Peter V. Ross, C.S.B., of San Francisco, California
Member
of the Board of Lectureship of The Mother Church,
The
First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
Given under the auspices of First Church of Christ, Scientist,
Kalamazoo, Michigan, at Central High School Auditorium on Tuesday, November 18,
1941.
Mr. Ross spoke substantially as follows:
In presenting me to an audience the other evening the Chairman was optimistic enough to say:
"This lecture will lead your thought Godward." Human thought is rather inclined toward
weariness and infirmity and injustice and lack of appreciation. This is why
distress and discouragement seem to become formidable. We help to make them so
appear by placing undue emphasis on them. We should turn thought to their
opposites, that is, we should throw all our emphasis on Life and its promise,
its richness, its satisfaction. More and more then will heaviness and suffering
fade out of experience. For one to be mindful of integrity is for one to forget
all about dishonesty. Likewise, for one to immerse one's self in the glories of
unending Life is to make pain and mortality obsolete.
Turning thought toward Life amounts to turning thought toward God, because God and Life are one and the same. The New Testament abounds with assertions to the effect that God is Life. Reason and observation confirm this pronouncement. For is not Life universal and indisputable? It is the one absolute fact. You may doubt many things. You may doubt everything — almost. But you never doubt that you live.
Along with the certainty of Life runs its continuity. People speak of life, thoughtlessly, as coming and going. But a moment's reflection will convince any one that Life does not come, it does not go. In other words Life is, it was, it will be. It is without beginning of days or end of years. You are living this Life today, in reality: there is no other.
Beginning and ending are alike impostors. They do not mark the confines of man's existence. No individual has any knowledge or recollection of his own beginning. He cannot have because an endless Life has no end in either direction. Eternity is as long one way as the other. Is this not why no one has any information either about starting or finishing his course.
Life is self-existent. It is not caused; it is not created. God does not make life; God is Life. Hence it is that Life must be diseaseless, ageless, imperishable. Disease and dissolution cannot be ascribed to God or to eternal Life. Spiritual man, and truly there is no other, as presently will be brought out, is the expression of this Life. He is the highest witness to its presence. Really therefore sickness and infirmity cannot molest him — cannot molest you. Disease is seeming or mesmeric rather than actual. Hence its curability in Christian Science, discovered and founded by Mary Baker Eddy.
Man does not have to leave the present world and take up his abode in a more favored realm in order to come into the enjoyment of eternal Life. He is endued with that Life here and now. So far as the individual realizes his identity with endless Life, and he can begin to realize it today, he will rise above fears, restrictions, miseries. He will emerge into the domain of confidence, strength, freedom, everlastingness.
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in exalting Jesus above all other teachers, describes him as made "after the power of an endless life." The chief handicap with men and women, generally, lies in their willingness to believe that they are of mortal origin and therefore subject to the limitations that go with materiality. This belief can be broken by any individual who chooses to recognize his divine origin and to maintain that as the image and likeness of God he has the qualities and the powers of endless Life.
How understandable, yet profound, is the speech, or rather the conversation, which grows out of the visit of Nicodemus to Jesus on the slope of Olivet in the silent hours of night. Nicodemus has heard of the sayings and doings of the Revered Teacher in and about Jerusalem. Now he has come to ask, "How can these things be?" "Except a man be born again," urges Jesus, "born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Then pointing to the swaying olive branch overhead he symbolizes: "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit."
An individual content with the belief that man is born of the flesh can entertain no more than a limited, inaccurate concept of himself and of his environment. He is bound to assume that existence is material and obstructed. Whereas the individual who has roused himself to the recognition that he is born of the Spirit beholds the unobstructed realm in which he is a free and unrestricted inhabitant.
Are there then two universes and two types of men? Not at all. The unillumined mentality fancies that man is material and mortal and that the world he lives in is of like quality. Whereas, the illumined mentality sees man as a spiritual immortal, unfettered and unafraid. Not two men, not two universes, but two appraisals of man and of the universe — the one true, the other false.
No fallacy works more mischief than duality. In the eternal oneness of things lies individual dominion: one God, who is Spirit; one universe and that immaterial and unobstructed; one man, and he spiritual, faultless, inextinguishable.
