Independent Christian Science articles

Gideon’s Three Hundred

From the July 1914 issue of the Christian Science Journal by

THE time once came when the children of Israel had urgent need to learn a lesson. Left without a leader after the passing away of Joshua, they so lapsed into evil ways that they at last found themselves fugitives in the land of Midian, hiding in dens and caves in the mountains for fear of the depredations of those around them. This they endured for seven miserable years; then, as had so often happened, in their dire extremity they “called upon the Lord,” and He sent them a deliverer.

When Gideon, at the divine command, left his father’s threshing field to become their leader, he was confronted with a somewhat unique situation, for he found that the thirty-two thousand unhappy, frightened fugitives so far exceeded the Midianites in number that they might easily at any time, but for their fears, have asserted their freedom. Even under their new leader, however, they were not to depend upon numerical supremacy for their ultimate release. The mere incident of numbers weighed not one whit in the balances of God; and that was the lesson which they had need to learn, lest in their newfound courage following Gideon’s appearance they should “vaunt themselves,” and say, “Mine own hand hath saved me.” And the way in which they were taught this lesson was indeed a strange one.

The decisive hour had arrived. On one side of the hill were the Midianites, and not far from them the camp of Israel, “beside the well of Harod;” but before the fighting was allowed to begin, those of the Israelites who were afraid were told to depart. Whereupon “there returned of the people twenty and two thousand.” The ten thousand remaining were then told to go to the water’s edge and drink. “And the Lord said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that boweth down upon his knees to drink. And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, were three hundred men: but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water. And the Lord said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you.”

Viewed superficially, this whole proceeding seems strangely inconsequential at so critical a moment, but to the thoughtful Bible student it contains a deep and beautiful significance. It is readily seen that the real intent was to test each man’s fidelity, to discover how much interest he took in the work before him; to find out, in other words, not in what manner he would drink, but whether he cared to drink at all, with the enemy in plain sight and the battle imminent. Therefore we find that those who were chosen were those who would not stop long enough to kneel down beside the well and drink quietly and comfortably, but who, in their eagerness to hasten the attack, quickly dashed up the water with their hands and hurried on. No wonder the host of Midian fled! Gideon’s “three hundred” stands for that high quality of mental alertness which always wins. Not by the twenty-two thousand who were afraid, nor by the ten thousand who were indifferent, but by the three hundred who rushed on to meet the foe, were the Israelites delivered.

There is a subtle mesmerism in numbers to which the Christian Scientist has constant need to keep himself awake. Our wise Leader has even considered the matter of sufficient importance to make it the subject of a by-law, wherein she directs the members of The Mother Church to “turn away from personality and numbering the people” (Church Manual, Art. VIII, Sect. 28). One cannot afford to be lured into the belief that in numbers there is strength, nor into the opposite and equally erroneous belief that in lack of numbers there is weakness. One right thought has more activity, power, and impulsion than any number of wrong thoughts, no matter how often or how vehemently expressed. If every one in the world were to shout at the same moment, “The world is flat,” it would not make it flat. One single voice replying, “The world is round,” would have more power, because it has more truth than a whole world’s mistaken impotence.

The remembrance of this should surely inspire all of us with fresh courage, but especially those students of Christian Science who happen to be living in small places, where the workers comprise but a handful, and who sometimes perhaps give way to a sense of discouragement as they climb the narrow stairs, week after week, to the little room where their services are held. They think the cause of Christian Science is weak in that town because the Scientists themselves are so few. “What can you do,” the adversary whispers, “among so many?” The disciples once succumbed to the same suggestion. They brought to Jesus the five loaves and the two small fishes, and then, looking at the multitude waiting to be fed, one of them asked helplessly, “But what are they among so many?” Yet the multitude were fed, because the Master looked beyond the limitation of numbers into the realm of infinite possibilities.

The multitude today, those starving for the bread of Life, may be fed in like manner, if those faithful followers of the Christ in that little room up the narrow stairs will forget the loaves and the fishes to contemplate instead Love’s ever-present abundance. In the throng of long ago that had followed the Master out into the desert place, there must have been quite as much ignorance, intolerance, superstition, prejudice, antagonism, and opposition as seems to exist in the average small town of the present time, yet Jesus fed them all. If he had stopped to pity himself because he was “one,” and they were “five thousand,” would there have been twelve baskets of fragments remaining over and above all that had been eaten?

Some one has defined the need of the moment as “not more Christian Scientists, but better ones.” Then let us look up and rejoice. That little room where “two or three are gathered together,” may be the very chrysalis from which some radiant butterfly will one day rise to find its wings. Have not wonderful things grown from just such modest beginnings? Do we not all know of “an upper room” where a little company once gathered to sup and talk together, as friends will on the eve of a separation? It could not have been much to look at, from a material point of view, and those who met there were but twelve in number; yet there went forth from that memorable meeting, a message which has revolutionized the world.

With the worker in the large city, however, the mesmerism of numbers takes a radically different form. He has his beautiful church, his well-appointed reading-room, his convenient practitioner, and the respect if not the unqualified approval of the community in general. He is no longer the subject of persecution and ridicule, nor considered to be of unsound mind because he refuses to call a doctor when he is sick. In fact, everything seems to be going along so nicely that if he is not careful he is sometimes lulled into a pleasant state of self-satisfied apathy. In the small town the adversary whispers, “There are so few, how can you do anything?” In the large town he says, “There are so many, why need you do anything?” But it is the same adversary, and we need to recognize it in whatever outward garb it comes to us, for its purpose is ever to beguile us into the inaction which would tend to check the steady progress of our cause.

There is no simpler way to put a man to sleep, figuratively speaking, than to make him think that there is no particular reason for him to keep awake. Even the disciples once listened to this suggestion. It was in the garden of Gethsemane, and although Jesus had asked them to watch with him “one hour,” as soon as he had left them they were straightway overcome with slumber. Is it not possible that each man allowed himself to fall asleep partly because he was so sure that all the rest would keep awake? Yet it ended in all quietly sleeping at the very time that their help was most needed; for just a step away, in the purple shadows of the moonlit olive trees, their beloved Master was kneeling, in lonely agony, “his sweat … as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”

Let us not be deceived by numbers. When the cause of Christian Science becomes in any locality what may be termed, for want of a better word, “popular,” and great crowds flock to its doors, it is not wise for the Christian Scientist to relax his vigilance. Popularity is often a crucial testing-time for churches as well as for individuals, and in our natural desire to see our church grow, let us not lose sight of the fact that much untried material hastily and over-zealously added to our church-membership does not always facilitate the orderly and dignified progress of the church body as a whole. The wise captain does not overload his ship.

The ship was overloaded once in the third century of the Christian era, when Constantine thought to increase the brilliancy of his reign by adding Christianity, like another jewel, to the imperial crown. The gay world of Rome accepted it, not because they loved it, but because an emperor had made it popular. We all know the result. Church and state became hopelessly intermingled, politics and personality crept in, and a little later the purity and simplicity of the Christ-message was lost, smothered in the superheated atmosphere of unthinking numbers. Its true animus, the healing power which ever characterized the earlier workers, was forgotten, until, centuries later, one woman lived close enough to God to find this “pearl of great price” and to restore its primitive luster. Did the mesmerism of numbers disturb our Leader, Mrs. Eddy? She never faltered, although the little town of Lynn, Massachusetts, once held the only student of Christian Science in all the world.

Should we not rejoice to remember these things, we in our handsome finished churches, and we in our little rooms up the narrow stairs? Gideon’s “three hundred” is here today, for it simply means a condition of thought expressed in fidelity, in love, in earnestness, in consecration, in steadfast devotion. It is quality rather than quantity. It is that for which Mrs. Eddy once sent out an imperative call, sweetly insistent as some silver trumpet-tone whose echoes still linger in hearts attuned to hear. These were her words as found in “Miscellaneous Writings” (p. 176): “Are we duly aware of our great opportunities and responsibilities? . . . Never was there a more solemn and imperious call than God makes to us all, right here, for fervent devotion and an absolute consecration to the greatest and holiest of all causes. The hour is come. The great battle of Armageddon is upon us. . . . What will you do about it? … Will you doff your lavender-kid zeal, and become real and consecrated warriors? Will you give yourselves wholly and irrevocably to the great work of establishing the truth, the gospel, and the Science which are necessary to the salvation of the world from error, sin, disease, and death? Answer at once and practically, and answer aright!” And Gideon’s “three hundred” answered.

The Closed Hand

From the September 2, 1911 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel by

In an article recently published in the Sentinel, there appeared this sentence: “The closed hand cannot receive.” The simple statement, almost epigrammatic in its terseness, lingered in the memory of at least one reader, and said itself over and over in her heart as she went about her daily work. “The closed hand cannot receive.” And why not? She had only to hold out her own hand, tightly closed, to understand. Some one might have been offering her the price of a king’s ransom, and yet so long as those fingers maintained their rigid clasp she could not have received it. Let her open her hand, however, and hold it out, palm upward, as in the act of giving, and that very change of attitude, simple though it was, placed her at once in a position to receive.

