James G. Rowell, C.S.B., of Kansas City, Missouri
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The
Mother Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
First Church of Christ, Scientist, Indianapolis, was host Monday night at a Christian Science lecture given at Cadle Tabernacle by James G. Rowell, C.S.B., of Kansas City, Mo. Mr. Rowell, who is a member of The Board of Lectureship of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Mass., was introduced by Dayle C. Rowland. The lecture was given substantially as follows:
In an arid country, nothing is so much appreciated as a spring of good clear water. An ancient Arabian legend tells of such a spring, which if it could be found, would transform the sandy desert into a garden, and make it green and glad and fruitful, capable of supporting in plenty untold numbers of people. The legend tells of an angel's stopping to quench his thirst at one of these rare desert springs. Finding the water sweet and refreshing, he blessed it. For long afterward from every spot where a drop of that spring water fell, a new spring gushed forth to refresh and bless the weary traveler. And then, that wonderful spring was lost. Though many searched, no one seemed able to find it.
Jesus of Nazareth, sitting by the well at Sychar, said to the woman of Samaria. "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water"; and then he added, "But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."
Friends, it is to drink of this living water, so often spoken of in the Bible, that we are assembled here tonight. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, speaks in the Preface of her little book, "No and Yes," (p. v) of "those who are athirst for the life-giving waters of a true divinity," and invites them to "'Come and drink;' and if you are babes in Christ, leave the meat and take the unadulterated milk of the Word, until you grow to apprehend the pure spirituality of Truth." Like the water from the legendary well, these "life-giving waters of a true divinity" will cause another living spring to leap forth in every receptive heart, until at last the desert of human experience, parched by fear and sin and ignorance of God, shall be transformed and shall "blossom as the rose."
Jesus said, "The true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." More than eighteen hundred years later Mrs. Eddy wrote, "The restoration of pure Christianity rests solely on spiritual understanding, spiritual worship, spiritual power" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 152). First mentioned and of primary importance of these three is, of course, spiritual understanding. Without spiritual understanding, there could be no real spiritual worship, nor any conscious exercise of spiritual power among men; for spiritual worship and spiritual power are the outgrowth of spiritual understanding.
Perhaps the greatest thing that Christian Science has done for the world, then, is that it has given to mankind a spiritual understanding of God. The cause or Principle of the universe, including man, Christian Science shows to be Mind, infinite, incorporeal, supreme, divine Mind.
Speaking of her discovery of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy says in "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 24), "During twenty years prior to my discovery I had been trying to trace all physical effects to a mental cause; and in the latter part of 1866 I gained the scientific certainty that all causation was Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon."
Mrs. Eddy's discovery was her awakening to the use of her spiritual senses, the letting of "this mind" be in her, "which was also in Christ Jesus." To her newly aroused spiritual senses, cause and effect were discerned as wholly mental. Mrs. Eddy's discovery carried her much farther than to "trace all physical effects to a mental cause." She could not escape the logical deduction that every effect reflects the nature of its cause. Beginning with a first cause or God, which is Spirit, Mind, she rightly deduced a universe or effect which is like its creator, spiritually mental. A new sense of reality dawned upon her quickened consciousness. She realized that God, being Spirit, His universe had always been spiritual and must remain forever unchanged throughout eternity. Her thought about it was all that was being changed. She was becoming adjusted to the facts of Spirit. No other conclusion could be reached than that her former inharmonious, material sense of things had been a mistaken one, and she set about correcting her thinking in every particular.
Through reason and revelation, Mrs. Eddy had arrived at the conclusion that divine Mind is the one omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God; that divine Mind's infinite ideas, perfect, eternal, spiritual, and mental (like their creator) constitute the one and only creation, the spiritual universe, including spiritual man.
