Paul Stark Seeley, C.S.B., of Portland, Oregon
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The
Mother Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
Paul Stark Seeley, C.S.B., of Portland, Oregon, member of the Board of Lectureship of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Mass., delivered a lecture entitled "Christian Science: Christianity in Action" last evening at First Church of Christ, Scientist, Dwight Way and Bowditch St. This lecture was given under the auspices of First Church of Christ, Scientist, Berkeley, and was largely attended.
The lecturer spoke substantially as follows:
A school building was being erected some years ago in a village in one of the countries of the Near East. In charge of the work was a young civil engineer from a neighboring country which had suffered much from atrocities committed by the first country in the name of fanatical religious zeal. One day he was informed by his employer that a systematic massacre of the young engineer's fellow countrymen would soon be under way, but that he would be allowed to complete the school building. Then he would be buried nearby.
Deep resentment filled his thought. He decided to delay the work on the building as much as possible. That evening he prayed earnestly the Lord's Prayer, for he was a Christian. When he came to the words, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors," he stopped and pondered them. He saw that the men who intended doing him this great wrong were his debtors and that he was not forgiving them as he would wish others to forgive him his mistakes.
He saw that the reason they were doing him this wrong was only that they had not yet learned to love their brother man, as the Master commanded. His part, he saw, was to love and not to hate, regardless of what others might do. His work was to see that hate could never be the real individuality of his brother, and that his brother's real selfhood he could and would love. He would not lend his thought to adding to the evil called hate, which was ignorantly expressing itself.
The next day he returned to his work with love in his heart. He determined to finish the school as soon as possible and to trust God with his future. He resolved to do for all about him all the good he could do, to "shew the kindness of God unto them," to borrow the words of David (II Sam. 9:3), to do unto them as he would have them do unto him. Opportunities appeared for him to be helpful. Then one day a Government official expressed a desire to irrigate a certain hillside, well suited to a vineyard, but he despaired of ever getting water on it. The young engineer said he might be able to help him.
He ran levels from a stream several miles away and found that, though it appeared as though the water would have to run uphill to reach the land, it could be brought by gravity to the hillside. He offered to do the work if the official supplied the labor. His offer was gladly accepted, but with the threat that if he failed his life would be forfeited. He succeeded, won the gratitude of the official, and his life was saved.
The position the young engineer
found himself in seemed hopeless. The scene was all set by forces apparently
beyond his control. To a material viewpoint he was in a deathtrap. But the love
of God he was willing to express freed him. Once again the familiar lines of
Edwin Markham were illustrated:
"He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in."
Here was Christianity in action; the power of Love, God, was demonstrated.
The Bible calls God our salvation. Why? Because, Love's way, God's way, to freedom, harmony, and health for men is never blocked. Love and its power to free the engineer were as near to him as thought. They are just as near as that to you and me. But how willing are we to draw the circle with the finger of Love that takes our brother into Love's embrace with us? How willing are we to put Christianity into action? Said a small boy to his teacher in a Christian Science Sunday School, "It doesn't make any difference if no one loves you so long as you love everybody." What a foundation on which to begin to build a life!
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer
and Founder of Christian Science, says on page 571 of "Science and Health
with Key to the Scriptures," the Christian Science textbook, "Clad in
the panoply of Love, human hatred cannot reach you." Panoply means
something that affords complete protection. John describes this armor of light
when he says, "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God,
and God in him" (I John 4:16). We dwell within God and share His immunity
from evil and hate as we
truly love.
What was the substance of the love expressed by the engineer? Was it not the substance of all-considerate, divine Mind? You would never look for this unselfed love in the air, in water, in material things. Mind is its essence. How much is there of this wonderful substance called love? If every individual on this earth should, of a sudden, be willing to love as the engineer loved, would there be enough love for all? I am sure there would be; aren't you? What makes this so? The fact that Love is true intelligence, real Mind, and this all-loving Mind is infinite in quantity. Its love is as unlimited and as universal as Mind is, as universal as God.
The engineer did not have to go somewhere else to find the love that worked his freedom. It was there, as near as thought. It always is. It was present where hate and evil claimed to be. The ever-presence of the Mind that is Love should help us to begin to see something of the never-presence of the negative, evil material sense of mind, its opposite, and the transient material phenomena which are the outcome of this misconception of Mind and Love.
