Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 E-Book

Mary Baker Eddy

• Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

In "Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896," Mary Baker Eddy compiles a profound assortment of essays, sermons, and letters that encapsulate her thoughts on spirituality, health, and the science of being. This literary mosaic showcases Eddy's distinctive prose style, marked by clarity and fervent conviction. Rooted in the metaphysical debates of 19th-century America, her work seeks to bridge the chasm between religion and science, positioning Christian Science as a radical reinterpretation of healing and divine law. Each piece acts as both an invitation and a challenge to readers, urging them to reconsider established notions of faith and personal well-being through the transformative lens of spiritual understanding. Mary Baker Eddy, as the founder of Christian Science, experienced profound personal trials that informed her philosophy and theological insights. Throughout her life, she grappled with issues of illness and injury, which propelled her to seek a new understanding of health, culminating in the establishment of her religion. Through her dedication to empirical research and theological study, Eddy contributed significantly to spiritual discourse, asserting that understanding God can lead to tangible healing. "Miscellaneous Writings" stands as an essential text for those intrigued by the intersections of spirituality and healing, as well as for scholars of American religious movements. It invites readers to explore the depths of human existence while unlocking the transformative power of spiritual insight, making it a thought-provoking and enlightening addition to any personal library. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - The Author Biography highlights personal milestones and literary influences that shape the entire body of writing. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.

Leseprobe

Mary Baker Eddy

Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896

Enriched edition. Exploring Christian Science through the Nineteenth Century Spirituality

In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience.

Introduction, Studies and Commentaries by Harriet Gainsborough

Edited and published by Good Press, 2022

[email protected]

EAN 4064066102401

Table of Contents

Introduction

Author Biography

Historical Context

Synopsis (Selection)

Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896

Analysis

Reflection

Memorable Quotes

Introduction

Table of Contents

This collection gathers a broad range of writings by Mary Baker Eddy produced between 1883 and 1896, presenting a panoramic record of her thought, ministry, and instruction during a formative span of authorship. Rather than a single genre or a narrow selection, the volume assembles concise aphorisms, doctrinal expositions, public addresses, pastoral letters, sermons, meditations, poems, and testimonials. Together these materials trace how principles are articulated, explained, and applied in private counsel and public forum. The purpose is at once didactic and documentary: to preserve representative texts from these years and to provide readers an integrated view of teaching, practice, church life, and personal devotion.

The scope is intentionally miscellaneous, allowing short maxims to stand beside extended essays, and formal sermons to converse with informal notes. Readers encounter introductory reflections, a prospectus of aims, and chapters that expound core concepts, followed by questions and answers that clarify points of practice. Substantial sections record addresses delivered in public venues and church assemblies, while letters carry instruction to associations, congregations, and individual students. Services and Bible lessons are included, as are tightly reasoned admonitions on conduct. Meditative and allegorical pieces offer imaginative approaches to doctrine. Poems conclude the literary arc, with a final gathering of testimonials.

The arrangement guides the reader from concise orientation through elaborated principle to lived application. Brief epigrams frame the tone, while early chapters lay foundations and anticipate objections. Thereafter the volume moves outward into the public sphere, preserving addresses delivered in Boston and beyond, including occasions connected with the central church and learned gatherings. Subsequent letters bring the voice of counsel home to specific communities and individuals. Sermons and services mark ecclesiastical seasons and civic moments. Ethical and practical precepts assemble clarifications and corrections. Meditations, philosophical sketches, and poetry expand into devotional and imaginative registers before concluding with witness and experience.

The genres represented include epigrams, prefaces, prospectuses, doctrinal essays, expository chapters, and question-and-answer materials. Public orations appear as addresses to congregations, associations, and alumni of a metaphysical college, alongside special messages for annual meetings and communion services. Pastoral correspondence ranges from circulars to personal notes and counsel to students. Liturgical components include sermons, extracts from sermons, and Bible lessons. Brief admonitory articles provide practical guidance on personal conduct and church order. The reflective section contains allegorical and philosophical meditations. Historical sketches appear in a dedicated portion. The poetic section offers hymns, devotional lyrics, and occasional verse. Testimonials provide concluding evidences of practice.

Unifying the collection is a consistent moral and spiritual program: the primacy of divine reality, the reform of thought and character, the healing effect of prayer, and the practical demands of charity, forgiveness, and self-government. Stylistically, the writing blends scriptural resonance with argumentative clarity and pastoral urgency. Antithesis is a favored device—setting spiritual insight against material sense—while aphorism and maxim condense instruction. Across forms, the tone remains exhortative yet consoling, balancing correction with encouragement. Whether addressing congregations or individuals, the voice presses from premise toward demonstration, insisting that doctrine be embodied in conduct, community, and service.

The letters display the breadth of pastoral oversight and the diversity of the movement’s communities during these years. Communications to national associations and college affiliates are interleaved with notes to local churches in various cities, as well as messages to the central congregation in Boston. Counsel reaches students, addressing their responsibilities and methods. Practical matters—prayer, church work, decorum, charity, and the handling of controversy—are treated alongside expressions of gratitude, such as thanks extended to donors. The epistolary voice is personal but authoritative, clarifying practice, correcting missteps, and sustaining unity through instruction tailored to circumstances while grounded in common principles.

The addresses and sermons capture the public face of the teaching. Orations in prominent venues and in the Boston church articulate doctrine in a civic and religious register, inviting both adherents and observers to consider claims and their implications. Messages for annual meetings and communion services strengthen ecclesial identity, while sermons for holidays—including midwinter and spring observances—as well as remarks delivered on national anniversaries, connect spiritual themes with shared calendars. Extracts preserve the condensed vigor of oral delivery. Taken together, these pieces show how argument, exhortation, and celebration converge in worship, assembly, and the larger forum of public discourse.

The sequence of brief precepts and practical notes functions as a compact manual of conduct, polemic, and policy. Here the author addresses rumor and misrepresentation, urges fairness in judgment, and outlines ethical standards for practitioners and clergy. Topics range from professional integrity and mental malpractice to obedience, humility, and the avoidance of vainglory. Reflections on marriage, law, and civic duty appear alongside pastoral cautions against contagion and unkind speech. Notices and cards respond to current issues and administrative needs. The cumulative effect is corrective yet constructive, establishing boundaries while keeping the emphasis on spiritual law, charity, and disciplined self-examination.

Meditative and philosophical pieces widen the register beyond instruction to contemplation. Allegory offers a narrative lens through which to consider spiritual awakening and the contrast between surface appearances and deeper purpose. Seasonal voices and devotional essays mingle with inquiries into the nature of evil, the reliability of human concepts, and the relation of philosophy to revealed truth. Throughout, the movement is from perplexity toward illumination, from abstraction toward moral and practical consequence. The author treats reason and revelation as complementary when rightly ordered, bringing speculative questions back to the transformative demands of fidelity, wisdom, and consistent practice.