As she pondered these things a picture which hangs in a certain dearly-loved reading-room flashed into her memory. It represents a group of persons standing on a lawn listening to a woman who has evidently stepped out upon a low balcony to address them. The woman is Mrs. Eddy. She stands looking out upon that sea of upturned faces, a slender figure silhouetted against the sky, the face in shadow, but what a world of eloquence there is in those outstretched hands! And the palms are upturned. Giving, giving, always giving,—and since the days of Jesus of Nazareth no one has ever received in such abundance. Yet is it not only in accord with an immutable law that she who gave so much should receive in like manner? Jesus himself said, “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

Does the storehouse sometimes seem strangely empty, O troubled heart? Do we sometimes find ourselves thinking that Christian Science is not doing as much for us as it should; that we are not getting as much out of it as we ought, and wonder why we do not receive more? Before becoming unduly disturbed over this, suppose we try the experiment of taking an entirely different point of view. Instead of asking, “What is Christian Science doing for me?” suppose we ask ourselves, “What am I doing for Christian Science?” Instead of saying, “I am not getting as much as I ought,” suppose we say, “Am I giving as much as I can?” Instead of saying, “I wonder why I do not receive more?” suppose we say, “Am I making the most of what I have?”

Why should we concern ourselves as to how much we are receiving? That is God’s part, and His work is already done. Divine Love is always saying, as did the father in the parable, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.” Since Principle and its idea are inseparable in Science, man already has all, for man is God’s reflection. The ring and the best robe have always belonged to the son, but he can use and enjoy them only as he turns to the Father, the divine Principle of his being, from whom all good proceeds. And, by the same process of reasoning, if we, today, would receive all that “the Father hath bestowed upon us,” we should ask ourselves whether or not we are making the absolute best of that good of which we are already in conscious possession. If we are honestly doing this, and giving to others as it hath been given unto us, fully, freely, out of the abundance of a grateful heart, and with no thought of recompense or reward, the clear, strong currents of a still higher understanding will flow into our lives in accordance with a law of divine reciprocity.

When Saul of Tarsus first saw the light of Truth, he did not stop to inquire what all this was to bring him, nor what return he might expect for work in the Master’s service. He simply fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” And a Christian Scientist who carries this prayer in his heart each day will find, when the evening shadows fall, that opportunities to give and to bless have come to him far beyond his fondest hopes. For it is the prayer of divine activity, which must ever find its answer. It is the prayer which longs to give, not one which murmurs because it does not receive. It is the prayer which asks to be shown the Father’s will, not one which desires to carry out its own. It is the prayer of the righteous which “availeth much.”

Self-examination is not always an agreeable occupation, nor is it the one best fitted to send us up in our own esteem, for when we dig deeply into the depths of human consciousness we sometimes bring to the surface thoughts which do not look very pretty when viewed in the honest light of day. It is, nevertheless, a purifying process which none of us can afford to neglect, for nine times out of ten when things go wrong, we have only to look within to locate the trouble. Do we feel, for instance, that we receive but scant measure of love from those around us? Let us look within and find how much love we are giving. “But,” we complain, “certain people do not even seem to like us.” Do we like them? “If ye love them which love you,” said the Master, “what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?”

Perhaps we feel that we have been unjustly treated. What about our treatment of others? Has it invariably been characterized by a gentle charity, “broad enough to cover the whole world’s evil, and sweet enough to neutralize what is bitter in it” (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 224)? Possibly our best efforts are often unappreciated. What of other people’s best efforts? Have we always given to them the cordial “Well done!” which we ourselves have failed to hear? Many of us feel that we are frequently misunderstood. Do we always understand others? Those who happen to differ from us may yet be quite as sincere and honest in their convictions as even we ourselves; but it takes a nature rarely great to remember this. Do we hear our mistakes criticized? Before resenting this, we might profitably look back into the past and see if we can remember ever having become a self-appointed judge in Israel. Are our faults magnified and commented upon? What of other people’s faults? Have we always maintained toward them the same loving silence which we would be glad to receive in return?

Truly it is “with what measure ye mete,” dear fellow worker in the bonds of Christ. Then let each begin this day, this hour, to do something for somebody; and if the suggestion comes that one is so situated that he cannot do anything for anybody, let him talk straight back to the lying argument and send it where it belongs. No one is so poor that he cannot do something, if it is only to turn over with his foot the beetle which is struggling on its back in a garden path. It is not always money which this sad world needs. In fact, could statistics of this kind be taken, they would probably show that more people starve annually for want of love than for want of food. There may be those within sound of our voice today to whom a word of encouragement would be worth more than all the money in the world. Indeed, circumstances sometimes arise when it requires more of the real Christ-spirit to hold out a hand to a friend who stands alone and misunderstood, perhaps even for the moment disgraced in the eyes of the world, than to build a church whose spires shall reach the very heavens.

When the hungry multitude lacked bread, Jesus fed them in the wilderness, “about five thousand men, beside women and children,” but when Mary sat at his feet to learn more of Christ, Truth, he said she had chosen the one thing needful. Thus was he ever ready to give according as the human sense of need presented itself. He did not tell the starving multitude that “man shall not live by bread alone,” nor did he give to Mary of the loaves and the fishes. Can we pray too earnestly for a similar discernment, for that intelligent, wisely expressed love which is ever reaching out toward humanity in tenderest compassion, ever ready to bless, to comfort, to heal?

There was once a poor widow whom Elijah found, in time of famine, gathering sticks. When he asked her to fetch him a little water and a bit of bread, she explained that she had only a handful of meal and a little oil in a cruse. “And, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and son, that we may eat it, and die.” The same old lying argument— “too poor to give!” But what said the man of God? Did he come down under the same mesmerism, accept her point of view, and hastily take himself off in search of some one whose opportunities were obviously less limited? Not at all. On the contrary, he saw the mental attitude of the speaker, saw the closed hand holding fast to fear, doubt, self-interest, and lack of faith in God’s infinite bounty. He saw that, so far as she was concerned, the sense of famine was nowhere so great as in her own thought, and he helped her heal it in the only way which at that moment would have done the work. “Fear not,” he said, “go and do as thou hast said : but make me thereof a little cake first.” Open the closed hand. Those stiff, cramped fingers have been shut too long. Let go of all that makes for limitation. Stop doubting God and begin to supply a brother’s need out of that good of which you are already in conscious possession. The woman did as she was told, and the upturned open hand received the blessing, for we are told that “she, and he, and her house, did eat many days. And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail.”

Elijah is not here today, but God is. The same Principle which was operative then is with us now, for God is “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” Then let us act as if we believed this. Let us give what we have, and give it gladly. If some beautiful new thought has unfolded to our consciousness, to shine like a star upon our ascending path, let us remember it is only as we pass on to others the blessing it has brought, that we may really make it our own. That which we gained yesterday, and give today, fits us to receive in yet greater measure tomorrow. The only man who receives nothing is the man who stands still, tightly clutching that which he has for fear of losing it.

Then let us open the closed hand. Open it wide. It should be joy enough for any one of us “to sow by the wayside for the way-weary, and trust Love’s recompense of love” (No and Yes, p.3) . That recompense is sure, but it often comes more quickly when we stop looking for it. Let us be willing to leave that part of it—the what and the when and the where—to God; and just go quietly on, forgetting self in blessing others, and leaving the future to make manifest that which is already growing clearer to us each day, each hour, that we cannot lose by giving.

The Eternal Now

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There is perhaps no more favorite method whereby the so-called human mind attempts to defeat or to delay a Christian Science healing than that which continually puts it off until tomorrow. All good is ours today, and we have a right to receive it; yet that mind which is ever enmity to God, good, would fain persuade us to overlook the golden possibilities of the eternal now in pursuing that evanescent thing called tomorrow, which, like some frail will-o’-the-wisp, dances ever alluringly just a step ahead of us, but is never reached.

It is not only the so-called patient in Christian Science, but the so-called practitioner as well, who sometimes seems to succumb to this fallacious argument whereby the realization of God’s goodness to His children is indefinitely postponed. Every treatment should be given with the firm conviction that it is the only one which will ever be needed, that the work is completed, then and there. A student of Christian Science who was noted for his instantaneous demonstrations was once asked the reason for his success. “I never take into account the possibility of a tomorrow,” was the reply. “I always work as if today were my first, last, and only chance to heal the case.”

This may partially explain why cases which to human sense seem critical are often healed so quickly that the world would say a miracle had been wrought. Christian Science treatment has been asked for only as a last resort, when the physicians and family have given up all hope and the patient appears to be passing on. The Scientist called in such an emergency instantly recognizes that the work must be done quickly, if at all. There is no chance here to postpone the issue. Seeing the patient again tomorrow will not do. It is a quick, hand-to-hand encounter with the “last enemy,” and everybody knows it. In such instances, spurred on by the exigency of the moment, and realizing as perhaps never before the utter insufficiency of human help to meet the situation, the practitioner often rises to such calm heights of spiritual exaltation that the sick man has been known to rise from his bed, and walk.