We all know that physical
scientists have in recent years been changing radically their evaluation of
what is called matter. Dr. Gustav Stromberg, associated for more than
twenty-five years with Mt. Wilson Observatory, said recently in a radio talk,
"Matter has lost its substance, has become a sort of nothingness, but yet
retains its structure." Really matter has not changed. What has changed is
men's thought about it. Little by little thought advances toward the conclusion
reached by Mrs. Eddy more than a half-century ago, that "there is no life,
truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its
infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all" (Science and Health, p.
468). The omnipresence of positive Mind, Love, makes the presence of negative,
loveless matter scientifically impossible. Through growth in spiritual
understanding we shall come to understand and demonstrate this as did our
Wayshower.
Mortals have been accustomed to identify anything they think of as alive with a physical body, and so many of them jump to the conclusion that God must have a physical body, be corporeal. This is a mistake. Ask yourself how God could be everywhere if localized by a physical body. Again, how could God be present to help one in Turkey and one in India to master hate at the same moment if He were limited and confined by a material body in some place? Or how could God, if He were in a physical form, bring comfort to one needing healing in New York and to another in need of healing in London at the same instant? Furthermore, Jesus told us, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing" (John 6:63). Can you imagine the supremely intelligent cause being identified by what Jesus said profits nothing, and what even our physical scientists say is a sort of nothingness? Pure intelligence, God, can by no possible stretch of reason be regarded as in its opposite, matter. Causative Mind cannot be fenced in somewhere or walled out of anywhere.
When one thinks of God as self-existent, infinite Mind, the question comes, What then is man, and how is he related to this supreme Mind? If God is Mind and man is the effect of God, what can man be but the idea of Mind? Does Mind have any other effect than its ideas? Is there any alternative way by which it evidences itself? So on page 475 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy thus defines man: "Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique." Mrs. Eddy, I believe, was the first great religious teacher to define the only real selfhood of man as God's idea. But her logic is without a flaw.
There is no higher status conceivable for man than as the compound, individual idea of all-intelligent Mind. The goal of human progress is the comprehension and demonstration of all that this means. The purpose of Christ Jesus' mission was to teach and to demonstrate that man is really the son, or expression, of God, Spirit, Mind, not the offspring of unintelligent matter.
Jesus was the messenger whose message was the Christ, the spiritual idea of God as incorporeal Spirit, or Mind, and man as the son of God, not of matter, the highest expression of the parent Mind. By his works Jesus proved that individual man's real consciousness is the consciousness which understands spiritual reality — is the Mind of Christ — and thereby realizes man's oneness with the Father, Mind, and his superiority to sin, disease, and death. Jesus' work rent the veil of matter and mortality for all men. Christian Science comes to bring to remembrance all that he taught and specifically to explain how every individual may do the same.
"Spirit, God, never germinates," says Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health on page 546. Then man, the child of God, Mind's idea, cannot be the result of material germination. He is the result of divine Mind's eternal emanation, or self-expression. Idea means representation. Your only true identity is Mind's representation. As idea man is forever safe within Mind. Mind is his eternal substance and Life. No quality or condition can, in fact, be his but what is representative of perfect Mind. So long as Mind is able to express itself, man must be; and what can ever extinguish intelligence, Mind?
Man, as idea, cannot be in trouble because he is in untroubled Mind. He cannot be in pain because he is, as idea, one with painless Mind. He cannot be in any unhappy material environment because he is in the Mind that is Love and Life, which knows only the harmony of its kingdom and its ideas included therein. Ponder the whereabouts of man. In reality he is not where matter and the material mind say he is at all. He is not in matter, in China, in New York, in debt, or in any material place or condition. Why not? Because man is only where the Master said he was, and still is, in God, the Father. Instead of habitually thinking of ourselves as being where matter and material sense argue we are, let us think more consistently as our Wayshower did as to the real whereabouts of man — in God.
Man is the compound idea of God, Mind. As an individual representative of Mind, he reflects all the qualities of Mind. Nothing is withheld from him by his Father Mind that is essential to his continuing and eternal completeness as a perfect individual idea of God. Man, the highest idea of Mind, has the capacity to reflect all of the ideas of infinite Mind as they unfold throughout eternity in his consciousness according to divine law.