Even the little children may understand in some degree and use this truth that God is the only real Mind. A little eight-year-old Christian Scientist had an examination in arithmetic which lasted for one period of each of two days. Talking to her mother about it later, she said, "The first day the problems looked so hard when teacher put them on the board that I thought I couldn't do them. But I tried and tried, and finally I thought of something. I said to myself, 'Well, this is fine, trying to solve problems without God.' And then I thought, 'God is Mind, and He gives me intelligence to do what I have to do,' and I solved every problem, mother, and teacher gave me one hundred. The next day I had finished all the problems and then I thought, 'I just wish God would tell me whether these problems are right. Something led me to look over the seventh, and I found a mistake in it and corrected it, and that's how I got two one hundreds in arithmetic."
The same fact of being which enabled this little girl to solve her problems in arithmetic is available to all of us. This truth that God is the Only Mind, is intimate enough to enter into our smallest personal problems and big enough to solve the clashing questions of the nations. Can one afford to be apathetic to this great revelation that Christian Science has brought to human consciousness, namely, that God is divine Mind, the one and only Mind, and therefore of necessity his Mind? For the Mind which is God — the only Mind — is all that exists by way of mind; it constitutes all there is in reality to your intelligence and to mine.
Just as reason and demonstration in physical science have enabled us to discard belief in a flat earth for the more scientifically correct one of a round earth; belief in a stationary earth for the more nearly correct belief in a quickly moving one; one center of movement of the stellar universe for another, in the same way, revelation, reason and demonstration have enabled us to give up a false, material sense of God and creation and to behold them both in their eternal, unchanging, mental, spiritual nature.
Every lie has to be a lie about something. Therefore what the material senses behold counterfeits a better original to be found in some divine, eternal, spiritual fact. It is the part of spiritual worship to translate every material concept back into its better original. Enough has been said to show that Christian Science is divine metaphysics. Our Leader tells us that "metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul" (Science and Health, p. 269). This is the definitely scientific way to think and to live, a way out of the mazes of materiality into the spiritual facts of being. It is plain that the ideas of Soul must replace the objects of sense when one considers the unstable, fleeting nature of material sense and the real, eternal nature of Soul. The ideas of Soul and the objects of sense do not constitute two different and distinct creations, for there is but one creation, the spiritual. Neither are they two actual states of mind, for the divine is the one and only Mind. The opposite or counterfeit of a reality is unreal — is nothing, not something.
Christ Jesus was the "master Metaphysician" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 222). His ministry was not only a system of Christian ethics, but one of Christian metaphysics as well. By metaphysics is meant the full and exact knowledge of real being, which is not material, but spiritual. Jesus taught his followers by precept and example to look away from the physical, the material, for both cause and effect. Jesus' understanding of the supremacy of Mind over matter, of good over evil, of Truth over error, of the actual over what seemed to be, was proof of his Christliness, and the foundation on which he wrought his wondrous works.
Abiding in the consciousness of the allness of God, Jesus realized the presence of abundance so clearly that with but a few loaves and fishes to begin with, he was enabled to feed the five thousand and to have more left over when they had eaten than he had been told were available at the beginning. He rebuked the fear of his disciples at one time, and then removed the cause of their apprehension by mental means alone, when he stilled the wind and the waves. To the sick, ignorant of their God-given dominion, and suffering from fear of the power of evil, Jesus restored by mental means the normal, natural flesh to the withered hand, sight to the sightless eyes, hearing to the deaf ears, speech to the dumb lips, order to the supposedly chaotic brain, harmony and strength to the seemingly diseased, weak, and emaciated bodies. To the repentant sinner, Jesus restored, through mental means, self-respect, health, and the consciousness of his real selfhood as a son of God, and counseled him to "Go, and sin no more."
From his teachings and his works, can anyone doubt that Jesus the Christ was the master Metaphysician? Is it not plain that Jesus resolved things into thoughts (Science and Health, p. 269), and then, through his understanding of the supremacy of Spirit over matter, of good over evil, of the divine over the human, changed the belief in lack to an improved belief in abundance; a belief in fear to one of confidence in God, good; a belief in disease to one of health; a belief in sin to one of purity. This was evidence of progress — progress which was to continue until false beliefs were replaced by divine ideas and divine Mind reigned in each individual consciousness in purity and perfection.