Why should we not be just as much in earnest in all cases? The man who lay at the pool of Bethesda, waiting to be healed, was not in imminent danger of passing on. If Jesus had not come by that day the chances are the patient sufferer would have been at his accustomed post again tomorrow, just as he had been for the last thirty and eight years. Although the Master knew that “he had been now a long time in that case,” he saw no reason why he should be a long time getting out of it. There was one quick, simple, unanswerable word of command, and the work was done. That was Jesus’ way. We have no record of any case of healing begun today and finished tomorrow. He lived in the eternal now, wherein his Father’s omnipotence was all sufficient.

But what about similar so-called chronic cases of today? Are we not sometimes like those of old whom Jesus rebuked because they maintained “there are yet four months, and then cometh harvest”? Christian Science reiterates, “Now is the time for so-called material pains and material pleasures to pass away, for both are unreal, because impossible in Science” (Science and Health, p. 39). Yet when a belief of many years’ standing presents itself at the door of our consciousness to be healed, calling itself a man who has it, do we not sometimes become so mesmerized by this belief of “time” that we have even been known to take his case by the week, or possibly by the month, at what we consider to be a generously reduced price? Truly, the ways are many and devious whereby the adversary will seek to nullify a Christian Science treatment, even to the extent of persuading the very practitioner himself to lend a hand!

It is obvious that if we thought the patient would be healed on Monday, we would not arrange to continue the work until Saturday; and if he is not to be healed until Saturday, why begin on Monday? This stupefying belief of time never laid its spell upon the clear consciousness of our Master. When he had need to be at the other side of the lake, he entered the ship, and they were at the other shore “immediately.” The dictionary defines the word immediately as meaning, “Without interval of time; without delay; straightway; instantly; at once.” Why is it that the followers of the Christ today do not reach more quickly the haven where they would be? Why do we not reach the other side of the lake “immediately”? Simply because we do not know that we can.

When one awakens from a dream, how long does it take for the dream to disappear? Although one might have been all night in getting to sleep, he could wake up in an instant. Suppose we were dreaming of a castle perched on beetling crags far above a swiftly rushing river, in which we were held a prisoner: would the castle have to fall into ruins before we could get out? Would long years have to elapse, wherein mortar would disintegrate, and stones crumble, and iron bars rust, and hinges break, in order that we might go free? Yet the whole of mortal existence is but a dream of pain and pleasure in matter, no more real than the dream-castle, did we but know it. Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 530) : “The history of error is a dream-narrative. The dream has no reality, no intelligence, no mind; therefore the dreamer and dream are one, for neither is true nor real.” Then what is the quickest, surest, sanest, simplest way to destroy the dream-castle wherein we feel ourselves imprisoned? Is it not just to wake up?

It seems so easy to see this about the fantasies of a dream! Why not try to see it also of those grim prison-houses of disease, sin, sorrow, want, and woe, wherein we fancy in our waking moments that we sometimes dwell? Those whose eyes are shut are not the only ones who dream. In her famous sleep-walking scene, one watcher says of Lady Macbeth, “See, her eyes are open.” “Aye,” replies the other, “but their sense is shut.” Let us arouse ourselves from the belief of any consciousness apart from God. Mortal mind would fain prolong this dream. “You have been sick a good while,” it says. “Your system needs to be built up. You cannot expect to get well in a moment. All this takes time.”

Does it? How long did it take for the dream-castle to go? You once believed yourself a prisoner there. But were you? Your present belief in sickness, or discord of any sort, is no more real than that castle, and can be destroyed by the same simple process. Where does it go? To the same place where the dream-castle goes when you wake up. Where did it come from? From just the same place that the dream-castle came from. There is no use in speculating as to where error comes from. There is no use looking for the origin of evil, for it has none. Do we not sometimes get so busy “uncovering error” that we forget to thank God because there is no reality in error?

What matters the type, length, breadth, thickness, and general appearance of our dream-castle? Who cares who built it, and when ? Will the illusion vanish any more quickly after we once decide whether its style of architecture is Gothic, Renaissance, or early English? Will it help us to wake up to know whether it is built of granite, marble, or only of stones from the river bed below? And if we cannot figure it out for ourselves, will it expedite matters any to call in some one else to look at it and tell us its name?

Who gave the names to everything mortal and material in the first place? Mrs. Eddy says, “Beholding the creations of his own dream and calling them real and God-given, Adam —alias error—gives them names” (Science and Health, p. 528). Why prolong the dream? Since the one object of Adam, or error, is to prevent us from waking up, it would keep us at work indefinitely counting the windows and doors of our castle, if it could. It would keep us forever staring at matter, if it had its way. But why give so much flattering consideration to anything so obviously false? The one point which should interest us is this: How are we to get out?

The important thing then is to wake up. When this is done the dream-castle will disappear of its own accord, because there is nothing else left for it to do. Then let us cease our hopeless contemplation of our prison walls. Have we not already stared at them long enough? Let us know that it never existed in God’s beautiful realm of the real, and that we were consequently never in it. Let us realize that inharmony of any kind is no part of man, that it cannot attach itself to man, nor call itself either the dream or the dreamer. Let us remember, instead, that we are living in God’s eternal now, wherein no laggard element of time can ever enter, where no stone walls crumble, but where all is as perfect and harmonious and complete as in that primal hour when Mind spoke, “and it was so.”

Serving Continually

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When Daniel, at the command of Darius the king, had been cast into the den of lions, we are told that the king, after a night of anxiety and fasting, went very early in the morning to see what had taken place. The outlook was not promising. Without was the great stone, sealed with the royal signet and laid before the mouth of the den, while within were the hungry lions; yet there must have been in the thought of the king some faint shadow of hope that somehow his friend would yet be alive. The day before, when he had reluctantly pronounced sentence upon his trusted counselor, he had said, “Thy God whom thou servest continually, he will deliver thee.” Now his first words show that his thought is still upon some higher power than any which he himself has ever known. “O Daniel,” he cries, “servant of the living God, is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions?” We remember the brave, sweet answer: “O king, live forever. My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions’ mouths, that they have not hurt me.”

It is a significant fact that in addressing Daniel the king had twice referred to him as one who served his God “continually.” This fidelity and steadfastness on Daniel’s part, in the midst of persecution, intolerance, ignorance, and superstition, had evidently impressed Darius, just as it will impress us when we begin to see that this very thing was an important factor in securing Daniel’s speedy release from his most trying situation. We are always interested in learning more of how Daniel, as the saying is, “made his demonstration,” for this Hebrew captive of centuries ago is not the only person who has ever believed himself thrown into a den of lions, and some have not gotten out so quickly as did he. We may recall that for what appeared to be an endless length of time we beat upon the stone walls of our dungeon without response. We cried aloud for succor, but nobody seemed to hear. Surely, we thought, God is able to save us! He who is “the same yesterday, and today, and forever,” will not fail us!

Just at this point we stopped beating upon the walls and began to think. God is indeed “the same yesterday, and today, and forever,” but what were we doing yesterday, and the day before that, and the week before that, and the month before that? Were we acknowledging God’s allness, reflecting His goodness, rejoicing in His presence and power, gratefully recognizing ourselves as the expression of this infinite All, this supreme I am of Spirit, or were we idly amusing ourselves in a satisfied sense of ease in matter? It is not an easy thing to readjust one’s thinking in an instant. Christian Science teaches that “to understand God is the work of eternity, and demands absolute consecration of thought, energy, and desire” (Science and Health, p. 3). As Christian Scientists we have undertaken a great and holy task, even the amelioration of sin, sickness, and death; shall we therefore be less earnest, less devoted, less steadfast than was this Hebrew captive of old, who went into his chamber thrice daily, opened his windows “toward Jerusalem,” and “prayed, and gave thanks before his God”?

It seems so easy to forget! Sense testimony whispers that we live, not in “the atmosphere of Spirit, where Soul is supreme” (Science and Health, p. 590), but in a material world, amid all sorts of material surroundings. It tells us that this is an age of luxury and ease, of many and diversified interests, of countless interruptions, of increasing demands, of feverish unrest. It tells us that one cannot afford to be thought “queer;” that the easiest way is to drift along with the current of popular opinion, to do what everybody else does, to go where everybody else goes, to say what everybody else says, to think what everybody else thinks. There are so many things to be done before we can settle down to do our studying and reading, and our quiet mental work. We would like to serve continually, and we will, after a while; but in the mean time,—and then down we suddenly go into the den of lions, and straightway call loudly upon God to get us out.

He can, He will, He does, for such is the all-inclusive compassion of Love’s infinite plan; but if the getting out process is sometimes accomplished only after many strange delays and discouragements, shall we not be honest enough to place the responsibility where it really belongs? It was easy for Daniel to turn quickly to God in his trouble, for his mental processes required but little readjustment. With other Hebrew youths he had been brought, a prisoner, into one of the most corrupt and demoralized courts on earth; but he had not eaten the king’s meat, neither had he partaken of wine at the king’s table. He had been in the world, but not of it, like the disciples for whom Jesus prayed, “Not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” Surely it was no hard thing for him who had been in the habit of opening his windows thrice daily “toward Jerusalem,” to look up through the little window of his prison and realize the omnipotence of good, of infinite Truth and Love.