Historical glimpses bridge doctrine and circumstance, sketching context and offering perspective on the development of ideas and institutions. The poetic section then transposes themes into lyric form. Hymns and devotional verses encourage trust, praise, and steadfastness; occasional poems honor persons, seasons, and places; and varied stanzaic patterns convey both intimacy and resolve. The verse sustains the same central emphases as the prose—reform of thought, tenderness of love, and constancy in trial—while engaging the affections and imagination. Poetry here is not an ornament but an instrument of devotion, complementing argument with song and meditation with praise.

The closing testimonials provide experiential corroboration of the teachings and practices set forth earlier. These accounts, presented as personal statements, serve a dual purpose: they document results associated with the discipline and they encourage readers through narrative evidence. Positioned at the end of the volume, they return the discussion from theory and exhortation to outcome and gratitude. The inclusion of such witness situates the entire miscellany within a community of practice, where doctrine is tested by life. In form and function, these testimonies reinforce the book’s central claim that spiritual understanding bears fruit in concrete ways.

Considered as a whole, the volume’s significance lies in its comprehensive portrait of a religious teaching as it speaks across platforms—pulpit, podium, correspondence, lesson, meditation, and song. The miscellany allows readers to see how instruction adapts to occasion without losing coherence, and how a single author calibrates tone to audience while sustaining a consistent aim. For students of American religious writing, the collection exhibits a distinctive blend of scriptural cadence, moral suasion, and practical counsel. For adherents and inquirers alike, it provides a structured path from principle to practice, from private devotion to public witness, within a single, unified book.

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) was an American religious leader and author best known as the founder of Christian Science and the principal architect of its theology. Emerging from the religious ferment of nineteenth-century New England, she advanced a distinctive interpretation of Christianity that emphasized spiritual healing, rigorous biblical study, and the supremacy of divine Mind. An energetic organizer as well as a writer, she established institutions, periodicals, and a church structure that gave her ideas lasting reach. Her work drew both committed followers and outspoken critics, placing her at the center of national debates about faith, health, authority, and the place of religion in modern life.

Raised in rural New Hampshire within a Congregationalist milieu, Eddy experienced recurring ill health that limited formal schooling but intensified a lifelong discipline of self-directed study. She read the Bible closely, analyzing passages that later anchored her theological positions, and she absorbed sermons, devotional writings, and contemporary discussions of metaphysics circulating in New England. That reading, combined with active engagement in church life, supplied tools for interpreting Christian doctrine through experience. By the 1850s and 1860s, she was articulating ideas about prayer, morality, and cure, testing them against personal trials and the wider religious conversation that animated American Protestantism in the period.

In the early 1860s Eddy consulted Phineas P. Quimby, a Maine practitioner known for mental healing, as part of her search for relief and understanding. Scholars have long discussed the extent to which his methods influenced her; she later maintained that her mature theology arose from independent biblical study. A decisive turning point came in 1866, when, after a severe fall, she recovered while reading Gospel accounts of Jesus’ healings. She interpreted the experience as a revelation of spiritual law grounded in God’s goodness. That conviction—that divine reality governs health and can be demonstrated through prayerful understanding—became the seed of Christian Science.

Eddy began systematizing and publishing her views in the mid-1870s with Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, a work she revised repeatedly throughout her life. The book presents God as infinite Spirit or Mind, creation as fundamentally spiritual, and salvation and healing as the practical outcome of understanding this truth. It argues that sickness and sin are overcome through spiritual awakening rather than material means, and it urges careful, devout engagement with the Bible. Widely circulated and frequently debated, the volume served both as a theological treatise and a manual of practice, and its evolving editions chart her ongoing clarification of doctrine.

To support this message, Eddy organized a church and educational infrastructure. In the late 1870s she founded The Church of Christ, Scientist, and in the 1880s she chartered the Massachusetts Metaphysical College to train practitioners and teachers. She launched The Christian Science Journal to publish articles, testimonies, and notices, and later codified church governance in the Manual of The Mother Church. These institutions framed standards for practice, preaching, and healing, and they located the movement’s administrative center in Boston while encouraging local branch activity. Through structured classes, lectures, and publications, her ideas moved from individual experience to a recognizable denomination with international reach.

From the 1890s into the early twentieth century, Eddy continued to write and to build a publishing program. She issued collections and doctrinal essays, including Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, Unity of Good, and Retrospection and Introspection, alongside ongoing revisions of Science and Health. She founded additional periodicals, among them the Christian Science Sentinel and The Herald of Christian Science, and in the first decade of the twentieth century she established The Christian Science Monitor, conceived as a newspaper committed to fair-minded reporting. Her prominence brought scrutiny, public controversy, and court challenges, yet it also amplified the visibility of her texts and practices.

Eddy’s later years were marked by sustained editorial oversight of church publications and by efforts to secure stable governance for the movement she had founded. After her death in 1910, Christian Science continued as a distinct current in American and international religious life, with adherents studying her writings and the Bible in tandem. Science and Health remains the central theological text for members, while historians read it as a landmark of nineteenth-century metaphysical religion. The Christian Science Monitor, an international news organization recognized for its journalism, testifies to her broader cultural aspirations. Her legacy endures in ongoing conversations about faith, healing, and religious authority.

Historical Context

Table of Contents

Miscellaneous Writings, 1883–1896 gathers Mary Baker Eddy’s occasional prose, sermons, addresses, letters, and poems produced as her movement shifted from fragile beginnings to national institution. Compiled and published in 1897, it reflects Boston- and New England–centered origins and a widening audience across the United States and Canada. The collection belongs to the Gilded Age, when industrial expansion, urbanization, and a volatile press culture framed debates over science, religion, and authority. Its pieces speak to a readership living amid rapid change, and they document the founder’s effort to stabilize doctrine, discipline, and worship while responding to critics, encouraging branches, and articulating a distinctively American Christian metaphysics.

Eddy, born Mary Morse Baker in Bow, New Hampshire, on July 16, 1821, located her narrative in New England piety and reform. Her pivotal healing in Lynn, Massachusetts, on February 1, 1866, catalyzed the scriptural study that led to Science and Health (Boston, 1875). She organized the Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879 and chartered the Massachusetts Metaphysical College in Boston in 1881. By 1883 she founded The Christian Science Journal to knit far‑flung students. Miscellaneous Writings spans these institutional years, collecting public defenses, pastoral counsel, and devotional artifacts that relate the 1866 discovery to the maturing church visible in Boston and beyond by the mid‑1890s.

The late nineteenth‑century religious landscape was crowded: post‑Civil War revivalism, Holiness pietism, Spiritualism, Theosophy, and refined liberal Protestantism competed in pulpits and lecture halls. Eddy’s essays on Christian Theism and Scientific Theism differentiate her system from pantheism and occult currents while aligning it with biblical monotheism. Boston’s Tremont Temple, where she spoke in 1888, symbolized the era’s public platform for theological controversy. The 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago exemplified comparative religion’s allure; several of her associates participated while she engaged the moment through print. The collection’s introductory chapters situate Christian Science within this marketplace by affirming revelation, prayer, and healing as demonstrable Christian essentials.