Duality has the effrontery to define man as soul and body, when, in fact, man is one and that one is consciousness — "an individual consciousness," to use Mrs. Eddy's precise words (Science and Health, page 76.) Appraising man as consciousness rather than corporeality we see why it is that he grows by the quality of thought he entertains and by the standard of conversation he carries on with himself. To think healthfully, intelligently, righteously — to abide in faith, hope, charity — is to be absent from material appearances and present with reality. Then it is that human consciousness clarifies and ascends. There is no limit to the height it may reach. Boundless freedom is the ultimate. The dream or mesmerism of materiality and mortality, thus repudiated, fades out.
He who glimpses the unobstructed world of reality, the boundless Life in which he moves and has his being, forgets his pain, his fear, his despair, his remorse. He gets to know himself as he is, a spiritual identity. He learns how safe and friendly is the universe of Spirit in which he dwells. The nation in peril, uplifted by days of fervent expectant prayer, is delivered from its enemies. The Red Sea adventure is not a legend. Nor is Dunkirk a miracle. Each furnishes an example of an entire nation lifted out of a supposititious world of danger into the actual world of security. How close is security after all, involving, as it does, only a change in human consciousness, brought about by a faith that approximates spiritual understanding.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Renowned Leader of the Christian Science movement, never made a more discerning observation than this: "Outside the material sense of things, all is harmony" (Science and Health, page 489).
Safety is not a question of place but of understanding. Jesus and Peter are only a few yards apart as they walk the waves of Galilee. They tread the same water; they are subject to the same laws. Presently doubt weighs down the valiant apostle and materiality wins — for a moment. But Jesus puts himself, and his confused disciple, beyond the reach of gravity by knowing that man is a spiritual being in a spiritual realm where material forces do not operate. Spiritual man, or true selfhood, can no more be influenced by the law of gravitation than can the multiplication table.
What distinguishes Jesus from other men and women? Simply this: Jesus finds himself. He discovers that he is the Son of God. A like discovery awaits every growing individual. Says Emily Dickinson:
We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies.
The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king.
Spiritual growth, with the freedom which if brings, is a slow process, confessedly. No one in these days pretends to have arrived. But every individual who orders his thought and conduct in accordance with divine Principle has set out in the right direction. Political, economic, and social freedom paves the way. The Christian Scientist is therefore intensely interested in these institutions. He loses no opportunity to advance them through energetic moral and tangible support. He finds that he can seldom do that which is absolutely right. He therefore chooses that which is nearest right in the circumstances, hopefully looking forward to the time when he may attain the absolute. He can never be charged, by practical men, with standing idly by in the presence of vital issues.
Sound idealism recognizes that the loss of social, political, or economic freedom jeopardizes spiritual freedom. Hence it is that the Christian is never an appeaser or compromiser when liberty is at stake. Christianity and spirituality mellow the individual, most assuredly, but in so doing they do not deprive him of the insight, the alertness, the courage, and the resolution, that go with patriotism.
People cannot be brought en masse into the liberty of the sons and daughters of God. One by one must they come through experience born of intelligent effort in the way made clear by Christian Science. There must be a development of worthiness and soulfulness in individuals before there can be lasting capacity for any kind of freedom. And the status, once attained, can be preserved only by being prized and practiced vigilantly, constantly, industriously, prayerfully. The unused talent is lost. If the artisan abandons his craft does not his right hand forget its cunning? Travelers during and following the World War were impressed with the efficiency of girls at the ticket window and information desk. These new duties, which had become drudgery to men, were play to newly emancipated women.
When citizens neglect to participate in politics in order that they may pursue the adventure of business or professional careers, democracy is sure to wane. Likewise, if Christians do not practice their professions, Christianity must lose its vitality. "Faith without works is dead." The totalitarians assume that this period of decadence has arrived. They reckon that the hour has struck for demolishing democratic and Christian civilization.
Greatly do they err. Militant materialism, destitute of rationality, must go down in confusion and defeat when challenged by the moral and spiritual forces of Christian Science. "The Lord God omnipotent reigneth" is not sounding brass. Neither is the assurance, "He disappointeth the devices of the crafty." The Bible promises are kept, because they are more than promises, they are undefeatable facts.