Matter was a very different thing to Jesus from what it was to the worldly minds about him. Jesus saw in matter a mental phenomenon which could be changed in the way that any false theory or false belief can be changed or destroyed. He demonstrated continuously throughout the three years of his ministry his ability to change so-called matter in accordance with the dictates of good. Every change that Jesus made in what seemed material conditions was made in strict obedience to the laws of divine metaphysics. Jesus' primary concern was with Spirit, divine Mind, and yet all of his demonstrations of divine power were made to meet some human need.
It is recorded that in three instances Jesus was tempted to change matter from one form to another, and to set aside certain material laws for his own human satisfaction, for the plaudits of the world, or for personal wealth and prestige. In every case, he refused — these temptations found no response in him. Such an abuse of his spiritual power would have cost Jesus the loss of his spiritual understanding, and of his ability to worship spiritually, and would have separated him from conscious sonship with God. That Jesus had dominion over belief in matter and over material laws is evident, and it is plain that he exercised this dominion only in obedience to divine Principle.
Is not this the adoration of God, Spirit, the exaltation of His holy name and nature? Is this not the practical fulfilling of the commandment, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind"? This is indeed true spiritual worship — using the revealed laws of divine Mind's supremacy over matter, in subjection to and in relation always to that holy law of God, "love thy neighbour as thyself."
That Jesus taught his disciples to be Christian metaphysicians is clear. At one time, Jesus, yearning to be understood, and it may be to test the metaphysics of his disciples, asked them, "But whom say ye that I [the Son of man] am?" It was Peter who gave him the answer which satisfied, when he replied, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." In other words, Peter, through spiritual discernment, realized that, although Jesus had called himself "the Son of man" he was in fact and always had been the Son of God. Peter was an apt pupil in divine metaphysics, and his response was based not only on what he had observed in Jesus' practice, but also on what his awakened spiritual senses had revealed to him. He saw that Jesus' conscious use of his spiritual inheritance had identified him with the Christ. It is upon this understanding of the true selfhood of each individual as a son of God that Christ Jesus declared that he would build his church. Mrs. Eddy tells us that "perfect God and perfect man" are "the basis of thought and demonstration" (Science and Health, p. 259) in Christian Science. Peter's reply must have been the source of great rejoicing to Jesus, for through it he learned that his true selfhood, his ministry, and his teachings had been understood spiritually, and that what he knew of God and man and their inseparable relationship could be taught to others.
The true man is that expression of God which images forth the nature, activity and dominion of God. Outside or beyond the image and likeness of God, man is not to be found. When one identifies himself, in Science, with his true selfhood, the man of God's creating, the laws of God become instantly operative in his experience. These laws of eternal Life operate as laws of elimination and annihilation to every false belief about life. How important then, to identify ourselves with our true selfhood, thus to bring the omnipotent laws of God to bear upon our experiences.
Our true selfhood is not something for us to construct or reconstruct. Christian Science teaches us how through intelligence reflected from God, to pierce the veil of human consciousness here and now and to understand the real, the universe of Spirit. To be able to behold in Science one's own true selfhood, man made in the image and likeness of God, is proof of spiritual discernment and is practical application of the First Commandment, Thou shalt have one God, one Father. When a man understands spiritually his own true individuality, it becomes his inevitable duty to behold in Science the true selfhood of his neighbor — another individual expression or idea of God. To know that each individual expression of God is held in scientific relation to every other one of God's expressions or ideas, makes practical the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. To behold in one's self or in one's neighbor at any time less than God's perfect child, is primarily one's own greatest loss, for it is a departure from the understanding that man is the image and likeness of God, and leads to spiritual blindness. It breaks the First Commandment and fails to recognize the scientific brotherhood of man.