Medical professionalization and germ theory reshaped expectations between 1870 and 1895. The American Medical Association expanded standards; laboratories confirmed bacterial causation. Simultaneously, the mind‑cure stream associated with Phineas P. Quimby (1802–1866) and writers like Warren Felt Evans offered mental therapeutics. Eddy contested both material and occult explanations, arguing for spiritually scientific healing grounded in the Bible. Essays such as Science and the Senses and Contagion confront the authority of sense testimony and epidemic fear—topical during the 1889–1890 influenza pandemic—while Mental Practice warns against manipulative mesmerism. The collection thus registers a broad cultural debate about causation, cure, and conscience under the pressures of new medicine.

States tightened medical practice laws in the 1880s and 1890s, provoking court cases and legislative hearings over religious healing. Eddy’s brief Cards and longer admonitions address rumor, liability, and public duty, urging obedience to civil statutes while defending spiritual causation. Items titled A Christian Science Statute, Notice, and Obtrusive Mental Healing show her awareness of legal language and policing of practice. Her letters to associations and churches model organizational compliance and pastoral prudence. The collection records how a new religious movement navigated licensing regimes and public health anxieties without abandoning its theological claim that prayer, understood scientifically, heals and moralizes the practitioner and patient alike.

Print made the movement. In Boston in 1883, Eddy launched The Christian Science Journal with prospectuses, editorials, and regular testimonials—genres echoed in Miscellaneous Writings. The Preface, Prospectus, Epigrams, and Questions and Answers show her editorial method: concise maxims, catechetical exchange, and doctrinal framing suited to a dispersed readership. Testimony, a longstanding evangelical device, becomes evidentiary support for practice in Chapter XII. The collection also preserves addresses and sermons as they were printed and circulated, underscoring how railroads, the postal system, and periodical culture created a network binding readers in Oconto, Scranton, Denver, and Boston to a common lexicon and discipline.

Institutionally, Christian Science moved from voluntary association to corporate church. The National Christian Scientist Association, formed in 1886, struggled and effectively disappeared by 1890. Eddy reorganized the Boston church as The First Church of Christ, Scientist in 1892 with twenty‑six original members. The Original Mother Church edifice in Boston’s Back Bay rose in 1894 and was dedicated in January 1895. The collection includes lists of early members, addresses delivered in 1895–1896, and messages to annual meetings, evidence of a consolidating center. These documents trace the transition from itinerant classes and ad hoc conventions to a standing mother church with bylaws, officers, and a regular calendar.

The Massachusetts Metaphysical College (1881–1889) was Eddy’s pedagogical laboratory, conferring degrees and licensing teachers. Criticism, litigation, and scale led her to close it in 1889, yet alumni and affiliated associations continued to function. Addresses to alumni in 1895, along with Advice to Students, Class, Pulpit, Students’ Students, and Close of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, show her tightening control of pedagogy and succession amid rapid growth. The rhetoric of authorization—who may teach, how to handle malpractice, what constitutes fidelity—pervades. The collection thus documents the move from proprietary classroom to church‑based instruction and the gradual centralization of training in Boston and its branches.

Eddy’s career unfolded during organized womanhood’s expansion—suffrage campaigns, temperance activism, and women’s clubs. As a woman founding a denomination, she placed women in visible roles as Readers, practitioners, and officers long before many Protestant bodies ordained them. Poems like Woman’s Rights and The Mother’s Evening Prayer, and pastoral essays on marriage and purity, reflect a gendered moral vision that resonated with middle‑class readers. Hints to the Clergy confronts male ecclesiastical skepticism while redefining ministry as healing service. The collection reveals how Christian Science channeled domestic virtues—discipline, nurture, prayer—into public leadership, reframing authority without adopting either clericalism or the era’s militant feminism.

The Gilded Age press rewarded polemic, and Christian Science drew intense scrutiny. Articles titled Perfidy and Slander, Unchristian Rumor, Malicious Reports, and A Card respond to newspaper attacks and dissident claims, while Loyal Christian Scientists and A Word to the Wise cultivate solidarity. Ethical essays such as Love Your Enemies, Judge Not, and New Commandment anchor controversy in gospel imperatives, urging a spiritualized civility amid sensational journalism. By circulating these pieces across chapters—addresses, letters, and precepts—the collection shows a founder crafting communal etiquette, turning public conflict into instruction on charity, self‑government, and the disciplined speech that would become characteristic of her church’s public face.

Geographically, the movement leapt from New England to the Midwest, the Mountain West, and Canada by the mid‑1890s. Letters to congregations in Oconto, Scranton, Denver, and Lawrence acknowledge local initiative while aligning it with Boston. A note to donors of a boat from Toronto, Canada, registers cross‑border ties. Messages to the National Christian Scientist Association and later to the Mother Church exemplify how telegraph, rail, and postal networks standardized doctrine and practice across distances. The collection’s many Letters reveal a governance by correspondence, in which branch by‑laws, discipline, and philanthropy were harmonized with the center, producing a recognizable identity in dispersed communities.

Pleasant View, the Concord, New Hampshire, residence Eddy occupied from 1892, gave the movement a pastoral emblem. Pond and Purpose uses the imagery of lilies and still water to represent purification and aim. The Address on the Fourth of July at Pleasant View (1897), delivered before some 2,500 members, locates Christian Science within American civic ritual, fusing patriotism with spiritual healing. Concord’s literary associations—Emerson and Thoreau—haunt the setting, though Eddy’s metaphysics rejects Transcendentalist immanence. The essays’ Concord scenes offered readers a restorative landscape, contrasting Boston’s bustle and reinforcing the idea that spiritual discipline yields practical reform in body, church, and nation.

Worship practice matured decisively in this period. In 1895 Eddy ordained the Bible and Science and Health as the impersonal Pastor of The Mother Church, ended personal preaching, and accepted the title Pastor Emeritus. Bible Lessons, Sunday Services on July Fourth, Easter Services, and Communion Address (January 1896) outline a calendar and liturgy centered on Scripture read by lay Readers. The shift democratized the pulpit and insulated services from personality conflicts. Miscellaneous Writings preserves texts and editorial extracts that taught branches how to conduct services, interpret sacraments spiritually, and maintain uniformity, thereby linking doctrine, devotional practice, and governance across a swiftly expanding field.

The collection also captures Eddy’s artistic and poetic experiments. Christ and Christmas (1893), produced with illustrator James F. Gilman, fused verse and symbolic imagery to present the nativity as the appearing of Christian Science; its revisions and reception reveal tensions over religious art and authority. Poems such as Communion Hymn, Feed My Sheep, Christ My Refuge, and The Mother’s Evening Prayer migrated into hymnals and services, aligning the movement with nineteenth‑century American hymnody. Short lyrics, seasonal pieces (Sunrise at Pleasant View), and occasional verse to friends show how poetry functioned devotionally and pedagogically, embedding doctrine in memorable forms suitable for congregational and domestic use.