The zeal and enthusiasm for democracy and things spiritual must be recaptured. Lethargy and inertia have brought them perilously near the precipice. There is still time to arouse ourselves and act heroically, but none too much. "Awake thou that sleepest," cries Paul, "and Christ shall give thee light." Every individual should fervently pray that this nation proceed wisely and swiftly in the crisis. Each day he should set aside time to realize: "God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved."
His prayer should extend to insisting that men and women in places of responsibility will have the courage and resourcefulness to play their part in the world drama. Does not His presence accompany civilians and soldiers alike, and from it can they not gather strength, guidance, and protection commensurate with the demands of the occasion? The forces of evil carry within themselves the seeds of their own destruction. They have no intelligence. They border on lunacy. We should say and know these things, consistently and expectantly. The truth thereby released will not return void. It is the word of God which accomplishes that whereunto it is sent.
We should be on our guard against mental aggression from outside sources. Designing individuals and groups try, inaudibly, either to suppress or direct people and even entire nations. Sometimes this practice produces the lethargy we have been discussing. Sometimes it takes on even more mischievous forms. But there is no occasion for alarm; only occasion for alertness and the active, intelligent realization of the allness of good and the consequent impotence of evil.
An outstanding President of the United States of America, Woodrow Wilson, when warned of the silent unseen hostility of opponents, remarked, in effect: There is no mind to think or voice this enmity; no medium to transmit it; no audience to entertain it. These keen observations hint a technique for successful defense against malicious thought. Divine Mind cannot conceive or project it. Nor can enlightened man feel or harbor its thrusts. "Clad in the panoply of Love," assures Mrs. Eddy, "human hatred cannot reach you" (Science and Health, page 571). "Be still," then, "and know that I am God." Here we have the impenetrable shield of faith.
We are not helpless in the confusion and turmoil of the times. We have the ability to extinguish the fanatical influences bent on abolishing freedom of thought and action. And our weapon is of the sort that the mental aggressor cannot see or cope with. It is the verity that Principle — intelligent, animate, benevolent Principle — governs in all times and in all places, tolerating not one unprincipled thing in the universe. This recognition of the reign of law enables us to walk the earth in dignity.
Leaders in labor, in business, in politics must learn that the Eternal directs the affairs of this world. He rules today, just as He has always done, regardless of the attempted rule of selfishness, strife, tyranny. His is the only government. Ultimately it will be seen to prevail. The power usurped by despot and racketeer will depart, as did the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar, and they will be driven from men till their reason returns. For one to recognize these truisms, and to insist upon their dynamic quality, is for one to have part in arousing public opinion to wise and energetic action.
Fear, more than any other foe, impedes mankind. It is fear that freezes the abilities of the individual; and incapacitates him from going out in the world to achieve the fine things he dreams. It is fear that freezes the functions of one's economy, causing illness and infirmity. It is fear that argues for peace when there is no peace. The major fear of all is the fear of coming to an end. Let any man come into the sublime conception that Life, the very life that animates him, is self-existent and endless, and he takes on an intelligent courage which rounds out and enriches his existence.
He becomes a better artisan, a
better business man, a better citizen, a better soldier in every field of
endeavor. To him the selfishness of isolation, the littleness of appeasement,
the trepidation of defeatism are unthinkable. Men assigned to places of
supposed danger should realize, through the teachings of Christian Science,
that spiritual man, and genuinely there is no other, is quite out of reach of
the machinations of evil and the enginery of war. A woman in her home can help
to keep her men folk at the front safe under the shadow of the Almighty by
realizing this fact.
Not long ago a woman settled herself comfortably in the auditorium to get the most she could out of this lecture. Presently a man struggled in, leaning on two canes. He seated himself nearby and uneasily waited for the discourse to begin. She became so disturbed that she feared the occasion would be ruined for her. The lecture had not proceeded far when she forgot all about the man and her irritation.