Type of the true Christian Scientist is this intrepid Daniel, mingling quietly with his fellows, making the best of a bad situation, living in peace even among a race of aliens and idolaters, but never allowing anything to interfere with the serving of his God continually; for to serve as he did is to think right always. He who “shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty” is he who “dwelleth in the secret place of the most High,” not he who goes there only when he is in trouble. The true Christian Scientist dwells so constantly in Mind’s abiding presence that his thoughts spontaneously go out in unconscious healing. He does not always need to speak; he lives in an atmosphere of right thinking, which speaks for itself, like the fragrance of a summer garden, silently abloom. Jesus on one occasion had only to turn and look upon Peter to send that weak disciple forth, healed of his fault, and weeping bitterly.

The true Christian Scientist is one who often blesses without knowing it. No one can even casually meet him without feeling better, or take his hand without realizing the sincerity of its clasp, or look into his eyes without remembering that the pure in heart see God. He does not have his moments of rapturous exaltation, followed by the swing of the pendulum to the other extreme, but is ever poised, alert, awake, listening for the Father’s voice, ready to go, to come, to wait, to speak or to keep silent, as the Father wills. He is the Daniel of the twentieth century; and when he is cast into the den of lions,—as he sometimes is,—we know that after his night of vigil the quiet hour of dawn will come, when he will serenely look up into the anxious face of his would-be persecutor and say, as did that other one who served continually: “O king, live forever. My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions’ mouths, that they have not hurt me.”

Man’s Heritage Of Joy

From the Christian Science Sentinel, August 21, 1915, by

The consciousness of the Christian Scientist is like some sweet, still garden, wherein each day is unfolding new blossoms of thought, nourished by the dews of faith, refreshed by the winds of hope, and quickened into life and beauty by the warm sunshine of love. It is a place of perpetual springtime. As the world awakens each year from its long winter’s sleep, so do mortals, too long asleep in material beliefs, awaken sooner or later under the transforming touch of Truth to find themselves in a new world of loveliness, the “new heaven” and the “new earth” of John’s prophetic vision. The activity which unlocks the frozen shallows of the brooks, which flings green garlands on every bough and coaxes the anemone to uncurl its shy petals in the sunshine, is but a type of that spiritual activity which makes “the wilderness and the solitary place” of some starving human consciousness to bud and “blossom as the rose.”

Mrs. Eddy asks, “Who that has felt the loss of human peace has not gained stronger desires for spiritual joy?” Then she adds, “The pains of sense quickly inform us that the pleasures of sense are mortal and that joy is spiritual” (Science and Health, p. 265). Joy, then, being spiritual, is but a part of man’s eternal heritage. God’s obedient idea has a right to be happy, because it is ever knowing and doing the Father’s will. It is just as natural for man to be happy as it is for a bird to sing. Joy is a spiritual possession, and it necessarily follows that it is impartially and universally bestowed, — an ever present fact, as changeless and eternal as the Mind from which it emanates.

But what says mortal mind to all this? It flatly contradicts it, of course, just as it attempts to contradict and reverse everything that is true. It says that joy is far from being a universal possession, but is instead some rare gift allotted to a favored few. It says that joy is not the normal state of man, but the abnormal. It insists that man is naturally “of few days, and full of trouble.” Job once believed this, but it was before he had learned to differentiate between frail humanity and the perfect man of God’s creating. Popular opinion on this subject has not greatly changed since that day when beggared self-righteousness, shorn of all it held most dear, sat in dust and ashes, listening to the false sympathy of false friends.

Job was supposed to be happy when he was at ease in personal sense, and to be unhappy as soon as this sense of ease was taken from him. The world in general agrees with Job; it says that a man’s happiness consists “in the abundance of the things which he possesseth,” so it straightway goes to work to accumulate “things.” It says that joy is synonymous with wealth, power, fame, worldly success, gratified ambition, ample leisure for self-indulgence,—all that stands for “the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” It therefore spends its short span of time in pursuing these, as children pursue some dancing will-o’-the-wisp, yet all the while knowing that when this evanescent thing called happiness is once attained, it will be retained only so long as chance and change decree, and that at any moment a sudden turn of that elusive weather-vane called “circumstance” may send it floating provokingly away into the distance.

How it rests one, after thinking of these things, to remember that the man who had as little in material possession as any one of whom the world has ever known, once included “my joy” in the rich legacy which he left to his disciples. In the hour before Gethsemane, Christ Jesus said to those sorrowing hearts, “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” His joy, when he was about to be crucified! Yet as we read those matchless words spoken that day in the “upper room” at Jerusalem, we feel sure that in the face of him who uttered them there must have shone that look of holy joy which shines in the faces of all who follow him, because it is clear and undisturbed radiance of right thinking.

The only sort of joy which really exists, loses not one iota of its pure serenity through the empty flutter of passing events. Paul once wrote that he rejoiced in tribulation. Joy does not mean that one has run away from trouble; it means that he has overcome it. Joy has proven the affluence of its God, and is giving thanks. It is not the untried, undisturbed tranquility of a garden bathed in June sunshine; rather is it this same garden uplifting fragrant chalices of gratitude because of the refreshing of the rain. It is the rainbow blossoming into beauty against the blackness of disappearing storm-clouds. It is the smile that shines through tears. It is that which has had its starless midnight and at dawn has heard the thrush’s song.

In a certain quiet room there stands a vase of iridescent glass, delicately sensitive to the tint of any flower confided to its care. All day long it sparkles like a fleck of imprisoned rainbow, flinging out soft blues and purples and opalescent rose color, a thing of perpetual beauty, changing its hues each hour as the sunshine shifts its point of view. But it is when the sunshine goes away and evening shadows creep into the room that it grows most beautiful of all in the eyes of its possessor; for while it loses its color, it still shines on, like some clear, steady little star, long after everything else around it has melted into darkness. Thus it reminds one of the true Christian Scientist, lifting his gaze above the clouds of sense, rejoicing in the sunshine, merging himself with delicate self-effacement into the general harmony of his surroundings, a source of unfailing light and gladness to all about him.

In “Miscellaneous Writings” our Leader says: “The lives of great men and women are miracles of patience and perseverance. Every luminary in the constellation of human greatness, like the stars, comes out in the darkness to shine with the reflected light of God” (p. 340). “Your joy,” said Jesus, “no man taketh from you.” Then shine on, little star! Who knows how many are watching for your light? Who knows how many, now wandering afar in the darkness, shall see your steady glow, and come out from among the shadows to find, as you have found, the eternal sunshine of Love’s abiding presence?

Giving Up and Going Up

From the Christian Science Sentinel, November 13, 1915, by

The trend of the human mind for centuries has been to associate goodness with asceticism, and it is not surprising, therefore, to hear the beginner in Christian Science express a vague fear that if he continues his study to the point where he finally becomes what he terms “good,” he will have to give up much of that cheerful exuberance of spirits which he has somehow grown to think is incompatible with the religious temperament.

No one, however, knows better than does the Christian Scientist that holiness is not synonymous with gloom or depression. Mrs. Eddy says, “I agree with Rev. Dr. Talmage, that ‘there are wit, humor, and enduring vivacity among God’s people'” (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 117). The joyless saint is a paradox. As a matter of fact, the better one grows, the happier he grows, for he is becoming more conscious of his oneness with God, the source of all good. So to those who seem to be entertaining a frightened sense that Christian Science is going to rob them of something in spite of themselves, let the comforting assurance be given that it never compels anybody to give up anything. It only shows us something so much better that we gladly let go of the old

Christian Science never leaves the heart empty and unsatisfied. It never tears something rudely away and gives nothing in its place. The very fact that something is gone from human experience which was once deemed essential to happiness, is in itself proof that something else, and something better, has already come. God’s ways are as gentle as the processes whereby a field of stiff little wheat-stalks is transformed into a sea of rippling gold. God’s ways involve progress, unfoldment, accretion, not loss and deprivation. Nothing is lost when spring merges sweetly into summer,—hope is only exchanged for fruition, promise for fulfilment.

As one gathers a rich cluster of ruby grapes, does he sigh because the delicate fragrance of the early blossom no longer lingers on the air? Does the butterfly ever try to crawl back into his chrysalis? Without another glance at his empty cradle, he just flutters his wonderful new wings and disappears in a blur of gold. Why should it not be a matter for rejoicing to leave a thing outgrown? June would be without its roses if every little bud at the first touch of the summer sun should cry out in alarm, Don’t shine on me, or I may have to give up being a rosebud. The desire to grow is as normal in a man as in a rose. “Christianity causes men to turn naturally from matter to Spirit, as the flower turns from darkness to light” (Science and Health, p. 458).

The Father’s plan does not involve a giving up of anything. Through the study of the good, the true, and the beautiful, as revealed in Christian Science, thought is educated out of itself into loftier aims and ideals, but always in a direct line of spiritual advancement. “Giving up;” is simply another name for “going up;” and it is so naturally accompanied by a grateful realization that nothing has been lost, nothing left behind, that unless this joyousness does attend the giving up, one may be very sure the thing has not really been done at all, no matter what the outside semblance may be. Jesus once made this point very clear when he rebuked the thought which should even look with covetousness upon something forbidden. Is it not possible that the adversary sometimes deludes even very earnest workers into believing that they have given up something, when in reality they are clinging to it as desperately as ever? The human will has many disguises, some old, some surprisingly new, and one of its favorite diversions is to pass itself off as a Christian Science demonstration. It tells a man that he has given up some habit or appetite, yet every hour of every day he longs for the desired object. It tells a woman she has done the same, yet the lack of the thing desired leaves her irritable and hungry.