Philosophically, the writings engage idealist and scientific currents. Essays like One Cause and Effect, Science and Philosophy, Spirit and Law, and Truth versus Error rework themes associated with Berkeleyan idealism and American mental philosophy in a biblical key, resisting emergent materialisms that accompanied Darwinian discourse after 1859. Eddy’s vocabulary of Principle, law, and demonstration borrows the prestige of science to claim repeatable spiritual results. Science and the Senses questions sensory epistemology in favor of revelation-tested reason. The result is an apologetic that situates Christian Science both against determinist naturalism and against esoteric occultism, staking out a Protestant metaphysical theism adapted to modern controversies.

Self‑presentation and memory are integral to the book. Inklings Historic offers brief historical vignettes that position Eddy as discoverer and teacher, while Deification of Personality warns followers against leader‑worship. The Quimby controversy—allegations of derivation from mesmerism—lingers in the background of several defenses distinguishing Christian Science from hypnotic or personal influence. Cards and Notices reply to plagiarism charges and organizational challenges posed by ambitious former students. By coupling narrative with admonition, the collection creates a usable past for a young church, asserting textual primacy for Science and Health and establishing criteria by which fidelity, authorship, and practice could be judged across generations.

By the close of 1896 the movement numbered thousands of adherents, with organized branches in numerous American cities and footholds in Canada, all oriented to Boston’s Mother Church, dedicated in January 1895. Miscellaneous Writings consolidates that moment: it codifies worship patterns soon stabilized by successive editions of the Church Manual (begun in the mid‑1890s), models correspondence governance, and memorializes sermons and public addresses that defined the church’s voice. It also anticipates expansion—new periodicals after 1898, international growth, and a clarified polity. As a whole, the volume supplies the historical connective tissue between discovery and durable institution in a formative American religious movement.

Synopsis (Selection)

Table of Contents

Epigrams

A series of brief aphorisms distilling the metaphysical and ethical tenets of Christian Science into concise maxims that encourage spiritual-mindedness and moral reform.

Preface

Eddy states the purpose and scope of the miscellany—to clarify Christian Science doctrine, answer criticism, and guide students and churches in practical spiritual healing.

Chapter I. Introductory (Prospectus; A Timely Issue; Love Your Enemies; Christian Theism; The New Birth)

Foundational essays that outline the mission of Christian Science, urge charity toward opponents, define a strictly spiritual monotheism (God as infinite Mind), and describe spiritual rebirth as awakening to divine Principle and practice.

Chapter II. One Cause And Effect

A doctrinal statement asserting God, the one infinite cause, as producing only good, thereby denying reality and causality to matter and evil.

Chapter III. Questions And Answers

A catechetical section addressing common inquiries on prayer, healing, sin, sacraments, and church practice, explaining their meaning and method within Christian Science.

Chapter IV. Addresses (Christian Science In Tremont Temple; Science And The Senses; Extracts and Messages, 1893–1896)

Public talks and church messages applying Christian Science to topics such as the unreliability of material sense, spiritual communion, organization and education of the movement, and calls to unity and moral discipline.

Chapter V. Letters (To The Mother Church; To Associations and Churches; To Students; Miscellaneous Correspondence)

Open letters offering pastoral guidance on prayer, church building and governance, gratitude and giving, class instruction, and ethical conduct, along with responses to rumors and practical directives to congregations and students.

Chapter VI. Sermons (Christmas, Easter, National Services, Bible Lessons)

Sermons and service outlines that connect Christ’s nativity and resurrection to present spiritual healing, frame national observances in spiritual terms, and present Scripture as practical metaphysics for daily life.

Chapter VII. Pond And Purpose

An allegorical essay contrasting stagnation with purposeful spiritual activity, urging readers to let thought flow with divine purpose rather than settle into apathy.

Chapter VIII. Precept Upon Precept (Brief Essays, Notices, and Admonitions)

Dozens of concise teachings on obedience to divine will, nonviolence, true theism, right mental practice, forgiveness, prudence regarding contagion and slander, humility, marriage, church order, loyalty, and organizational notices—including patriotic and pastoral messages.

Chapter IX. The Fruit Of Spirit (Allegories, Meditations, and Doctrinal Sketches)

Short pieces on fidelity and spiritual growth, the supposed origin of evil versus the supremacy of Truth, the way of spiritual progress, cautions against blind leadership, and seasonal/devotional reflections, including reference to the illustrated poem 'Christ and Christmas.'

Chapter X. Inklings Historic

Brief historical reminiscences tracing the emergence of Christian Science, formative episodes in its institutions, and principles that shaped its organization and practice.

Chapter XI. Poems (Come Thou; The Mother’s Evening Prayer; Christ My Refuge; 'Feed My Sheep'; Communion Hymn; and others)

A collection of devotional and occasional verse on love, hope, motherhood, nature, and reliance on Christ, several used as hymns and prayers within Christian Science worship.

Chapter XII. Testimonials

Firsthand accounts of spiritual healing and moral regeneration attributed to the practice of Christian Science, offered as experiential evidence of its efficacy.

Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896

Main Table of Contents

Epigrams.

Preface.

Chapter I. Introductory.

Prospectus.

A Timely Issue.

Love Your Enemies.

Christian Theism.

The New Birth.

Chapter II. One Cause And Effect.

Chapter III. Questions And Answers.

Chapter IV. Addresses.

Christian Science In Tremont Temple.

Science And The Senses.

Extract From My First Address In The Mother. Church, May 26, 1895

Address Before The Alumni Of The Massachusetts. Metaphysical College, 1895

Address Before The Christian Scientist Association. Of The Massachusetts Metaphysical College,. In 1893

Communion Address, January, 1896

Message To The Annual Meeting Of The Mother. Church, Boston, 1896

Chapter V. Letters.

To The Mother Church.

To ——, On Prayer.

To The National Christian Scientist Association.

To The College Association.

To The National Christian Scientist Association.

To The First Church Of Christ, Scientist, Boston.

To Donors Of Boat, From Toronto, Canada.

Address,—Laying The Corner-Stone.

To The First Church Of Christ, Scientist, Boston

The First Members Of The First Church Of Christ,. Scientist, Boston, Massachusetts

Extract From A Letter

To The Mother Church

To First Church Of Christ, Scientist, In Oconto

To First Church Of Christ, Scientist, In Scranton

To First Church Of Christ, Scientist,. In Denver

To First Church Of Christ, Scientist,. In Lawrence

To Correspondents

To Students

To A Student

To A Student

Extract From A Christmas Letter

Chapter VI. Sermons.

A Christmas Sermon

Editor's Extracts From Sermon

Extract From A Sermon Delivered In Boston, January 18, 1885

Sunday Services on July Fourth

Easter Services

Bible Lessons

Chapter VII. Pond And Purpose.