As she stood up at the end of the hour she saw the man walking toward the exit. "Mister, you have forgotten your sticks!" she exclaimed. "Will you leave me alone?" he rejoined, "I have something else to think about;" and he strode along as unincumbered as those about him. For in following the argument from the platform he had got better acquainted with himself than he had ever been before. He had discovered, to use a homely expression, that man is well made — built of qualities enduring and unimpairable. He had discerned, in some measure, that since man is spiritual, his integrity cannot be touched. Surely it is not too much for one to say, "I am well made," for is it not written "Man is the noblest work of God"?
Socrates was perfectly right when he used to advise, "Know thyself," since if a man gets really to understand himself he will lose his supposed impediments and miseries. Every individual is much of a mystery to himself. He would like to be conversant with his biography, so to speak. The best biography of man ever published, if we except the Gospel of John, may be found in that celebrated book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," written by Mary Baker Eddy some sixty or seventy years ago. Page after page refers to spiritual, perfect, immortal man. This man is your true selfhood. Therefore when you read this volume you read about yourself.
This explains why people like to study Science and Health; every person likes to ascertain the facts about himself. This explains too why people are healed reading the book; they find themselves, to learn that truly they are whole, sound, intact. Thousands have been healed reading Mrs. Eddy's writings; other thousands will be healed by the same process in the future.
Mary Baker Eddy has stated fundamental truths, revealed to her from the Bible, as they have never been stated before. Her Science and Health is the outstanding volume of modern times. Its influence on human thought has been tremendous and is still under way. The book can be found in all Christian Science Reading Rooms and in most public libraries.
On page 470 she says, "Man is the expression of God's being." We have attached a certain remoteness to Deity by referring to Him as the Supreme Being, when in fact God is Being itself, your being. Suffering must abate when you come into this realization of your identity with harmonious Life. Life must be expressed. Where? At its highest in individual men and women. God must be. But where? Paul answers: "There is . . . one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." Few exercises are more exhilarating than for one to realize, as understandingly and as reverently as possible, the indwelling presence of exuberant and irrepressible Life. Here is the fervent prayer of the righteous man which availeth much.
It must be perfectly clear, to one who indulges for a moment in self-examination, that man is mental, mental all the way through. This explains why mental and spiritual treatment reaches every nook and corner of his being and puts to flight every lurking sense of pain or disorder. The fact that you are mental explains why the argument of this hour searches every avenue of your economy, making crooked places straight, substituting strength for weakness, establishing hope and confidence in place of anxiety and despair.
On page 475 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy defines man as "the conscious identity of being." Two pages farther on she asks, "What are body and Soul?" In reply she states: "Identity is the reflection of Spirit, the reflection in multifarious forms of the living Principle, Love. Soul is the substance, Life, and intelligence of man, which is individualized, but not in matter." It may be doubted if profounder statements in relation to man have ever been uttered. No attempt here to explain man's identity in terms of corporeality. True identity, yours, "is the reflection of Spirit." So ends liability to disease and danger.
Turning again to page 475, we find that the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science describes man as "the compound idea of God, including all right ideas." Really, then, man is a composite reflection of all God's qualities — the qualities of resplendent Life, Mind, Soul, Principle, words so frequently used by Christian Science in defining Deity.
What are these qualities? Vigor, courage, intelligence, integrity, sympathy, and a score of others that will readily occur to you. Enumerate them, gratefully acknowledge that they are yours as the Eternal's witness. Almost immediately will you feel uplifted because you have identified yourself, as you should, with divine Principle, which in its full signification is Mind, Life, and Love.
When Paul was in this mood he wrote, in his graphic and colorful way, "Ye are the temple of the living God." A temple is a place where people gather. Gathered in your spiritual self are the vitalities, and graces of unending Life. All of which reminds us of Jesus' pronouncement, "I and my Father are one." If a drop of water in the Mississippi River could speak, it would proclaim, "I and the Mississippi are one;" and the chemist would confirm the statement, for he knows that centered in a single drop are all the properties of the Father of Waters. The drop is in the river, yes, but the river is in the drop. You are in the mighty river of Life. It envelopes you; it permeates you; you are inseparable from it. Can the wave be disjoined from the water? No more can you be detached from self-existent Life. You are one with it.
The oneness of man with Life triumphant presents itself in three aspects: first, a oneness in quality; second, a oneness of inseparability; third, a oneness in this, that Life and its expression constitute a completeness, a wholeness, which Christian Science describes as perfect God and perfect man.