There is nothing supernatural in the ability to discern the "spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold" (Science and Health, p. 585), as Mrs. Eddy expresses it. This spiritual ability was the outstanding characteristic of the prophets, the seers, of Christ Jesus himself, and of his disciples. It is the essentially distinguishing possession of the Christian Scientist. Every case of healing brought out by Christian Science is the direct result of spiritual discrimination between the testimony of the false senses and the evidence of the spiritual senses — that is, between illusion and the eternal spiritual facts of being. It is the silencing of a lie by the transcendent power of Truth.
Of the two diametrically opposed records of creation found in the first two chapters of Genesis, Christian Science takes cognizance of both. It accepts the first, the record of spiritual creation, the one in which man is created in God's image, as the true and logical account of the origin of man and the universe. The second record, the one in which man is supposedly made of the dust of the ground, and yields assent to belief in both good and evil as real, Christian Science accepts as an allegory, illustrating that whenever, in belief, one becomes like-minded with evil, that is, learns to know both good and evil, he separates himself from the true, the good and harmonious, and must "till the soil from whence he came," must improve his false beliefs until one by one their nothingness is understood and he beholds his uninterrupted, unimpaired, spiritual selfhood in God's image and likeness.
The theory of fallen man has a very subtle and tenacious hold upon mankind. This false theological viewpoint is a heritage from ages past. True Christian theology, which coincides absolutely with Jesus' words and works and is found just as practical to heal sickness and sin and to guide our steps today as it was in Jesus' time, is teaching us that we are now the sons of God, even though this fact may not become apparent until we shall have purified our thinking. We are assured, however, by the beloved John that when we shall be able to discern spiritually the Father and the Son of His creating, we shall find that we are "like him."
Mrs. Eddy is very careful to have us understand that so-called mortals are not the children of God. But what is a mortal, but the supposititious opposite of the man there is? The false beliefs we entertain of ourselves as mortals are mortal, and that's all there is about us that is mortal. When we shall have grasped that truth about ourselves and proved it in righteous living, there shall be found nothing mortal about us — no cause for worry or mistakes, no cause for chance or change, no cause for decay and death, and no manifestation of any of these false beliefs.
For us to believe that there is both a real, spiritual man made in God's likeness and a mortal, material personality which may be demonstrated out of, is a serious mistake. For us to believe that we have an eternal, real selfhood in the likeness of God, but that we cannot now lay claim to our true selfhood, but must wait until we have demonstrated spirituality in order to do so, is again all that error, or mortal mind, asks. If error has our present allegiance, what more does it need or desire?
We can never demonstrate spirituality until we serve Spirit and identify ourselves with Spirit's creation. Jesus sent his disciples forth with instructions to preach that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, and Paul reminds us that now is the day of salvation. He who has spiritual understanding is identifying himself with his spiritual selfhood now.
For an individual to identify himself, even temporarily, with the Adam-belief in an evil man, although this so-called man is acknowledged to be an erroneous concept of man, is still to support the theory of fallen man. It is the vain acceptance of the unreal as the real. Let us not forget that this recognition of true sonship is attested by what we do rather than by what we may protest.
In working out our own salvation, it is essential to understand our neighbor spiritually and to identify our neighbor with his true selfhood, the image and likeness of God. This is the fulfilling of the law, "Love thy neighbour as thyself." In this law, friends, we are responsible for all that we do and think. This means that we are responsible for all that we think that our neighbor does and thinks. Note well. We are not, of course, responsible for what our neighbor does and thinks, but we are absolutely accountable for what we think our neighbor does and thinks. This wise loving of our neighbor will not blind us to the evil beliefs which he may seem to be entertaining, but will help us and him to realize no reality in them. Until we accept, in Science, the moral responsibility of being the image and likeness of divine Mind, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love, we are not in the conscious use of our spiritual senses, and therefore, we comprehend neither the spiritually mental nature of ourselves nor that of our neighbor.
When asked by God the whereabouts of Abel, Cain, the murderer of his more spiritually minded brother replied, "Am I my brother's keeper?" We are indeed the keeper of our brother. We must keep our concept of our brother in harmony with the spiritual sense, the divine sense of our brother, if we would demonstrate our own sonship with God. To behold our brother as God beholds him, in His, God's, own image and likeness, is the Christ ideal, and is a manifestation of that divine Love which alone is worthy of the name.