Unless there is a going up, there has been no giving up, we may be sure of that. Then let us turn the white light of Truth upon such a demonstration and look it squarely in the face. That which really demonstrates Love’s omnipresence, leaves no lingering sense of deprivation. A trained musician would not feel deprived of anything because he could no longer stand entranced before that delight of every boyish heart, the circus hurdy-gurdy. He whose ears are attuned to heavenly harmonies, can well afford to relinquish the crudities of uninstructed childhood.

Heavenly harmonies, such as he never dreamed of before, are coming into the life of every earnest student of Christian Science. Things which he once found amusing, now seem stale and profitless. He suddenly discovers what is indeed the truth, that there is nothing in them, and finds himself beginning to take an interest in many things for which he has hitherto had scant regard. He begins to find himself attracted as never before to things genuine and simple, wholesome and unaffected. He likes simpler manners, simpler speech, simpler dressing, simpler modes of living. Better music appeals to him; his taste in art and drama becomes more refined; while as he grows more familiar with the unique, forceful English found in the writings of Mrs. Eddy, his appreciation of good literature is sure to grow ever more keen. Even his erstwhile favorite newspaper is likely to be laid aside in favor of The Christian Science Monitor, whose daily chroniclings uplift thought to behold the good, the useful, the beautiful, and the true.

These changes come about so gently, however, that the student is hardly conscious of them himself. He only knows that the old scenes wherein he once played so conspicuous a part know him no more. The very mental atmosphere they exhale would seem to him now as suffocating as the over-perfumed, superheated air of some conservatory would be to one accustomed to the delicate freshness of the dew-wet morning. Perhaps new friends come to him, whose tastes and aspirations are akin to his own; but if the Father’s plan for him does not for the moment seem to include the sort of human companionship to which he now instinctively turns, he knows that he is not in any way dependent upon it for happiness. He sees that the lesson of the hour is for him to turn more unreservedly to God, to prove that since God is the infinite ever-presence, man, His child, is never alone.

Thus the student finds friends in the birds, the stars, the flowers, the rippling brook. The winds whisper him their woodland secrets, and the pine trees sing him a song which needs no words to be complete. The happy, innocent creatures of the woods grow dear to him, and he wonders how he could ever have believed it sport to overpower them either by strength or strategy, and to carry them home limp and lifeless, “butchered,” like those of old, “to make a Roman holiday.” In fact, he whose heart is going out in truer love for all things, both small and great, through his better understanding of the eternal facts of being, finds that he loves the sweetness of solitude as never before. The whole world has suddenly become for him one vast, ever changing panorama of delight; and as you sometimes meet him, on an early summer morning, returning from an hour alone with his books and the sunrise and his own happy thoughts, and he smiles at you in passing, you somehow remember it was written once of Moses that “when he came down from the mount,” he “wist not that the skin of his face shone.”

God is so good, and we are all surrounded by so many beautiful, true, right things,—just waiting. Let us rejoice if we can see that one by one the old things, all that belongs to “the old man with his deeds,” are already slipping away, and that no matter how fair these sense-dreams of happiness may once have seemed, we can be glad, because we have found that in parting with them we are losing nothing. Some one has written:—

I thank Thee that I know
Those much-desired dreams of long ago,
Like butterflies, have had their summer’s day
Of brief enchantment, and have gone. I pray
For better things.

Let us then welcome any experience, however trying, which enables us to go up to find those “better things” which God hath prepared for those who love Him. They will be gained just in the proportion that we are willing to loosen our grasp on matter and reach out for those things of Spirit which have from the beginning constituted man’s eternal heritage.

The Lion of the tribe of Juda

From the Christian Science Journal, September 20, 1919, by

In the fifth chapter of Revelation we read of a book “written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals,” and the Revelator goes on to say that he “wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.” But presently one of the elders said unto him, “Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.” What is this “Lion of the tribe of Juda,” we perhaps wonder, which had power to prevail when all else failed? Since the Bible to be correctly understood must be spiritually interpreted, how natural it is to turn at once to that dear companion, ever close at hand, which is indeed a veritable key to hidden treasures, our beloved textbook; and there we find our answer, on page 514 of “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy. “Moral courage is ‘the lion of the tribe of Juda,’ the king of the mental realm.”

How beautifully it all unfolds as we ponder it more deeply and recognize the indisputable fact that he who would break the seven seals of error’s utmost effort and read, as in an open book, “things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world,” must indeed possess that kingly quality which enables him to roam the mental realm as its master. What Christian Scientist, in fact, has not already proved this, to some extent; for who of us has not, at some time or other, been placed in a hard situation, a trying position, an embarrassing predicament, from which there seemed for the moment no possible way of escape? That so-called mind, which is always enmity to God, likes nothing better than to get mortals into “a tight corner,” as the saying is, and then stand off and laugh at them. “What are you going to do about it?” it seems to say; and, to tell the truth, we hardly know, so bound hand and foot do we seem to be by the invisible chains of fear, uncertainty, and irresolution. No matter where we turn, it seems impossible to take a single step in any direction. Yet as we stand there, praying for wisdom to know what to do, it begins to dawn upon us after a while that the one thing needed to break our bonds and set us free, is moral courage.

Following this conviction, quickly comes the realization that no matter how much mortal mind may be laughing at us, there really is a way out after all. If this were not so, would not the one All-power be powerless on some occasions? Divine Love has always and under all circumstances provided “a way out;” let us never forget that. So, as we look about us, gathering fresh courage now from our confidence in God’s willingness and ability to help us, a strange thing sometimes happens; instead of seeing no way out at all, we now see two ways,—a right way, which looks like a hard way, and a wrong way, which seems to be a very easy way. The question now arises, Which shall it be?

It should not take a true Christian Scientist long to decide, and the decision once made, all we need is moral courage to take the next step. Sooner or later, to-day or tomorrow or next month or next year, according to our faith in the omnipotence of good, this step is taken, and we find that with it our bonds are instantly broken and we are free to go forward as Principle may direct in that right way, though it may seem the hard way. This is wonderful enough of itself, but after a while another even more wonderful thing happens: the right way gradually ceases to be the hard way, and becomes the easy way instead. Why? Because Love is right there with us, to help us through. A joyous sense of protection, of safety, of peace indescribable steals over us. Can this be the hard path which we thought we were entering? We supposed we should have to tread it with bleeding footsteps; but it might be carpeted with flowers, so little do we feel the stones and the thorns and the hard places on the road. Where are the jagged rocks which we once saw standing in the way, the threatening cliffs which looked so terrifying, the dark, icy waters which we thought we would have to cross alone? Were they, after all, only the visions of our frightened imagination? How beautifully the way is all smoothed out before us as we go steadily, surely, unfalteringly on, with the Father’s hand in ours! Why should we be afraid when all that really is, is on our side?

It may be, however, that some of us have had to learn a much needed lesson by trying to get out of our corner by taking the other path, the wrong way, which seemed the easy way. Then what did we find? Just this,—that we were simply going round in a circle, and would sooner or later find ourselves exactly in the place from which we started. For the easy way is only the hard way camouflaged, as many of us have found to our sorrow. No matter how innocent and alluring it may appear, it never gets us anywhere but right back in our corner again. In other words, the predicament in which a student of Christian Science may find himself will present itself again and again until he has extricated himself from it in the right way. If he attempts to escape in any other he will simply have to go back, sooner or later, and do it all over again. It may present its claims in a new form and call itself a new set of circumstances; but underneath it all ever lurks the same old lie, the lie which was never squarely faced and overcome, as it should have been, but avoided and evaded and condoned instead.

Another thing we find, when we endeavor to escape the issue by a wrong path: we find that the farther we travel, the darker things seem to grow. It is no small thing to have let go of the Father’s hand, and of course that is what we are doing when we voluntarily turn from Principle. We no longer have anything on which to rely, no basis for our conclusions, no foundation for our footsteps, no law to govern our actions, no stability, no permanence. We begin to be afraid, and that is only natural; for when we are walking in a wrong path, we have reason not only to be afraid but to be very much afraid. God has not changed in any way, of course; but what has happened? Even that of which Isaiah wrote, “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: but your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.” Has not our Leader expressed the same thought on page 19 of Science and Health, “If living in disobedience to Him, we ought to feel no security, although God is good”?

Why should we, then, why do we, ever wander into that insecure path which never goes anywhere but round and round in a circle? What keeps us from taking that first right step in the other direction? Nothing but lack of moral courage. And what is back of this lack of moral courage? Fear. We are afraid to leave the beaten track of popular opinion lest we be thought odd or queer or different; or we are afraid of hurting somebody’s feelings; or we are afraid of losing something,—social standing, business prestige, or personal popularity; or we are afraid of ridicule, the worldling’s frown, or its cynical smile; most of all, we are afraid that our motives will be misjudged, our acts misunderstood, our words misinterpreted. So we try to dodge the issue. In other words, while we are not, of course, saying that black is white, we are quite satisfied to compromise by calling it a sort of gray.