Talk to yourself as you have just been invited to talk, and you will give yourself an effective treatment. Or talk in the same vein to another who asks for treatment, and you will start him on the road to freedom. In fact you have just been receiving, from the platform, forty minutes of Christian Science treatment, as a result of which you will not walk out of the auditorium the same person you were when you entered. You should expect to leave behind some of the years, some of the depression, some of the aches and pains, some of the poundage that hamper your movement.
What has been said of the freedom and perfection of man has of course been said in relation to spiritual and immortal man. Mortal and material man can claim none of the glory. He is no more than a misinterpretation of genuine manhood. He is the old man that Paul in his poetic way counsels us to put off. We say poetic way because, in a realistic sense, there is no such creature. Man cannot be dualized.
As we talk this language we turn thought Godward. We allow that Mind which was in Christ Jesus to speak through us and to endue us with the graciousness and the power which animated him. This all-knowing, compassionate Mind knows your needs and satisfies them. As Jesus himself once said, "Your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things." What things? Health, hopefulness, endurance, opportunity, work, business, attractiveness, friends, companions. Idleness, loneliness, despondency should be ruled out. Little by little they will be ruled out by the individual who stops voicing them and talks as we have been talking tonight. You can make this change from an idle, devastating conversation with yourself to an invigorating constructive conversation before the day ends. To do this is to repent, that is to change your mind and talk sensibly. Tremendous is the effect.
He who recognizes the availability of divine Mind, and turns to it asking guidance and direction, will take on a fuller capacity for achievement. That Mind will release in him the thoughts and ideas which will enable him, to solve the problems and master the difficulties which try to obstruct progress. In this way the individual makes divine intelligence his intelligence.
We must not forget that divine Mind is everywhere and in command of every situation small or great. Mind is in the highways we travel, in the shops where we work, in the homes where we dwell. We should recognize that Mind is enforcing right activity in these places. It directs traffic. It directs the other ordinary affairs of life. We can help to abolish accidents and make our premises safe by realizing this protective might of Mind.
The matchless spiritual discernment which enabled Mary Baker Eddy to discover Christian Science was combined with an amazing genius for organization which qualified her to make her discovery an unexampled institution for human betterment. The Mother Church which she established has branches encircling the globe. The periodicals she inaugurated are beacon lights of faith and freedom for the nations of the world. The columns of the Christian Science Sentinel and The Christian Science Journal are a perpetual reminder to readers of their dominion over the ills of the flesh. While The Christian Science Monitor, an international daily newspaper, is a most sagacious and courageous advocate of liberty. In no instance perhaps has the Founder of the Christian Science movement shown keener insight than in placing the control of her Church in the hands of five Directors. They have always displayed and are still displaying extraordinary wisdom and faithfulness in directing the affairs of the organization. As a result Christian Science is exerting a tremendous influence for good throughout the world.
It is a favorite saying that Jesus "spake as never man spake." It can as truthfully be said of Mary Baker Eddy that few teachers, if any, since his time, have spoken with the power, the beauty of language, the heartening effect on the disconsolate that this distinguished woman has spoken, putting forth the
Word of Life, most pure, most strong,
Lo, for thee the nations long;
Spread, till from its dreary night
All the world awakes to light.
C. S. Hymnal 394
Years ago there was a woman who had a strong desire to hear Henry Ward Beecher. One Sunday morning the opportunity came. She heard him preach. Speaking of the occasion to her friends the next day, she remarked: "Mr. Beecher cannot be such a great man after all; I understood everything he said." Such is the simplicity of truth. Any teacher at home in his subject is likely to make his presentation so vivid and concrete that people will not realize how deep thought is running.
Jesus was always able to make the profoundest truths intelligible and workable. You will observe this as you read the Fourth Gospel, often characterized as the greatest book in the world. Arguing with bystanders one day he maintained, "Before Abraham was, I am." How stupendous and graphic the declaration, yet how few people, apparently, grasp its meaning.