Are you proud, are you critical of others at home, in the church, or at large? Are you snobbish, greeting some with a smile and others with a I-don't-care-for-you look? Do you hold a grain of resentment toward anyone anywhere? If so, examine yourself, and you will discover there is a thief in your mental home that is claiming to rob you of the true sense of yourself and of your brother as equally ideas of the Life that is Love. Put Christianity into action. Love Love, and love your brother as yourself.
Jesus likened the thoughts that evidence God and spiritual reality to the wheat, and their opposites that argue for matter and material selfhood to the tares, which for a time seem to grow side by side with the wheat. The tares or weeds, he said, must be separated from the wheat and burned, not just put out of sight. There is no place to do this but in our consciousness. There we have to destroy our misconceptions regarding the multiplication table and also our misconceptions as to what is real cause and real effect.
The chief tussle is with the false sense of self, the self evil puts forth as its representative, the self that is selfish and unloving, willful, dishonest, sin-loving, and ignorant of God and man. Through humility we can differentiate between this falsity and our true sense of being. Humility is the willingness to accept as your real status the sense of man as the effect of the Mind that is Love, its idea, and not a mortal personality with a mind, will, and life of its own, working on its own.
A correspondent recently wrote me, "I am so grateful I have discovered that the key to Christian Science is self-surrender." She is right. "Humility," writes Mrs. Eddy, "is the stepping-stone to a higher recognition of Deity. The mounting sense gathers fresh forms and strange fire from the ashes of dissolving self, and drops the world" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 1). "The ashes of dissolving self" — is your ash pile growing? All we have to give up is what is untrue; so why make a wry face about that?
A young woman who was earnestly trying to separate between the tares and the wheat in her thought, refusing to accept every suggestion of evil the instant it appeared, decided to play a game which she called As-soon-as. The game required her to be constantly alert and not to accept as having a place in her consciousness a single thought of fear, worry, bad temper, selfishness, criticism, sickness, or sin, but to deny all such a place in her thinking as soon as they argued to her.
She realized she must not wait five minutes, an hour, or a day, before she put Christianity into action. The right time was as-soon-as an evil thought whispered to her. She was endeavoring to profit by Mrs. Eddy's wise counsel on page 234 of Science and Health, "You must control evil thoughts in the first instance, or they will control you in the second." Exercise jurisdiction over your thinking instead of permitting it to be a receiving station for the motley array of evil suggestions which are wholly unrelated to your being as the idea of God.
This student found the game good
fun, and as her score improved so did her sense of joy. Also, more
opportunities came for useful service as her thinking became more expressive of
her oneness with Love. Try playing As-soon-as. It pays. It helps you to
discover that your only real life individually expresses the self-activity, or
spontaneity, of Love, of God.
Love, the great, intelligent Parent, Mind, never permits a single manifestation of Life to be lost in the wilderness of loveless, godless material-mindedness. You can be sure that just as soon as your friend or dear one, whom you would so like to have understand Christian Science, is mentally ready to receive the spiritual idea of being, the Christ-idea, ever-present Love will reveal it. Trust your brother to God, his source. Do not, with mere human desire, try to push or pull him into Love's kingdom. Those methods are as material as his thinking, which you would like to see improved — perhaps more so.
The part owner of a pawnshop once had a little woman come into his shop toward the end of the week and timidly inquire if he would loan something on a book she had with her. "Oh, no," he said, "I never loan money on books; only on jewelry, silver, and things like that; never on books." Disappointed, the woman turned to leave. He sensed her acute need and said, "Well, how much money did you want on your book?" "Just three dollars to pay my room rent for the week." He was a kind man, so he said, "I have never loaned a dollar on a book before but I'll loan you what you need."
He took the book, and she took the money. As she opened the door to leave, she turned and said with a smile, "You may read the book if you like." He thought it rather strange for her to say that. But the next day he had a quarrel with his partner, and it made him ill. He remembered the book, got it, and read some of it. He did not seem to understand a word, but he soon felt well. This happened several times. The book was "Miscellaneous Writings" by Mrs. Eddy. From that beginning he found his way into Christian Science. No receptive thought can be separated long from Love, omnipresent Shepherd of all.
One reason why God is definable as Love is that God is always giving, never getting. God is giving life, intelligence, wisdom, ideas, identity, ability. Everything you or I can ever really have is the gift of God. Only pure Love so unselfishly and eternally gives.