Divine Principle, however, recognizes no such vacuous and neutral tint: He who is not with me is against me. Right is right, and wrong is wrong. There is no convenient middle ground. We stand at the parting of the ways. Will we choose the right path now, or do we prefer to go round in a circle a little longer? Of course no one likes to be misunderstood; but after all, what does it matter? There are worse things than being misunderstood. Being a coward before Truth is worse. Every one who has ever done anything for humanity has been misunderstood more or less. Our Master himself was mocked and reviled, as he trod in mighty meekness the shores of Galilee. Then, many centuries later, another great teacher had to stand and face the world alone,—a gentle, patient, loving woman, misrepresented, maligned, misunderstood. Have we ever considered what it must have meant to be the only Christian Scientist on earth? No wonder that the sublime quota of moral courage which enabled our beloved Leader, Mrs. Eddy, to take her single-handed stand for Truth, was also that which opened for her the seven seals, and gave us the complete and final revelation of Truth as contained in our textbook.

Is not this quality, then, well worth cultivating, and never more than now? Because the outward conflict across the sea is over, it by no means follows that our mental warfare, as Christian soldiers, is over also. The ringing of the peace bells did not at the same time, unfortunately, sound the requiem for all error. Already those on the watch-towers have given us warning. Let us not subside into self-satisfied lethargy, lest it trap us, after all, in the very midst of our songs of victory. During this coming period of reconstruction many questions will undoubtedly arise,—indeed, have already arisen,—which will require much earnest, prayerful consideration on the part of every student of Christian Science. The warfare between flesh and Spirit has not yet reached the place where there is even an armistice, as most of us know, and we may at any time be called upon to take a stand for Principle which will not seem easy; but let us always remember that Love is right there with us to help us through.

Then let us cultivate this moral courage which enables us to take the required first step, thereby helping others to do the same. “On ne passe pas” should be our daily watchword, as each wrong suggestion is halted and challenged. Let nothing pass which is not in accord with Principle. Let nothing elude our mental vigilance; most of all, that phase of evil which may come in the guise of good. Let there be no good-natured, easy compromise. Since we must take our stand against error, sooner or later, why not meet every question fairly and squarely as it comes? In the presence of “the Lion of the tribe of Juda” it will quickly show itself for what it is; for it dares do nothing else. And why not take our stand at once? Surely there is nothing to be gained by waiting. We live not in a past of unhappy memories, nor yet in a future of vague possibilities. We live in the to-day of Mind’s eternal presence.

Copyright, 1919, by The Christian Science Publishing Society, Falmouth and St. Paul Streets, Boston, Massachusetts. Entered at Boston post office as second-class matter. Acceptance for mailing at a special rate of postage provided for in section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized on July 11, 1918.

Where Is Your Faith?

From the Christian Science Journal, May 1916, by

At the time of the storm upon the Galilean lake, when the disciples cried out to the Master to save them, the question which he put to them was, “Where is your faith?” It was evident from their self-confessed inability to cope with the situation that their faith in the power of matter to destroy them was greater than their faith in the power of Spirit, to save them; hence it is not surprising that to his very pointed question not one of them could answer a word.

This is not the only instance in which Jesus had to do for his disciples the work they should have done for themselves. When they asked him to dismiss the multitude who had followed him out into the wilderness, so that they might go and buy food, his instant response was, “They need not depart; give ye them to eat.” But they only proved the insufficiency of their faith by looking helplessly at the few loaves and fishes.

How often must the Master have groaned within himself at the deadly dulness of those whom he had so tenderly sought to teach! Nevertheless with unfailing patience he said. “Bring them hither to me.” He had given the disciples an opportunity to manifest their own understanding of the truth, and they had lost it. So he not only fed the multitude for them, but in the instance above noted he had not another word for the terror-stricken little group than the question already quoted, as he quietly turned from them to rebuke the winds and the waves with such authority that the tempest could do no less than cease and the calm of Spirit follow.

No characteristic of Jesus was more pronounced than his unwavering trust in God. Before the writer became a student of Christian Science she used to puzzle a good deal over the failure of Jesus to assist the poor widow who had cast her two mites into the treasury. He knew it was all she had, “even all her living,” for he had called his disciples’ attention to that fact; yet there is no record that he did anything except to commend her action in the highest terms. Why did he not give her something? Commendation, though pleasant, does not buy bread.

How could any one so tenderhearted and compassionate as the Master witness that touching little scene and raise not even a finger in the widow’s behalf? He who had fed the five thousand was amply able to help her, and he knew her need. How could he let her go home without anything? He could do it because he had enough faith in God; because he knew that instead of going home without anything, she was going home to find that every real thing on earth was now on her side. She had proven that she was not looking to matter to supply her needs, for she had just given away the last bit of it which she possessed; and by reason of that very act she had placed herself unreservedly under the protection of Spirit, thereby availing herself of a spiritual law more certain, changeless, and infalliable than the so-called law which holds the planets in their courses.

The widow may have been wholly unconscious of this. Her deed may have been inspired merely by a simple, childlike faith that in some unknown way God would take care of her; but this did not affect the result. She had laid hold of a law, whether she knew it or not; and God’s law does not depend upon human will for its divine impulsion. She was, however, obedient to the law, not in opposition to it, or the blessing would have been missed.

Writing to the Romans, Paul speaks of some who “show the work of the law written in their hearts,” even though they are ignorant of the letter. How many persons are familiar with the laws of their own land? Yet each one of us has been protected from his very infancy by the laws of his country, and the fact that he may himself be unconscious of the existence of any specified law does not render that law less operative in his behalf if he lays hold upon it. Although the woman may have been unconscious that by giving up her pittance in matter she was laying hold of the limitless abundance of Spirit, this did not render the result any the less inevitable.

Jesus understood. That is why he could let this woman go without a word. It is one of the rare instances in which he simply stood aside, because there was nothing left for him to do. She had done it all herself, and there was no more doubt as to the ultimate outcome than there was doubt of the sun rising on the following morning. As she turned away from the treasury that day, one can easily picture the pure joy which must have shone in his face as he watched her go, and looking into the future foresaw its radiant possibilities. To have hurried after her in order to press a little money into her hand would have spoiled it all; and Jesus never spoiled other people’s demonstrations by getting in their way.

Let us thank God if the same may always be said of us. There are, of course, occasions where a Christian Scientist is called upon to give not only the spiritual food which is needed, but to meet the urgent necessity of the moment by supplying material assistance as well. We would by no means decry that loving charity which is not content with merely saying, “Be ye warmed and filled,” but which gladly proffers also the wherewithal to purchase that which warms and feeds. No one would deny, however, that to awaken the needy to a sense of the divine ever-presence, with its infinite supply for all human need, is to confer a much greater boon.

Christian Science teaches its followers to be loving, compassionate, generous, open-hearted, and kind; but there is such a thing as false charity, and it is often only another name for lack of moral courage. To put the hand into the pocket is nearly always the easiest way; but the easiest way is not always the best way, nor the way which most truly blesses both “him that gives, and him that takes.” Jesus once supplied the temporal need of those whom he had for three days filled with the bread of heaven; yet he did this only once or twice, so far as we know, in the whole course of his ministry. In like manner the cases wherein the practitioner of Christian Science is called upon to furnish both spiritual and material assistance may be fewer in number than is sometimes believed, if the case has not been analyzed with prayerful consideration.

What is it that impels a Christian Science practitioner who has heard some “hard luck story” to put his hand in his pocket in the patient’s behalf? Is it not a half-defined fear that if he does not nobody else will? Yet in the treatment given he has doubtlessly affirmed in all earnestness and sincerity that man is under no law but the law of God, and that consequently every avenue and channel for good is open to him, and always available. In the words of a loved hymn (Hymnal, p. 195), “Why is thy faith, O child of God, so small?” Cannot the practitioner dismiss a so-called patient with the same joyous confidence with which Jesus watched the woman go, that day of centuries past? Is a Christian Science treatment so frail a thing that one needs to watch closely afterward to see if it is working? Is the closing of an office door a signal for the perfect law of God to cease its stately operation?

Whence comes this exaggerated sense of personal responsibility? When one drops a ball, he does not reach out his hand to push it, for fear that if he does not it will never reach the ground. Can we not have as much faith in God’s law as we have in the law of gravitation? When we let go of the ball there is no uncertainty as to the outcome, no half-frightened misgiving that unless we keep a sharp eye on it, it may go up instead of down. We know that it is going down. We do not just believe that it is, or hope that it is, but we know that it is. We have done our part when we release it from the hand; the law of gravitation does the rest.

In exactly the same manner, when the practitioner has by his treatment mentally released the patient from the false beliefs which have been holding him, he has done his part; God does the rest. When at the Christ-command Lazarus stepped forth from the tomb, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes, it is a significant fact that Jesus did not say to those who stood by, Loose him, and make him go, but rather, “Loose him, and let him go.”