Chapter VIII. Precept Upon Precept

“ Thy Will Be Done ”

“ Put Up Thy Sword ”

Scientific Theism

Mental Practice

Taking Offense

Hints To The Clergy

Perfidy And Slander

Contagion

Improve Your Time

Thanksgiving Dinner

Christian Science

Injustice

Reformers

Mrs. Eddy Sick

“ I've Got Cold ”

“ Prayer And Healing ”

Veritas Odium Parit

Falsehood

Love

Address On The Fourth Of July At Pleasant View,. Concord, N. H., Before 2,500 Members Of The. Mother Church, 1897

Well Doinge Is The Fruite Of Doinge Well

Little Gods

Advantage Of Mind-Healing

A Card

Spirit And Law

Truth-Healing

Heart To Heart

Things To Be Thought Of

Unchristian Rumor

Vainglory

Compounds

Close Of The Massachusetts Metaphysical. College

Malicious Reports

Loyal Christian Scientists

The March Primary Class

Obtrusive Mental Healing

Wedlock

Judge Not

New Commandment

A Cruce Salus

Comparison to English Barmaids

A Christian Science Statute

Advice To Students

Notice

Angels

Deification Of Personality

A Card

Overflowing Thoughts

A Great Man And His Saying

Words Of Commendation

Church And School

Class, Pulpit, Students' Students

My Students And Thy Students

Unseen Sin

A Word To The Wise

Christmas

Card

Message To The Mother Church

Chapter IX. The Fruit Of Spirit

An Allegory

Voices Of Spring

“ Where Art Thou? ”

Divine Science

Fidelity

True Philosophy And Communion

Origin Of Evil

Truth Versus Error

Fallibility Of Human Concepts

The Way

Science And Philosophy

“ Take Heed! ”

The Cry Of Christmas-Tide

Blind Leaders

“ Christ And Christmas ”

Sunrise At Pleasant View

Chapter X. Inklings Historic

Chapter XI. Poems

Come Thou

Meeting Of My Departed Mother And Husband

Love

Woman's Rights

The Mother's Evening Prayer

June

Wish And Item

The Oak On The Mountain's Summit

Isle Of Wight

Hope

Rondelet

To Mr. James T. White

Autumn

Christ My Refuge

“ Feed My Sheep ”

Communion Hymn

Laus Deo!

A Verse

Chapter XII. Testimonials

"

[pg v]

Dedication.

Table of Contents

To

Loyal Christian Scientists

In This And Every Land

I Lovingly Dedicate These Practical Teachings

Indispensable To The Culture And Achievements Which

Constitute The Success Of A Student

And Demonstrate The Ethics

Of Christian Science

Mary Baker Eddy

[pg vii]

Epigrams.

Table of Contents

Pray thee, take care, that tak'st my book in hand,

To read it well; that is, to understand.

Ben Jonson: Epigram 1

When I would know thee ... my thought looks

Upon thy well made choice of friends and books;

Then do I love thee, and behold thy ends

In making thy friends books, and thy books friends.

Ben Jonson: Epigram 86

If worlds were formed by matter,

And mankind from the dust;

Till time shall end more timely,

There's nothing here to trust.

Thenceforth to evolution's

Geology, we say,—

Nothing have we gained therefrom,

And nothing have to pray:

My world has sprung from Spirit,

In everlasting day;

Whereof, I've more to glory,

Wherefor, have much to pay.

Mary Baker Eddy

[pg ix]

Preface.

Table of Contents

A certain apothegm of a Talmudical philosopher [1]

suits my sense of doing good. It reads thus: “The

noblest charity is to prevent a man from accepting

charity; and the best alms are to show and to enable a

man to dispense with alms.” [5]

In the early history of Christian Science, among my

thousands of students few were wealthy. Now, Christian

Scientists are not indigent; and their comfortable fortunes

are acquired by healing mankind morally, physically,

spiritually. The easel of time presents pictures—once [10]

fragmentary and faint—now rejuvenated by the touch

of God's right hand. Where joy, sorrow, hope, disap-

pointment, sigh, and smile commingled, now hope sits

dove-like.

To preserve a long course of years still and uniform, [15]

amid the uniform darkness of storm and cloud and

tempest, requires strength from above,—deep draughts

from the fount of divine Love. Truly may it be said:

There is an old age of the heart, and a youth that never

grows old; a Love that is a boy, and a Psyche who is [20]

ever a girl. The fleeting freshness of youth, however,

is not the evergreen of Soul; the coloring glory of

[pg x]

perpetual bloom; the spiritual glow and grandeur of [1]

a consecrated life wherein dwelleth peace, sacred and

sincere in trial or in triumph.

The opportunity has at length offered itself for me to

comply with an oft-repeated request; namely, to collect [5]

my miscellaneous writings published in The Christian

Science Journal, since April, 1883, and republish them

in book form,—accessible as reference, and reliable as

old landmarks. Owing to the manifold demands on my

time in the early pioneer days, most of these articles [10]

were originally written in haste, without due preparation.

To those heretofore in print, a few articles are herein

appended. To some articles are affixed data, where these

are most requisite, to serve as mile-stones measuring the

distance,—or the difference between then and now,— [15]

in the opinions of men and the progress of our Cause.

My signature has been slightly changed from my

Christian name, Mary Morse Baker. Timidity in early

years caused me, as an author, to assume various noms

de plume. After my first marriage, to Colonel Glover [20]

of Charleston, South Carolina, I dropped the name of

Morse to retain my maiden name,—thinking that other-

wise the name would be too long.

In 1894, I received from the Daughters of the American

Revolution a certificate of membership made out to Mary [25]

Baker Eddy, and thereafter adopted that form of signature,

except in connection with my published works.

[pg xi]

The first edition of Science and Health having been [1]

copyrighted at the date of its issue, 1875, in my name

of Glover, caused me to retain the initial “G” on my

subsequent books.

These pages, although a reproduction of what has [5]

been written, are still in advance of their time; and are

richly rewarded by what they have hitherto achieved for

the race. While no offering can liquidate one's debt of

gratitude to God, the fervent heart and willing hand are

not unknown to nor unrewarded by Him. [10]

May this volume be to the reader a graphic guide-

book, pointing the path, dating the unseen, and enabling

him to walk the untrodden in the hitherto unexplored

fields of Science. At each recurring holiday the Christian

Scientist will find herein a “canny” crumb; and thus [15]

may time's pastimes become footsteps to joys eternal.

Realism will at length be found to surpass imagination,

and to suit and savor all literature. The shuttlecock of

religious intolerance will fall to the ground, if there be

no battledores to fling it back and forth. It is reason for [20]

rejoicing that the vox populi is inclined to grant us peace,

together with pardon for the preliminary battles that

purchased it.

With tender tread, thought sometimes walks in memory,

through the dim corridors of years, on to old battle- [25]

grounds, there sadly to survey the fields of the slain and

the enemy's losses. In compiling this work, I have tried

[pg xii]

to remove the pioneer signs and ensigns of war, and to [1]

retain at this date the privileged armaments of peace.

With armor on, I continue the march, command and

countermand; meantime interluding with loving thought

this afterpiece of battle. Supported, cheered, I take my [5]

pen and pruning-hook, to “learn war no more,” and with

strong wing to lift my readers above the smoke of conflict

into light and liberty.

Mary Baker Eddy

Concord, N.H. January, 1897

[pg 001]

Chapter I. Introductory.

Table of Contents

Prospectus.