Christian Science is the gift of the Mind that is Love. Mrs. Eddy found, or discovered, the true idea of being, which constitutes this Science, because, of all mankind, her thought most fully exemplified the truth already quoted from John, "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him" (I John 4:16). From her deeply spiritual mother she had learned to dwell in Love. As a child she healed herself through her realization, in some degree, of God as all-inclusive Love. Through a wilderness of hardships and trials she loved God supremely and her brother as herself. She knew the God who is Love sends no trouble, and she must learn how the Master freed men from it.
Her discovery came, not in a moment, but through persistent devotion over many years to a high purpose. Her unremitting effort better to understand God and the healing power of Love brought to light in the year 1866, and the years that immediately followed, the modus operandi for healing men of all trouble — for Christianity in action. Her textbook of Christian Science, published in 1875, was so radical in statement that she was bitterly maligned and persecuted. In return she loved. She saw that what maligns, misrepresents, and hates is not Truth's man. It is the poor counterfeit of evil's evolving and is as valueless as a counterfeit, and hence unworthy of being accepted as true identity. The depth of her love for all mankind is shown in this statement in her Message to The Mother Church for 1902 (p. 19): "I say it with joy, — no person can commit an offense against me that I cannot forgive." It was her great and pure love for God and man that enabled her to be the revelator to this age of the Science of spiritual being.
It was Mrs. Eddy's ability to heal the sick with the power of divine Love which gave Christian Science its original impetus and gradually attracted seriously-minded students to the study of Science and Health. One of those who worked in close association with Mrs. Eddy for some years, when she was establishing the Christian Science movement, has mentioned the extreme simplicity of her healing work. So clear was her understanding of man's spiritual oneness with eternal Love that often but a single statement of truth was needed to accomplish the healing.
When in 1910 Mrs. Eddy left her labors here, editors of many leading newspapers acclaimed her great work. One said: "She accomplished in one generation that which followed only centuries after every other great religious leader. No other founder of a great church ever lived to see his work complete." Another's comment was, "It is not necessary to give intellectual acceptance to the creed of her church, to concede that Mrs. Eddy nobly lived and worked and aspired — and that she deserves to be ranked among the most striking, the most interesting, and the strongest figures that ever graced and distinguished the annals of her sex."
Sometimes when one starts to read Science and Health, it seems abstract and its meaning obscure. Sometimes it seems radical in the extreme. I have a well-educated friend, who tells me he read this book through three times before he began to feel he was getting a hold on it. His little god was tobacco; he had one hundred carefully picked pipes, and he was smoking vigorously while he first read Science and Health. Perhaps the smoke helped to obscure his vision of the spiritual verities of which he was reading.
But he had been healed of malaria by Christian Science and was determined to find out what did the work. He did, and he not only got rid of the malaria, and his pipes and tobacco, but also of his accumulated ignorance of the things of God. He was willing to give up his ignorance, which is more than some mortals are yet willing to do.
One such was a man to whom a friend sent a gift subscription to The Christian Science Monitor, one of the best of the world's newspapers. After this man had received a few copies, he wrote to the Monitor and said: "Please stop sending me your paper. I was born ignorant, I am still ignorant, and I want to stay ignorant." Rather a high compliment, of a backhanded sort, for the Monitor, don't you think so?
Many who read Science and Health for the first time, find it is the truth they have been seeking, and its meaning stands out as logical and understandable. But remember that mere human intellectuality can be as adamant to spiritual truth as pig iron. All must come to see what Paul meant when he said, "The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God" (I Cor. 3:19).
The Bible names God as man's strong tower, his defense, his fortress — terms intended to convey the comforting truth that it is the function of God, infinite Love, to protect man from every form of destructive evil force. But it is very apparent that men have yet much to learn as to how the power of Love to do this can be successfully invoked. That the way is simple, not complicated, the young engineer in the Near East proved.
An individual, whom I shall call Mr. A, once had a dream in which he got into a quarrel with a neighbor, Mr. B. Mr. A became increasingly angry and got potatoes and onions out of his basement with which he pelted Mr. B. Finally he became so enraged that he got out a gun and shot at Mr. B, and, in his dream, injured him. He then awakened in alarm, thinking he had done injury to his neighbor. To his surprise he discovered he had not hurt Mr. B at all. Why not? Because Mr. B was not in his dream.