He intended to convey, did he not, that individual man has a continuous existence? He has existed before just as he will continue to exist in the future. Here is a definite recognition of pre-existence. Christian Science makes it clear that pre-existence, indeed all genuine existence, is spiritual; it does not hold that there have been earthly existences before this one or that there will be earthly existences after.
More comprehensively did Jesus affirm the continuity of individual life when he asserted: "I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father." Here in one brief sentence we have the biography of the greatest man who ever lived. Here, if you will accept it, you have your own biography.
If you will apply to yourself the truths voiced by Christ Jesus when he said: "Before Abraham was, I am; I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father; and now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was" — you will awake, sooner or later, to the endlessness of your life. Having done so you will be equipped to deal with discomfort and disaster effectively, for a continuous life cannot be exposed to misfortune or extinction.
In the Fourth Gospel, just as certainly as in Science and Health, you can glimpse the highlights of your biography. If you read this book discerningly, you will get acquainted with yourself. You will put off the worries, the dejections, the afflictions which have been trying to make you believe you are a mortal, and you will put on the strength, the fortitude, the capability of the sons and daughters of God.
It is remarkable how a man will talk to himself. It is perfectly deplorable how he will argue disease, failure, wretchedness, and thereby persuade himself to believe in those things and to be incapacitated by them. With the same effort he could talk the truth to himself. He could say, "I and my Father are one;" he could say, "Before Abraham was, I am;" he could pray, "Give me the glory I had with thee before this mesmerism settled down upon me."
The symptoms of disease need to be challenged more searchingly than has been our custom. We should declare, when they try to approach, "You have no voice, no intelligence, no life." A sentence more withering cannot be pronounced against any offender than to strip him of intelligence, of life, of substance, of presence. Such intelligence as disease, or any other form of evil may seem to have, has been borrowed from those who acquiesce in it. It has none of its own. We should denounce disease as a lying imposition and at the same time exalt health and life as the realities and the inalienable rights of man.
Some people seldom think of
disease. They do not voice it. They do not expect it. Their attitude is normal,
wholesome, defensive. Seldom are they ill. But on the other hand,
unfortunately, there are people who picture disease, fear it, expect it.
Altogether too frequently they become victims of the condition they argue for.
So it is in the world of business. There are men who seldom if ever think of failure or defeat. They start or carry on an enterprise with an expectation of success and usefulness. Almost invariably success and usefulness is the outcome of the venture. Then there are those others who almost perpetually wonder if the business they launch will succeed. Still others look for employment, hardly expecting to find any. They deplore their years, their lack of influence or pull. They expect failure from the outset. The world is packed with opportunities. Only people without vision fail. And yet vision, stamina, industry, the will to achieve are inherent qualities of man, who is the compound idea or temple of the living God.
When Jesus announced "I came forth from the Father," he referred to his pre-existence, spiritual of course, did he not? Probably you have forgotten yours. Jesus had not forgotten his. This marks one difference between him and you. When he declared, further, "I am come into the world," he referred to present existence. And, finally, when he foretold "I return to the Father," he referred to future existence. Standing in this vale of tears, we see only the broken arc stretching between the cradle and the grave. Christian Science is leading us to the heights from which we shall behold the perfect round of individual life that does not begin, does not age, does not sicken, does not despair, does not fade out.
People take on necessary courage and hardihood as they begin to realize how endless Life is, how undefeatable it is, and how certainly there is place and need for them in the world. There is no virtue in failure or poverty. No virtue in sickness or infirmity. No necessity for them. Age and dissolution can be stood off by the individual who takes hold of himself every day and reasons out the leading facts in his biography as the son of God — those points brought out during the past hour, points more convincingly stated in Science and Health, points more dramatically set forth in Scripture.
"Search the scriptures,"
is the divine injunction, "for in them ye think ye have eternal
life." To which may be added: "Read Science and Health and you will
get acquainted with yourself, to learn that all the ingredients of Life and of
Mind and of Soul converge to make you, to make you a man, to make you a man
upright and Godlike."
[Delivered Nov. 18,
1941, at the Central High School Auditorium in Kalamazoo, Michigan, under the
auspices of First Church of Christ, Scientist, Kalamazoo, and published in The
Otsego Union of Otsego, Michigan, Nov. 20, 1941.]