Table of Contents

The ancient Greek looked longingly for the Olym- [1]

piad. The Chaldee watched the appearing of a

star; to him, no higher destiny dawned on the dome

of being than that foreshadowed by signs in the heav- [5]

ens. The meek Nazarene, the scoffed of all scoffers,

said, “Ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye

not discern the signs of the times?”—for he forefelt

and foresaw the ordeal of a perfect Christianity, hated

by sinners. [10]

To kindle all minds with a gleam of gratitude, the

new idea that comes welling up from infinite Truth needs

to be understood. The seer of this age should be a

sage.

Humility is the stepping-stone to a higher recognition [15]

of Deity. The mounting sense gathers fresh forms and

strange fire from the ashes of dissolving self, and drops

the world. Meekness heightens immortal attributes

only by removing the dust that dims them. Goodness

reveals another scene and another self seemingly rolled [20]

up in shades, but brought to light by the evolutions of

[pg 002]

advancing thought, whereby we discern the power of [1]

Truth and Love to heal the sick.

Pride is ignorance; those assume most who have the

least wisdom or experience; and they steal from their

neighbor, because they have so little of their own. [5]

The signs of these times portend a long and strong

determination of mankind to cleave to the world, the

flesh, and evil, causing great obscuration of Spirit.

When we remember that God is just, and admit the

total depravity of mortals, alias mortal mind,—and that [10]

this Adam legacy must first be seen, and then must be

subdued and recompensed by justice, the eternal attri-

bute of Truth,—the outlook demands labor, and the

laborers seem few. To-day we behold but the first

faint view of a more spiritual Christianity, that embraces [15]

a deeper and broader philosophy and a more rational and

divine healing. The time approaches when divine Life,

Truth, and Love will be found alone the remedy for sin,

sickness, and death; when God, man's saving Principle,

and Christ, the spiritual idea of God, will be revealed. [20]

Man's probation after death is the necessity of his

immortality; for good dies not and evil is self-destruc-

tive, therefore evil must be mortal and self-destroyed.

If man should not progress after death, but should re-

main in error, he would be inevitably self-annihilated. [25]

Those upon whom “the second death hath no power”

are those who progress here and hereafter out of evil,

their mortal element, and into good that is immortal;

thus laying off the material beliefs that war against

Spirit, and putting on the spiritual elements in divine [30]

Science.

While we entertain decided views as to the best method

[pg 003]

for elevating the race physically, morally, and spiritually, [1]

and shall express these views as duty demands, we

shall claim no especial gift from our divine origin, no

supernatural power. If we regard good as more natural

than evil, and spiritual understanding—the true knowl- [5]

edge of God—as imparting the only power to heal the

sick and the sinner, we shall demonstrate in our lives the

power of Truth and Love.

The lessons we learn in divine Science are applica-

ble to all the needs of man. Jesus taught them for this [10]

very purpose; and his demonstration hath taught us

that “through his stripes”—his life-experience—and

divine Science, brought to the understanding through

Christ, the Spirit-revelator, is man healed and saved.

No opinions of mortals nor human hypotheses enter this [15]

line of thought or action. Drugs, inert matter, never are

needed to aid spiritual power. Hygiene, manipulation,

and mesmerism are not Mind's medicine. The Principle

of all cure is God, unerring and immortal Mind.

We have learned that the erring or mortal thought holds [20]

in itself all sin, sickness, and death, and imparts these

states to the body; while the supreme and perfect Mind,

as seen in the truth of being, antidotes and destroys these

material elements of sin and death.

Because God is supreme and omnipotent, materia [25]

medica, hygiene, and animal magnetism are impotent;

and their only supposed efficacy is in apparently delud-

ing reason, denying revelation, and dethroning Deity.

The tendency of mental healing is to uplift mankind; but

this method perverted, is “Satan let loose.” Hence the [30]

deep demand for the Science of psychology to meet sin,

and uncover it; thus to annihilate hallucination.

[pg 004]

Thought imbued with purity, Truth, and Love, in- [1]

structed in the Science of metaphysical healing, is the

most potent and desirable remedial agent on the earth.

At this period there is a marked tendency of mortal

mind to plant mental healing on the basis of hypnotism, [5]

calling this method “mental science.” All Science is

Christian Science; the Science of the Mind that is God,

and of the universe as His idea, and their relation to each

other. Its only power to heal is its power to do good,

not evil.

A Timely Issue.

Table of Contents

At this date, 1883, a newspaper edited and published

by the Christian Scientists has become a necessity. Many

questions important to be disposed of come to the Col-

lege and to the practising students, yet but little time [15]

has been devoted to their answer. Further enlight-

enment is necessary for the age, and a periodical de-

voted to this work seems alone adequate to meet the

requirement. Much interest is awakened and expressed

on the subject of metaphysical healing, but in many [20]

minds it is confounded with isms, and even infidelity, so

that its religious specialty and the vastness of its worth

are not understood.

It is often said, “You must have a very strong will-

power to heal,” or, “It must require a great deal of faith [25]

to make your demonstrations.” When it is answered

that there is no will-power required, and that something

more than faith is necessary, we meet with an expression

of incredulity. It is not alone the mission of Christian

Science to heal the sick, but to destroy sin in mortal [30]

[pg 005]

thought. This work well done will elevate and purify [1]

the race. It cannot fail to do this if we devote our best

energies to the work.

Science reveals man as spiritual, harmonious, and eter-

nal. This should be understood. Our College should [5]

be crowded with students who are willing to consecrate

themselves to this Christian work. Mothers should be

able to produce perfect health and perfect morals in their

children—and ministers, to heal the sick—by study-

ing this scientific method of practising Christianity. [10]

Many say, “I should like to study, but have not suffi-

cient faith that I have the power to heal.” The healing

power is Truth and Love, and these do not fail in the

greatest emergencies.

Materia medica says, “I can do no more. I have [15]

done all that can be done. There is nothing to build

upon. There is no longer any reason for hope.” Then

metaphysics comes in, armed with the power of Spirit,

not matter, takes up the case hopefully and builds on

the stone that the builders have rejected, and is suc- [20]

cessful.

Metaphysical therapeutics can seem a miracle and a

mystery to those only who do not understand the grand

reality that Mind controls the body. They acknowledge

an erring or mortal mind, but believe it to be brain mat- [25]

ter. That man is the idea of infinite Mind, always perfect

in God, in Truth, Life, and Love, is something not easily

accepted, weighed down as is mortal thought with mate-

rial beliefs. That which never existed, can seem solid

substance to this thought. It is much easier for people [30]

to believe that the body affects the mind, than that the

mind affects the body.

[pg 006]

We hear from the pulpits that sickness is sent as a [1]

discipline to bring man nearer to God,—even though

sickness often leaves mortals but little time free from

complaints and fretfulness, and Jesus cast out disease as

evil. [5]

The most of our Christian Science practitioners have

plenty to do, and many more are needed for the ad-

vancement of the age. At present the majority of the

acute cases are given to the M. D.'s, and only those

cases that are pronounced incurable are passed over to [10]

the Scientist. The healing of such cases should cer-

tainly prove to all minds the power of metaphysics over

physics; and it surely does, to many thinkers, as the

rapid growth of the work shows. At no distant day,

Christian healing will rank far in advance of allopathy [15]

and homœopathy; for Truth must ultimately succeed

where error fails.