After a correctly scientific treatment has been given, one does not need to rush around to “make” anything happen; he only has to stand aside and “let” it happen. Yet it sometimes takes real moral courage to keep our hands “off” after our mental work is done. We do not always seem satisfied with merely loosing Lazarus from his grave-clothes; we sometimes want to run after him and tell him which way to go. But is that the practitioner’s part? Yet this is what many a faithful, loving, tenderhearted practitioner of Christian Science is doing, and has been doing for years. On page 419 of our textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mrs. Eddy, we read, “Your true course is to destroy the foe, and leave the field to God.” If we only would leave it! But we sometimes stay around, and unintentionally occupy so much of the field that God has to wait a long while.

Human sympathy so easily overreaches itself. It frequently robs a brother of the priceless privilege of making his own individual struggle. It robs him of a chance to grow, because it wants to do all his growing for him. It sees so plainly what he should do that it rushes in and attempts to do it for him before he gets a chance. It wants to work out another’s problem, and then hand it to him all finished and nicely folded up, like some neat bundle. But such bundles are not worth the paper they are wrapped in, as most of us know, because most of us have handed them out from time to time. A child grows to be a mathematician through the mental processes involved in solving his own problems, not by having some kind-hearted friend give him the answers from the back of the book.

O Love divine, that clothes the lilies and marks the sparrow’s fall, if we would only trust Thee a little more! The supreme test of Jesus’ faith was when he hung upon the cross and looked down upon what seemed to be only a lost cause. What had he to show for his three years of untiring ministry? A few weeping women, a few scattered disciples, the jeers and gibes of the multitude. “He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him,” was the taunt. Yet Jesus never wavered! “He saved others; himself he cannot save,” they cried. Yet even in that moment of extreme human anguish he would not look to matter for help, nor to material means. The “twelve legions of angels” were not called upon to aid the stately operation of his Father’s perfect law. He might then and there have stepped down from the cross and become their king, but he did not. His faith was still in Spirit, not in matter. His purified vision saw far beyond the fleeting testimony of the passing moment to discern the eternal activity of good. “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” was all he had to say. He had faith in the coming of the resurrection morning, even though the path leading to it brought him through the darkness of Calvary.

There is a resurrection morning for each one of the Master’s followers today, a time when we shall rise above our false estimates of life in matter to behold the risen Christ. What is it that beclouds the vision? Why does its radiant effulgence too often seem to be wrapped in shadows? Why can we not see the wonder and the glory,—see it now? “What is it that seems a stone between us and the resurrection morning?” Mrs. Eddy asks in “Miscellaneous Writings” (p. 179), and she adds, “It is the belief of mind in matter.”

Then let us lift our thoughts, as did the Master, above and away from the flutter of some mere passing human belief calling itself truth, to behold the spiritual, perfect real. Let us roll away the only stone that lies between us and the solution of every problem. Does this statement seem too sweeping? In Science and Health (p. 368) Mrs. Eddy has written, “When we come to have more faith in the truth of being than we have in error, more faith in Spirit than in matter, more faith in living than in dying, more faith in God than in man, then no material suppositions can prevent us from healing the sick and destroying error.”

Purification

From the Christian Science Sentinel, July 26, 1913, by

One day a Christian Scientist who had recently passed through a somewhat trying experience was leaving the home of a practitioner just as another student of Christian Science was entering it. The newcomer and the practitioner stood for a moment on the veranda, enjoying the freshness of the spring morning, and the eyes of both half unconsciously followed the one who was leaving as he made his way down the shady street. “How that dear man has been persecuted!” murmured the newcomer. But the practitioner only smiled as she looked after the retreating figure. “Why not call it purified?” she asked. “To my sense, he is being pushed into the kingdom of heaven just as fast as he is able to go.”

“Purified,” not persecuted. As the one who was undergoing this purifying process proceeded on his way, his heart was full. He had gone to the practitioner that morning, trying to find surcease from a situation which was becoming well-nigh unbearable; and he had been given, not the sympathy which he had somehow expected, but a glimpse instead of the allness of God, lifting his thought into the realm of clearer vision, wherein he saw that “the accuser is not there” (Science and Health, p. 568) and man forever expresses the infinite perfection.

Oh, miracle of Love, he thought, which maketh even “the wrath of man” to praise Thee! How could I have been blind so long? Is the gold “persecuted” because the refining fire separates it from the dross? And what does it matter if the furnace does seem to be heated “seven times more than it was wont to be heated,” as was that Babylonian furnace wherein were cast the three captives of long ago? Since “seven” symbolically stands for “completeness,” it must mean that the fire burns only until the experience has been sufficient to teach us the lesson which we had need to learn.

When this larger, better, truer view of some trying human situation becomes clear to us, we begin to look at persons and events in an entirely different light, and no longer continue to hang the millstone of a false sympathy about the neck of those whom we profess to love. It is a fact not without significance that when the friends and relatives of Lazarus stood about his tomb, weeping and lamenting, Jesus spoke to them before he spoke to Lazarus. “Take ye away the stone,” he said. And when, at the Christ-command, Lazarus finally came forth, wrapped in his grave-clothes, Jesus once more addressed those who stood by. “Loose him,” he said, “and let him go,” thus implying that the friends of Lazarus had still something to do before the demonstration could be complete. Those of us who would be friends, in the highest sense of the word, will remember this, unless we are so blinded by “mere personal attachment” (Manual, Art. VIII., Sect. 1) that we cannot see a step beyond the present moment.

There is an incident in the experience of the three Babylonian captives before referred to which is well worth considering in this connection. Most of us have known the story from our childhood, having listened to it in wide-eyed wonder at our mother’s knee; but it remained for Christian Science to show us that this narrative, like all those in the Bible, when spiritually interpreted, will furnish us a practical working basis for our present-day problems. We see that Nebuchadnezzar may be likened to those who are today controlled by mortal mind, which has not changed much since those primitive times, but still condemns to a fiery furnace those who refuse at its command to enthrone matter as deity. As we read on, however, we find that a strange thing happened. As Nebuchadnezzar watched the progress of what was intended to put an utter end to those who had defied his supremacy, he suddenly called out to his counselors, “Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?” Upon being assured that such was the case, “he answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.”

“The form of the fourth.” What was it? Whence came it? These three Hebrew captives had been in the king’s company, more or less, for a considerable time, yet no one had ever until that moment seen this form. Why was it so suddenly in evidence? Might it not have been because the fiery trial of persecution had so purified the thought of the three men that they were able to rise to the true consciousness of man as he really is, spiritual, and not material, and thus forever beyond the reach of mortal mind’s hatred? This discernment of the fact of being must have been so clear to them that after a while it became clear even to the dull perception of the heathen king, and he saw, all at once, their savior from the flames, even the true concept of man as he really is, “the Son of God.”

Persecution or purification, which shall it be? We have our choice. Those who have done much mountain climbing know that it sometimes happens that a rock stands directly in the narrow pathway, apparently putting a stop to all further progress. Shall we make of this rock an obstacle or a stepping-stone? If we choose to do so, we may sit down helplessly in front of it, and exclaim, “This is too much. Just because I am trying to get to the top of the mountain somebody who wants to see me fail has put this miserable rock in my way.” At this, however, some wiser companion only shakes his head. “There is nobody who wants to see you fail, for the only man is the man that God made, and the only Mind is the Mind that was also in Christ Jesus. This is just a stepping-stone, and from the top we will have a better view of what is beyond. Give me your hand, my brother, and let us go on.”

But sometimes the hand is not given. The one stays where he is, the other goes on. But he who sits looking at the rock, with anger, resentment, self-pity, and self-justification still rankling in his bosom, misses the joy of the one who stands at last upon the mountain top, and as he looks through the rarefied atmosphere of spiritual ascendency upon the new heaven and the new earth spread out before him, he forgets his bleeding footsteps, and only cries out in his heart, “Father, I thank Thee for every rock in the way, since, in surmounting it, I gained a stepping-stone to this!”

Christian Science does not teach that God puts these obstacles in our path, for He, the infinite good, never has need to make use of evil to accomplish His wise purposes, nor do Truth and error ever form even a temporary partnership for the benefit of mortals. God had no part in the persecutions which attended the earthly career of Jesus of Nazareth; yet the very sum total of human hatred which ultimated in laying Jesus in the grave, was turned into an experience wherein he reached his highest realization of the ever-presence of Life. In triumphing over the trials of Gethsemane and Calvary he set the seal of demonstration on a teaching which his enemies would fain have buried forever in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.

We read in the text-book, in the chapter on the Apocalypse, that when the dragon stood before the woman, ready to devour her child, the spiritual idea, “this only impelled the idea to rise to the zenith of demonstration” (Science and Health, p. 565). Why, then, should any of us murmur when we pass through an ordeal which compels us to rise to a higher and more glorified view of God as the only power and presence, and of man, not as an ill-used, unhappy mortal, but as the Son of God, forever at-one with the Father? Surely it is time to have done with the sickly sentimentality which fondly parades itself or its friend in the guise of a martyr. St. John tells us that at the beginning of those terrible hours which marked the final scenes in that most bitter and unjust persecution for righteousness’ sake which the world has ever seen, Jesus “lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son.” To the clear, spiritualized thought of the Master it was a time of exaltation, not of martyrdom. The man who stands on the mountain top and thanks God, is not a martyr. He has only been forced onward and upward, by the compelling hand of Love, to heights of which he himself had never dreamed.