What was it that had been the object of his dream-anger, the potatoes, onions, and gunshot? Simply his own erroneous dream concept, which was wholly insubstantial. Mr. B was outside the range of Mr. A's dream-thinking, no matter how hateful and aggressive it was.
Apply this to your everyday experience. Suppose a mortal called Mr. A (or perhaps Mrs. A or Miss C) becomes angry, critical, resentful toward Mr. B. Mr. A thinks he is justified because he believes Mr. B has done him a grave wrong by preventing him from securing a promotion in his organization. Mr. B has opposed Mr. A because he honestly felt he was not qualified for the larger responsibilities. Suppose Mr. B were a Christian Scientist. How should he pray to establish his immunity to hate and bring out the right sense between Mr. A and himself?
He would turn his thought to God, the only cause of all that really is. He would realize that God is the all-intelligent Mind that is infinite Love, that this Mind expresses itself in a universe of love-minded ideas, all of whom are under the constant control of their causative intelligence; that this Father, Mind, governs all its individual manifestations with wisdom and intelligence and causes each and every one to know every other one aright. He would know that there can be no issues to produce hate and resentment between the ideas of divine Life and Love, for all are made to live in peace, one with another. Mind gives to each its rightful place, and no power but causative Mind determines the place and activity of its every idea. Materially-minded personalities do not.
The picture suggested to his thought by mortal mind he would see was a misconception of cause and effect, mortal mind controlling its puppets, mortal men, and setting them at variance. He would know that this misconception could not encroach on the universality of Love and its ideas or substitute itself for God and His Love-filled kingdom. The ignorant thoughts of hate he would know are powerless to affect him, for God alone is cause to him, not negative, evil thinking. Mr. A hating mortal Mr. B he would see was a fiction, unknown to the all-knowing Mind or to any of its ideas. These spiritual facts, accepted and realized, would produce harmonious adjustments in the human order. Is not this Christianity in action?
Men and women become so humanly busy in their efforts to make what they call a living that they often overlook the fact that the cause of their being alive is always able and willing to provide them with the wherewithal so necessary to success. What is more important to success than wisdom, good judgment, foresight, understanding? What makes these things? Mind. What Mind? The one Parent, or Father of us all. Man is made to express all these gifts of Mind, and as he does so, his way to successful accomplishment becomes more clearly defined. The need of most mortals is to get out of the driver's seat and give the all-intelligent cause of man an opportunity to exercise its prerogative as man's all-governing, causative Mind.
An automobile dealer was building a warehouse. The contractor telephoned and said he had to stop the work, that he was out of cement and could get no more anywhere. The dealer, who was a student of Christian Science, said, "Let me see what I can do." So he started to pray. Prayer is the modus operandi of Christian Science. He challenged the argument of the material mind that there was a shortage which could not be supplied. He knew that in God's kingdom, which was the only true kingdom, Love sees to it that every idea is constantly provided with all that it needs for its continuing completeness and useful activity. He realized that the basic error, mortal mind, could not change this or cut man off from Love's constant provision for his needs.
As he was prayerfully working along these lines, it came to his thought to telephone a certain man in his community with whom he had a slight acquaintance, but whom he had not thought of previously as being one who might assist him. He telephoned; the man was friendly and wished to cooperate, but did not know where he could then secure the cement. But he told the dealer to call another man, who he thought might be able to help.
The dealer did so at once. This party was friendly and said that he had a carload of cement coming in the next morning and that he would be glad to share some of it with the dealer for his warehouse. The need was met. How? Through intelligent prayer, turning thought trustfully and expectantly to ever-present, all-loving Mind, for guidance. Love provided it forthwith, as it provided the ideas that freed the young engineer. God works as quickly as thought. Nothing works faster than that. Our part is to be willing — 100 per cent willing — first to pray, then to listen, then to obey. Love is gentle when it speaks. Only when we love Love and trust Love can we hear it. But, as the Scriptures tell us, "They that hear shall live" (John 5:25). This is Christianity in action.
Someone asked a boy who was a Christian Scientist if Christian Scientists never took medicine. "Oh, yes," he said, "we take medicine, but we think it; others drink it."