The ability to separate, in our thinking, the error from the individual is one of the outstanding blessings that Mrs. Eddy's discovery has brought to mankind. Christian Science teaches the false, mortal nature of evil; that it is never any part of God, divine Mind, nor of man. Evil comes to individual consciousness as a deceiving false sense, clamoring for acceptance. Because individuals consent, evil perpetuates and extends its hold upon them. Christian Science shows us how to see and love a man's true selfhood, while at the same time we detect the falsity of the evils which claim to be a part of him. This right mental attitude toward our brother helps to free him and ourselves from belief in evil as real.
We cannot possibly be envious of our brother when we understand the spiritual selfhood of all individuals in Science. We rejoice when he makes a better demonstration of health, happiness, or supply, for we realize that whatever is possible for him is possible also for us; that his good is also our good, and that nothing less than perfection is included in his true selfhood, as it is in our own. We are learning that each one of us through reflection already has all. While our brother may be the channel through which divine Love supplies our human need, he is not the source of that supply. We may have opportunity to be the channel through which our brother's need is met, but we are not the source of his supply. God alone is the infinite source of all good. To believe otherwise is a form of idolatry, quite prevalent in human consciousness. It ascribes to persons power and ability that do not and cannot belong to them, but which are forever the prerogatives of God, divine Mind.
We must learn never to neglect or overlook an opportunity for expressing good, God, to our brother, for only through unselfed love can we demonstrate our own true selfhood in the image and likeness of divine Love. We must also be careful not to be a stumbling block in his path, or in any way to dampen his ardor in responding to the prompting of divine Love when he strives to meet our needs and those of others.
One of the urgent necessities in Christian Science is to learn the lesson of unselfed love. "Love thy neighbour as thyself" is a practical, scientific rule of spiritual worship. Our own good, as well as that of our neighbor, depends upon our putting this rule into practice. How much it means to each one of us is illustrated by the story of a farmer friend. Having secured at a distance and at considerable expense some exceptionally fine seed, he grew, one season, a most wonderful crop of corn. He took all the prizes in his section, and was very proud of his corn. His neighbors begged him to let them buy some of his corn for seed, but he argued that he had so little of it, that he needed all that he had raised for seed himself. The next year it was just a little different. He still wouldn't sell any corn for seed. He fed some of it, however, to his cattle. His reputation as a grower of wonderful corn was spreading. It was sweet to be the champion corn-grower of his state. Why run the risk of losing his title? And so into the third year — but something had happened. Some of his corn was little better than that of his neighbors. What had happened, you have guessed. His corn was going back, it was being pollenized by the poor corn of his neighbors. All around the edges of his field it was so. That fall, he gathered the best ears from the center of his field, and shared the good seed with his neighbors. He had learned a lesson. "We must share, if we would keep . . . Such is the law of love." (Hymnal No. 86).
We must share wisely, the ideas of divine Mind which have been revealed to us through Love, or we shall be in danger of losing them. And sharing ideas is even more profitable than sharing material things. "If you and I each have a dollar," the story goes, "and we exchange, you still have one and so have I. But if you have an idea and I have one, and we exchange, you now have two and I also have two." Can you think of a more profitable business than this business of exchanging right ideas? What our Leader desired and had every reason to expect from Christian Scientists is an earnest, selfless striving to gain an ever increasing ability to share, by making manifest in daily deeds, the ideas expressed in her textbook. And this must be done with a love so patterned after the divine that it will be broad enough and wise enough to embrace all mankind in God's law of infinite perfection. Is it not worth while to know Him better, to realize that we may express Him in loving manliness and womanliness, and to prove that fact in more spiritual, less selfish, living?
Friends, anything that prevents one's exercising righteous judgment is an error that impedes spiritual progress and must, now or later, be detected and cast out. The human mind has, in belief, bestowed upon certain kinds of matter power to induce habits. Tobacco and beverages containing alcohol are well-known examples of habit-producing forms of matter.