Mind governs all. That we exist in God, perfect,

there is no doubt, for the conceptions of Life, Truth, and

Love must be perfect; and with that basic truth we con- [20]

quer sickness, sin, and death. Frequently it requires

time to overcome the patient's faith in drugs and mate-

rial hygiene; but when once convinced of the uselessness

of such material methods, the gain is rapid.

It is a noticeable fact, that in families where laws [25]

of health are strictly enforced, great caution is observed

in regard to diet, and the conversation chiefly confined

to the ailments of the body, there is the most sickness.

Take a large family of children where the mother has

all that she can attend to in keeping them clothed and

fed, and health is generally the rule; whereas, in small

families of one or two children, sickness is by no means

[pg 007]

the exception. These children must not be allowed to [1]

eat certain food, nor to breathe the cold air, because

there is danger in it; when they perspire, they must be

loaded down with coverings until their bodies become

dry,—and the mother of one child is often busier than [5]

the mother of eight.

Great charity and humility is necessary in this work

of healing. The loving patience of Jesus, we must

strive to emulate. “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as

thyself” has daily to be exemplified; and, although [10]

skepticism and incredulity prevail in places where

one would least expect it, it harms not; for if serving

Christ, Truth, of what can mortal opinion avail? Cast

not your pearls before swine; but if you cannot bring

peace to all, you can to many, if faithful laborers in His [15]

vineyard.

Looking over the newspapers of the day, one naturally

reflects that it is dangerous to live, so loaded with disease

seems the very air. These descriptions carry fears to

many minds, to be depicted in some future time upon [20]

the body. A periodical of our own will counteract to

some extent this public nuisance; for through our paper,

at the price at which we shall issue it, we shall be able

to reach many homes with healing, purifying thought.

A great work already has been done, and a greater work [25]

yet remains to be done. Oftentimes we are denied the

results of our labors because people do not understand

the nature and power of metaphysics, and they think

that health and strength would have returned natu-

rally without any assistance. This is not so much from [30]

a lack of justice, as it is that the mens populi is not suffi-

ciently enlightened on this great subject. More thought

[pg 008]

is given to material illusions than to spiritual facts. If [1]

we can aid in abating suffering and diminishing sin,

we shall have accomplished much; but if we can bring

to the general thought this great fact that drugs do not,

cannot, produce health and harmony, since “in Him [5]

[Mind] we live, and move, and have our being,” we shall

have done more.”

Love Your Enemies.

Table of Contents

Who is thine enemy that thou shouldst love him? Is

it a creature or a thing outside thine own creation? [10]

Can you see an enemy, except you first formulate this

enemy and then look upon the object of your own conception?

What is it that harms you? Can height, or

depth, or any other creature separate you from the

Love that is omnipresent good,—that blesses infinitely [15]

one and all?

Simply count your enemy to be that which defiles,

defaces, and dethrones the Christ-image that you should

reflect. Whatever purifies, sanctifies, and consecrates

human life, is not an enemy, however much we suffer in [20]

the process. Shakespeare writes: “Sweet are the uses

of adversity.” Jesus said: “Blessed are ye, when men

shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all

manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake; ... for

so persecuted they the prophets which were before [25]

you.”

The Hebrew law with its “Thou shalt not,” its de-

mand and sentence, can only be fulfilled through the

gospel's benediction. Then, “Blessed are ye,” inso-

[pg 009]

much as the consciousness of good, grace, and peace, [1]

comes through affliction rightly understood, as sanctified

by the purification it brings to the flesh,—to pride, self-

ignorance, self-will, self-love, self-justification. Sweet,

indeed, are these uses of His rod! Well is it that the [5]

Shepherd of Israel passes all His flock under His rod

into His fold; thereby numbering them, and giving them

refuge at last from the elements of earth.

“Love thine enemies” is identical with “Thou hast

no enemies.” Wherein is this conclusion relative to [10]

those who have hated thee without a cause? Simply, in

that those unfortunate individuals are virtually thy best

friends. Primarily and ultimately, they are doing thee

good far beyond the present sense which thou canst entertain

of good. [15]

Whom we call friends seem to sweeten life's cup and

to fill it with the nectar of the gods. We lift this cup

to our lips; but it slips from our grasp, to fall in frag-

ments before our eyes. Perchance, having tasted its

tempting wine, we become intoxicated; become lethar- [20]

gic, dreamy objects of self-satisfaction; else, the con-

tents of this cup of selfish human enjoyment having lost

its flavor, we voluntarily set it aside as tasteless and

unworthy of human aims.

And wherefore our failure longer to relish this fleet- [25]

ing sense, with its delicious forms of friendship,

wherewith mortals become educated to gratification in

personal pleasure and trained in treacherous peace?

Because it is the great and only danger in the path

that winds upward. A false sense of what consti- [30]

tutes happiness is more disastrous to human progress

than all that an enemy or enmity can obtrude upon

[pg 010]

the mind or engraft upon its purposes and achievements [1]

wherewith to obstruct life's joys and enhance its sor-

rows.

We have no enemies. Whatever envy, hatred, revenge

—the most remorseless motives that govern mortal mind [5]

—whatever these try to do, shall “work together for good

to them that love God.”

Why?

Because He has called His own, armed them, equipped

them, and furnished them defenses impregnable. Their [10]

God will not let them be lost; and if they fall they shall

rise again, stronger than before the stumble. The good

cannot lose their God, their help in times of trouble.

If they mistake the divine command, they will recover

it, countermand their order, retrace their steps, and [15]

reinstate His orders, more assured to press on safely.

The best lesson of their lives is gained by crossing

swords with temptation, with fear and the besetments

of evil; insomuch as they thereby have tried their

strength and proven it; insomuch as they have found [20]

their strength made perfect in weakness, and their fear

is self-immolated.

This destruction is a moral chemicalization, wherein

old things pass away and all things become new. The

worldly or material tendencies of human affections and [25]

pursuits are thus annihilated; and this is the advent of

spiritualization. Heaven comes down to earth, and

mortals learn at last the lesson, “I have no enemies.”

Even in belief you have but one (that, not in reality),

and this one enemy is yourself—your erroneous belief [30]

that you have enemies; that evil is real; that aught but

good exists in Science. Soon or late, your enemy will

[pg 011]

wake from his delusion to suffer for his evil intent; to [1]

find that, though thwarted, its punishment is tenfold.

Love is the fulfilling of the law: it is grace, mercy,

and justice. I used to think it sufficiently just to abide

by our State statutes; that if a man should aim a ball at [5]

my heart, and I by firing first could kill him and save

my own life, that this was right. I thought, also, that

if I taught indigent students gratuitously, afterwards

assisting them pecuniarily, and did not cease teachi

ing the wayward ones at close of the class term, but [10]

followed them with precept upon precept; that if my

instructions had healed them and shown them the sure way

of salvation,—I had done my whole duty to students.