One serving as a Christian Science chaplain in the last World War was with a division that had been trapped by the enemy at the Battle of the Bulge. The division had dug in on high ground and was under heavy bombardment. The chaplain was at the Battalion Aid Station where the wounded were first received. The sense of confusion, fear, and destruction seemed great. Tirelessly he labored, helping the wounded all day, but toward evening he felt very ill and was manifesting a high fever. He was able to swallow only with difficulty. He lay down in a corner of the station, which drew the attention of the doctor to him. The doctor took his temperature, and when he saw it was several degrees above normal, he ordered the chaplain to be taken at once to the hospital. The latter pleaded that there be a delay until the morning, as the ambulance would have to drive through the shelled area. His request was granted.
He prayed until three in the morning, when heavy shelling started again and he was needed. He got up feeling entirely free. As soon as the doctor saw him, he hurried over to him and insisted on again taking his temperature. The doctor looked at the thermometer, frowned, broke it, and threw it away. He called for another and put it in the chaplain's mouth; then he examined his mouth and throat. The chaplain asked, "Is everything all right?" The doctor nodded his assent and said, "Your condition is normal now, but I was sure last evening you were coming down with a very bad case of diphtheria; but there is no sign of it now."
What had produced the change? The understanding prayer of the chaplain. He had not implored a faraway God to heal him. He had known what was then and there spiritually true concerning himself. He had realized in some measure that his individuality was not what mortal mind and material sense said it was, an afflicted, fleshly mortal. Rather was it, what the all-loving Mind caused him to be, its idea, constituted of the substance of Spirit, Mind, caused, conditioned, and governed by this omnipresent, all-inclusive Mind. This was the scientific, spiritual fact against which negative matter could not prevail. Its lying claim that matter was man's cause, and could make him, then afflict him, was untrue and so unable to affect the health with which God endows His son, or idea.
He realized the inability of material instruments or devices to measure or define his health, which was not within the reach of matter at all, for it was inseparable from his true consciousness, which was the idea of, and forever in, the Life and Love that is God.
Thoughts such as these were his medicine, and they cut at the root of the disease, mortal mind. They stilled fear and revealed man's oneness, not with afflictable matter, but with all-harmonious Mind, God. Love supplied the ideas that accomplished the healing, as it did for the engineer, the businessman, and the one whom another tried to hate. Love was present where it was needed, even in the midst of a battlefield. No material circumstances, personalities, or environment can ever crowd Love out of its primal and eternal omnipresence. This unalterable fact, God's omnipresence, as we come to understand it, reduces the claim of mortal mind and matter that it is the only presence, to an illusion which must disappear in the degree spiritual reality is realized. This is Christianity in action.
The common enemy of all men, of all races and nations, is the godless, devilish, material, so-called mind, which has no more reality than has ignorance. The common friend of all men is the Mind that is the Life and Love that is God. We must be prepared to meet physical force with physical force if the need arises, but by our prayerful thinking we can do much to restrain the forces of evil with the spirit of God. Nothing is so powerful to hold evil in check, to confuse and confound and defeat it — in other words, to prove evil's nothingness — as is the understanding that there really is but one Mind, which is the natural ruler of men of all nations; that to this altogether just and loving Mind and its moral and spiritual forces every knee must bow, and every tongue confess.
We pray as the Master commanded us, "Thy kingdom come." The objective of Christianity and of human progress is the coming to light in the thought of men of Love's kingdom of spiritual reality, with every expression of Life contained therein. Only the carnal mind opposes this, not the real selfhood of our brother. Let us see the impotence of the common enemy to take to itself the prerogative of God to rule all men, its inability to mesmerize with deceit and dishonesty the thought of a single expression of the one cause. God is presently and eternally omnipotent, the All-in-all, and no momentary combinations of material thinkers have the power or can get the power to stop the progressive appearing in human consciousness of His healing, saving Christ, evidenced in and by the unifying forces of the living God, eternal Love.
Let us realize the eternal God-revealed truth simply said by Mrs. Eddy in her poem, "The New Century" (Poems, p. 22),
"'Tis writ on earth, on leaf and flower:
Love hath one race, one realm, one power."
[Delivered Dec. 29, 1952, at First Church of Christ, Scientist, Dwight Way and Bowditch Street, in Berkeley, California, and published in The Berkeley Daily Gazette of Berkeley, Dec. 30, 1952. Also published in The Dorchester Beacon of Dorchester, Massachusetts, Feb. 12, 1959.]