Everyone knows how easy it is to get on a toboggan when it is stationary at the top of a hill. It is just as easy to get up and leave one's seat before the start. Once under way, however, and gathering momentum, it seems next to impossible to get off before the journey's end.
It is the easiest thing imaginable, and by some even considered smart, to learn to use some habit-producing form of matter. As the habit gets under way, however, and makes more and more demands upon its victim, he becomes a little uneasy, he doubts the wisdom of his venture, he looks around for a way to separate himself from the insatiable appetite. By this time the habit has gained full speed; he is not the master of the unnatural desire that he has acquired. Even the laws of chemistry have been marshaled against him. His body seems to demand the so-called sedative or stimulant. Anywhere along the line he could have found his freedom had he but appealed to the higher laws of God. Christian Science would have come to his rescue with the understanding that no such idolatrous thought-force has any real existence; that it has no laws of attraction through which to ensnare man; no power to fasten itself to him; that man's freedom and satisfaction are maintained in adherence to the laws of God. Consistent and persistent effort to understand and to prove this true status of himself will free him at any time, but he must remain true to divine Principle in order to remain free.
Christian Science teaches us the folly and danger of acquiring false appetites. This is one of the subtle ways in which animal magnetism operates in human consciousness. Once the slave of mortal mind through the use of some habit-producing form of matter, a man thinks and does things that he would not otherwise think or do; things selfish, harsh, cruel, dishonest, impure, untruthful, immoral. In Christian Science we learn that we cannot afford to cast into the balance even the slightest weight on the side of evil. Bad habits are a form of idolatry. Tobacco and alcohol, for example, do not in fact possess the power and influence that the human mind attributes to them. Every human appetite is but another shackle forged by the human mind to keep mortals in bondage to belief in fear, sin, sickness, and death — shackles which mortals have ignorantly, and with not a little complacency, snapped upon themselves.
We have learned that the boasted pleasures of the physical senses are but transient, false claims to happiness, which lead on to ultimate sorrow and suffering. Christian Science is freeing multitudes from this unnecessary self-imposed sorrow and suffering, as they turn from illusory matter to infinite divine Mind for all cause and effect. Let me say this to the young men and women especially. Be wise enough to refuse to accept the mistaken and defrauding suggestion that the demands of spiritual worship take the joy and pleasure out of life, especially for the young and vigorous, and vivacious. Be keen enough to discern that quite to the contrary, as Christian Science shows, spiritual worship is the one and only road to real pleasure, joy and satisfaction, and completeness, which come to man through the divine law of reflection. It is right to be happy. Real joy is the badge of the true Christian.
Christian Science teaches us how to be a good friend to our brother man. If others seem to be slaves to some false appetite, they need our helpful example of completeness, joy and satisfaction gained through dependence upon divine Mind. True friendship never debases or debauches, but always elevates. It is the part of true friendship to awaken another when he is being deluded, deceived, and defrauded. Mrs. Eddy tells us to "expose and denounce the claims of evil and disease in all their forms, but realize no reality in them" (Science and Health, p. 447). Let us realize the powerlessness of the false thought-forces which have ensnared and bound those we love, and let us know that under the protection, guidance, and even the chastisement of the true thought-force of divine Mind, they will come safely home.
This is a busy world. To keep busy doing some right-thing-to-do is just as vital to us as is health — indeed it is a part of what we call health to be busy. Sometimes error deceives men into believing that there is lack of employment. This is a contagious, mesmeric condition of thought which must be recognized as such and met on this basis. We can no more maintain individual employment while thinking and talking unemployment, than we can maintain individual health while talking and fearing disease.
