind cure or mental science is a modernized form of Stoicism, in common parlance, the philosophy of smiling and bearing. Without doubt many minor pains and ills can be for a time subjugated and controlled by mere will power or strengthened mortal thought. For the destruction of sin and the healing of disease that have their origin in sin, or for the thorough cure of the listed incurable organic and functional diseases, the human mind is utterly powerless. At just this point those systems fail to apprehend or reach the fundamental premise of Christian Science, which heals where they can not and do not.
Mesmerism, animal magnetism and hypnotism, are three terms for the same material mental element. Reverse the term animal magnetism, and straightway is set forth the magnetism of instinct. This magnetism constitutes the occultism of error, and is a world-menace to the best interests of moral civilization, individual progress and spiritual advancement of the race. Modern hypnotism is but the methodical use of this element. Because of this fact it is an enemy to health and morals, to individual self-government, and as a system is one of mental interference, magnetic control and of questionable and detrimental therapeutic value.
O, may that heartless offspring of human selfishness — ingratitude — not blot, as of old, the fair page of present Christian history. May we all grasp, even if faintly, humanity's debt to the great labor of the woman and womanhood, to whose tireless toil is traceable the rich blessings that are coming to a needy world through operative Christian Science. Woman's touch is ever chaste and gentle. Her spiritual message always one of love. Her historic and present part in the great drama of life is essentially that of service, ministry, and soulful pure affection. How could a woman Scribe, listening to the still voice of the Most High, let her pen record any but a womanly interpretation of the Mother-heart of God. From the uplands of practical as well as intuitional spiritual understanding, Mary Baker Eddy wrote Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. The good that her life, teachings and books are accomplishing amply proves the scientific and Christian character of Christian Science. Her life work is spiritually heroic, and humanity is her debtor. Mrs. Eddy's place in history is born of work already accomplished. Her spiritual viewpoint, authorship and righteous philanthropy settle the nature of her leadership. The demonstration of her teachings prove their scientific basis. The textbook of Christian Science announces monotheistic Christianity in its purity and elucidates an exact curative and spiritual Science. The work and moral fiber of her honest pure-minded and lovingly kind followers and fellow toilers in life's vineyard prove the power of Christian Science to make new Puritans in Christendom, men and women alive to all that is beautiful and pure, loving and of good report.
[Delivered Feb. 1, 1903, at The Grand Opera House of Salem, Oregon, and published in The Daily Journal of Salem, Feb. 2, 1903. A couple of lines of text inadvertently omitted by the typesetters, set off in brackets in the text above, have been supplied from another copy of the lecture. The lecture title, not given in this account, is, however, given in accounts in other newspapers. Several very long paragraphs were broken up into smaller paragraphs for this transcript.]