Then when next we meet him, instead of thinking “How that dear man has been persecuted!” let us hold instead that truer concept of the situation which will “loose him” from his load of human sympathy, “and let him go.” No word need be spoken between us; he will understand just from the silent clasp of our hand and the look in our eyes that we are rejoicing with him, because we know that when the fiery ordeal is over, he will come forth as gold.

The Smell of Fire

From the March 1920 Christian Science Journal by

Perhaps there is no story more dear to the heart of the Christian Scientist than that of the deliverance of the three young Hebrew captives from Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace. It is, indeed, so familiar to all of us, even to those who have hitherto been only casual readers of the Bible, that it needs no repetition here. There is one point, however, in connection with it which, though often dwelt upon, has particularly interested at least one student of Christian Science of late, and it is this: that after Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego were finally released, not only were their clothes unhurt and the hair of their heads unsinged, but not even “the smell of fire had passed on them.”

“The smell of fire,”—that is where one endeavoring to understand the Scriptures in their true spiritual meaning and import may well give pause; for what, metaphysically speaking, is the smell of the fire? Is it not the remembrance of it, the sting of it, the resentment over it? “The smell of fire” is the acknowledgment that an evil happened. It means that evil has a history. It means that although the fire is out now, it once existed, and we were in it. So insistently does this last argument seem to cling to consciousness that some of us go through the fire and every one smells smoke on us for years afterwards. When such is the case, can it be said that we, like those three of long ago, have come through the experience untouched?

Let us refuse to allow error to attach itself to us in any way, shape, or manner. Its claim that it once had activity, presence, power, cause, intelligence, or law is a false and spurious claim, and should be seen and handled only as its last, desperate effort, since all else has failed, to get itself perpetuated as a belief of memory. Let us refuse to give it life, even to that extent. Let us refuse to admit that evil ever had either a beginning or an ending. Let us refuse to admit that it ever was at all, even for one unholy moment. This, of course, by no means implies that we should not give grateful thanks for our deliverance from the belief in it, at the right time and in the right place, with the pure desire to help some one else who may be going through a similar experience. It only means that it does not facilitate the elimination of “the smell of fire” from our garments if we drag the remembrance of it around with us wherever we go, brooding over it unnecessarily in private, talking of it unnecessarily in public, and seeming to take a melancholy delight in recounting its unpleasant details. Will it daily grow beautifully less by any such procedure?

In the warfare which is wholly spiritual there should be no wounded veterans pointing to their scars with pardonable pride, simply because, if the fighting has been rightly done, there will be no scars to exhibit. “Trials are proofs of God’s care,” as we are told in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 66), and surely it is not in accord with the nature of Love that, when a proof of this tender care is given, the incident should be seared upon us with a permanent stamp of past suffering. God’s ways are painless, easy, gentle, natural. It is only our rebellion over learning our much needed lessons which causes any suffering. Little children at school do not necessarily suffer and get scarred for life just because they pass from the Primer Class into the First Reader. Let us refuse to be scarred up Christian Scientists. We do not have to be. Let us just be Christian Scientists who have learned our lessons and gone up higher.

Perhaps, however, that which most commonly keeps alive “the smell of fire” is self-pity. We feel so sorry for ourselves, forgetting that thereby we encourage others to feel sorry for us, since one seldom fails to receive that for which he makes a market. Jesus said, “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.” When the “prince of this world” presents himself at the door of any human consciousness, he cannot effect an entrance unless there is something in that consciousness which responds. He may come over and over, but if he meets with no response he will soon get tired of coming. There is a limit to the length of time when even the most persistent falsity will continue to knock at a door resolutely closed and barred against it. Let us tire error out, instead of letting it tire us out.

As for the pity of others for us, there are few things more dully stupefying than sympathetic mesmerism. Human sympathy tends to strangle its victim in the python coil of what it impudently calls “love.” Under its influence even that high and holy thing called “mother love” has sometimes been perverted into that which might better be termed “smother love.” Yet one often unconsciously comes down under it because it assumes that phase of evil hardest to detect, namely, evil coming in the name of good, something which puts Christian Scientists off their guard more quickly than anything else in the world. Evil coming in the name of evil fights in the open. We see it in all its hideous proportions, recognize it for what it is, and govern ourselves accordingly; but evil coming in the name of good puts on the habiliments of heaven, presents itself to the guard in this stolen uniform, gives the countersign “love,” and slips into the camp undetected.

One of the best antidotes for selfpity, should one ever find himself inclined to indulge in it, has been given by our revered Leader in “Miscellaneous Writings” (p. 18): “Thou shalt recognize thyself as God’s spiritual child only, and the true man and true woman, the all-harmonious ‘male and female’ as of spiritual origin, God’s reflection,—thus as children of one common Parent,— wherein and whereby Father, Mother, and child are the divine Principle and divine idea, even the divine ‘Us’—one in good, and good in One.” This inspired statement certainly strips off error’s disguise in an instant, and leaves it cowering and ashamed before Truth; for if we once recognize ourselves in this our true identity and being, what is there left to pity or to be pitied? Is “God’s spiritual child” ever an object of commiseration? Are we mortals or immortals? Of course we can think of ourselves as mortals if we choose. Nobody is going to stop us; indeed mortal mind would gladly encourage us in the delusion. Our false estimate of ourselves, however, and the world’s false estimate of us can never for one instant change the forever fact that “now are we the sons of God.”

There is something else, however, besides self-pity which helps to keep alive “the smell of fire,” and that is self-condemnation. Either one alone is bad enough; but when they go hand in hand, as they so often do, one might as well step back into his fiery furnace and stay there a while longer; for his demonstration is not made. Does that sound discouraging? Perhaps, just at first; but when one is “speaking the truth in love,” as the apostle so beautifully puts it, no one can feel really the worse for having heard it. Let us be awake to this fallacy of self-condemnation. Like its boon companion, it presupposes that evil has a history, and that we were identified with it. It tricks us first into admitting that there was a fiery furnace heated “seven times more than it was wont to be heated,” for our especial benefit. This much conceded, it argues to us that we were once in it, and that we did get out of it finally, but not so quickly nor so gracefully nor so spectacularly as it now makes us believe we should have done, or as anybody else would have done under the same circumstances.

Let us refuse to accept any argument that perpetuates a belief in a material past. To hold a post-mortem over error is tacitly to admit that it once had life. Why not forget “those things which are behind,” as the apostle says, and press forward? Let us shut the door on condemnation, both from within and from without. What other people say about our experience matters little, so long as God understands. Unless those who may now be criticizing stood right beside us in the furnace all through it, they are in no position to judge how hot the fire was.

What a wonderful thing it would be if every one who had ever passed through a trying ordeal would come out of it “every whit whole,” with head erect and with shining eyes, with a greater love for God and man, a deeper gratitude, a stronger faith; and with a broader charity for the mistakes and struggles of the weak and weary ones of earth! What a goodly company they would make, these purified ones, as they go their silent way among us, peaceful, exalted, chastened, humble, their faces still radiant with the joy of demonstration!

Since our Leader tells us that “those only who are tried in the furnace reflect the image of their Father” (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 278), should we ever look back upon any such experience with anything but gratitude? “Beloved,” wrote the apostle Peter, from the depths of his own personal experience, “think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: but rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy . . . for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you.”

“The spirit of glory and of God”! To gain that, is it not worth a few pangs, or many pangs, if need be? Let us never forget that it was right there, in the midst of the fire, that those captives of long ago saw the Vision of the Christ. Their human extremity was so great that they rose to a mental height born of the necessity of the moment, and beheld man as he really is, spiritual and not material, and beheld this saving fact so plainly that even the dull eyes of the watching Nebuchadnezzar caught the vision. “Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?”he cried in amazement; “Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.”

That heavenly glimpse of divine reality, that clear realization of man as he really is, “the Son of God,” is not so often gained in our hours of ease as in those testing times when the utmost efforts of animal magnetism seem put forth to destroy the Christ-idea for which we stand. So let us rejoice, even if it were through great tribulation that we gained the vision; for “the form of the fourth” once seen, can never be forgotten, nor can we ever go back to where we were before the wonder and the glory of it came. So the fire goes out, the princes, governors, captains, and counselors depart in baffled fury, Nebuchadnezzar openly proclaims that “there is no other God that can deliver after this sort,” and those “upon whose bodies the fire had no power” quietly go about their business.

If the demonstration has been a perfect one, clean-cut, permanent, convincing, this is what he who has just been released will naturally say if questioned about his experience, and if he can say it in very truth and mean it, he may be absolutely sure that even “the smell of fire” is gone: “Was it hard? I don’t know. The vision was so beautiful I have forgotten all the rest.”

Love is the liberator.