Sometimes a man who has been busy in affairs seems to slip out, so to speak, and finds himself out of a job. As he walks the street, it seems to him that the world is streaming by him; that everyone has a vital place in the world's scheme of business, everyone except himself. If this man knows something of his true selfhood, he will face this lie of unemployment by doing something. He will get very busy thinking right thoughts about the situation. He will refuse to accept a condition which marks him as a victim of an epidemic of unemployment. He will realize that he is, as God's idea, at all times about his Father's business, and he will prove it in alert, loving, honest, and fearless endeavor. He will find a way of doing something for somebody.
Indeed, I once knew a carpenter who, when he seemed to be "out of a job," asked his friends and neighbors for the privilege of doing some helpful thing about their homes. This he did without pay, of course, gratefully accepting the opportunity to express right activity and love to his neighbor. In work is found one practical human approximation of the demand of divine Love, "Love thy neighbour as thyself." As each one of us keeps busily at work we find that our services supply our brother's needs while his work is meeting our own. Very often my carpenter friend would have some new contract offered him before he had finished his first "thank you" job. But he never failed to complete later his love offering, which had helped him to realize greater usefulness. Without knowing it, perhaps, he had touched a law of God, the law which maintains every one of God's ideas in continuous right activity.
To realize that each one of us is active under a law of God, a law of divine Principle, Love, will adjust our circumstances, by putting us to work and keeping us busy. No one of us can shirk his moral responsibility, to know the truth about work and to be rightfully employed himself, without suffering for it sooner or later. We can always give of what we have, something to meet our brother's need. Many times his greatest need is for an encouraging word or smile, or perhaps just a refusal on our part to agree with the testimony of the material senses. Such unselfed love has been known to open the door of human consciousness to opportunities before unheeded or perhaps unseen. To look upon work as a necessary evil, to be borne with as much good grace as possible, is an erroneous, false sense of work which brings neither happiness nor dominion.
No matter what we are called upon to do, the spiritual understanding that through the law of reflection we have strength, endurance, and wisdom enough from the divine source to enable us to perform it, makes service light, joyous, and fruitful beyond human comprehension. Being grateful for what we already have and being thankful for all the work we see going on around us, prepares us to be partakers in greater right activity than ever before. To be of good cheer, founded upon spiritual understanding, is always a helpful state of consciousness. To understand the all-inclusive nature of God, good, the only cause, to stop thinking and talking disaster, to stop fearing evil, to stop worshipping persons, to stop hating persons, to love God, good, the only cause, "with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind" and "thy neighbour as thyself" will assure one of fruitful employment.
Mary Baker Eddy, a gentle New England woman, discovered this "lost spring" of "living water" of which Jesus spoke to the woman of Samaria. Thereafter, Mrs. Eddy lovingly devoted her life to making this spiritual truth available to all those "who hunger and thirst after righteousness." She knew that in giving Christian Science to the world, she was but restating in prayerful humility the pure Christianity which Jesus taught and lived. It had become clear to her that this Christianity was scientific and therefore provable. Every doctrinal statement in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" is scientific, and when understood and honestly tested, will be found verifiable. One who knew and loved Mrs. Eddy wrote of her, "Only one taught of God . . . could employ the English language so masterfully, making every word and phrase the perfect servant of divine thought" (Alice Dayton, Christian Science Journal, XV, p. 230). An unprejudiced reading of this book will convince anyone that its author was a loving, earnest, unworldly woman who had thought much and yearned deeply to satisfy her spiritual hunger. It was Mrs. Eddy who wrote (Pulpit and Press, p. 9), "Practice not profession, — goodness, not doctrines, — spiritual understanding, not mere belief, gain the ear and right hand of omnipotence, and call down blessings infinite."
Spiritual understanding discerns the truth about God and man in His image and likeness; spiritual worship practices this truth, and spiritual power demonstrates it in our present experience. Thus is Christian Science proved to be the restoration of pure Christianity.
[Delivered Jan. 14, 1935, at Cadle Tabernacle in Indianapolis, Indiana, under the auspices of First Church of Christ, Scientist, Indianapolis, and published in The Marion County Mail of Indianapolis, Jan. 18, 1935. A few paragraph breaks have been added to this transcript.]