Love metes not out human justice, but divine mercy.

If one's life were attacked, and one could save it only [15]

in accordance with common law, by taking another's,

would one sooner give up his own? We must love our

enemies in all the manifestations wherein and whereby

we love our friends; must even try not to expose their

faults, but to do them good whenever opportunity [20]

occurs. To mete out human justice to those who per-

secure and despitefully use one, is not leaving all retribu-

tion to God and returning blessing for cursing. If special

opportunity for doing good to one's enemies occur not,

one can include them in his general effort to benefit the [25]

race. Because I can do much general good to such as

hate me, I do it with earnest, special care—since they

permit me no other way, though with tears have I striven

for it. When smitten on one cheek, I have turned the

other: I have but two to present. [30]

I would enjoy taking by the hand all who love me not,

and saying to them, “I love you, and would not know-

[pg 012]

ingly harm you.”Because I thus feel, I say to others: [1]

Hate no one; for hatred is a plague-spot that spreads

its virus and kills at last. If indulged, it masters us;

brings suffering upon suffering to its possessor, through-

out time and beyond the grave. If you have been badly [5]

wronged, forgive and forget: God will recompense this

wrong, and punish, more severely than you could, him

who has striven to injure you. Never return evil for evil;

and, above all, do not fancy that you have been wronged

when you have not been. [10]

The present is ours; the future, big with events.

Every man and woman should be to-day a law to him-

self, herself,—a law of loyalty to Jesus' Sermon on the

Mount. The means for sinning unseen and unpunished

have so increased that, unless one be watchful and stead- [15]

fast in Love, one's temptations to sin are increased a

hundredfold. Mortal mind at this period mutely works

in the interest of both good and evil in a manner least

understood; hence the need of watching, and the danger

of yielding to temptation from causes that at former [20]

periods in human history were not existent. The action

and effects of this so-called human mind in its silent argu-

ments, are yet to be uncovered and summarily dealt with

by divine justice.

In Christian Science, the law of Love rejoices the heart; [25]

and Love is Life and Truth. Whatever manifests aught

else in its effects upon mankind, demonstrably is not Love.

We should measure our love for God by our love for man;

and our sense of Science will be measured by our obedience

to God,—fulfilling the law of Love, doing good to all; [30]

imparting, so far as we reflect them, Truth, Life, and Love

to all within the radius of our atmosphere of thought.

[pg 013]

The only justice of which I feel at present capable, [1]

is mercy and charity toward every one,—just so far as

one and all permit me to exercise these sentiments toward

them,—taking special care to mind my own business.

The falsehood, ingratitude, misjudgment, and sharp [5]

return of evil for good—yea, the real wrongs (if wrong

can be real) which I have long endured at the hands of

others—have most happily wrought out for me the law

of loving mine enemies. This law I now urge upon the

solemn consideration of all Christian Scientists. Jesus [10]

said, “If ye love them which love you, what thank have

ye? for sinners also love those that love them.”

Christian Theism.

Table of Contents

Scholastic theology elaborates the proposition that

evil is a factor of good, and that to believe in the reality [15]

of evil is essential to a rounded sense of the existence of

good.

This frail hypothesis is founded upon the basis of mate-

rial and mortal evidence—only upon what the shifting

mortal senses confirm and frail human reason accepts. [20]

The Science of Soul reverses this proposition, overturns

the testimony of the five erring senses, and reveals in

clearer divinity the existence of good only; that is, of

God and His idea.

This postulate of divine Science only needs to be con- [25]

ceded, to afford opportunity for proof of its correctness

and the clearer discernment of good.

Seek the Anglo-Saxon term for God, and you will

find it to be good; then define good as God, and you

will find that good is omnipotence, has all power; it fills [30]

[pg 014]

all space, being omnipresent; hence, there is neither place [1]

nor power left for evil. Divest your thought, then, of

the mortal and material view which contradicts the ever-

presence and all-power of good; take in only the immor-

tal facts which include these, and where will you see or [5]

feel evil, or find its existence necessary either to the origin

or ultimate of good?

It is urged that, from his original state of perfec-

tion, man has fallen into the imperfection that requires

evil through which to develop good. Were we to [10]

admit this vague proposition, the Science of man could

never be learned; for in order to learn Science, we

begin with the correct statement, with harmony and

its Principle; and if man has lost his Principle and

its harmony, from evidences before him he is inca- [15]

pable of knowing the facts of existence and its con-

comitants: therefore to him evil is as real and eternal

as good, God! This awful deception is evil's umpire

and empire, that good, God, understood, forcibly

destroys. [20]

What appears to mortals from their standpoint to be

the necessity for evil, is proven by the law of opposites

to be without necessity. Good is the primitive Princi-

ple of man; and evil, good's opposite, has no Principle,

and is not, and cannot be, the derivative of good. [25]

Thus evil is neither a primitive nor a derivative, but

is suppositional; in other words, a lie that is incapable

of proof—therefore, wholly problematical.

The Science of Truth annihilates error, deprives evil

of all power, and thereby destroys all error, sin, sickness, [30]

disease, and death. But the sinner is not sheltered from

suffering from sin: he makes a great reality of evil, iden-

[pg 015]

tifies himself with it, fancies he finds pleasure in it, and [1]

will reap what he sows; hence the sinner must endure

the effects of his delusion until he awakes from it.

The New Birth.

Table of Contents

St. Paul speaks of the new birth as “waiting for the [5]

adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” The

great Nazarene Prophet said, “Blessed are the pure in

heart: for they shall see God.” Nothing aside from the

spiritualization—yea, the highest Christianization—of

thought and desire, can give the true perception of God [10]

and divine Science, that results in health, happiness, and

holiness.

The new birth is not the work of a moment. It begins

with moments, and goes on with years; moments of sur-

render to God, of childlike trust and joyful adoption [15]

of good; moments of self-abnegation, self-consecration,

heaven-born hope, and spiritual love.

Time may commence, but it cannot complete, the

new birth: eternity does this; for progress is the law

of infinity. Only through the sore travail of mortal mind [20]

shall soul as sense be satisfied, and man awake in His

likeness. What a faith-lighted thought is this! that

mortals can lay off the “old man,” until man is found

to be the image of the infinite good that we name God,

and the fulness of the stature of man in Christ appears. [25]

In mortal and material man, goodness seems in em-

bryo. By suffering for sin, and the gradual fading out

of the mortal and material sense of man, thought is de-

veloped into an infant Christianity; and, feeding at first

on the milk of the Word, it drinks in the sweet revealings [30]

[pg 016]

of a new and more spiritual Life and Love. These nourish [1]

the hungry hope, satisfy more the cravings for immor-

tality, and so comfort, cheer, and bless one, that he saith:

In mine infancy, this is enough of heaven to come down

to earth. [5]

But, as one grows into the manhood or womanhood

of Christianity, one finds so much lacking, and so very

much requisite to become wholly Christlike, that one

saith: The Principle of Christianity is infinite: it is

indeed God; and this infinite Principle hath infinite [10]